After the ceremony, we then got out at the window, and it was a heavy day to me; but we went to the manse, and there we had an excellent dinner, which Mrs. Watts of the new inns of Irville 2 prepared at my request, and sent her chaise-driver to serve, for he was likewise her waiter, she having then but one chaise, and that no often called for.
But, although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was resolved to cultivate civility among them, and therefore, the very next morning I began a round of visitations; but, oh! it was a steep brae that I had to climb, and it needed a stout heart. For I found the doors in some places barred against me; in others, the bairns, when they saw me coming, ran crying to their mothers, “Here’s the feckless Mess-John!” and then, when I went into the houses, their parents wouldna ask me to sit down, but with a scornful way, said, “Honest man, what’s your pleasure here?” Nevertheless, I walked about from door to door like a dejected beggar, till I got the almous deed of a civil reception – and who would have thought it? – from no less a person than the same Thomas Thorl that was so bitter against me in the kirk on the foregoing day.
Thomas was standing at the door with his green duffle apron, and his red Kilmarnock nightcap – I mind him as well as if it was but yesterday – and he had seen me going from house to house, and in what manner I was rejected, and his bowels were moved, and he said to me in a kind manner, “Come in, sir, and ease yoursel’: this will never do, the clergy are God’s gorbies, and for their Master’s sake it behoves us to respect them. There was no ane in the whole parish mair against you than mysel’; but this early visitation is a symptom of grace that I couldna have expectit from a bird out the nest of patronage.” I thanked Thomas, and went in with him, and we had some solid conversation together, and I told him that it was not so much the pastor’s duty to feed the flock, as to herd them well; and that, although there might be some abler with the head than me, there wasna a he within the bounds of Scotland more willing to watch the fold by night and by day. And Thomas said he had not heard a mair sound observe for some time, and that, if I held to that doctrine in the poopit, it wouldna be lang till I would work a change. – “I was mindit,” quoth he, “never to set my foot within the kirk door while you were there; but to testify, and no to condemn without a trial, I’ll be there next Lord’s day, and egg my neighbours to be likewise, so ye’ll no have to preach just to the bare walls and the laird’s family.”
I have now to speak of the coming of Mrs. Malcolm. – She was the widow of a Clyde shipmaster, that was lost at sea with his vessel. She was a genty body, calm and methodical. From morning to night she sat at her wheel, spinning the finest lint, which suited well with her pale hands. She never changed her widow’s weeds, and she was aye as if she had just been ta’en out of a bandbox. The tear was aften in her e’e when the bairns were at the school; but when they came home, her spirit was lighted up with gladness, although, poor woman, she had many a time very little to give them. They were, however, wonderful well-bred things, and took with thankfulness whatever she set before them; for they knew that their father, the breadwinner, was away, and that she had to work sore for their bit and drap. I dare say, the only vexation that ever she had from any of them, on their own account, was when Charlie, the eldest laddie, had won fourpence at pitch-and-toss at the school, which he brought home with a proud heart to his mother. I happened to be daunrin’ by at the time, and just looked in at the door to say gude-night: it was a sad sight. There was she sitting with the silent tear on her cheek, and Charlie greeting as if he had done a great fault, and the other four looking on with sorrowful faces. Never, I am sure, did Charlie Malcolm gamble after that night.
I often wondered what brought Mrs. Malcolm to our clachan, instead of going to a populous town, where she might have taken up a huxtry-shop, as she was but of a silly constitution, the which would have been better for her than spinning from morning to far in the night, as if she was in verity drawing the thread of life. But it was, no doubt, from an honest pride to hide her poverty; for when her daughter Effie was ill with the measles – the poor lassie was very ill – nobody thought she could come through, and when she did get the turn, she was for many a day a heavy handful; – our session being rich, and nobody on it but cripple Tammy Daidles, that was at that time known through all the country side for begging on a horse, I thought it my duty to call upon Mrs. Malcolm in a sympathising way, and offer her some assistance, but she refused it.
“No, sir,” said she, “I canna take help from the poor’s-box, although it’s very true that I am in great need; for it might hereafter be cast up to my bairns, whom it may please God to restore to better circumstances when I am no to see’t; but I would fain borrow five pounds, and if, sir, you will write to Mr. Maitland, that is now the Lord Provost of Glasgow, and tell him that Marion Shaw would be obliged to him for the lend of that soom, I think he will not fail to send it.”
I wrote the letter that night to Provost Maitland, and, by the retour of the post, I got an answer, with twenty pounds for Mrs. Malcolm, saying, “That it was with sorrow he heard so small a trifle could be serviceable.” When I took the letter and the money, which was in a bank-bill, she said, “This is just like himsel’.” She then told me that Mr. Maitland had been a gentleman’s son of the east country, but driven out of his father’s house, when a laddie, by his stepmother; and that he had served as a servant lad with her father, who was the Laird of Yillcogie, but ran through his estate, and left her, his only daughter, in little better than beggary with her auntie, the mother of Captain Malcolm, her husband that was. Provost Maitland in his servitude had ta’en a notion of her; and when he recovered his patrimony, and had become a great Glasgow merchant, on hearing how she was left by her father, he offered to marry her, but she had promised herself to her cousin the captain, whose widow she was. He then married a rich lady, and in time grew, as he was, Lord Provost of the city; but his letter with the twenty pounds to me, showed that he had not forgotten his first love. It was a short, but a well-written letter, in a fair hand of write, containing much of the true gentleman; and Mrs. Malcolm said, “Who knows but out of the regard he once had for their mother, he may do something for my five helpless orphans.”
Thirdly, Upon the subject of taking my cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw, for my first wife, I have little to say. – It was more out of a compassionate habitual affection, than the passion of love. We were brought up by our grandmother in the same house, and it was a thing spoken of from the beginning, that Betty and me were to be married. So, when she heard that the Laird of Breadland had given me the presentation of Dalmailing, she began to prepare for the wedding; and as soon as the placing was well over, and the manse in order, I gaed to Ayr, where she was, and we were quietly married, and came home in a chaise, bringing with us her little brother Andrew, that died in the East Indies, and he lived and was brought up by us.
Now, this is all, I think, that happened in that year worthy of being mentioned, except that at the sacrament, when old Mr. Kilfuddy was preaching in the tent, it came on such a thunder-plump, that there was not a single soul stayed in the kirkyard to hear him; for the which he was greatly mortified, and never after came to our preachings.
CHAPTER II
YEAR 1761
It was in this year that the great smuggling trade corrupted all the west coast, especially the laigh lands about the Troon and the Loans. The tea was going like the chaff, the brandy like well-water, and the wastrie of