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A more contented woman than Kirsty Hamilton née Christie it would have been difficult to find. Andrew Hamilton and Langhope Manse made to her "Paradise enow." The little hard lines had gone from her face, and she bustled about, a most efficient mistress, encouraging the small maid to do her best work, and helping with her own capable hands. She planned and cooked most savoury, thrifty dinners, and made every shilling do the work of two; it was all sheer delight to her. House-proud and husband-proud, she envied no one, and in fact sincerely pitied every other woman because she could not have her Andrew.
July, August, and September were three wonderful months to the Hamiltons. They spent them settling into the new house (daily finding new delights in it), working in the garden, and getting acquainted with the congregation.
After their one o'clock dinner, on good afternoons, they mounted their bicycles and visited outlying members. Often they were asked to wait for tea, such a fine farmhouse tea as town-bred Kirsty had never dreamed of; and then they cycled home in the gloaming, talking, talking all the time, until they came to their own gate—how good that sounded, their own gate—and having wheeled their bicycles to the shed, they would walk round the garden hand in hand, like happy children.
Andrew had generally something to show Kirsty, some small improvement, for he was a man of his hands; or if there was nothing new to see, they would always go and again admire his chief treasures—a mossy bank that in spring would be covered with violets, a stone dyke in which rock plants had been encouraged to grow, and a little humpbacked bridge hung with ferns.
The war did not trouble Kirsty much. She was rather provoked that it should have happened, for it hurt the church attendance and sadly thinned the choir, and when Andrew had finished reading the papers he would sometimes sit quite silent, looking before him, which made her vaguely uneasy.
Her own family were untouched by it. Archie had no thought of going to train, the notion seemed to him ludicrous in the extreme, but he saw his way to making some money fishing in the troubled waters. The Rev. Johnston Christie confined his usefulness to violent denunciations of the Kaiser from the pulpit every Sunday. He had been much impressed by a phrase used by a prominent Anglican bishop about the Nailed Hand beating the Mailed Fist—neat and telling he considered it, and used it on every possible occasion.
One afternoon in late October the Hamiltons were walking in their garden. They had been lunching at Etterick, and were going in shortly to have tea cosily by the study fire. It was a still day, with a touch of winter in the air—back end, the village people called it, but the stackyards were stocked, the potatoes and turnips were in pits, the byres were full of feeding cattle, so they were ready for what winter would bring them.
To Andrew Hamilton, country-born and bred, every day was a delight.
To-day, as he stood with his wife by the low fence at the foot of the gardens and looked across the fields to the hills, he took a long breath of the clean cold air, and said:
"This—after ten years of lodging in Garnethill! Our lives have fallen to us in pleasant places, Kirsty."
"Yes," she agreed contentedly. "I never thought the country could be so nice. I like the feel of the big stacks, and to think that the stick-house is full of logs, and the apples in the garret, and everything laid in for winter. Andrew, I'm glad winter is coming. It will be so cosy the long evenings together—and only one meeting in the week."
Her husband put out his hand to stop her. "Don't, Kirsty," he said, as if her words hurt him.
In answer to her look of surprise, he went on:
"Did you ever think, when this war was changing so much, that it would change things for us too? Kirsty, my dear, I have thought it all out and I feel I must go."
Kirsty was apt to get cross when she was perturbed about anything, and she now said, moving a step or two away, "What in the world d'you mean? Where are you going?"
"I'm going to enlist, with as many Langhope men as I can persuade to accompany me. It's no use. I can't stand in the pulpit—a young strong man—and say Go. I must say Come!"
Now that it was out, he gave a sigh of relief.
"Kirsty," he pleaded, "say you think I'm right."
But Kirsty's face was white and drawn.
"I thought you were happy," she said at last, with a pitiful little sob on the last word.
"So happy," said her husband, "that I have to go. Every time I came in and found you waiting for me with the kettle singing, when I went out in the morning and looked at the hills, when I walked in the garden and knew that every bush in it was dear to me—then I remembered that these things so dear were being bought with a price, and that the only decent thing for me to do was to go and help to pay that price."
"But only as a chaplain, surely?"
Andrew shook his head.
"I'm too young and able-bodied for a chaplain. I'm only thirty-two, and though I'm not big I'm wiry."
"The Archbishop of Canterbury says the clergy shouldn't fight," Kirsty reminded him.
Andrew took her arm and looked very tenderly at her as he answered, laughing, "Oh! Kirsty, since when did an Anglican bishop direct your conscience and mine?" They walked slowly towards the house.
On the doorstep Kirsty turned.
"Andrew," she said, "have you thought it all out? Have you thought what it may mean? Leaving the people here—perhaps they won't keep your place open for you, for no man knows how long the war'll last—leaving your comfortable home and your wife who—who loves you, and going away to a life of hardship and exposure, and in the end perhaps—death. Have you thought of this sacrifice you are making?"
And her husband answered, "Yes, I have thought of all it may mean. I don't feel I am wrong leaving the church, because Mr. Smillie is willing to come back and look after the people in my absence. He will stay in the Manse and be company for you." Here poor Kirsty sniffed. "Oh! my dear, don't think I am going with a light heart. 'Stay at home, then,' you say. 'Better men than you are will stay at home.' I know they will, and I only wish I could stay with them, for the very thought of war makes me sick. But because it is such a wrench to go, makes me sure that I ought to go. Love and sacrifice—it's the way of the Cross, Kirsty. The 'young Prince of Glory' walked that way, and I, one of His humblest ministers, will find my way by His footprints."
Kirsty said no more. Later, when Andrew was gone, her father came to Langhope and in no uncertain voice expressed his opinion of his son-in-law. That a man would leave a good down-sitting and go and be private soldier seemed to him nothing short of madness.
"Andrew's a fool," he said, with great conviction.
"Yes," said Kirsty, "Andrew's a fool—a fool for Christ's sake, and you and I can't even begin to understand what that means in the way of nobility and courage and sacrifice, because we were born crawling things. Andrew has wings, and my only hope is that they will be strong enough to lift me with him—for oh! I couldn't bear to be left behind." She ran from the room hurriedly, and left a very incensed gentleman standing on the hearth-rug.
Mr. Christie was accustomed to the adulation of females. He was a most welcome guest at the "At Home" days of his flock. He would drop in and ask in his jovial way for "a cup of your excellent tea, Mrs. So-and-so," make mild ministerial jokes, and was always, in his own words, "the purfect gentleman."
And his daughter had called him "a crawling thing!" He was very cold to Kirsty for the rest of his visit, and when he went home he told his wife that marriage had not improved Christina.
His little