The next day was Sabbath, when a new trial, now to
be told, awaited Gavin in the pulpit; but it had nothing
to do with the cloak, of which I may here record the
end. Wearyworld had not forwarded it to its owner;
Meggy, his wife, took care of that. It made its
reappearance in Thrums, several months after the riot,
as two pairs of Sabbath breeks for her sons, James
and Andrew.
First sermon against women.
On the afternoon of the following Sabbath, as I have
said, something strange happened in the Auld Licht
pulpit. The congregation, despite their troubles,
turned it over and peered at it for days, but had
they seen into the inside of it they would have weaved
few webs until the session had sat on the minister.
The affair baffled me at the time, and for the Egyptian’s
sake I would avoid mentioning it now, were it not
one of Gavin’s milestones. It includes
the first of his memorable sermons against Woman.
I was not in the Auld Licht church that day, but I
heard of the sermon before night, and this, I think,
is as good an opportunity as another for showing how
the gossip about Gavin reached me up here in the Glen
school-house. Since Margaret and her son came
to the manse I had kept the vow made to myself and
avoided Thrums. Only once had I ventured to the
kirk, and then, instead of taking my old seat, the
fourth from the pulpit, I sat down near the plate,
where I could look at Margaret without her seeing me.
To spare her that agony I even stole away as the last
word of the benediction was pronounced, and my haste
scandalised many, for with Auld Lichts it is not customary
to retire quickly from the church after the manner
of the godless U. P.’s (and the Free Kirk is
little better), who have their hats in their hand when
they rise for the benediction, so that they may at
once pour out like a burst dam. We resume our
seats, look straight before us, clear our throats
and stretch out our hands for our womenfolk to put
our hats into them. In time we do get out, but
I am never sure how.
One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in
a town, without losing his character, and I used to
await the return of my neighbour, the farmer of Waster
Lunny, and of Silva Birse, the Glen Quharity post,
at the end of the school-house path. Waster Lunny
was a man whose care in his leisure hours was to keep
from his wife his great pride in her. His horse,
Catlaw, on the other hand, he told outright what he
thought of it, praising it to its face and blackguarding
it as it deserved, and I have seen him when completely
baffled by the brute, sit down before it on a stone
and thus harangue: “You think you’re
clever, Catlaw, my lass, but you’re mista’en.
You’re a thrawn limmer, that’s what you
are. You think you have blood in you. You
hae blood! Gae away, and dinna blether.
I tell you what, Catlaw, I met a man yestreen that
kent your mither, and he says she was a feikie fushionless
besom. What do you say to that?”
