An Auld Licht Official

by J. M. Barrie

 

AN AULD LICHT OFFICIAL.

BY J. M. BARRIE

IT was Snecky Hobart's pretty way of cleaning a dyke in the discharge of his official duties that first attracted my respectful notice. The wall was that which shuts in the dominie's house from the illiterate world, darkening the small windows, over whose peeling mason-work rose-bushes straggle, and stunting the garden into a prison yard. Mr. Aitken was divesting his gaunt pump of its wintry suit of straw, stripping the lanky skeleton of its artificial flesh, and I had my hand against the mouth of its wooden spout, my lips at the gimlet-hole above, when Snecky's right leg showed over the hen-house. Two hands followed, clutching desperately for holes in the wall that did not happen to be there; the leg worked as if it were turning a grinding-stone, and next moment Hobart sat breathlessly on the dyke. From this to the wire hen-house, under its roof of "divits," down a waterspout, the descent was comparatively tame, and a slanting board allowed the daring bellman to slide thence to the ground. Mr. Aitken, who had never thought of wondering at Snecky's invariable mode of effecting an entrance to his house, asked for Jewly, his visitor's help-mate, and having deliberated with him over the matter in hand, nodded him a frank good-day. Snecky was a polite Auld Licht, but he panted heavily, as with the remark, "Ay, weel, I'll hae to be ga'en," he turned to rescale the wall. I looked at the dominie, but he was again twisted round the pump, tearing the bonnet of stuffed sacks from its head. Diffidently I suggested to the bellman that he might find the gate easier. Snecky's face almost took some expression for a moment, and he let go his hold of the wire. "Is there a gate?" he said, chuckling over the resources of modern science, and went his way much relieved. He had always considered the climbing of the wall "a michty oncanny way o' winnin' oot an' in," though he was too considerate to say so.

Both his bell and his nickname were inherited by Hobart from a worthy father, and he was as proud of the one as he stormed at the mention of the other. When Auld Licht bairns (egged on, doubtless, by children of other denominations) felt life growing stale and flat, they could always give it a zest by piping "Snecky" down the bellman's lum and casting a nice damp clod of earth after the cry, ere escaping fearfully along the other stone roofs. In the early days of the century, the elder Hobart's bell had roused the village on hazy mornings to drive back the threatened French invasion, and the bellman, in a fine martial frenzy, himself joined the volunteers. The Auld Lichts never got an opportunity of sweeping "Nap" and his hordes into the sea, but they practised diligently for the fray. Gradually it was noticed that Hobart contented himself with levelling his musket, telescope-like, at the target, then retiring proudly without firing. His comrades questioned him, but the bellman only regarded them slyly in reply. Then the officers took the matter up, and Hobart had to make a clean breast of it. "If you please, sire," he whispered them darkly, "the snecky winna' dra'." The humorous Auld Lichts christened him Snecky on the spot, and though his son left at the age of ten for the distant farm of Tullin, and did not return until the old man's death a score of years afterwards, his greeting on re-entering the village was a shrewd wife's surmise that he "would be little Snecky come to bury auld Snecky."

It was perhaps because his soul was in his bell that on great occasions, such as the loss of little Effie Lunan, Snecky became officially puffed up. Ordinary announcements he took as they came, crying sales of bankrupt stock, or the arrival of one dozen barrels of fine apples, or even the invasion of the village by a cheap Jock as (to him) mere bagatelles. I see the bent legs of the snuffy old man still, as they used to straighten to the sound of his beloved bell, the complacent wink with which he let the populace gather round him, the "gly" that informed him how his words were telling. In one hand he showingly displayed the paper on which his news was written (his insignia of office), but he scorned to "read" as much as the minister in the pulpit himself. The bell carefully tucked under his oxter, he spoke in a crescendo rasping voice that broke into gutturals at awkward moments. "There will be soald—this morning (D.V.)—in the market place—by public roup—that faine stock of ladies' and gents'—boots and shoes—belonging to Mr. Alexander Phin—late boot and shoe makker—Growrie's close—of this toon.—-Sale to cum-mence—at eight o'clock-precisely." It would have broken his heart to think that, in the discharge of his official functions, he spoke one word of Scotch, but no one thought he did. Reluctantly he dropped the news into the mouths that gaped around, and then, carrying his bell by the tongue as carefully as if it were a flagon of milk, he hobbled off to repeat the announcement in the other wynds, with a score of admiring urchins at his heels. Snecky, though the fault was not his own, for he was continually agitating on the subject, wore no official uniform, but before crying matters of moment, he put on his tall lum hat. A swallow-tail was not for him, but he had fallen heir to a heavy great-coat, which he carried, perhaps a little ostentatiously, during the cloudless days of summer.

The tacit understanding between Government and its servants, that the latter should cover their heads with a veil when their employers go a kennin wrong, was not known to the philosophy of Hobart. His instructions he, on all occasions, carried out to the letter (except in the notorious case of the atheist Eassie, who wanted the letters D.V. to be omitted, but having once cried these, his soul was his own. Snecky was a pernickitty, cantankerous body, and liked to unburden himself on the matter he had been crying. To listen to these criticisms from his official mouth was like taking counsel's opinion. Busy as a tax-collector he always was during the time of the hill-market, when the public common was given over to long tents that reeked of whisky, when the tails of the farm horses were gaudily decked with straw and ribbon, and impassable were the bleating roads. Cattle took their nearest way to the common, with a fine contempt for private property, and on one occasion, the exasperated laird of Platts sent round the bellman with the announcement that every cattle-driver caught trespassing on his grounds would be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. There was consternation among Hobart's listeners. "Hoots, lads," Snecky said, as he folded up the paper, "dinna tak' on; it's juist a haver o' the grieve's."

An ugly rumour once went through the community to the effect that Snecky only awaited the offer of the kirk officership of the new Free Church to accept it. People looked askance at him at the time, and I remember he did have a hang-dog appearance. But the temptation was greater than most of us understood. The new seceders had a bell that put every other musical instrument in the village to shame. It was the kirk officer's sacred privilege to toll it, and with Snecky it would have been a labour of love. The poor "stock" who got the post merely took it as a matter of money, and gave the minister "up his foot" for asking him to toll the prayer-meeting in on Wednesdays. Snecky would have rung it in and out every night in the week and tried variations between times. As it was he had to content himself with sneering audibly every time it rang; and wheresoever two or three Auld Lichts were gathered together in the square, with the bellman in their midst, one might be sure that Snecky, with a wistful eye in its direction, was laying down the law contemptuously concerning the Free Kirk bell.

Disappointment in a vale of tears is the occasional lot even of public men, as Lang Tammas used to remind the bellman over a capacious mull of snuff. Snecky would rake the fire gloomily and shake his head. Among his trials was the callousness of Doctor Lament. Hobart was a body whose happiness lay from an early age in his medical man's hands. An ambition of his life was to be stricken with a fell disease, but the doctor never sympathized with his case, even to the extent of a trumpery cold. It was a great day for Snecky when he fell through Andra Cowrie's pig-stye and had to be carried home on a stretcher. But such occasions were rare, and even then he healed quickly. There never was a man with a more beautiful faith in pills, and in its way it was touching to see the bellman's trembling hands going out toward cough bottles. When he had the luck (for this was his only chance) to have relatives unwell in his house, he rubbed their rheumatic backs with a glee that would only have been excelled had the back been his own, enjoying the reflected glory; and the Auld Lichts who loved him, sent their medicinal drugs to him with their compliments. The bellman was a little injudicious in his mixture?, smacking his thin lips over whatever fell in his way, without asking questions; and I have seen him draw a very long face over ointments wasted on flannel. He thought all medicines should be taken inwardly. Snecky looked forward to the drear day with a Christian fortitude that few Auld Lichts ever could manifest. His ideal death was after a lingering illness and much medicine taken from a spoon three times a day. There was poetry to him in the phrase "shake the bottle; and complacently he awaited the time when he would be stricken down, and so turn the tables on the doctor. The impression was general among the Auld Lichts, though to do them justice they never mentioned it to him, that the reason why the bellman got no "treatment" was because he was so strong.