Shona MacLEAN - The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

The schoolmaster retired then to his study, inviting me to keep him company. It was a place of comfort and good reflection, a place of exercise for the mind, and my heart always warmed to the old man when he asked me to join him there.

‘I have something for you first,’ I said. ‘I will be down in a minute.’ I headed up the stairs as he made himself comfortable in his easy chair. The packages and luggage carried over by Jaffray’s stable boy were lying by my bed. I checked all were there; none had gone amiss on my journey. The mid-morning gloom afforded very little light to my small chamber, but I found what I was looking for without much difficulty. I was down again at Gilbert Grant’s door only a few moments after leaving him. He was sitting in contemplation by the room’s only window, an unlit candle at his elbow. Around him was an air of sadness I had seen on him only once before, when I had finally come home and told him that what he had heard about my final trial for the ministry had been true. He was a man too ready to share in the sufferings of those dear to him, and of the innocent. In his many long years as schoolmaster in Banff, he had come to love many and had had cause to weep with them too often. His face lightened a little when he noticed me in the doorway.

‘Come in, Alexander, come in. We will rest ourselves here. While we cannot be of any use, at least we can keep ourselves from getting in the way.’ I smiled as I recalled how often I had heard his wife scold him for being in the way. She was always so busy, in the midst of much movement, and he preferred to be quiet and move little, but I think she knew that the reason he was always in her road was that he loved her so dearly. Before settling myself in the only other seat in the room I handed him the package.

‘I have brought you this from Aberdeen, from Melville’s.’

‘Ah, is it really? From Melville?’ He was thinking, searching in his mind, delaying the pleasure by not unbinding and opening the package straight away. ‘I have not had a minute to ask you how you fared on your journey, or to quiz you for news from the town. I trust to God that there is no such business there as we have on hand here?’

‘None that I have seen,’ I assured him, ‘although what goes on up the vennels or behind the pends of other men’s houses I do not know. This time last week we would not have thought such things possible here in Banff.’

He raised his eyebrows at me a little in surprise. ‘Ah, would we not, do you think?’ He mused quietly a moment. ‘But you are young. I forget sometimes, Alexander, how young you really are; you have the air of one who has seen more of the world than he cares to. You will not remember that we have seen this sort of thing before. And yet we have learned nothing. Like the Israelites, time and time again we have turned our face from God and He has hidden His face from us.’

‘You think this portends the judgement of God on us?’

‘No. This is the turning from God and not the judgement. What the judgement will be I dread to live to see.’ He opened the package now, knowing all the while that it was the Bible that was there. Without examination, without the careful caress of the finely bound volume that I had half expected, he opened the book and, with well-practised hands found the passage he wanted. He started to read, and although his finger ran along the lines, he did not look at them, for the words were already at his lips. ‘Hosea, chapter four: “Hear the word of the Lord ye children of Israel; for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out and blood touches blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish.”’

I cleared my throat. ‘But does the prophet not also say, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely”?’

I had not spoken in this way, preached to another human being in many months, and the words came strangely unbidden from my mouth. Grant afforded me a saddened smile. ‘Indeed he does, Alexander. But how shall we answer to this offer of God? How did the Israelites answer when sent the Redeemer? Was he not slain? What if this young man, Patrick Davidson, was also sent to us from God?’ He looked up sharply. ‘No redeemer mind, but a prophet, a messenger only, to tell us something, to get us to mend our ways. And he is slain. How now shall God deal with us?’

I myself had no notion of Patrick Davidson as a message from God. In his short time in our burgh he had gathered plants, drawn maps and courted a girl. There had been no public speeches, no preaching, no giving of admonition or warning by him. No passing on of messages. And yet I could not mock the old man’s fears.

‘But you, Gilbert, you have nothing to answer for, you who do only good to friend and stranger alike. Whatever has brought this visitation of darkness upon our town, it is not you.’

In less than a moment I saw that the words I had intended for comfort aroused only a sudden and real anger. ‘I, nothing to answer for? Who amongst us has nothing to answer for, is without sin? It is not I. What nonsense did you hear preached in Aberdeen? We are all sinners. We are none of us capable of doing the least good thing, unless it be the Lord who ordains it. God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and could find only one good man. If there is one good man here, it is not me.’

If not you, then who, I thought. Who in this town could argue our case in the face of the wrath of the creator? ‘And yet it does not stop you trying,’ I said.

‘As we are commanded to do. And you too, I know, Alexander, you try also to do good as you are commanded to do.’

I could not answer him, and was glad when I was summoned through to the kitchen, to help the doctor bring Edward Arbuthnott back to his comfortless home.

‘How will he fare?’ I asked Jaffray, after we had seen Arbuthnott settled into his own bed under the care of his wife, in whom the advent of a true disaster seemed to have awoken some common sense and, what I had never remarked in her before, affection.

Jaffray pursed his lips. ‘He will be as a man who waits for nothing more than the grave, I fear. Marion was all his hope and joy.’

The door to Jaffray’s consulting room, the scene of last night’s desolation, was shut when we arrived in the house, but I suspected all would be clean and orderly again. The doctor went first to the kitchen, to warn Ishbel that I would be coming for my dinner that night. He wanted proper news of my trip to the town, and to interrogate me in peace, and there were things I had to ask of him. He emerged from the kitchen and ushered me quietly towards his study. ‘Ishbel is taking it very badly,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘I do not know how it was that I never saw it before, but I think, whether he realises it or not, he has taken her heart. They will let no one in to see him, and though she sends baskets of food up to the tolbooth every day, I do not know whether he gets them.’

‘You have not been allowed in to him?’

‘But once. It was Thomas Stewart who persuaded the provost. The baillie was near beside himself to be let in on the interview, but Stewart said he would come in with me himself and that would be enough.’ Jaffray paused, remembering. ‘And it was enough. He has a quiet authority to him, the notary, that even the baillie cannot question. I think he will sit in the provost’s seat one day.’

We had reached Jaffray’s parlour by now, and mention of the provost had recalled me to my earlier appointment. ‘I cannot wait long,’ I said. ‘I should have seen Walter Watt by now, to report on my business.’