Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

Sandy the Tinker-1-1

Sandy the Tinker

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“Before commencing my story, I wish to state it is perfectly true in every particular.”

“We quite understand that,” said the sceptic of our party, who was wont, in the security of friendly i*********e, to characterise all such prefaces as mere introductions to some tremendously exaggerated tale.

On the occasion in question, however, we had donned our best behaviour, a garment which did not sit ungracefully on some of us; and our host, who was about to draw out from the stores of memory one narrative for our entertainment, was scarcely the person before whom even Jack Hill, the sceptic, would have cared to express his cynical and unbelieving views.

We were seated, an incongruous company of ten persons, in the best room of an old manse among the Scottish hills. Accident had thrown us together, and accident had driven us under the minister's hospitable roof. Cold, wet and hungry, drenched with rain, sorely beaten by the wind, we had crowded through the door opened by a friendly hand, and now, wet no longer, the pangs of hunger assuaged with smoking rashers of ham, poached eggs, and steaming potatoes, we sat around a blazing fire, drinking toddy out of tumblers, whilst the two ladies who graced the assemblage partook of a modicum of the same beverage from wine glasses.

Everything was eminently comfortable, but conducted upon the most correct principles. Jack could no more have taken it upon himself to shock the minister's ear with some of the opinions he aired in Fleet Street, than he could have asked for more whisky with his water.

“Yes, it is perfectly true,” continued the minister, looking thoughtfully at the fire. “I can't explain it, I cannot even try to explain it. I will tell you the story exactly as it occurred, however, and leave you to draw your own deductions from it.”

None of us answered. We fell into listening attitudes instantly, and eighteen eyes fixed themselves by one accord upon our host.

He was an old man, but hale. The weight of eighty winters had whitened his head, but not bowed it. He seemed young as any of us—younger than Jack Hill, who was a reviewer and a newspaper hack, and whose way through life had not been altogether on easy lines.

“Thirty years ago, upon a certain Friday morning in August,” began the minister, “I was sitting at breakfast in the room on the other side of the passage, where you ate your supper, when the servant girl came in with a letter. She said a laddie, all out of breath, had brought it over from Dendeldy Manse. ‘He was bidden to rin a' the way,’ she went on, ‘and he's fairly beaten.’

“I told her to make the messenger sit down, and put food before him; and then, when she went to do my bidding, proceeded, I must confess with some curiosity, to break the seal of a missive forwarded in such hot haste.

“It was from the minister at Dendeldy, who had been newly chosen to occupy the pulpit his deceased father occupied for a quarter of a century and more.

“The call from the congregation originated rather out of respect to the father's memory than any extraordinary liking for the son. He had been reared for the most part in England, and was somewhat distant and formal in his manners; and, though full of Greek and Latin and Hebrew, wanted the true Scotch accent, that goes straight to the heart of those accustomed to the broad, honest, tender Scottish tongue.

“His people were proud of him, but they did not like some of his ways. They could remember him a lad running about the whole country-side, and they could not understand, and did not approve of his holding them at arm's length, and shutting himself up among his books and refusing their hospitality, and sending out word he was busy when maybe some very decent man wanted speech with him. I had taken it upon myself to point out that I thought he was wrong, and that he would alienate his flock from him. Perhaps it was for this very reason, because I was blunt and plain, he took to me kindly, and never got on his high horse, no matter what I said to him.

“Well, to return to the letter. It was written in the wildest haste, and entreated me not to lose a moment in coming to him, as he was in the very greatest distress and anxiety. 'Let nothing delay you,' he proceeded. 'If I cannot speak to you soon I believe I shall go out of my senses.'

“What could be the matter? I thought. What in all the wide earth could have happened?

“I had seen him but a few days before and he was in good health and spirits, getting on better with his people, feeling hopeful of so altering his style of preaching as to touch their hearts more sensibly.

“‘I must lay aside Southern ideas as well as accent, if I can,’ he went on, smiling. ‘men who live such lives of hardship and privation, who cast their seed into the ground under such rigorous skies, and cut their corn in fear and trembling at the end of late, uncertain summers, who take the sheep out of the snowdrifts and carry the lambs into shelter beside their own humble hearths, must want a different sort of sermon from those who sleep softly and walk delicately.’

“I had implied something of all this myself, and it amused me to find my own thoughts come back clothed in different fashion and presented to me quite as strangers. Still, all I wanted was his good, and I felt glad he showed such aptitude to learn.

“What could have happened, however, puzzled me sorely. As I made my hurried preparations for setting out I fairly perplexed myself with speculation. I went into the kitchen, where his messenger was eating some breakfast, and asked if Mr. Crawley was ill.

“'I dinna ken,' he answered. 'He mad' no complaint, but he luiked awful bad, just awful.'

“'In what way?' I inquired.

“'As if he had seen a ghaist,' was the reply.

“This made me very uneasy, and I jumped to the conclusion the trouble was connected with money matters. Young men will be young men.” And here the minister looked significantly at the callow bird of our company, a youth who had never owed a sixpence in his life or given away a cent; while Jack Hill—no chicken, by the way—was over head and ears in debt, and could not keep a sovereign in his pocket, though spending or bestowing it involved going dinner-less the next day.

“Young men will be young men,” repeated the minister, in his best pulpit manner (“Just as though any one expected them to be young women!” grumbled Jack to me afterwards), “and I feared that now he was settled and comfortably off some old creditor he had been paying as best he could, might have become pressing. I knew nothing of his liabilities, or, beyond the amount of the stipend paid him, the state of his pecuniary affairs; but, having once in my own life made myself responsible for a debt, I was aware of all the trouble putting your arm out further than you can draw it back involves. And I considered that most probably money, which is the root of all evil” (“and all good” Jack's eyes suggested to me), “was the cause of my young friend's agony of mind. Blessed with a large family—every one of whom is now alive and doing well, I thank God, out in the world—you may imagine I had not much opportunity for laying by. Still, I had put aside a little for a rainy day, and that little I placed in my pocket-book, hoping even a small sum might prove of use in case of emergency.”

“Come, you are a trump,” I saw written plainly on Jack Hill’s face; and he settled himself to listen to the remainder of the minister’s story in a manner in manner which could not be considered other than complimentary.

Duly and truly I knew quite well he had already devoted the first five-guinea cheque he received to the poor of that minister’s parish.

“By the road,” proceeded our host, “Dendeldy is distant from here ten long miles, but by a short cut across the hills it can be reached in something under six. For me it was nothing of a walk, and accordingly I arrived at the manse ere noon.”

He paused, and, though thirty years had elapsed, drew a handkerchief across his forehead before he continued his narrative.

“I had to climb a steep brae to reach the front door, but before I could breast it my friend met me.

“'Thank God you are come,' he said, pressing my hand in his. 'Oh, I am grateful.'

“He was trembling with excitement. His face was a ghastly pallor.

His voice was that of a person suffering from some terrible shock, labouring under some awful fear.

“'What has happened, Edward?' I asked. I had known him since he was a little boy. 'I am distressed to see you in such a state. Rouse yourself; be a man; whatever may have gone wrong can possibly be righted. I have come over to do all that lies in my power for you. If it is a matter of money—'

“'No, no; it is not money,' he interrupted; 'would that it were!' and he began to tremble again so violently that really he communicated some part of his nervousness to me, and put me into a state of perfect terror.

“'Whatever it is, Crawley, out with it,' I said; 'have you murdered anybody?'

“'No, it is worse than that,' he answered.

“'But that's just nonsense,' I declared. 'Are you in your right mind, do you think?'

“'I wish I were not,' he returned. 'I'd like to know I was stark staring mad; it would be happier for me—far, far happier.'

“'If you don't tell me this minute what is the matter, I shall turn on my heel and tramp my way home again,' I said, half in anger at what I thought was his folly.

“'Come into the house,' he entreated, 'and try to have patience with me; for indeed, Mr. Morison, I am sorely troubled. I have been through my deep waters, and they have gone clean over my head.'

“We went into his little study and sat down. For a while he remained silent, his head resting upon his hand, struggling with some strong emotion; but after about five minutes he asked in a low subdued voice:

“'Do you believe in dreams?'

“'What has my belief to do with the matter in hand?' I inquired.

“'It is a dream, an awful dream, that is troubling me.'

“I rose from my chair.

“'Do you mean to say,' I asked, 'you have brought me from my business and my parish to tell me you have had a bad dream?'

“'That is just what I do mean to say,' he answered. 'At least it was not a dream—it was a vision; no, I don't mean a vision—I can't tell you what it was; but nothing I ever went through in actual life was half so real, and I have bound myself to go through it all again. There is no hope for me, Mr. Morison. I sit before you a lost creature, the most miserable man on the face of the whole earth.'

“'What did you dream?' I inquired.

“A dreadful fit of trembling again seized him; but at last he managed to say: 'I have been like this ever since, and I shall be like this for evermore, till—till—the end comes.'

“'When did you have your bad dream?' I asked.

“'Last night, or rather this morning,' he answered. 'I'll tell you all about it. I was as well when I went to bed about eleven o'clock as ever I was in my life. I had been considering my sermon and felt satisfied I should be able to deliver a good one next Sunday morning. I had taken nothing after my tea and I lay down in my bed feeling at peace with all mankind, and satisfied with my lot. How long I slept, or what I dreamt about at first, if I dreamt at all, I don't know; but after a time the mists seemed to clear from before my eyes, to roll away like clouds from a mountain summit, and I found myself walking on a beautiful summer's evening beside the River Deldy.'

“He paused for a moment, and an irrepressible shudder shook his frame.

“'Go on,' I said, for I felt afraid of his breaking down again.

“He looked at me pitifully, with a hungry entreaty in his weary eyes, and continued.

“'It was a lovely evening and I never thought the earth had looked so beautiful before. I walked on and on, till I came to that point where, as you may perhaps remember, the path, growing very narrow, winds round the base of a great crag, and leads the wayfarer suddenly into a little green amphitheatre, bounded on one side by the river, and on the other by rocks, that rise in places sheer to a height of a hundred feet or more.'