The Redemption of Alexander Seaton

We finally reached King Edward as the late afternoon light began to lose its warmth and turn a colder grey, portending dusk. Duncan had instructions from his master to take lodgings in Turriff before dark if it could be done, and not to think of attempting to finish the journey back to Aberdeen by night. Rarely can a warning have been less needfuclass="underline" the old man would never have been so foolish. We went first to the manse, where to my relief I found that the minister was at home. His wife offered us food, of course, but Duncan, thanking the mistress profusely, said we had dined to our fill, and that a drink of water for ourselves and the pony was all that was needed. I had changed my horse at Turriff, and was now once again on Gilbert Grant’s mount. Duncan warmed himself in a seat by the fire while I was shown through to the minister’s spartan study.

Hamish MacLennan was tall and spare and learned-looking. As we entered at his call, he was standing at the window with a small book in his hands. I recognised it, for it was an identical edition to that I and all teachers used with our children: Craig’s Shorter Catechism. His wife announced me and, nodding in my direction, he invited me to sit down.

‘I am sorry to have interrupted you in your work,’ I said.

‘I am always at my work. Here in my study, out in the parish, in the kirk, in my every solitude. My life is in my calling.’

I did not know how to respond and he saw my discomfort.

‘I meant no criticism of yourself, Mr Seaton. It is the Lord who judges all.’ He paused for a moment in contemplation of this thought, and I wondered how it was that the town of Banff had to endure the self-serving mediocrity that was the Reverend Guild while this poor country parish was so blessed in its minister. MacLennan might almost have forgotten I was there, but his wife, who had not yet left, called me back to his attention.

‘Hamish, Mr Seaton has a favour he would ask of you. For myself, I hope that you might feel able to grant it him.’ Thus having said, she left us to our business.

MacLennan smiled now, and there was warmth in his austere face. ‘I am intrigued,’ he said. ‘My wife is not a woman who asks for favours, for herself or even others. Please tell me what it is you want.’

And so I told him of Sarah Forbes. He listened without interruption, once or twice nodding as I spoke. Occasionally, he would look up sharply, and I knew on what points I would be questioned when I had finished. When I had indeed finished, he got up and stood in front of the empty fireplace. The evening was now drawing on and the room was cold, but I had met many men of such frugal habits and self-denial, and it did not surprise me that Hamish MacLennan was one of them. Now he drew a deep breath and began slowly. ‘I think, in all, what you propose is a good thing, and I will do what is in my power to have it effected, but there are one or two things I would know first.’

And so he asked me all the questions I had known he would ask. He asked first of all, although he asserted he already believed he knew what the answer was, whether I was the father of Sarah Forbes’s baby. I told him I was not, and he lingered no longer on that matter. He asked next about the character of William Cargill, and of his wife, and of the soundness of their marriage and the nature of his household. I told him of William’s respectability, of his kindness, his reliability, his firmness of purpose and his fine mind. I told him of Elizabeth’s joyfulness, her loyalty and her zeal for hard work, and of the fondness she had evoked in his own good sister-in-law and in her husband, Gilbert Grant. I asked that Duncan might be called in, to give testimony as to the nature of his master’s household. It was allowed, and I watched in wonder as these two godly men, one of great learning and the other of little, conversed without dissemblance on the topic, and with mutual respect. The minister shook the servant’s hand and asked God’s blessing on him before dismissing him. He read again the letter from William that I had brought him.

‘And they will let her take the child, too. They are indeed good people, I think, and it will go better for the child that way, much better. Sarah is strong, and God willing, if she can be got away from under her uncle’s roof, she and her child will remain so. She will manage the two bairns well enough.’ He folded the letter. ‘It was a blessing on her, the day you met her on your way to visit your friend.’

‘And on me also,’ I said.

‘How so?’

‘Because I do not remember the last time I was called to be an instrument of good and answered that call.’

He looked at me for a long moment. ‘We are all sinners, but the Lord gives it to us to do good. Like Jonah, we often flee from His presence before we will submit to answering His call, and yet the Lord does not turn His face from us for ever.’ He smoothed the front cover of the small book of catechism, still in his hand. ‘What is taught to the bairns would be well remembered by us all.’