The Right Stuff | Page 5

to bring credit on the family, even
though his parents have to pinch and save and his brothers bide at the
plough-tail all their lives in consequence--a law whose chief merit lies
in the splendid sacrifices which its faithful fulfilment involves, and
whose vital principle well-meaning but misguided philanthropy is now
endeavouring to dole out of existence--he had been sent to Edinburgh
to make the most of this, his one chance in life.
Still, though the credit of the family hung upon the result of the
examination,--if he won the Bursary, the money, together with the
precious hoard which his father and mother had been accumulating for
him for ten years, would just suffice to keep him at the University,--no
one discussed the matter. It was in the hands of God, and
prognostication could only be vain and unprofitable. His mother and
sister, indeed, questioned him covertly when his father and brother
were out of hearing; but that was chiefly about Edinburgh, and the
shops, and the splendours of the Dalry Road. The Bursary was never
mentioned.
On the day on which the result was to be announced their father took
Robin and David away to a distant hillside to assist at the
sheep-dipping. The news would come by letter, which might or might
not get as far as Strathmyrtle Post Office, seven miles away, that very
afternoon. In the morning it would be delivered by the postman.
But there are limits to human endurance, none the less definite because
that endurance appears illimitable. When father and sons tramped back
to the farm that evening, just in time for supper, it was discovered that
Margaret was absent. John Fordyce, grim old martinet that he was,
looked round the table inquiringly; but a glance at his wife's face
caused him to go on with his meal.

At nine o'clock precisely the table was cleared. The herdman and two
farm lasses came into the kitchen from their final tasks in the yard, and
the great Bible was put down on the table for evening "worship."
John Fordyce, having looked up the "portion" which he proposed to
read, then turned to the Metrical Psalms. These were sung night by
night in unswerving rotation throughout the year, a custom which,
while it offered the pleasing prospect of variety, occasionally left
something to be desired on the score of appropriateness.
All being seated, the old man, after a final fleeting glance at his
daughter's empty chair, gave out the Psalm.
"Let us worship God," he said, "by singing to His praise in the Hundred
and Twenty-first Psalm. Psalm a Hundred and Twenty-one--
'I to the hills will lift mine eyes, From whence doth come----'"
The door opened, and Margaret entered. She was dusty and tired, for
she had walked fourteen miles since milking-time; but in her hand she
held a letter.
She glanced timidly at the clock, and was for slipping quietly into her
seat; but her father said--
"You had best give it to him now. A man cannot worship God while his
mind is distracted with other things."
Robin took the letter, and after a glance in the direction of his father
and the waiting Bible, opened and read it amidst a tense silence. Finally
he looked up.
"Well?" said the old man.
"They have given me the First Bursary, father," said Robin.
No one spoke, but Robin saw tears running down his mother's face.
John Fordyce deliberately turned back several pages of the Bible.

"We will sing," he said in a clear voice, "in the Twenty-third
Psalm--the whole of it!--
'The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want----'"
* * * * *
The Psalms of David, as rendered into English verse by Nahum Tate
and others, are not remarkable for poetic merit; neither does the old
Scottish fashion of singing the same, seated and without
accompaniment, conduce to a concord of sweet sounds. But there are
no tunes like old tunes, and there are no hearts like full hearts. If ever a
song went straight up to heaven, the Twenty-third Psalm, borne up on
the wings of "Martyrdom," did so that night.
CHAPTER TWO.
INTRODUCES A PILLAR OF STATE AND THE
APPURTENANCES THEREOF.
The time had undoubtedly arrived when I must have a Private
Secretary.
Kitty, for one, insisted on it. She said that I was ruining my health in
the service of an ungrateful country, and added that she, personally,
declined to be left a widow at twenty-eight-and-a-half to oblige
anybody.
"It is exactly the wrong age," she said. "If it had happened four or five
years ago, I could have done pretty well for myself. Now, I should be
out of the running among the débutantes, and a little too young and
flighty to suit a middle-aged bachelor."
I may add that