J. M. Barrie doc The Little Minister

Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king’s soldier withoutwhistling impudently, “Come ower the water to Charlie,” a minister of Thrums was to bemarried, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, hepassed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was white, butshe, too, was still unmarried. The meeting had only one witness, a weaver, and he saidsolemnly afterwards, “They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I sawthe love-light in their een.” No more is remembered of these two, no being now living eversaw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them human tous for ever.It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know that light when they see it.I am not bidding good-bye to many readers, for though it is true that some men, of whomLord Rintoul was one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met them,and of women so incomplete I never heard.Gavin Dishart was barely twenty-one when he and his mother came to Thrums, lighthearted like the traveller who knows not what awaits him at the bend of the road. It wasthe time of year when the ground is carpeted beneath the firs with brown needles, whensplit-nuts patter all day from the beech, and children lay yellow corn on the dominie’s deskto remind him that now they are needed in the fields. The day was so silent that carts couldbe heard rumbling a mile away. All Thrums was out in its wynds and closes—a few of theweavers still in knee-breeches—to look at the new Auld Licht minister. I was there too, thedominie of Glen Quharity, which is four miles from Thrums; and heavy was my heart as Istood afar off so that Gavin’s mother might not have the pain of seeing me. I was the onlyone in the crowd who looked at her more than at her son.Eigh years had passed since we parted. Already her hair had lost the brightness of itsyouth, and she seemed to me smaller and more fragile; and the face that I loved when I wasa hobbledehoy, and loved when I looked once more upon it in Thrums, and always shalllove till I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old woman, and she was only forty-three;and I am the man who made her old. As Gavin put his eager boyish face out at the carriagewindow, many saw that he was holding her hand, but none could be glad at the sight as thedominie was glad, looking on at a happiness in which he dared not mingle. Margaret wascrying because she was so proud of her boy. Women do that. Poor sons to be proud of, goodmothers, but I would not have you dry those tears.