When one drops one's plummet into life anywhere it falls the whole
length of the line we give it. The man who can give his plummet the
longest line is he who realises most surely that it has not touched the
bottom.
Bart Toyner betook himself to prayer. He had learned from his friend the
preacher that when a man is tempted he must pray until he is given the
victory, and then, calm and steadfast, go out to face the world again.
If Toyner's had been a smaller soul, the need of his life would have
imperatively demanded then that just what he expected to happen to him
should happen, and in some mysterious way no doubt it would have
happened.
When we quietly observe religious life exactly as it is, without the
bias of any theory, there are two constantly recurring facts which,
taken together, excite deep astonishment: the fact that small minds
easily attain to a certainty of faith to which larger minds attain more
slowly and with much greater distress; and also the fact that the
happenings of life do actually come in exact accordance to a man's
faith--faith being not the mere expectation that a thing is going to
take place, but the inner eye that sees into the heart of things, and
knows that its desire must inevitably take place, and why. This sort of
faith, be it in a tiny or great nature, comes triumphantly in actual
fact to what it predicts; but the little heart comes to it easily and
produces trivial prayers, while the big heart, thinking to arrive with
the same ease at the same measure of triumph, is beaten back time and
time and again.
Probably the explanation is that the smaller mind has not the same
germinating power; there is not enough in it to cause the long, slow
growth of root and stem, and therefore it soon puts forth its little
blossom. These things all happen, of course, according to eternal law of
inward development; they are not altered by any force from without,
because nothing is without: the sun that makes the daisy to blossom is
just that amount of sun that it absorbs into itself, and so with the
acorn or the pine-cone. These latter, however, do not produce any bright
immediate blossom, though they ultimately change the face of all that
spot of earth by the spread of their roots and branches.
After praying a long time Bart Toyner relapsed into meditation,
endeavouring to contemplate those attributes of his God which might
bring him the strength which he had not yet attained, and just here came
to him the subtlest and strongest reinforcement to all those arguments
which were chiming together upon what appeared to him the side of evil.
The God in whom he had learned to trust was a God who, moved by pity,
had come out of His natural path to give a chance of salvation to wicked
men by the sacrifice of Himself. To what did he owe his own rescue but
to this special adjustment of law made by God? and how then was it right
for him to adhere to the course the regular law imposed on him and to
hunt down Markham? If he saved Markham, he would answer to the law for
his own breach of duty--this would be at least some sacrifice. Was not
this course a more God-like one?
There was one part of Toyner that spoke out clearly and said that his
duty was exactly what he had esteemed it to be before Ann Markham
appealed to him. He believed this part of him to be his conscience.
All the rest of him slowly veered round to thoughts of mercy rather than
legal duty; he thought of Ann and Christa with hard, godless hearts,
surrounded by every form of folly and sin, and he believed that Ann
would keep her promise to him, and that different surroundings would
give them different souls. Yet he felt convinced that God and conscience
forbade this act of mercy.
One thing he was as certain of now as he had been at the beginning--that
if he disobeyed God, God would leave him to the power of all his evil
appetites; he felt already that his heart gave out thoughts of affection
to his old evil life.
As the hours passed he began to realise that he would need to disobey
God. He found himself less and less able to face the thought of giving
up this rare opportunity of winning Ann's favour and an influence over
her--_moral_ influence at least; his mind was clear enough to see that
what was gained by disobeying God's law was from a religious point of
view nil. In his mind was the beginning of a contempt for God's way of
saving him. If he was to win his own soul by consigning Ann and her
father to probable perdition, he did not want to win it.
The August morning came radiant and fresh; the air, sharp with a touch
of frost from neighbouring hills, bore strength and lightness for every
creature. The sunlight was gay on the little wooden town, on its breezy
gardens and wastes of flowering weeds, on the descent of the foaming
fall, on the clear brown river. Even the sober wood of ash and maple
glistened in the morning light, and the birds sang songs that in
countries where a longer summer reigns are only heard in spring-time.
Bart Toyner went out of the house exhausted and almost hopeless. The
source of his strength had failed within him. He looked forward to
defeat.
As it happened Toyner's official responsibility for Markham's arrest was
to be lightened. The Crown Attorney for the county had already
communicated with the local government, and a detective had been sent,
who arrived that morning by the little steamboat. Before Toyner realised
the situation he found himself in consultation with the new-comer as to
the best means of seeking Markham. Did the perfect righteousness require
that he should betray Ann's confidence and state that Markham was in
hiding somewhere within reach? Bart looked the question for a moment in
the face, and trembled before it. Then he set it aside unanswered,
resolved on reticence, whether it was right or wrong.
The detective, finding that Toyner had no clue to report, soon went to
drink Ann's beer, on business intent. Bart kept sedulously apart from
this interview. When it was over the stranger took Toyner by the arm and
told him privately that he was convinced that the young woman knew
nothing whatever about the prisoner, and as Markham had been gone now
forty-eight hours it was his opinion that it was not near Fentown that
he would be found.
This communication was made to Toyner in the public-house, where they
had both gone the better to discuss their affairs. Toyner had gone in
labouring under horrible emotion. He believed that he was going to get
drunk, and the result of his fear was that he broke his pledge, giving
as an excuse to the by-standers that he felt ill. Yet he did not get
drunk.
Toyner saw the detective depart by the afternoon boat, and as he walked
back upon the bit of hot dusty road in the sun he reeled, not with the
spirits he had taken, but with the sickening sense that his battle was
lost.
Nothing seemed fair to him, nothing attractive, but to drink one more
glass of spirits, and to go and make promises to Ann that would be sweet
to her ear. He knew that for him it was the gate of death.
At this point the minister met him, and jumped at once to the conclusion
that he was drunk. The minister was one of those good men who found
their faith in God upon absolute want of faith in man. His heart was
better than his head, as is the case with all small-minded souls that
have come into conscious contact with God, but his opinions ruled his
official conduct. "I am afraid you have been drinking, Toyner," he said
reproachfully.
The first three words, "I am afraid," were enough for Bart; he was
filled himself with an all-pervading fear--a fear of himself, a fear of
God, a fear of the devil who would possess him again. He was not drunk;
the fact that drunkenness in him appeared so likely to this man, who was
the best friend he had, completed in his heart the work of revolt
against the minister and the minister's God. What right had God to take
him up and clothe him and keep him in his right mind for a little while,
just to let him fall at the first opportunity? It was quite true that he
had deserved it, no doubt; he had done wrong, and he was going to do
wrong; but God, who had gone out of His way to mercifully convert him
and keep him straight for a while, could certainly have gone on keeping
him if He had chosen. His mind was a logical one. He had been taught to
praise God for some extraordinary favour towards him; he had been taught
that the grace which had changed his life for good was in no degree his
own; and why then was he to bear all the disgrace of his return to evil?
In the next hours he walked the streets of the town, and talked to other
men when need was, and did a little business on his own account in the
agency in which he was engaged, and went home and took supper, watching
the vagaries of his father's senile mania with more than common pity for
the old man. His own wretchedness gave him an aching heart of sympathy
for all the sorrow of others which came across his mind that day.
The whole day was a new revelation to him of what tenderness for others
could be and ought to be.
He did not hope to attain to any working out of this higher sympathy and
pity himself. The wonderful confidence which his new faith had so long
given him, that he was able in God's strength to perform the higher
rather than the lower law of his nature, had ebbed away. God's strength
was no longer with him; he was going to the devil; he could do nothing
for himself, little for others; but he sympathised as never before with
all poor lost souls. He was a little surprised, as the day wore to a
close, that he had been able to control his craving, that he had not
taken more rum. Still, he knew that he would soon be helpless. It was
his doom, for he could awake in himself no further feeling of repentance
or desire to return to God.
In the long day's struggle, half conscious and half unconscious, his
love for Ann--and it was not a bad sort of love either--had triumphed
over what principle he had; it had survived the sudden shock that had
wrecked his faith. The hell which he was experiencing was intolerable
now, because of the heaven which he had seen, and he could not forgive
the God who had ordained it. The unreal notion that an omnipotent God
can permit what He does not ordain could have no weight with him, for he
was grappling with reality. As he brooded bitterly upon his own fate,
his heart became enlarged with tenderness for all other poor helpless
creatures like himself who were under the same misrule.
His resolution was taken--he would use his sobriety to help Ann. It
would not profit himself, but still he would win from her the promise
concerning her future life and Christa's which she had offered him, and
he would go that night and do all that a man could do to help the poor
wretch to whom his heart went out with ever-increasing pity. It would
not be much, but he would do what he could, and after that he would tell
the authorities what he had done and give up his office. He had a very
vague notion of the penalties he would incur; if they put him in prison,
so much the better--it might save him a little longer from drinking
himself to death.
Like an honest man he had given up attempting to pull God round to his
own position. He did not now think for a moment that the act of love and
mercy which possessed his soul was a pious one; his motive he believed
to be solely his pity for Markham and his love for Ann, which, being
natural, he supposed to be selfish, and, being selfish, he knew to be
unholy.
It had all come to this, then--his piety, his reformation, his prayers,
his thanksgiving, his faith. His heart within him gave a sneering laugh.
He was terribly to blame, of course--he was a reprobate; but surely God
was to blame too!