The morning sun hung, a red, lustreless ball, in the dull grey sky. A
light snow had fallen in the night and the landscape, crossed by
spider-like trails of fences, was as white and lifeless as if wrapped
in a shroud.
A young man was driving down the road to Rykman's Corner; the youthful
face visible above the greatcoat was thoughtful and refined, the eyes
deep blue and peculiarly beautiful, the mouth firm yet sensitive. It
was not a handsome face, but there was a strangely subtle charm about
it.
The chill breathlessness of the air seemed prophetic of more snow. The
Reverend Allan Telford looked across the bare wastes and cold white
hills and shivered, as if the icy lifelessness about him were slowly
and relentlessly creeping into his own heart and life.
He felt utterly discouraged. In his soul he was asking bitterly what
good had come of all his prayerful labours among the people of this
pinched, narrow world, as rugged and unbeautiful in form and life as
the barren hills that shut them in.
He had been two years among them and he counted it two years of
failure. He had been too outspoken for them; they resented sullenly
his direct and incisive tirades against their pet sins. They viewed
his small innovations on their traditional ways of worship with
disfavour and distrust and shut him out of their lives with an
ever-increasing coldness. He had meant well and worked hard and he
felt his failure keenly.
His thoughts reverted to a letter received the preceding day from a
former classmate, stating that the pastorate of a certain desirable
town church had become vacant and hinting that a call was to be
moderated for him unless he signified his unwillingness to accept.
Two years before, Allan Telford, fresh from college and full of
vigorous enthusiasm and high ideas, would have said:
"No, that is not for me. My work must lie among the poor and lowly of
earth as did my Master's. Shall I shrink from it because, to worldly
eyes, the way looks dreary and uninviting?"
Now, looking back on his two years' ministry, he said wearily:
"I can remain here no longer. If I do, I fear I shall sink down into
something almost as pitiful as one of these canting, gossiping people
myself. I can do them no good--they do not like or trust me. I will
accept this call and go back to my own world."
Perhaps the keynote of his failure was sounded in his last words, "my
own world." He had never felt, or tried to feel, that this narrow
sphere was his own world. It was some lower level to which he had come
with good tidings and honest intentions but, unconsciously, he had
held himself above it, and his people felt and resented this. They
expressed it by saying he was "stuck-up."
Rykman's Corner came into view as he drove over the brow of a long
hill. He hated the place, knowing it well for what it was--a festering
hotbed of gossip and malice, the habitat of all the slanderous rumours
and innuendoes that permeated the social tissue of the community. The
newest scandal, the worst-flavoured joke, the latest details of the
most recent quarrel, were always to be had at Rykman's store.
As the minister drove down the hill, a man came out of a small house
at the foot and waited on the road. Had it been possible Telford would
have pretended not to see him, but it was not possible, for Isaac
Galletly meant to be seen and hailed the minister cheerfully.
"Good mornin', Mr. Telford. Ye won't mind giving me a lift down to the
Corner, I dessay?"
Telford checked his horse reluctantly and Galletly crawled into the
cutter. He was that most despicable of created beings, a male gossip,
and he spent most of his time travelling from house to house in the
village, smoking his pipe in neighbourly kitchens and fanning into an
active blaze all the smouldering feuds of the place. He had been
nicknamed "The Morning Chronicle" by a sarcastic schoolteacher who had
sojourned a winter at the Corner. The name was an apt one and clung.
Telford had heard it.