THE TREASURE-BOOK
And yet, O God, I know not how to fail!
Within my heart still burns an unquenched fire,
Like Israel of old I must prevail,
Or failing, still reach on to something higher.
They counted _Him_ a failure when He trod
The slopes of Calvary that led to God!
--HELENA COLEMAN.
All winter the eldest orphan's reformed conduct had been the subject of
joyous wonder on the part of his parents. Hannah was of the opinion
that the boy had been converted at Mr. Scott's series of special
meetings at Christmas time, but Jake, having been a boy himself, shook
his head, and said it was likely just a spell he had taken with the
cold weather, and it would work off when the summer came, like Joey's
whooping-cough. But, strange to say, Tim went no more abroad with Davy
Munn on lawless expeditions. Sawed-Off Wilmott and the young Lochinvar
from Glenoro came regularly, on alternate evenings, to see Ella Anne
Long, and never found ropes tied across the gate, nor whips nor
lap-robes missing, as in Tim's unregenerate days. Even Miss Weir
testified that sometimes he would not do anything particularly
outrageous in school for a week at a time. The truth was that the
eldest orphan had neither time nor inclination for childish mischief.
Mentally, he had grown up. He dwelt no more in the common walks of
humanity, but in the land of romance. For one who consorted with
heroes, fought great battles, and performed mighty deeds of valor,
childish pranks had no interest. He cared now for nothing in the world
but to read all day long, and half the night; to read anything and
everything, from the hair-raising cowboy tales Davy Munn loaned him, to
the ponderous histories from the minister's book-shelf. Through this
selfsame book-shelf the minister had become one of Tim's closest
friends, and might have made a pastoral visitation every day in the
week and been welcome. He had almost got ahead of the doctor in the
eldest orphan's regard; for while the doctor had plenty of books, whole
shelves of them, they were queer, stupid things, full of long, hard
words, and never a battle or a shipwreck from one cover to the other.
At first, the boy's greedy desire to devour a story at one sitting
filled him with impatience at his own slowness. He found, to his
chagrin, that he could not read the "Waverley Novels" with the
swiftness the course of events demanded. He tried having them read
aloud by his father, but though Jake was always willing, he stumbled
and spelled his way through the battles and adventures with a
laboriousness that nearly set his young listener mad.
But one winter night Tim discovered a royal road to learning. The
minister had called, and left "Quentin Durward." It was an evening the
boy had been in the habit of spending with John McIntyre, so he slipped
the volume inside his coat and sped away with it down to the Drowned
Lands.
And wonderful good fortune, John McIntyre proved a splendid reader.
Not only that, but after his first reluctance had been overcome, he
seemed to like the task.
That was the beginning of a new life for both of them. The boy came
almost every evening now, and as John McIntyre grew stronger he often
read on, as absorbed as his listener, until the hour was late. Then,
instead of going home, Tim would curl up snugly in bed behind his
friend, and sleep until he was awakened in time to start for school.
One evening, when the sick man had almost recovered his wonted
strength, Tim came hobbling down the road with a large volume bulging
out the front of his coat. John McIntyre sat before his fire, looking
through his little frosted panes at the beauty of the winter sunset,
and something of the sadness in his weary eyes vanished as the little
figure appeared against the filmy rose mists of Treasure Valley, and
came trotting down the glittering road. There seemed to be a
reflection of the sunset glow in the man's face as the boy bounded in.
"Hello!" he shouted, pitching his snowy mittens under the stove and his
cap upon the bed. "I've got a new story." He struggled to extract the
book from his coat. "Old Hughie Cameron gave it to me. Hech! hech!
hoots! toots! indeed and indeed!" he added, hobbling about the room,
and imitating the old man's caressing manner to perfection.
No one in Elmbrook had ever seen John McIntyre smile, nor did he do so
now; but as he watched the absurd attempts of the youngster to portray
the queer gait of the village philosopher there came into his eyes a
look as though there had passed before them the ghost of the days when
he, himself, was young and light-hearted and full of boyish pranks. He
arose, and lighting the little lamp, placed it upon the table.
"It's a bully story," went on the boy. "Old Hughie started to read it
to me an' the twins las' night, but they got to scrappin', an' I had to
lambaste 'em both, an' so he didn't finish. He said mebby you would.
It's about an old guy who was rich an' had chunks o' money, an' a big
family, an' all the rest; an' the devil got after him an' busted up the
whole thing. He got all his cows an' his horses an' things struck with
lightning, an' his boys an' his girls were all at a swell birthday
spree, an' the house up an' fell down, an' smashed every bloomin' one
o' them--oh, say! it's a dandy!"
He placed the book on the table and shoved it toward John McIntyre.
The man reached for it, but quickly drew back.
"It's--the Bible!" he said sharply.
"Yes," said Tim, "'course. Did ye ever read any of it?" He paused in
embarrassment. John McIntyre, being such a particularly bad man, a
fact he was prone to forget, would naturally scorn to read the Bible.
He felt ashamed of himself. "It's got a whole lot o' bully yarns in
it," he added apologetically.
The man was looking at the Book as though he were afraid of it.
"This man's name was Job. D'ye ever hear about him?" continued Tim
insinuatingly.
"Yes, I've read it."
"Oh, have you? Well, read it again. Aw, go on. It won't hurt!"
He shoved the book into the man's hands. He had learned, long ere
this, that John McIntyre was his obedient servant. "Begin at the
beginning, 'cause I kinder forget how it starts."
So, for the first time in many long years, John McIntyre took into his
hands the Word of God--the Book he had been wont to read every evening,
so long ago, in the light of his happy home circle.
"There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was
perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil."
Tim snuggled down on Miss Arabella's rug, close to the stove, his chin
in his hands, and stared up with eager, devouring eyes. At first, John
McIntyre read in a strained, hard voice, but soon he seemed to forget
everything but the absorbing tale--the tale of his own life--a man's
struggle with overwhelming sorrow; and yet how different from his own.
For Job had not sinned, nor "charged God foolishly," while he, in his
bitterness, had thrown the blame of his evil case upon his Maker, and
declared that He knew not compassion.
Throughout the early portion of the story Tim listened with eyes and
ears, but when they entered upon the long discourses of Job's friends
he grew restless. There was not enough action here. Thunder and
lightning, sudden deaths, and overwhelming catastrophes were exactly
suited to the orphan's taste, but theological controversy was a
weariness to his soul. He wriggled around impatiently, counted the
purple robins again and again, and gouged holes in the single eye each
possessed. But still the dreary talk went on.
"Say! ain't that coon ever goin' to get done shootin' off?" he broke in
wearily, in the midst of a long speech from Eliphaz the Temanite.
John McIntyre did not hear. He had come to the answer of Job, words
that found an echo in his own bitter heart:
"I was at ease, but He hath broken me asunder; He hath also taken me by
my neck and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for His mark. His
archers compass me round about. He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth
not spare."
The anguish in the reader's voice, conveying the strength of the man's
mighty grief, made itself felt in the child's soul, and stilled him.
He gazed up into John McIntyre's haggard face with a strange heaviness
at his heart. Through chapter after chapter he waited, silent and
subdued, but at last his weariness overcame his fears. He rolled over
on the rug and yawned loudly.
"Aw, shucks!" he muttered; "they're as bad at gassin' as Ella Anne
Long!" He waited through another chapter, and then broke in once more.
"Say! couldn't you skip all that blather, an' tell us what happened
next? Didn't the devil get after him again?"
The reader paused, and gazed down at the boy in a dazed fashion. "What
do you want?" he asked vaguely.
"I wish them fellows would hustle up, an' quit chewin'. Did Job get
all right again?"
John McIntyre mechanically turned the leaves. He experienced a grim
satisfaction in the boy's complaints. What did these wordy friends of
Job know of sorrow and despair? As though they were conditions that
could be explained away! He turned almost to the end of the story, and
there he paused. A new actor had entered the sorrowful drama. Out of
the whirlwind there came a Voice--the voice of the Infinite--and before
its thunder the souls of Job and his friends bowed in self-abasement.
The reading went on again, continuing uninterrupted to the end. The
man closed the Book, dropping it heavily upon the table.
"Is that all?" demanded Tim, fearing to be cheated out of one word of
the story.
"That is all," said John McIntyre in a whisper. He shaded his eyes
with his hand. What long, weary days and nights had passed over him
since he last looked into that Book! He had thought never to look into
it again, and yet its pages held their old convincing power. There was
still that magic touch that went straight to a man's heart, as only
God's word can. Job had suffered, had been bereft of all that made
life worth the holding, and yet he had garnered from the seed sown in
anguish, not bitterness and despair and hatred of God and man, but a
golden harvest of divine revelation, a wealth of eternal hope and joy:
"I know that my Redeemer liveth!"
When the eldest orphan started out for the Drowned Lands the next
evening he sighted the minister on the village street ahead of him. He
was about to hasten his footsteps to overtake him, when he noticed Mr.
Scott pause and speak to some one.
As the boy drew slowly near, he was amazed to see that it was Sandy
McQuarry. They seemed to be talking in quite a friendly tone, too,
while over at Long's store Tim's foster-father, and his enemy,
Spectacle John, and the blacksmith, were craning their necks through
the doorway, and apparently enjoying the scene. Sandy did not speak
long, but they parted with a hearty handshake.
"Hello!" cried the boy, coming up alongside the tall figure. The
orphans could never be accused of stiffness or formality.
"Hello!" cried the minister, with equal cordiality. His eyes were
shining, and he looked as though he had just received great and good
news.
"Ain't he mad at ye any more?" asked Tim, jerking his thumb over his
shoulder to indicate Sandy McQuarry, the way he had seen his father do.
The minister's eyes grew brighter. "No, Tim, he's not mad at me any
more, and, please God, he never will be."
"Did you take it back, what you said about Muskoka?"
"Well, yes, partly; but it wasn't that." The laughter lines were
deepening around the minister's eyes. "When you grow older you will
understand better. And how are you feeling to-night? Cold better, eh?"
"Oh, I'm fine and dandy. How's yourself?" He was prancing along by
the man's side, with a gait peculiar, even to himself. The orphans all
had a curious, orphan-like habit of rendering pedestrianism as
difficult as possible. The twins would stagger around for a whole day
tied together at the ankles, and Tim now displayed this family
peculiarity by hirpling along, one foot up on the smooth, hard roadway,
the other plunging far into the deep snow.
"Very well, thank you," said Mr. Scott. "Where are you going?"
"Down to see John." His tone revealed his pride in the daring
confession. It was a splendid thing to have such a wicked man for a
chum, a man whom folks said even the minister feared.
"Ah! What are you reading now?"
"'We haven't got anything new for to-night. I was wishin' I had a
book." He looked up slyly, to see if the hint had taken effect.
The minister fell easily into the trap. "Dear me! I'm sorry I didn't
know that. You might have had 'Nicholas Nickleby.' I'll send it to
school with Tommy to-morrow, if you promise you won't read any of it in
school, eh?"
"All right; 'course not," cried Tim righteously.
"And what have you been reading since you finished 'Pilgrim's
Progress'?"
The minister looked down enviously at the small, hobbling figure. If
he had only been wise enough, he reflected, to go to that man with this
child's faith and good-fellowship, they might have been on such terms
of intimacy now, and he might have helped to cure that look of pain in
John McIntyre's eyes.
"We've been readin' about a chap named Job. It's in the Bible. Ever
read it?"
"The Bible!" The minister paused in the road. What miracle had led
the child thither? "Did McIntyre read Job to you?"
"Yes."
"Every bit of it?"
"Yes--all but a lot o' mushy talk in the middle. Them jiggers had such
an awful lot to say we skipped some of it. But we read the end."
"Ah, you've got a fine story-book now, Tim! You'll not find such
another. Ask McIntyre to read you some more of its stories. They're
better than 'Nicholas Nickleby.'"
Tim looked dubious. With the exception of Job, and Daniel in the
lions' den, and extracts from one or two thrilling tales like that, he
considered the Bible rather tame. His foster-father read a chapter to
them every night before they went to bed, but the eldest of the family
was generally too much occupied in pinching the twins, or keeping them
in order, to give the reading anything better than a very desultory
attention. But Jake's slow, droning voice was not calculated to arouse
interest. "I dunno," he said, glancing up sidelong at the man. "Mebby
he--I don't think he likes it--much."
"Oh, you set him at the right stories, and he will. Don't you like
stories of shipwreck?"
"You bet!"
"Well, get him to read to you about Paul; he had some wonderful
adventures on the sea. And there's a better story than that there,
about some people who were nearly shipwrecked, and a Man on board saved
them. And how do you think He did it? Why, He got up and stopped the
storm and the waves."
The child nodded. "Daddy read us that one night," he said.
So the Book remained in John McIntyre's shanty, and often, when some
other story was finished, the boy would bring it out. The books of
Esther and Daniel, the tales of Samson and Gideon, and the wonderful
stories of the Savior Himself, all had to be gone over again and again.
And one night John McIntyre read of love's great sacrifice, when the
skies grew dark and the earth trembled with the agony of Calvary.
Tim lay on the floor, staring up at the reader. John McIntyre's
sorrowful voice had brought home to him some inkling of the
stupendousness of that tragedy.
"What did they kill Him for?" he demanded sharply. "He never did
anything bad, did He?"
"No." John McIntyre's voice was almost inaudible.
"Couldn't He have stopped them if He had wanted to?"
"Yes," hesitatingly.
"Why didn't He, then?" scornfully.
Why? There had been a day when John McIntyre could have given a ready
answer. He would have told the boy it was God's love and man's great
need that held the Savior there; but he had long ceased to believe in
that love, and he was silent.
Tim waited a while, and then tried another question. "Where is Jesus
now? Is He in Heaven?"
"I suppose so--yes."
"That's where our mother is--an' your boys, too, eh?"
"I suppose so," faltered the man.
"Were they very bad boys?" asked Tim in an awed whisper.
"No." The answer was almost fierce.
"Oh, then they'll be in Heaven for sure, won't they?"
"Yes."
"Are you _dead_ sure?"
"Yes, sure." The man drew a deep breath as he answered.
The boy lay silent, evolving a new question. It came at last.
"Say! all boys and girls have to have mothers, don't they?"
"Yes."
"Then your boys must 'a' had one, too, eh?"
"Yes."
"Is--is she in Heaven, too?"
"Yes, she is." John McIntyre spoke with a defiant firmness that
startled the boy.
"You're dead sure about that, ain't you?" he inquired, half admiringly.
"Yes. If there's a heaven, she's there, even if no one else is."
"But ain't there one?" cried Tim eagerly. It would be rather nice to
shock Miss Scott on Sunday with the news that there was no such place,
backed up by an authority like John McIntyre.
"Yes, there is." The answer was long in coming, but when it did come
it sounded final.
Tim was slightly disappointed. "Well," he argued at last, "I guess
there oughter be, anyhow, for good people like Mammy and Daddy Sawyer
and Dr. Allen and Mr. Scott--eh?"
"I suppose so."
"Why, daddy read about it one night in the Bible. It was a city, he
said--aw, shucks! I'd rather it was the country. But it had gold
streets, and was all pearls and diamonds and things. Say! find it,
will you?"
So the next reading was of the New Jerusalem, the city that had no need
of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God
did lighten it, and the Lamb was the light thereof.
"For there shall be no night there." When John McIntyre came to those
words his voice broke, and he closed the Book quickly, as though it
hurt him. He had not shed a tear since that day when he and Mary laid
their last child in the grave; and a far deeper sorrow had come upon
him since; but something shone in his eyes now as he turned his back to
the light.
For some minutes Tim lay staring into the fire, and wondering. It was
a wild winter night, and the storm came wailing across the Drowned
Lands, and shook the old door of the little cabin. But its
sorrow-laden notes, that always found an echo in the winter of John
McIntyre's lonely heart, spoke to him of something new and
wonderful--of that other land where there would be "no more death,
neither sorrow nor crying."
"It must be an awful pretty place," Tim ventured at last, rather
wistfully. "Say!"--he looked up eagerly--"d'ye s'pose it 'ud be
nicer'n Nova Scotia?" His companion did not answer, and he went on:
"Our mother's there, 'cause she was good; but if our father's dead, he
ain't."
John McIntyre looked down at the child, and Tim nodded his head
emphatically. "Oh, but I know he ain't," he said with firm conviction.
"He was so awful bad. Don't you mind I told you? He cheated a lot of
other folks, an' got all their money, an' then he ran away, for fear
they'd put him in jail. The last time I seen him he come to give ole
Mother Cummins money for keepin' us. She was drunk that night, and I
sneaked out o' bed an' listened, an' he didn't give her 'nough, an' she
yelled at him, an' she says, 'Joseph Symonds, you're a----'
Wha--what's the matter?"
John McIntyre had leaned forward in his chair and was glaring at the
boy. "That name!" he cried. "What was your father's name?"
"Symonds--Joseph Symonds," repeated the child, staring. "That's our
name, too, an' Joey was called after him."
"Was Fair Hill the place you were born in?"
"Yes. How did you know? It was right beside the ocean----" He
paused. The look in John McIntyre's face alarmed him. "Ye--ye ain't
goin' to get sick again, are ye?"
He arose and came nearer, and the man drew back, with a gesture of
loathing. "Your--father--was Joseph Symonds!" he repeated, dazed.
Tim had a fashion, when he was very much interested in anything his
friend was saying, of seizing a button of the man's coat and twisting
it. He took hold of it now, and turned it around and around, gazing at
him wonderingly.
"Yes; did ye know him?" he asked, innocently eager.
John McIntyre's clenched hands relaxed. His first impulse had been to
hurl far from him the offspring of the scoundrel who had been his ruin.
But one look into the boy's inquiring eyes, gazing at him in perfect
faith, rendered him powerless. He let his hand fall heavily upon Tim's
shoulder, and holding him back, stared into his wondering face. Line
by line he traced resemblances, hitherto unnoticed, to the man he had
hated. There was the same pointed chin, the same cunning droop of the
eyes. And yet, oh, miracle of love! those very hated features now
formed the one thing in the world to which his heart clung. He was
overcome by a feeling of utter impotence. Hitherto, his strength had
lain in his relentless hatred; and now, what had become of it? It was
gone--transformed into another feeling infinitely more potent.
Something of the all-conquering force of love--the impossibility of
escape from it--was borne in upon John McIntyre's soul. For an instant
the veil of mystery that shrouded human suffering seemed to grow
transparent, and behind it shone Divine Love in the agony of Calvary.
Inevitable, all-pervading, like the voice of the Apocalypse thundering
from heaven, it spoke: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
ending."
The man placed his hand on the boy's head in a helpless fashion.
"Are ye sick?" whispered Tim.
"It's nothing," he faltered weakly. "I--I was just feeling weak.
Come, it's time you were in bed. It is too stormy for you to go home."
And that night John McIntyre slept with a protecting arm placed around
the son of the man who had ruined his life.