MASTER AND MAN.
Reggie looked in the direction indicated. Down a vista of pink and
white apple blossom that seemed in its pure loveliness to emphasize
the miserableness and shame of sin, came two men, stumbling and
laughing and stumbling again and holding each other up. One was Mr.
Gray, the Bank Manager, the other, as Reggie guessed in a moment, was
Howard Bushman, of whom he had just heard.
One glance was enough for Reggie, and his eyes came back to his
companion. She was white and shivering.
"Oh Reggie!" she said again, "help him, do help him, it will ruin
him."
Just behind her was a small summer-house. It came to Reggie all in a
moment what to do.
"Go and sit down in there," he said gently, "and when Mr. Gray comes,
keep him with you till I get back."
Then he went swiftly to meet that stumbling, laughing pair, and he
spoke as gently as he had done to the poor wife.
"Mrs. Gray is sitting down in that summer-house," he said, "I think
she wants you. Will you stay with her while I run to the house for
something?"
The Bank Manager laughed foolishly.
"He! He! Reggie! Looking after the ladies, as usual! Bring some
champagne, my lad, and we'll have a nice little spree on the quiet."
But Reggie had not waited for directions.
He walked swiftly towards the house, but he did not wish to appear
hurried or to be on any secret errand, and as he went his thoughts
flew hither and thither bewilderingly.
For this man was his master. This man whom he had been asked to help,
had much of the making or marring of Reggie's prospects in his hand,
and to interfere, especially in such a delicate matter, was almost
certainly to incur more anger, more abiding, unredeemable displeasure,
than for any other misdemeanour.
And yet, for four months Reggie had been praying for this very man!
Three years before, when Charlie Henchman had come to the engineering
college in the town, he had sought out the loneliest fellow that he
knew and for Christ's sake had endeavoured to cheer and uplift and
help him by just being companionable to him. And the loneliest
fellow that Charlie knew was Reggie Alston, and after they had been
companions for quite a long time they found out that they both
knew the Brougham family, a link which drew them to be more than
companions,--to be friends.
Now Charlie was gone, and Reggie had promised him to seek out some
lonely fellow too, and try to help him and cheer him and lead him
nearer to Christ. He had prayed to be shown the right fellow, but
among all his acquaintances there was no one lonely; one name, and one
name only, seemed laid upon his heart, the name of Mr. Gray, his own
Manager and master!
But as yet Reggie had done nothing more than to pray for him earnestly
and regularly, for there seemed nothing else possible. For how could
a junior Bank clerk seek out the companionship of his superior and
invite him to supper or to cycle or to go with him to church?
He had been asked to help him now, and if those ways in which he had
wished to help some fellow had seemed impossible, in this case how
much more impossible were these circumstances? For to help in this way
could only bring the downfall of all Reggie's hopes of promotion, and
put off that day when he could tell Gertrude that his home was ready
for her.
Yet with all these thoughts surging through his brain, Reggie felt
that the call of duty had come to him, and to refuse would be to
refuse to take up his Cross and follow Christ. As he took four cups
of strong black coffee back to the summer-house, he realised that the
Cross is the place of suffering and of death.
He had scarcely been five minutes on his errand and the little party
in the summer-house had neither been added to nor diminished, and hope
had brought a little colour back to Mrs. Gray's woe-begone face.
A simple straightforwardness was one of Reggie's characteristics. He
put a cup of coffee into the manager's hand.
"You'd better drink it, Mr. Gray," he said quietly, "it's--it's
refreshing, and then if you'd just take Mrs. Gray home--I'm sure she
would feel better at home, and the bride has gone, so we can all slip
away together. People are beginning to go now."
Mrs. Gray hated black coffee, but she drank her cup bravely, and
looked all the better for it too.
"That stuff is refreshing," said Howard, suddenly, with a nod towards
the empty cups, as the four left the summer-house, to make their
farewells. "I felt rotten, but I feel as right as a trivet now."
Mr. Gray said nothing. He knew perfectly well that he was being
helped, and his pride fiercely resented it, but Reggie's three years
of quiet faithful work had had its influence, and the clinging touch
of Mrs. Gray's hand on his arm softened him, and he said to himself
that Reggie had an unbounded cheek, but there was really nothing to
wait for any longer, now that the bride had gone.
But there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. The bride's mother,
shaking hands and saying pleasant nothings to the first of her
departing guests, looked at Mr. Gray reproachfully.
"Mr. Gray! you are never going to desert us already! We want our
brightest stars to help illumine our darkness. Mrs. Gray feeling ill?
Surely, my dear Elaine, you do not need _three_ gentlemen to take you
home!"
The colour flamed into Mrs. Gray's cheeks.
"My husband is taking me home," she said proudly, "Mr. Alston and Mr.
Bushman happen to be leaving at the same time."
"It _is_ rather early," admitted Mr. Gray. He had caught sight of
a fresh tray of glasses going the round of a circle of his
acquaintances, and he decided not to be managed any longer, but to do
as he chose.
"Look here, Elaine!" he said in a low tone, "you let Reggie take you
home. I won't be a few minutes, but I must speak to Thornton. I've
been looking for him all the afternoon, and it's really important."
"I'm sure _you_ are not in a hurry, Howard," said the hostess.
So Reggie and Mrs. Gray found themselves outside the gate alone.
"I'll never go inside that gate again," cried Mrs. Gray, angrily. Then
she added piteously, "Oh, Reggie, I thought we had got him safe."
"So did I," said Reggie, ruefully.
"What _can_ I do?" she moaned, "I've seen it coming on little by
little, and now he's beginning not to care so much if--if people
guess. I'm glad you know, Reggie; it's a comfort to have somebody to
speak to. I used to think I should be perfectly happy if I had plenty
of money--we girls at home used to be poor till Aunt died and left
us her property, just before I was engaged, and now, often, I think
I would so willingly have just John's income--and it's only a small
income for so responsible a position--or work hard myself, if I could
be sure of--of him. But there it is," she added sadly. "Tell me what I
can do, Reggie."
"You can pray for him," said Reggie, earnestly, "God _does_ hear and
answer prayer and He can save to the uttermost." He hesitated and then
added in a lower tone,
"Mrs. Gray, are you an abstainer yourself?"
"Well, not quite," said she, "but I hardly take anything."
Reggie nodded.
"Yes, but you take as much as you care to, and he takes as much as
_he_ cares to. That is how Mr. Gray would look at it, and the way God
looks at it is this, '_Judge this rather that no man put a stumbling
block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way. Anything whereby
thy brother stumbleth or is offended or is made weak._'"
They had reached the Bank and she held out her hand with a sigh.
"Thank you," she said, "well, I'll think about it."
Reggie walked on to the corner of his own road and stood looking down
it distastefully.
Here he was in the middle of Bank holiday afternoon, in his best
clothes, with nowhere to go and no one to speak to, feeling as if his
life and himself and everything else were an utter failure. If he had
only had on his cycling suit, he might have contemplated a ride, but
the thought of turning into his dull lodgings, even to change, was
unbearable, and the writing of a letter to Gertrude, with which he had
beguiled many a lonely hour before, was not possible to-day.
He turned at the sound of quick footsteps behind him, and heard his
name called.
"Why! Mr. Alston!" said the cheerful voice of the Scotch minister's
little wife, "you look as if you belonged to nobody, and nowhere!"
Then, seeing instantly that her words had hit too near the mark, she
added quickly,
"I wish, if you aren't engaged, you would come home to supper with us.
I always feel as if I wanted to be entertained after a wedding, as if
it were very dull to go home to just an ordinary tea, and its being a
Bank holiday seems to emphasise the feeling. Mr. Mackenzie and I were
just saying so, weren't we, Will?"
"That is so," assented Mr. Mackenzie, with his grave smile, "I hear,
Mr. Alston, that you are musical and might have played our organ for
the marriage had we but known it. I have the organ keys, if you would
care to try the instrument. It was unfortunate that our organist was
away. I like a little singing at a wedding."
Reggie's face beamed.
"I'd like to come, awfully," he said, "what time shall I turn up?"
"Why, now!" said Mrs. Mackenzie, "we'll have tea at once and then the
garden-boy shall blow for you, and we'll be audience, and then we can
have supper and talk."
"That's the chief item in the programme, isn't it?" said her husband,
with a twinkle.
Reggie tried to smother a laugh but did not succeed. This unexpected
treat had wonderfully cheered his drooping spirits, and he laughed and
chatted merrily as they walked to the Manse; but beneath the
outward pleasure that the invitation gave him, there was running an
undercurrent of deep happiness, for he knew that in the moment of the
most intense loneliness, the most utter hopelessness that he had ever
known, God had sent His angel and delivered him.
And Mrs. Mackenzie talked on in her usual cheerful, lighthearted
way and never dreamed that she had been God's angel to any one that
afternoon. Reggie was too shy to tell her, and she had not the key to
the thoughts of the young organist who first woke the echoes of the
church for her, with the strains of,
But the Lord is mindful of His own,
He remembers His children.
That was for to-day and for to-morrow too, in Reggie's mind. As the
evening wore on, the dread of the to-morrow morning, when at nine
o'clock he must meet Mr. Gray, grew upon him. That his interference
had been resented, even while it was accepted, Reggie had seen quite
plainly, and to-morrow was coming nearer with each tick of the clock.