OUT OF THE NORTH.
In the stillness of a quiet summer evening, when the darkness
had fallen and the stars looked down from a far sky, and the soft
moonbeams shone silvery on dark trees and velvet lawns, John Gray,
Bank Manager, knelt at an open window, his arms resting on the sill,
his face turned skywards.
In the silence, in the stillness of that summer night, the great
battle of his life was being fought out beneath the stars.
Backwards and forwards raged the battle. Thoughts of what he must give
up if he turned his back on this temptation and did not satisfy his
desire for strong drink; the friends who would flaunt him; the friends
who would pity him for his weakness in yielding to the influence of
abstaining noodles; the friends who would smile and bid one another
wait a bit, and John Gray would be taking his glass with them again;
the awful haunting fear that they were right, that he would only make
himself ridiculous and never hold out; all these things seemed ranged
on one side against him, and on the other side what was there?
His wife Elaine. She had promised to help him, for them to start
together, to turn out of their home and their entertaining all
intoxicating beverages, to stand side by side in their social circle
and be abstainers. Then there was Reggie. He was helping already. Not
ostentatiously, not in a burdensome way. Only just a cycle ride here
and there, or a walk, or a concert, or an hour on the church organ,
when Reggie would blow and Mr. Gray, who was musical, would play as
nobody in the town, not excepting the organist, could play. Or a game
of chess in Mrs. Gray's drawing-room, while Elaine played or sang to
them and served them with delicious coffee.
There were other friends too--friends who had been shy of him and
Elaine lately, but who had once been pleasant, intellectual friends,
and who would be friends again if things were different.
All these were on the other side.
But he knew, and his head dropped upon his folded arms with a
groan--he knew that none of these things would keep him from
satisfying his desire; that they could give him no strength to resist.
They might indeed claim his attention for a little while, but surely,
as those smiling friends predicted, he would drift back to the old
temptation.
There were real tears of shame and mortification in his eyes, as he
lifted them to the sky once more. Oh! if he could only begin again; if
he had only been brought up as an abstainer, as children were brought
up now-a-days; if he had only taken his stand that side, as a young
man, like companions of his own youth had done; if only he had been
born strong and not with this weakness.
But all such regrets were unavailing. He knelt there in the moonlight
what he was, what he had been made, what he had made himself, and
there was something in him that told him that to-night was a deciding
point in his life.
And to drift needed no strength, no anything. Only just to get up from
his knees and to go upstairs to bed, and to wake again to the old life
in the morning.
But the very fact that he was kneeling came to his mind to remind him,
and the quiet sky above him spoke to him of strength and peace, and
suddenly he bowed his head upon the sill.
"Oh, God, what shall I do?" he moaned. And softly, a voice out of the
past--his sweet old grandmother's voice--came to him with words he had
never heard or heeded, since she taught them to him in his childhood.
"While we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the
ungodly."
Without strength--the ungodly. That was himself, and for him Christ
died!
The dawn was creeping up the eastern sky when John Gray softly closed
the window and went upstairs, and there was the dawn of hope in his
heart too, for in his life the Sun of Righteousness had risen with
healing in His wings.
It was the next day after this that Reggie Alston received a letter
with the Old Keston post-mark, but after the first glance he laid it
down indifferently. It was not from Gertrude.
After her birthday letter he had expected another pretty soon, because
it had been like her old letters and she had apologised for its
brevity, but none had come.
This was only from his aunt. She might, however, mention Gertrude! He
opened it and glanced at the opening words. When was she to expect him
for his holidays?
He sighed as he thought how long it was till the end of September,
when he was to have his holiday. He had so hoped it would be arranged
during the school vacation, but it had not been.
He turned the page of his aunt's epistle and then his face changed
from listlessness to keen interest.
"I think," wrote his aunt, "that you cannot have heard that little
Maud Brougham has been stolen. I thought Gertrude would of course
write you all about it, but you did not mention it in your last letter
to me, and perhaps, as Gertrude was to blame, she has not liked to
write."
And then his aunt proceeded to tell Reggie all the story, and all the
stories that had grown upon it. Perhaps in her delight in having so
interesting a tale to tell, she forgot what such a story might mean to
Reggie, for he had never made any secret of his whole-hearted devotion
to Gertrude, but certainly she did not spare Gertrude, and to do
Reggie's aunt justice, she fully believed most of the stories of
flirtation and coquetry.
Gertrude had been very little to see her of late, and in the light of
these tales, she naturally put her own interpretation on the neglect.
Reggie slept very little that night, and it was with a very pale face
that he knocked at Mr. Gray's private door in the morning.
"Are you ill?" asked the Manager kindly.
Reggie shook his head with a faint smile.
"Mr. Gray," he said, "you know my holiday is a fortnight in the end of
September. Could you possibly make an exception for me and let me have
four days now, and give up September entirely?"
"My dear boy! it would not be at all good for you. What's the matter?
Anybody at home ill?"
"No! I've only an aunt."
"Is it the one and only girl in all the world?"
Reggie nodded, and a deep flush swept over his face. "She's in
trouble. Her little sister has been stolen," he said, feeling some
explanation was due.
"Does she care for you?"
"No, I don't think so," said Reggie sadly, "but I should like to go.
It's all I can do, and it doesn't matter about my part of it, any
way."
"You shall go!" said the Manager quietly. "You shall go by to-night's
mail. Perhaps things will be better than you fear. You'll be in London
this time to-morrow morning."