If ever you wish to come to me I shall be ready. Now let us dismiss the
thing till after dinner. Disagreeable thoughts hinder digestion, I have
found, and nothing is quite worth that.”
With such resolution did she follow her own suggestion that, during the
drive and throughout the dinner hour and, indeed, until the moment of
her departure, Iola was not permitted to indulge her anxious thoughts,
but with Mrs. Duff Charrington's assistance she succeeded in keeping
them deep in her heart under guard.
As Mrs. Duff Charrington kissed her good-night she whispered:
“Don't face any issue to-night. Don't settle anything. Give time a
chance. Time is a wonderfully wise old party.”
And Iola, sitting back in the carriage, decided she would act upon the
advice which suited so thoroughly her own habit of mind. That Barney had
made up his mind to a line of action she knew. She would set herself to
gain time, and yet she was fearful of the issue of the interview before
her. The fear and anxiety which she had been holding down for the last
two hours came over her in floods. As she thought of Barney's last words
she found herself searching wildly, but in vain, for motives with which
to brace her strength. If he had only been angry! But that sad, tender
solicitude in his voice unnerved her. He was not thinking of himself,
she knew. He was, as ever, thinking of and for her.
A storm of wind and rain was rapidly drawing on, but she heeded not
the big drops driving into her face, nor did she notice that before she
reached her door she was quite wet. She found Barney waiting for her. As
she entered he arose and stood silent.
“Barney!” she exclaimed, and paused, waiting. But there was no reply.
“Oh, Barney!” she cried again, her voice quivering, “won't you tell me
to come?”
“Come,” he said, holding out his arms.
With a little cry of timid joy she ran to him, wreathed her arms about
his neck, and clung sobbing. For some moments he held her fast, gently
caressing with his hand her face and her beautiful hair till she grew
quiet. Then disengaging her arms, he kissed her with grave tenderness
and put her away from him.
“Go and take off your wet things first,” he said.
“Say you forgive me, Barney,” she whispered, putting her arms again
about his neck.
“That's not the word,” he replied sadly; “there's nothing to forgive.
Go, now!”
She hurried away, praying that Barney's mood might not change. If she
could only get her arms about his neck she could win and hold him, and,
what was far more important, she could conquer herself, for great as she
knew her love to be, she was fully aware of the hold her ambition had
upon her and she dreaded lest that influence should become dominant in
this hour. She knew well their souls would reach each other's secrets,
and according to that reading the issue would be.
“I will keep him! I will keep him!” she whispered to herself as she tore
off her wet clothing. “What shall I put on?” She could afford to lose
no point of vantage and she must hasten. She chose her simplest gown, a
soft creamy crepe de chene trimmed with lace, and made so as to show the
superb modelling of her perfect body, leaving her arms bare to the elbow
and falling away at the neck to reveal the soft, full curves where
they flowed down to the swell of her bosom. She shook down her hair
and gathered it loosely in a knot, leaving it as the wind and rain had
tossed it into a bewildering tangle of ringlets about her face. One
glance she threw at her mirror. Never had she appeared more lovely. The
dead ivory of her skin, relieved by a faint flush in her cheeks, the
lustrous eyes, now aglow with passion, all set in the frame of the
night-black masses of her hair--this, and that indescribable but
all-potent charm that love lends to the face, she saw in her glass.
“Ah, God help me!” she cried, clasping her hands high above her head,
and went forth.
These few moments Barney had spent in a fierce struggle to regain
the mastery over the surging passion that was sweeping like a tempest
through his soul. As her door opened he rose to meet her; but as his
eyes fell upon her standing in the soft rose-shaded light of the room,
her attitude of mute appeal, the rare, rich loveliness of her face and
form again swept away all the barriers of his control. She took one step
toward him. With a swift movement he covered his face with his hands and
sank to his chair.
“O God! O God! O God!” he groaned. “And must I lose her!”
“Why lose me, Barney?” she said, gliding swiftly to him and dropping to
her knees beside him. “Why lose me?” she repeated, taking his head to
her heaving bosom.
The touch of pity aroused his scorn of himself and braced his manhood.
Not for himself must he think now, but for her. The touch of self makes
weak, the cross makes strong. What matter that he was giving up his
life in that hour if only she were helped? He rose, lifted her from her
knees, set her in a chair, and went back to his place.
“Barney, let me come to you,” she pleaded. “I'm sorry I went--”
“No,” he said, his voice quiet and steady, “you must stay there. You
must not touch me, else I cannot say what I must.”
“Barney,” she cried again, “let me explain.”
“Explain? There is no need. I know all you would say. These people are
nothing to you or to me. Let us forget them. It matters not at all that
you went with them. I am not angry. I was at first insane, I think. But
that is all past now.”
“What is it, Barney?” she asked in a voice awed by the sadness and
despair in the even, quiet tone.
“It is this,” he replied; “we have come to the end. I must not hold you
any more. For two years I have known. I had not the courage to face it.
But, thank God, the courage has come to me these last two days.”
“Courage, Barney?”
“Yes. Courage to do right. That's it, to do right. That is what a man
must do. And I must think for you. Our lives are already far apart and I
must not keep you longer.”
“Oh, Barney!” cried Iola, her voice breaking, “let me come to you! How
can I listen to you saying such terrible things without your arms about
me? Can't you see I want you? You are hurting me!”
The pain, the terror in her voice and in her eyes, made him wince as
from a stab. He seemed to hesitate as if estimating his strength. Dare
he trust himself? It would make the task infinitely harder to have her
near him, to feel the touch of her hands, the pressure of her body. But
he would save her pain. He would help her through this hour of agony.
How great it was he could guess by his own. He led her to a sofa, sat
down beside her, and took her in his arms. With a long, shuddering sigh,
she let herself sink down, with muscles relaxed and eyes closed.
“Now go on, dear,” she whispered.
“Poor girl! Poor girl!” said Barney, “we have made a great mistake, you
and I. I was not made for you nor you for me.”
“Why not?” she whispered.
“Listen to me, darling. Do I love you?”
“Yes,” she answered softly.
“With all my heart and soul?”
“Yes, dear,” she answered again.
“Better than my own life?”
“Yes, Barney. Oh, yes,” she replied with a little sob in her voice.
“Now we will speak simple truth to each other,” said Barney in a tone
solemn as if in prayer, “the truth as in God's sight.”
She hesitated. “Oh, Barney!” she cried piteously, “must I say all the
truth?”
“We must, darling. You promise?”
“Oh-h-h! Yes, I promise.” She flung her arms upward about his neck. “I
know what you will ask.”
“Listen to me, darling,” he said again, taking down her arms, “this is
what I would say. You have marked out your life. You will follow your
great ambition. Your glorious voice calls you and you feel you must go.
You love me and you would be my wife, make my home, mother my children
if God should send them to us; but both these things you cannot do, and
meantime you have chosen your great career. Is not this true?”
“I can't give you up, Barney!” she moaned.
To neither of them did it occur as an alternative that Barney should
give up his life's work to accompany her in the path she had marked.
Equally to both this would have seemed unworthy of him.
“Is not this true, Iola?” Barney's voice, in spite of him, grew a little
stern. And though she knew it was at the cost of life she could not deny
it.
“God gave me the voice, Barney,” she whispered.
“Yes, darling. And I would not hinder you nor turn you from your great
art. So it is better that there should be no bond between us.” He paused
a moment as if to gather his strength together for a supreme effort.
“Iola, when you were a girl I bound you to me. Now you are a woman, I
set you free. I love you, but you are not mine. You are your own.”
Convulsively she clung to him moaning, “No, no, Barney!”
“It is the only way.”
“No, not to-night, Barney!”
“Yes, to-night. To-morrow I go to Baltimore. Trent has got me an
appointment in Johns Hopkins. You will never forget me, but your life
will be full again of other people and other things.” He hurried his
words, seeking to strike the note of her ambition and so turn her mind
from her present pain. “Your Philharmonic will bring you fame. That
means engagements, great masters, and then you will belong to the great
world.” How clearly he had read her mind and how closely he had followed
the path she herself had outlined for her feet! He paused, as if to take
breath, then hurried on again as through a task. “And we
will all be proud of you and rejoice in your success and in
your--your--your--happiness.” The voice that had gone so bravely and so
relentlessly through the terrible lesson faltered at the word and broke,
but only for an instant. He must think of her. “Dick will be here,” he
went on, “and Margaret, and soon you will have many friends. Believe me,
it is the best, Iola, and you will say it some day.”
Like a flash of inspiration it came to her to say, “No, Barney, you are
not helping me to my best.”
In his soul he felt that it was a true word. For a moment he had no
answer. Eagerly she followed up her advantage.
“And who,” she cried, “will help me up and take care of me?”
Ah, she struck deep there. Who, indeed, would care for her, guard her
against the world with its beasts of prey that batten their lusts upon
beauty and innocence? And who would help her against herself? The desire
to hold her for himself and for her sprang up fierce within him. Could
he desert her, leave her to fight her fights, to find her way
through the world's treacherous paths alone? That was the part of his
renunciation that had been the heart of his pain. Not his loss, but her
danger. Not his loneliness, but hers. For a moment he forgot everything.
All the great love in him gathered itself together and massed its weight
behind this desire to protect her and to hold her safe.
“Could you, Iola,” he cried hoarsely, “don't you think you could let me
care for you? Couldn't you come to me, give me the right to guard you? I
can make wealth, great wealth, for you. Can't you come?”
Wildly, with the incoherent logic and eloquence of great passion, he
poured forth his soul's desire for her. To work for her, to suffer for
her, to live for her, yes, and to give himself to her and to keep her
only for himself! Helpless in the sweeping tide of his mighty passion,
he poured forth his words, pleading as for his life. By an inexplicable
psychic law the exhibition of his passion calmed hers. The sight of his
weakness brought her strength. For one fleeting moment she allowed her
mind to rest upon the picture his words made of a home, made rich with
the love of a strong man, and sweet with the music of children's voices,
where she would be safe and sheltered in infinite peace and content. But
only for a moment. Swifter than the play of light there flashed before
her another scene, a crowded amphitheatre of faces, tier upon tier,
eager, rapt, listening, and upon the stage the singer holding, swaying,
compelling them to her will. Barney felt her relaxed muscles tone up
into firmness. The force of her ambition was being transmitted along
those subtle spiritual nerves that knit soul and mind and body into one
complex whole, into the very sinews and muscles of her frame. She had
hold of herself again. She would set herself to gain time.
“Let us wait, Barney,” she said, “let us take time.”
An intangible something in her tone pulled him to a sharp stop. What a
weak fool he had been and how he had been thinking of himself! He sat
up, straight and strong, his own man again.
“Forgive me, darling,” he said, a faint, wan smile flitting across his
face. “I was weak and selfish. I allowed myself to think for a moment
that it might be, but now I know we must say good-bye to-night.”
“Good-bye?” The sting of her pain made her irritable. He was so
stubborn. “Surely, Barney, it is unreasonable to ask me to decide at
once to-night.”
He rose to his feet and lifted her gently.
“You have decided. You have already chosen your life's path, and it
lies apart from mine. Let me go quietly away.” His voice was toneless,
passionless. His fight of two days and two nights had left him
exhausted. His apparent apathy chilled her to the heart. It was a
supreme moment in their lives, and yet she could not fan her soul's
fires into flame. He was tearing up the roots of his love out of her
life, but there was no acute sense of laceration. The inevitable had
come to pass. A silence, dense and throbbing, fell upon them. Outside
the storm was lashing the wet leaves against the window.
“If ever you should want me to come to you, Iola, one word will bring
me. I shall be waiting, waiting. Remember that, always waiting.” He
tightened his arms about her and without passion, but gravely, tenderly
he lifted her face. “Good-bye, my love,” he said, and kissed her lips.
“My heart's love!” Once more he kissed her. “My life! My love!”
She let the full weight of her body lie in his arms, lifeless but for
the eyes that held his fast and for the lips that gave him back his
kisses. Gently he placed her on the couch.
“God keep you, darling,” he whispered, bending over her and touching her
dusky hair with his lips.
He found his hat, walked with unsteady feet as a man walks under a heavy
load, her eyes following his every step, and reached the door. There he
paused, his hand fumbling at the knob, opened the door, halted yet an
instant, but without turning he passed out of her sight.
An hour later Margaret came in and found her sitting where Barney had
left her, dazed and tearless.
“He is gone,” she said dully.
Margaret turned upon her. “Gone? Yes. I have just seen him.”
“And I love him,” continued Iola, looking up at her with heavy eyes.
“Love him! You don't know what love means! Love him! And for your
paltry, selfish ambition you send from you a man whose shoes you are not
worthy to tie!”
“Oh, Margaret!” cried Iola piteously.
“Don't talk to me!” she replied, her lip quivering. “I can't bear to
look at you!” and she passed into her room.
It was intolerable to her that this girl should have regarded lightly
the love she herself would have died to gain. But long after Iola had
sobbed herself to sleep in her arms Margaret lay wakeful for her own
pain and for that of the man she loved better than her life.
But next day, as Iola was planning to go to the station, Margaret would
not have it.
“Why should you go? You have nothing to say but what would give him
pain. Do you want him to despise you and me to hate you?”
But Iola was resolved to have her way. It was Mrs. Duff Charrington
who fortunately intervened and carried Iola off with her to spend the
afternoon and evening.
“Just a few musical friends, my dear. So brush up and come away. Bring
your guitar with you.”
Iola demurred.
“I don't feel like it.”
“Tut! Nonsense! The lovelorn damsel reads well in erotic novels, but
remember this, the men don't like stale beer.”
This bit of worldly wisdom made Iola put on her smartest gown and lay
aside the role she had unconsciously planned to adopt, so that even Mrs.
Duff Charrington had no fault to find with the sparkling animation of
her protegee.
But to the three who stood together waiting for the train to pull
out that night there was only dreary, voiceless misery. There was no
pretence at anything but misery. To the brothers the moment of parting
would be the end of all that had been so delightful in their old life.
The days of their long companionship were over, and to both the thought
brought grief that made words impossible. Only Margaret's presence
forced them to self-control. As to Margaret, Dick alone knew the full
measure of her grief, and her quiet, serene courage filled him with
amazed admiration. At length came the call of the bustling, businesslike
conductor, “All aboard!”
“Good-bye, Margaret,” said Barney simply, holding out his hand. But the
girl quietly put back her veil and lifted up her face to him, her brave
blue eyes looking all their love into his, but her lips only said,
“Good-bye, Barney.”
“Good-bye, dear Margaret,” he said again, bending over her and kissing
her.
“Me, too, Barney,” said Dick, his tears openly streaming down his face.
“I'm a confounded baby! But hanged if I care!”
At Dick's words all Barney's splendid self-mastery vanished. He threw
his arms about his brother's neck, crying “Good-bye, Dick, old man.
We've had a great time together; but oh, my boy, my boy, it's all come
to an end!”
Already the train was moving.
“Go, old chap,” cried Dick, pushing him away but still clinging to him.
And then, as Barney swung on to the step he called back to them what had
long been in his heart to say.
“Look after her, will you?”
“Yes, Barney, we will,” they both cried together. And as they stood
gazing through dimming tears after the train as it sped out through the
network of tracks and the maze of green and red lights, they felt that a
new bond drew them closer than before. And it was the tightening of that
bond that brought them all the comfort that there was in that hour of
misery unspeakable.
XIII
A MAN THAT IS AN HERETIC REJECT
The college year had come to an end. The results of the examinations had
been published. The Juniors were preparing to depart for their summer
work in the mission field. Of the graduating class, some were waiting
with calm confidence the indications of the will of Providence as
to their spheres of labour, a confidence undoubtedly strengthened by
certain letters in their possession from leading members of influential
congregations. Others were preparing with painful shrinking of heart to
tread the weary and humiliating “trail of the black bag,” while others
again, to whom had come visions of high deeds and sounds of distant
battle, were making ready outfits supposed to be suitable for life and
work in the great West, or in the far lands across the sea.
Two high functions of college life yet remained, one, the Presbytery
examination, the other, Professor Macdougall's student party. The
annual examination before Presbytery was ever an event of nerve-racking
uncertainty. It might prove to be an entirely perfunctory performance of
the most innocuous kind. On the other hand, it might develop features of
a most sensational and perilous nature. The college barometer this year
was unusually depressed, for rumour had gone abroad that the Presbytery
examination was to be of the more serious type. It was a time of
searchings of heart for those who had been giving, throughout the
session, undue attention to the social opportunities afforded by college
life, and more especially if they had allowed their contempt for the
archaic and oriental to become unnecessarily pronounced. To these
latter gentlemen the day brought gloomy forebodings. Even their morning
devotions, which were marked by unusual sincerity and earnestness,
failed to bring them that calmness of mind which these exercises are
supposed to afford. For their slender ray of hope that their memory
of the English text might not fail them in the hour of trial was very
materially clouded by the dread that in their embarrassment they might
assign a perfectly correct English version to the wrong Hebrew text. The
result of such mischance they would not allow themselves to contemplate.
On the other hand, however, there was the welcome possibility that they
might be so able to dispose themselves among the orientalists in their
class that a word dropped at a critical moment might save them from this
mischance. And there was the further, and not altogether unreal, ground
of confidence, that the examiner himself might be uneasily conscious of
the ever-present possibility that some hidden Hebrew snag might rudely
jag a hole in his own vessel while sailing the mare ignotum of oriental
literature. Of course, the examination would also include other
departments of sacred learning, for it was the province and duty of
Presbytery to satisfy itself as to the soundness in the faith of the
candidates before them. On this score, however, few indulged serious
anxiety. Once the Hebraic shoals and snags were safely passed,
both examiner and examined could disport themselves with a jaunty
self-confidence born of a thorough acquaintance with the Shorter
Catechism received during the plastic years of childhood.
It was, however, just in these calm waters that danger lurked for Boyle.
On the side of scholarship he was known to be invulnerable. Boyle
was the hero and darling of the college men, more especially of the
“sinners” among them, not simply by reason of his prowess between the
goal posts where, times without number, he had rescued the college from
the contempt of its foes; but quite as much for the modesty with which
he carried off his brilliant attainments in the class lists. Throughout
the term, in the college halls after tea, there had been carried on
a series of discussions extending over the whole range of the
“fundamentals,” and Boyle had the misfortune to rouse the wrath and
awaken the concern of Finlay Finlayson, the champion of orthodoxy.
Finlay was a huge, gaunt, broad-shouldered son of Uist, a theologian
by birth, a dialectician by training, and a man of war by the gift of
Heaven. Cheerfully would Finlay, for conscience' sake, have given his
body to the flames, as, for conscience' sake, he had shaken off the
heretical dust of New College, Edinburgh, from his shoes, unhesitatingly
surrendering at the same time, Scot though he was, a scholarship of
fifty pounds. The hope that he had cherished of being able to find, in
a colonial institution of sacred learning, a safe haven where he might
devote himself to the perfecting of the defences of his faith within the
citadel of orthodoxy was rudely shattered by the discovery that the
same heresies which had driven him from New College had found their
way across the sea and were being championed by a man of such winning
personality and undoubted scholarship as Richard Boyle. The effect upon
Finlayson's mind of these discussions carried on throughout the term was
such that, after much and prayerful deliberation, and after due notice
to the person immediately affected, he discovered it to be his duty
to inform the professor in whose department these subjects lay of
the heresies that were threatening the very life of the college, and,
indeed, of the Canadian Church.
The report of his interview with the professor came back to college
through the realistic if somewhat irreverent medium of the professor's
son, Tom, presently pursuing a somewhat leisurely course toward a
medical degree. As Tom appeared in the college hall he was immediately
surrounded by an eager crowd, the most eager of whom was Robert Duff,
the sworn ally of Mr. Finlayson.
“Did Finlayson see your father?” inquired Mr. Duff anxiously.
“Sure thing,” answered Tom.
“And did he inform him of what has been going on in this college?”
“You bet your life! Give him the whole tip!”
“And what did the professor say?” inquired Mr. Duff, with bated breath.
“Told him to go to the devil.”
“To what?” gasped Mr. Duff, to whom it appeared for the moment that the
foundations of things in heaven and on earth had indeed been removed.
It was only after the shout of laughter on the part of the “sinners” had
subsided that Mr. Duff realised that it was the spirit only, and not
the ipsissima verba, of the devout and reverent professor, that had been
translated in the vigorous vernacular of his son.