Anything to get him to you.”
Iola mused a while. “He wants me to marry him and to keep his house.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “he does.”
“Housekeeping and babies, ugh!” shuddered Iola.
“Yes,” cried Margaret, “ah, God, yes! Housekeeping and babies and
Barney! God pity your poor soul!”
Iola shrank from the fierce intensity of Margaret's sudden passion.
“What do you mean?” she cried. “Why do you speak so?”
“Why? Can't you read God's meaning in your woman's body and in your
woman's heart?”
From Margaret Iola got little help. Indeed, the gulf between the two was
growing wider every day. She resolved to show her letter to Dick. They
were to go that evening to the play and after the play there would be
supper. And when he had taken her home she would show him the letter.
On their way home that evening as they were passing Dick's rooms, he
suddenly remembered that a message was to be sent him from the office.
“Let us run in for a moment,” he said.
“I think I had better wait you here,” replied Iola.
“Nonsense!” cried Dick. “Don't be a baby. Come in.”
Together they entered and, laying aside her wrap, Iola sat down and drew
forth Barney's letter.
“Listen, Dick. I want your advice.” And she read over such portions of
Barney's letter as she thought necessary.
“Well?” she said, as Dick remained silent.
“Well,” replied Dick, “what's your answer to be?”
“You know what he means,” said Iola a little impatiently. “He wants me
to marry him at once and to settle down.”
“Well,” said Dick, “why not?”
“Now, Dick,” cried Iola, “do you think I am suited for that kind of
life? Can you picture me devoting myself to the keeping of a house tidy,
the overseeing of meals? I fancy I see myself spending the long, quiet
evenings, my husband busy in his office or out among his patients while
I dose and yawn and grow fat and old and ugly, and the great world
forgetting. Dick, I should die! Of course, I love Barney. But I must
have life, movement. I can't be forgotten!”
“Forgotten?” cried Dick. “Why should you be forgotten? Barney's wife
could not be ignored and the world could not forget you. And, after
all,” added Dick, in a musing tone, “to live with Barney ought to be
good enough for any woman.”
“Why, how eloquent you are, Dick!” she cried, making a little moue. “You
are quite irresistible!” she added, leaning toward him with a mocking
laugh.
“Come, let us go,” said Dick painfully, conscious of her physical charm.
“We must get away.”
“But you haven't helped me, Dick,” she cried, drawing nearer to him and
laying her hand upon his arm.
The perfume of her hair smote upon his senses. The beauty of her face
and form intoxicated him.
He knew he was losing control of himself.
“Come, Iola,” he said, “let us go.”
“Tell me what to say, Dick,” she replied, smiling into his face and
leaning toward him.
“How can I tell you?” cried Dick desperately, springing up. “I only know
you are beautiful, Iola, beautiful as an angel, as a devil! What has
come over you, or is it me, that you should affect me so? Do you know,”
he added roughly, lifting her to her feet, his breath coming hard and
fast, “I can hardly keep my hands off you. We must go. I must go. Come!”
“Poor child,” mocked Iola, still smiling into his eyes, “is it afraid it
will get hurt?”
“Stop it, Iola!” cried Dick. “Come on!”
“Come,” she mocked, still leaning toward him.
Swiftly Dick turned, seized her in his arms, his eyes burning down upon
her mocking face. “Kiss me!” he commanded.
Gradually she allowed the weight of her body to lean upon him, drawing
him steadily down toward her the while, with the deep, passionate lure
of her lustrous eyes.
“Kiss me!” he commanded again. But she shook her head, holding him still
with her gaze.
“God in heaven!” cried Dick. “Go away!” He made to push her from him.
She clasped him about the neck, allowing herself to sink in his arms
with her face turned upward to his. Fiercely he crushed her to him, and
again and again his hot, passionate kisses fell upon her face.
Conscious only of the passion throbbing in their hearts and pulsing
through their bodies, oblivious to all about them, they heard not the
opening of the door and knew not that a man had entered the room. For
a single moment he stood stricken with horror as if gazing upon death
itself. Turning to depart, his foot caught a chair. Terror-smitten,
the two sprang apart and stood with guilt and shame stamped upon their
ghastly faces.
“Barney!” they cried together.
Slowly he came back to them. “Yes, it is I.” The words seemed to come
from some far distance. “I couldn't wait. I came for my answer, Iola.
I thought I could persuade you better. I have it now. I have lost
you! And”--here he turned to Dick--“oh, my God! My God! I have lost my
brother, too!” he turned to depart from him.
“Barney,” cried Dick passionately, “there was no wrong! There was
nothing beyond what you saw!”
“Was that all?” inquired his brother quietly.
“As God is in heaven, Barney, that was all!”
Barney threw a swift glance round the room, crossed to a side table, and
picked up a Bible lying there. He turned the leaves rapidly and handed
it to his brother with his finger upon a verse.
“Read!” he said. “You know your Bible. Read!” His voice was terrible and
compelling in its calmness.
Following the pointing finger, Dick's eyes fell upon words that seemed
to sear his eyeballs as he read, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust
after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
Heart-smitten, Dick stood without a word.
“I could kill you now,” said the quiet, terrible voice. “But what need?
To me you are already dead.”
When Dick looked up his brother had gone. Nerveless, broken, he sank
into a chair and sat with his face in his hands. Beside him stood Iola,
pale, rigid, her eyes distended as if she had seen a horrid vision. She
was the first to recover.
“Dick,” she said softly, laying her hand upon his head.
He sprang up as if her fingers had been red-hot iron and had burned to
the bone.
“Don't touch me!” he cried in vehement frenzy. “You are a devil! And I
am in hell! In hell! do you hear?” He caught her by the arm and shook
her. “And I deserve hell! Hell! Hell! Fools! no hell?” He turned again
to her. “And for you, for this, and this, and this,” touching her
hair, her cheek, and her heaving bosom with his finger, “I have lost my
brother--my brother--my own brother--Barney. Oh, fool that I am! Damned!
Damned! Damned!”
She shrank back from him, then whispered with pale lips, “Oh, Dick,
spare me! Take me home!”
“Yes, yes,” he cried in mad haste, “anywhere, in the devil's name! Come!
Come!” He seized her wrap, threw it upon her shoulders, caught up his
hat, tore open the door for her, and followed her out.
“Can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned?” And out of the
embers of his passion there kindled a fire that night that burned with
unquenchable fury for many a day.
XV
THE SUPERINTENDENT'S METHODS
The Superintendent was spending the precious hours of one of his rare
visits at home in painful plodding through his correspondence. For it
was part of the sacrifice his work demanded, and which he cheerfully
made, that he should forsake home and wife and children for his work's
sake. The Assembly's Convener found him in the midst of an orderly
confusion of papers of different sorts.
“How do you do, sir?” The Superintendent's voice had a fine burr about
it that gripped the ear, and his hand a vigour and tenacity of hold
that gripped the outstretched hand of the Assembly's Convener and nearly
brought the little man to the floor. “Sit down, sir, and listen to this.
Here are some of the compensations that go with the Superintendent's
office. This is rich. It comes from my friend, Henry Fink, of the
Columbia Forks in the Windermere Valley. British Columbia, you
understand,” noticing the Convener's puzzled expression. “I visited the
valley a year ago and found a truly deplorable condition of things.
Men had gone up there many years ago and settled down remote from
civilization. Some of them married Indian wives and others of them
ought to have married them, and they have brought up families in the
atmosphere and beliefs of the pagans. Would you believe it, I fell in
with a young man on the trail, twenty years of age, who had never heard
the name of our Saviour except in oaths? He had never heard the story of
the Cross. And there are many others like him. At the Columbia Forks the
only institution that stands for things intellectual is a Freethinkers'
Club, the president of which is a retired colonel of the British Army, a
man of fine manners, of some degree of intelligence and reading, but,
I have reason to believe, of bad life. His is the dominant influence in
the community if we except my friend, Mr. Henry Fink, or, as he is known
locally, 'Hank Fink.' Hank is a character, I assure you. A Yankee from
the Eastern States, the son of a Scotch mother. Has a cattle ranch, runs
a store which supplies the scattered ranchers, prospectors, and miners
with the necessaries of life, and keeps a stopping place. Is postmaster,
too. In fact, Hank is pretty much the whole village. He has lived in
that country some fifteen years. Has a good Canadian wife, and a flock
of small children. He is a rara avis in that country from the fact that
he hates whiskey. He hates it almost as much as he does Colonel Hicks
and his Freethinking Club. When I visited the village, for some reason
or other Hank took me up, the Scotch blood in him possibly recognising
kinship. He gave me his store to preach in, took me all about the
country, and in a week had a mission organized on a sound financial
basis. His methods were very simple, very direct, and very effective. He
estimated the amount each man should pay and announced this fact to the
man, who generally acquiesced. I didn't probe too deeply into Hank's
motives, but it seemed to give him considerable satisfaction to learn
that Colonel Hicks was filled with indignant and scornful rage at the
proposal to establish a Christian mission in that remote valley. It
grieved the Colonel to think that after so many years of immunity they
should at last be called upon to tolerate this particularly offensive
appendage to an effete civilization. I noticed that Hank's English
always broke down in referring to the Colonel. Well, we sent in
Finlayson a year ago this spring, you remember. Strong man, good
preacher, conscientious fellow. Thought he would do great work. You know
Finlayson? Well, this is the result.” Here he picked up Hank's letter.
“This would hardly do for the Home Mission report,” continued the
Superintendent, with a twinkle in his keen grey eyes:
“COLUMBIA FORKS, WINDERMERE, B. C.
“DEAR SIR:--I take my pen to write you a few lines to let you know how
things is goin'. Well, sir, I want to tell you this station is goin' to
the devil. [Judging from what I saw of the place, it hadn't far to go.]
Your preacher ain't worth a cuss. I don't say he ain't good fer some
people, but he ain't our style. [Mr. Finlayson would doubtless agree
with that.] He means well, but he ain't eddicated up to the West. You
remember how we got the boys all corralled up nice an' tame when you
was here. Well, he's got 'em wild. Couldn't reach 'em with a shotgun. He
throwed hell fire at 'em till they got scart an' took to the hills till
you can't get near 'em no more'n mountain goats. So they have all quit
comin'--I don't count Scotty Fraser, for he would come, anyway--except
me an' Monkey Fiddler an' his yeller dog. You can always count on the
dog. Now, sir, this is your show, not mine. But I was born an' raised a
Presbyteryn down East, an' though I haven't worked hard at the business
for some years, it riles me some to hear Col. Hicks an' a lot of durned
fools that has got smarter than God Almighty Himself shootin' off
against the Bible an' religion an' all that. [We needn't read too
closely between the lines at this point.] Send a man that don't smell
so strong of sulphur an' brimstone, who has got some savey, an' who will
know how to handle the boys gentle. They ain't to say bad, but just a
leetle wild. Send him along, an' we will stay with him an' knock the tar
out of that bunch of fools.
“Yours most respeckfully,
“HENRY FINK.
“P. S. When are you comin' into the valley again? If you could arrange
to spend a month or two I'll guarantee we will have 'em all in nice
shape.
“Yours respeckfully,
“HENRY FINK.”
“I don't think you can count much from the support of a man like that,”
said the assembly's Convener; “I don't think he shows any real interest
in the work.”
“My dear sir,” said the Superintendent, “don't you know he is the
Chairman of our Board of Management, a most regular attendant upon
ordinances and contributes most liberally to our support? And while
these things in the East wouldn't necessarily indicate a change of
heart, they stand for a good deal west of the Great Divide. And, at any
rate, in these matters we remember gratefully the word that is written,
'He that is not against us is on our part.'”
“Well, well,” said the Assembly's Convener, “it may be so. It may be so.
But what's to be done with Finlayson? And where will you get a successor
for him?”
“We can easily place Finlayson. He is a good man and will do excellent
work in other fields. But where to get a man for Windermere is the
question. Do you know anyone?”
The Assembly's Convener shook his head sadly.
“There appears to be no one in sight,” said the Superintendent. “I have
a number of applications here,” picking up a good-sized bundle of neatly
folded papers, “but they are hardly the kind to suit conditions at
Windermere. Numbers of them feel themselves specially called of God
to do mission work in large centres of population. Others are chiefly
anxious about the question of support. One man would like to be in touch
with a daily train service, as he feels it necessary to keep in touch
with the world by means of the daily newspaper. A number are engaged who
want to be married. Here's Mr. Brown, too fat. No move in him. Here's
McKay--good man, earnest, but not adaptable, like Finlayson; won't do.
Here's Garton--fine fellow, would do well, but hardly strong enough. So
what are you to do? I have gone over the whole list of available men and
I cannot find one suitable for Windermere.”
In this the Assembly's Convener could give him no help. Indeed, from few
did the Superintendent receive assistance in the securing of men for his
far outposts.
Assistance came to him from an unexpected quarter. He was to meet the
Assembly's Convener and some members of the Committee that evening at
Professor Macdougall's for tea. The Superintendent's mind could not be
kept long away from the work that was his very life, and at the table
the conversation turned to the question of the chronic difficulty of
securing men for frontier work, which had become acute in the case of
Windermere. Margaret, who had been invited to assist Mrs. Macdougall in
the dispensing of her hospitality, was at once on the alert. Why could
not Dick be sent? If only that Presbytery difficulty could be got over
he might go. That he would be suited for the work she was well assured,
and equally certain was she that it would be good for him.
“It would save him,” Margaret said to herself with a sharp sting at
her heart, for she had to confess sadly that Dick had come to the point
where he needed saving. She had learned from Iola the whole miserable
story of Barney's visit, of his terrible indictment of his brother and
the final break between them, but she had seen little of him during the
past six months. From that terrible night Dick had gone down in physical
and in moral health. Again and again he had written Barney, but there
had been no reply. Hungrily he had come to Margaret for word of his
brother, hopeful of reconciliation. But of late he had given up hope
and had ceased to make inquiry, settling down into a state of gloomy,
remorseful grief into which Margaret felt she dare not intrude. He
occasionally met Iola at society functions, but there was an end of all
intimacy between them. His only relief seemed to be in his work, and
he gave himself to that with such feverish energy that his health
broke down, and under Margaret's persuasion he was now at home with his
mother. Thence he had written once to say that his days were one long
agony. She remembered one terrible sentence. “Everything here, the
house, the mill, my father's fiddle, my mother's churn, the woods, the
fields, everything, everything shrieks 'Barney' at me till I am like to
go mad. I must get away from here to some place where he has never been
with me.”
It required some considerable skill to secure the Superintendent that
evening for a few minutes alone. In whatever company he was, he was
easily the centre of interest. But Margaret, even in the early days of
the Manse, had been a favourite with him, and he was not a man to forget
his friends. He had the rare gift of gripping them to him with “hooks
of steel.” Hence, he had kept in touch with her during the latter years,
pitying the girl's loneliness as much as his admiration for her cheery
courage and her determined independence would allow him. When Margaret
found her opportunity she wasted no time.
“I have a man for you for Windermere,” were her opening words.
“You have? Where have you got him? Who is he? And are you willing to
spare him? Few young ladies are. But you are different from most.” The
Superintendent was ever a gallant.
“You remember Mr. Boyle who graduated a year ago?” Her words came
hurriedly and there was a slight flush on her cheek. “There was some
trouble about his license at Presbytery. That horrid old Mr. Naismith
was very nasty, and Dick, Mr. Boyle, I mean--we have always been
friends,” she hastened to add, explaining her deepening blush, “you know
his mother lived at the Mill near us. Well, since that day in Presbytery
he has never been the same. His work--he is on the Daily Telegraph,
you know--takes him away from--from--well, from Church and that kind of
thing, and from all his friends.”
“I understand,” said the Superintendent, with grave sympathy.
“And he's got to be very different. He had some trouble, great
trouble, the greatest possible to him. Oh, I may as well tell you. The
brothers--you remember the doctor, Barney?”
“Very well,” replied the Superintendent. “Strong man. Where is he now?”
“He went to Europe. Well, the brothers were everything to each other
since little fellows together. Oh, it was beautiful! I never saw
anything like it anywhere. They had a misunderstanding, a terrible
misunderstanding. Dick was in the wrong.” The Superintendent shot a keen
glance at her. “No,” she said, answering his glance, the colour in her
face deepening into a vivid scarlet, “it was not about me, not at all. I
can't tell you about it, but that, and his trouble with the Presbytery,
and all the rest of it are just killing him. And I know if he got back
to his own work again and away from home it would save him, and his
mother, too, for she is breaking her heart. Couldn't you get him out
there?”
The Superintendent saw how hard a task it had been for her to tell the
story, and the sight of her eager face, the big blue eyes bright, and
the lips quivering with the intensity of her feeling, deeply touched
him.
“It might be possible,” he said.
“Oh, I know the Presbytery difficulty,” cried Margaret, with a desperate
note in her voice.
“That could be arranged, I have no doubt,” said the Superintendent,
brushing aside that difficulty with a wave of the hand. “The question
is, would he be willing to go?”
“Oh, he would go, I am sure. If you saw him and if you told him those
stories about the need there is, I am sure he would go. Could you see
him? There is no use to write. I do wish you could. He is such a fine
boy and his mother is so set upon his being a minister.” The blue eyes
were bright with tears she was too brave to let fall.
“My dear young lady,” said the Superintendent, his deep voice growing
deeper under the intensity of his feelings, “I would do much for your
sake and for your mother's. I am to visit your home early next month.
I shall make it a point to see Mr. Boyle, and I promise you I shall get
him if it is possible.”
The sudden lifting of the burden from her heart deprived the girl of
speech, but she shyly put out her hand and touched the long, sinewy
fingers that lay within reach of hers in a timid caress. Instantly the
fingers closed upon her hand in a grasp so strong that it seemed to
drive the conviction into her heart that somehow this strong man would
find a way by which Dick could be saved.
How, or by what arguments, the Superintendent overcame Dick's
objections, Margaret never learned. But the full bitter tale of reasons
against his ever taking up his work again, with which Dick had made
himself so familiar during the past dark, dreary months, were one by
one removed, and when the Superintendent left the Old Stone Mill he had
secured his missionary for Windermere. It gave the Superintendent acute
satisfaction to remember the flash of his missionary's blue eyes as, in
answer to the warning, “You will have a hard fight of it, remember,” the
reply came, “A hard fight? Thank God!”
Before the year was over it fell that the Windermere valley came to be
one of the mission fields that gladdened the hearts of the Home Mission
Committee of the Calgary Presbytery, and especially of its doughty
Convener. In the Convener's study, eight by ten, the report from the
Windermere field was discussed with the ubiquitous and indefatigable
Superintendent.
“An extremely gratifying record,” said the Superintendent, “especially
when one considers its disorganized condition a year ago.”
“Yes, it's a good report,” assented the Convener. “We had practically no
support a year ago. Our strongest man--”
“Fink?”
“Yes. You know Hank, I see. Well, Hank's enthusiasm and devotion were
hardly of what you would call the purest type. But whatever his motive,
he stood by the missionary, and, do you know, it is a splendid testimony
of the power of the Gospel to see the change in that same shrewd old
sinner. Yes, sir, give the Gospel a chance and it will do its work.” The
Convener, who hated all cant and canting phrases with a perfect hatred,
rarely allowed himself the luxury of an emotional outbreak. But the case
of Hank Fink seemed to reach the springs of feeling that he kept hidden
in the deep heart of him.
“So Boyle has done well?” said the Superintendent. “I am very glad of
it. Very glad of it, for his own sake, for his mother's, and for the
sake of another.”
“Yes,” replied the Convener, “Boyle has done a fine bit of work. He
lived all summer on his horse's back and in his canoe, followed the
prospectors up into the gulches and the miners to their mines, if you
can call them mines, left a magazine here, a book there, a New Testament
next place. And once he got his grip on a man, he never let him go. Hank
told me how he found a man sick in a camp away up in a gulch and how
he stayed with him for more than a week, then brought him down on his
horse's back to the Forks. Yes, it's a good record. A church built
at the north end of the field, another almost completed at the Forks.
Really, it was very fine,” continued the Convener, allowing his
enthusiasm to rise. “It renews one's faith in the reality of religion to
see a man jump into his work like that. They didn't pay him his salary
the first half year, but he omitted to mention that in his report.”
The Superintendent sat up straight. “Is he behind yet?”
“No. I mentioned the matter to Fink and explained that if the field
failed it was Boyle that would suffer. His language--well,” the Convener
laughed reminiscently, “you have seen Hank?”
“Yes. I've seen him, I've heard him, and I've read him. But let us hope
that his deeds will atone in a measure for his broken English. But,”
continued the Superintendent, “you have had Boyle ordained, have you
not?”