"ONE OF MANITOBA'S PROSPEROUS FARMERS"
Mr. Samuel Motherwell was a wealthy farmer who lived a few miles from
Millford. Photographs of Mr. Motherwell's premises may be seen in the
agricultural journals, machinery catalogues, advertisements for woven
wire, etc.--"the home of one of Manitoba's prosperous farmers."
The farm buildings were in good repair; a large red barn with white
trimmings surmounted by a creaking windmill; a long, low machine shed
filled with binders, seeders, disc-harrows--everything that is needed
for the seed-time and harvest and all that lies between; a large stone
house, square and gray, lonely and bare, without a tree or a shrub
around it. Mr. Motherwell did not like vines or trees around a house.
They were apt to attract lightning and bring vermin.
Potatoes grew from the road to the house; and around the front door, as
high as the veranda, weeds flourished in abundance, undisturbed and
unnoticed.
Behind the cookhouse a bed of poppies flamed scarlet against the
general sombreness, and gave a strange touch of colour to the common
grayness. They seemed out of place in the busy farmyard. Everything
else was there for use. Everybody hurried but the poppies; idlers of
precious time, suggestive of slothful sleep, they held up their brazen
faces in careless indifference.
Sam had not planted them--you may be sure of that. Mrs. Motherwell
would tell you of an English girl she had had to work for her that
summer who had brought the seed with her from England, and of how one
day when she sent the girl to weed the onions, she had found her
blubbering and crying over what looked to Mrs. Motherwell nothing more
than weeds. The girl then told her she had brought the seed with her
and planted it there. She was the craziest thing, this Polly Bragg. She
went every night to see them because they were like a "bit of home,"
she said. Mrs. Motherwell would tell you just what a ridiculous
creature she was!
"I never see the beat o' that girl," Mrs. Motherwell would say. "Them
eyes of hers were always red with homesickness, and there was no reason
for it in the world, her gettin' more wages than she ever got before,
and more'n she was earnin', as I often told her. Land! the way that
girl would sing when she had got a letter from home, the queerest songs
ye ever heard:
Down by the biller there grew a green willer,
Weeping all night with the bank for a piller.
Well, I had to stop her at last," Mrs. Motherwell would tell you with
an apologetic swallow, which showed that even generous people have to
be firm sometimes in the discharge of unpleasant duties.
"And, mind you," Mrs. Motherwell would go on, with a grieved air, "just
as the busy time came on didn't she up and take the fever--you never
can depend on them English girls--and when the doctor was outside there
in the buggy waitin' for her--he took her to the hospital--I declare if
we didn't find her blubberin' over them poppies, and not a flower on
them no mor'n nothing."
Sam Motherwell and his wife were nominally Presbyterians. At the time
that the Millford Presbyterian Church was built Sam had given
twenty-five dollars toward it, the money having been secured in some
strange way by the wiles of Purvis Thomas, the collector. Everybody was
surprised at Sam's prodigality. The next year, a new collector--for
Purvis Thomas had gone away--called on Mr. Motherwell.
The grain was just beginning to show a slight tinge of gold. It was one
of those cloudless sunshiny days in the beginning of August, when a
faint blue haze lies on the Tiger Hills, and the joy of being alive
swells in the breast of every living thing. The creek, swollen with the
July rain, ran full in its narrow channel, sparkling and swirling over
its gravelly bed, and on the green meadow below the house a herd of
shorthorns contentedly cropped the tender after-grass.
In the farmyard a gigantic turkey-gobbler marched majestically with
arched neck and spreading wings, feeling himself very much the king of
the castle; good-natured ducks puddled contentedly in a trough of dirty
water; pigeons, white winged and graceful, circled and wheeled in the
sunshine; querulous-voiced hens strutted and scratched, and gossiped
openly of mysterious nests hidden away.
Sam stood leaning on a pitchfork in front of the barn door. He was a
stout man of about fifty years of age, with an ox-like face. His
countenance showed the sullen stolidity of a man who spoke little but
listened always, of a man who indulged in suspicious thoughts. He knew
everything about his neighbours, good and bad. He might forget the
good, but never the evil. The tragedies, the sins, the misdeeds of
thirty years ago were as fresh in his memory as the scandal of
yesterday. No man had ever been tempted beyond his strength but Sam
Motherwell knew the manner of his undoing. He extended no mercy to the
fallen; he suggested no excuse for the erring.
The collector made known his errand. Sam became animated at once.
"What?" he cried angrily, "ain't that blamed thing paying yet? I've a
good notion to pull my money out of it and be done with it. What do you
take me for anyway?"
The collector ventured to call his attention to his prosperous
surroundings, and evident wealth.
"That's like you town fellows," he said indignantly. "You never think
of the hired help and twine bills, and what it costs to run a place
like this. I pay every time I go, anyway. There ain't a time that I let
the plate go by me, when I'm there. By gosh! you seem to think I've
money to burn."
The collector departed empty-handed.
The next time Sam went to Millford he was considerably surprised to
have the young minister, the Reverend Hugh Grantley, stop him on the
street and hand him twenty-five dollars.
"I understand, sir, that you wish to withdraw the money that you
invested in the Lord's work," he said as he handed the money to Sam,
whose fingers mechanically closed over the bills as he stared at the
young man.
The Rev. Hugh Grantley was a typical Scotchman, tall and broad
shouldered, with an eye like cold steel. Not many people had
contradicted the Rev. Hugh Grantley, at least to his face. His voice
could be as sweet as the ripple of a mountain stream, or vibrate with
the thunder of the surf that beats upon his own granite cliffs.
"The Lord sends you seed-time and harvest," he said, fixing his level
gray eye on the other man, who somehow avoided his gaze, "has given you
health of body and mind, sends you rain from heaven, makes his sun to
shine upon you, increases your riches from year to year. You have given
Him twenty-five dollars in return and you regret it. Is that so?"
"I don't know that I just said that," the other man stammered. "I don't
see no need of these fine churches and paid preachers. It isn't them as
goes to church most that is the best."
"Oh, I see," the young man said, "you would prefer to give your money
for the relief of the poor, for hospitals or children's homes, or
something like that. Is that so?"
"I don't know as there's any reason for me givin' up the money I work
hard for." Sam was touched on a vital spot.
"Well, I'll tell you the reason," the minister said; his voice was no
louder, but it fell with a sledge-hammer emphasis. He moved a step
nearer his companion, and some way caught and held his wavering vision.
"God owns one-tenth of all that stuff you call your own. You have
cheated Him out of His part all these years, and He has carried you
over from year to year, hoping that you will pay up without harsh
proceedings. You are a rich man in this world's goods, but your soul is
lean and hungry and naked. Selfishness and greed have blinded your
eyes. If you could see what a contemptible, good-for-nothing creature
you are in God's sight, you would call on the hills to fall on you.
Why, man, I'd rather take my chances with the gambler, the felon, the
drunkard, than with you. They may have fallen in a moment of strong
temptation; but you are a respectable man merely because it costs money
to be otherwise. The Lord can do without your money. Do not think for a
minute that God's work will not go on. 'He shall have dominion from sea
to sea,' but what of you? You shall lie down and die like the dog. You
shall go out into outer darkness. The world will not be one bit better
because you have passed through it."
Sam was incoherent with rage. "See here," he sputtered, "what do you
know about it? I pay my debts. Everybody knows that."
"Hold on, hold on," the young man said gently, "you pay the debts that
the law compels you to pay. You have to pay your hired help and your
threshing bills, and all that, because you would be 'sued' if you
didn't. There is one debt that is left to a man's honour, the debt he
owes to God, and to the poor and the needy. Do you pay that debt?"
"Well, you'll never get a cent out of me anyway. You have a mighty poor
way of asking for money--maybe if you had taken me the right way you
might have got some."
"Excuse me, Mr. Motherwell," the young man replied with unaffected good
humour, "I did not ask you for money at all. I gave you back what you
did give. No member of our congregation will ask you for any, though
there may come a time when you will ask us to take it."
Sam Motherwell broke into a scornful laugh, and, turning away, went
angrily down the street. The fact that the minister had given him back
his money was a severe shock to some of his deep-rooted opinions. He
had always regarded churches as greedy institutions, looking and
begging for money from everyone; ministers as parasites on society,
living without honest labour, preying on the working man. Sam's
favourite story was the old one about the woman whose child got a coin
stuck in its throat. She did not send for the doctor, but for the
minister! Sam had always seen considerable truth in this story and had
told it to every minister he had met.
He told himself now that he was glad to get back the money, twenty-five
dollars was not picked up every day. But he was not glad. The very
touch of the bills was distasteful to him!
He did not tell his wife of the occurrence. Nor did he put the money in
the black bag, where their money was always kept in the bureau drawer,
safe under lock and key. He could not do that without telling his wife
where it came from. So he shoved it carelessly into the pocket of the
light overcoat that he was wearing. Sam Motherwell was not a careless
man about money, but the possession of this particular twenty-five
dollars gave him no pleasure.