THE SOWING
"And other fell on good ground."
"EVERYTHING else is pretty only the old school," said Mary Watson.
"Look at the sky and the grass and the spruce trees on the
sandhills--all nice colours only the old school, and it's just a
grindy-gray-russet inside and out."
Mary was a plain-spoken young lady of ten.
"Well, we can clean it, anyway," Pearl said hopefully. "If we get it
clean it won't look so bad, even if it ain't pretty; and we can get
lots of violets, though they don't show much; but we'll know they're
there; and we can get cherry-blossoms and put them in something big
on the desk for the minister to look over, and they'll do him good,
for he'll see that somebody thought about it."
Maudie Steadman did not think much of the idea of violets and
cherry-blossoms. Maudie was fat, and had pale freekles all over her
face and on her hands. She talked in a jerky way, and was always out
of breath.
"Perhaps we could get Maw's tissue-paper flowers. She's got lovely
purple roses and yellow ones, and the like o' that," Maudie said.
Pearl considered it awhile.
"No, Maudie," she said. "Paper roses are fine in the winter, but in
the summer, if you use them, it looks as if you don't think much of
the kind that God's puttin' up, and you think you can do better
yourself. So I think with lots of meadow rue for the green stuff and
violets and blossoms, it'll be all right. Anyway, when the people get
in with their Sunday clothes on, and the flowers on their hats, it'll
take the bare look off it."
When Sunday came it seemed as if it were a day specially prepared for
the beginning of religious instruction in the Chicken Hill School.
The sky was cloudless save for little gauzy white flakes--"puffs of
chiffon that had blown off the angels' hats," Mary Watson said they
were. The grain was just high enough to run in waves before the wind,
and even Grandfather Gray, Mrs. Steadman's father, admitted that the
"craps were as far on as he'd ever seen them"; but in order that no
one could accuse him of stirring up false hopes, he pointed out that
"the wheat has a long way to go yet before the snow flies, and
there's lots that might happen it."
By half-past two o'clock, the time set for the service, the yard was
well filled with buggies and waggons, while knots of men, looking
uncomfortable in high collars, stood discussing the crops and the
price of horses, all in the best of humour. When they saw the
minister's gray horse coming, the minister himself became the subject
of conversation.
"It beats me," George Steadman said, springing the lid of his pipe
with his thumb as he struck a match on the sole of his boot, "it
beats me what a man sees in preaching as a steady job. It's easy
work, all right, only one day in the week; but there's no money in
it. A man can make more money at almost anything else he goes at"--he
was thinking of short-horns--"and be more independent. It certainly
beats me why they do it."
"Did ye ever hear, George, of greater rewards than money, and a
greater happiness than being independent?" Roderick Ray, the Scottish
Covenanter, asked gently, as he unbuckled his "beast" from the cart.
Roderick Ray had a farm on Oak Creek, three miles east of the
schoolhouse. "Yon man is a Methodist, an' I'm na' sa fond o' them as
o' some ithers, but I can see he has the root o' the matter in him
for all; and I'm thinkin' that he has the smile o' his Lord and
Master on him, an' that's better nor gold, nor siller, nor houses,
nor lands, nor cattle on a thousand hills; for, after all, George,
these things slip frae us easy and we slip away frae them easier
still, an' it's then we'll hear the Good Man ask: 'An' hoo did ye
spend the years I gave ye? Did ye warn the sinner, teach the young,
feed the hungry an' comfort the sad?' An' I'm thinkin', George, that
to all this yon little man, Methoda body though he be, will be able
to give a verra guid answer an' a very acceptable one."
The men sat on one side of the school, and the women on the other.
Even a very small boy, when he found himself sitting with the women,
made a scurry across to the other side. Danny Watson alone of the
male portion of the congregation was unaffected by this arrangement,
and clung to his sister Pearl, quite oblivious of public opinion.
Mrs. Cavers and Libby Anne sat beside the window, in the seat ahead
of Danny, Mary, and Pearl. Mrs. Cavers's eyes were on the group of
men at the woodpile, for Bill was among them, very much smartened up
in his good clothes. She had had some difficulty in persuading him to
come. He wanted to stay at home and sleep, he said. While the men
talked beside the woodpile, Sandy Braden, the hotelkeeper, drove up
with his pacing horse and rubber-tired buggy. He stopped to talk to
the men. Sandy was a very genial fellow, and a general favourite.
Mrs. Cavers sat perfectly still; only the compression of her lips
showed her agitation.
"Come on, Bill, and I'll give you a good swift ride," she heard him
say.
Bill hesitated and looked around uneasily. Sandy gave him a
significant wink and then he went without a word.
Inside, Mrs. Cavers gave a little smothered cry, which Libby Anne
understood. She moved nearer to her mother in sympathy.
Mrs. Cavers leaned forward, straining her eyes after the cloud of
dust that marked the pacing horse's progress, clasping and unclasping
her hands in wordless misery. Bill was gone--she had lost him again.
The wind drove ripples in the grain, the little white clouds hung
motionless in the sky, but Bill was gone, and the sun, bright and
pitiless, was shining over all. Then the other men came in and the
service began.
The singing was led by Roderick Ray, who had the Covenanters' blood
in his veins. He carried a tuning-fork with him always, and fitted
the psalm tunes to the hymns, carrying them through in a rolling
baritone, and swinging his whole body to the motion.
The Reverend John Burrell was a student of men. He had travelled the
North-West before the days of railways, by dog-train, snow-shoes, and
horse-back, preaching in the lumber camps and later on in the railway
camps, and it was a deep grief to him when his health broke down and
he was compelled to take a smaller appointment. He liked to be on the
firing-line. He was a gentle, shrewd, resourceful man, whose sense of
humour and absolute belief in the real presence of God had carried
him over many a rough place.
As he stood before his congregation this day in the schoolhouse, a
great compassion for the men and women before him filled his heart.
He saw their lives, so narrow and bare and self-centred; he read the
hard lines that the struggle with drought and hail and weeds had
written on their faces; and so he spoke to them, not as a stranger
might speak, but as a brother, working with them, who also had
carried burdens and felt the sting of defeat; but who had gone a
little farther down the road, and had come back to tell them to
persevere, for things were better farther on!
He had had to do with travel-stained, wayfaring men for so long that
he had got into the way of handing out to them at once, when he had
the opportunity, the richest treasures of his Father's storehouse.
When they looked to him for bread they were not given a stone, and
so, standing in the bare schoolroom that day, he preached to them
Christ, the Saviour of mankind, and showed the way of life eternal.
There was something very winsome about Mr. Burrell's preaching,
not because of his eloquence, for he was a man of plain speech,
low-voiced and gentle, but because he spoke with the quiet certainty
of one who sees Him who is invisible. Near the front sat Bud Perkins
and Teddy Watson, athletic-looking young fellows, clear-eyed and
clean-skinned, just coming into their manhood, and there was a
responsiveness in the boys' faces that made the minister address his
appeal directly to them as he set before them the two ways, asking
them to choose the higher, the way of loving service and Christlike
endeavour.
When the service was over, Mrs. Burrell went around shaking hands
with the women. "I am so glad we thought of holding service here,"
she said genially. "You people do turn out so well. Is this Mrs.
Cavers?" she asked, as she shook hands with Mrs. Steadman.
Pearl Watson put her right.
Mrs. Steadman, in a broad black hat resplendent with cerise roses,
stiffened perceptibly, but Mrs. Burrell did not notice this, but
rattled on in her gayest humour. "I always do get those names mixed.
I knew there were the two families out here."
She then turned to Mrs. Slater and Mrs. Motherwell. "It is a
bare-looking school, isn't it?" she said amiably. "You women ought
to try to fix it up some. It does look so wind-swept and parched and
cheerless." Mrs. Burrell prided herself on her plain speaking.
At this Mrs. Steadman, who was a large, pompous woman, became so
indignant that the cerise roses on her hat fairly shook. "I guess it
doesn't keep the children from learning," she said hotly; "and that's
mostly what a school is for."
"Oh, you are quite wrong, Mrs. Steadman," Mrs. Burrell replied,
wondering just how it had happened that she had given Mrs. Steadman
cause for offence. "Perhaps you think it doesn't prevent the children
from learning, but it does. There's plenty of other things for
children to learn besides what is in the books. Maybe they didn't
learn them when you were young, but it would have been better if they
had. Children should have a bed of flowers, and a little garden and
trees to play under."
"Well, you can have them for yours," Mrs. Steadman said harshly,
narrowing her eyes down to glittering slits. She knew that Mrs.
Burrell had no children living; but when Mrs. Steadman's anger rose
she tried to say the bitterest thing she could think of.
Mrs. Burrell was silent for a moment or two. Then she said gently:
"My little girl has them, Mrs. Steadman. She has the flowers that
never fade, and she needs no shade from trees, for no heat shall fall
upon them there. I wasn't thinking of my own, I was thinking of yours
and the other children who come here."
"Well, I guess we've done more for the school than anybody else
anyway," Mrs. Steadman said loftily. "We pay taxes on nineteen
hundred acres of land, and only send two children."
Mrs. Slater and Mrs. Motherwell joined the conversation then, and
endeavoured to smooth down Mrs. Steadman's ruled plumage.
"She ain't goin' to dictate to us," Mrs. Steadman declared
vehemently, after Mrs. Burrell had gone to speak to Mrs. Watson and
Aunt Kate. Mrs. Steadman had a positive dread of having any person
"dictate" to her.
Teddy Watson hitched up Mrs. Cavers's horse. There was still no sign
of Bill, and after a little talk with Martha Slater she and Libby
Anne drove sadly home.
Bud Perkins got the minister's horse ready and stood holding it while
Mr. Burrell was talking to Roderick Ray, who wanted to be sure how
Mr. Burrell stood on election. When the conversation was over Mr.
Burrell walked over to where Bud was holding his horse. A sudden
impulse seized him. "Bud," he said gently, laying his hand on the
boy's shoulder, "I wonder if you are the good ground? I wonder if you
are going to let the seed grow?"
Bud turned and looked the minister straight in the face, while a fine
flush came into his own. "I am going to try," he said simply.
Mr. Burrell took hold of Bud's hand and said earnestly: "God only
knows what can be made of a young man who is willing to try."
Bud's eyes were shining with emotion as he returned the handclasp.
And thus the good seed was sown in the fertile soil of Bud Perkins's
heart, destined to be cruelly choked by weeds in the evil days to
come, but never quite forgotten by the Master Sower!
* * *
On the way home Bud was strangely lent, and Martha, with quick
intuition, divined the cause. A great wave of emotion was surging
through the boy's heart, a great new love for every one and
everything; he wanted to do something, to suffer, to endure. Every
ripple that ran over the grain, every note of the robin and
meadowlark, the rustle of the leaves above them as they drove through
the poplar grove on the school section, were to him the voices of God
calling him to loving service.
"Martha," he said suddenly, "I haven't been very good to you, have I,
old girl? Lots of times I could have been nicer and helped you more.
I want to be better to you now. I never thought of it before, but I
know that I've often let you do things that I might have done myself.
I am going to be kinder and better, I hope."
Martha was not ready of speech. "You're all right, Bud," she said. "I
knew how you feel, and I'm glad."