Part 20

The orderly hurried away, leaving her alone. With trembling hands she shut the door, turned toward her desk, and there stood, both hands pressed hard to her heart, fighting hard to control the tumultuous tides that surged through her heart and thundered in her ears. “Barney! Barney!” she whispered. “Oh, Barney, at last!” The blue eyes were wide open and all aglow with the tender light of her great love. “Barney,” she said over and over, “my love, my love, my--ah, not mine--” A sob caught her voice. Over her desk hung a copy of Hoffman's great picture, the Christ kneeling in Gethsemane. She went close to the picture. “O Christ!” she cried brokenly, “I, too! Help me!” A knock came to the door, Nurse Crane entered. Margaret quickly turned toward her desk again.

“Dr. Bailey is at the door with a patient,” said the nurse.

“Dr. Bailey?” echoed Margaret, not daring to look up, her trembling hands fluttering among the papers on the desk. “Go to him, Nurse, and get what he wants. Take my room. I shall follow in a moment.”

Once more she was alone. Again she stood before the picture of the Christ, the words of the great submission ringing through the chambers of her soul. “Not my will but Thine be done.” She pressed nearer the picture, gazing into that strong, patient, suffering face through the rain of welcome tears. “O Christ!” she whispered, “dear blessed Christ! I understand--now. Help me! Help me!” Then, after a pause, “Not my will! Not my will!”

The strife was past. Quietly she went to the lavatory that stood in the corner of her office, bathed her eyes, smoothed away the signs of struggle from her face, and went forth serene to her duty and her cross. In the hall she met Barney. With a quick, light step she was at his side, both hands stretched out. “Barney!” “Margaret!” was all they said. For a moment or two Barney stood holding her hands, gazing without a word into the sweet face, so pale, so beautiful, so serenely strong. Twice he essayed to speak, but the words choked in his throat. Turning abruptly away he pointed to the figure under the grey blanket on the camp bed.

“I've brought--you--Dick,” at last he said hoarsely.

“Dick! Hurt? Not--” She halted before the dreaded word.

“No, injured. Badly, I fear, but I hope--”

“The room is ready,” said Nurse Crane.

At once all other thoughts and emotions gave way to the immediate demands of their common duty. They had work to do, and they had trained themselves to obey without thought of self that Divine call to serve the suffering. Together they toiled at their work, Margaret noting with delighted wonder the quick fingers and the finished skill that cleansed and probed and dressed the wound in the head and made thorough examination for other injury or ill, Barney keenly conscious of the efficiency of the silent, steady helper at his side whose quick eye and hand anticipated his every want. At length their work was done and they stood looking down upon the haggard face.

“He is resting now,” said Barney, in a low voice. “The fracture is not serious, I think.”

“Poor Dick,” said Margaret, passing her hand over his brow.

At her touch and voice Dick moaned and opened his eyes. Barney quickly stepped back out of sight. For a moment or two the eyes wandered about the room, then rested on Margaret's face in a troubled, inquiring gaze.

“What is it, Dick, dear?” said Margaret, bending over him.

For answer his hand began to move feebly toward his breast as if seeking something.

“I know. The letter, Dick?” A look of intelligence lighted the eye. “That's all right, Dick. I shall get it to Barney. Barney is here, you know.”

A hand grasped her arm. “Hush!” said Barney in stern command. “Say nothing about me.” But she heeded him not. For a moment longer the sick man's gaze lingered on her face. A faint smile of content overspread the drawn features, then the look of intelligence faded and the eyes closed wearily.

“Come,” said Barney, moving toward the door, “he is better quiet.”

Leaving the nurse in charge, they went together toward the office.

“Where did you find him?” asked Margaret as she gave Barney a seat. Then Barney told her the story of how he had chanced upon the canoe and had discovered Dick lying insensible in the woods.

“It was God's leading, Barney,” said Margaret gently, when the story was done; but to this he made no reply. “Is there serious danger, do you think?” she inquired in an anxious voice.

“He will recover,” replied Barney. “All he requires is careful nursing, and that you can give him. I shall wait till to-morrow.”

“To-morrow? And then?”

“I am leaving this country next week.”

“Leaving the country? And why?”

“My work here is done.”

“Surely there is much yet to do, and you have just begun to do such great things. Why should you leave now?”

Barney waited a few moments in silence as if pondering an answer. “Margaret, I must go,” he finally burst forth. “You know I must go. I can't live within touch of him and forget!”

“Forgive, you mean, Barney.”

“Well, forgive, if you like,” he replied sullenly.

“Barney,” replied Margaret earnestly, “this is unworthy of you, and in the face of God's mercy to-day how can you hold resentment in your heart?”

“How can I? God knows, or the Devil. For three years I have fought it, but it is there. It is there!” He struck his hand hard upon his breast. “I can't forget that he ruined my life! But for him I believe in my soul I should have won--her to me! At a critical moment he came in and ruined--”

“Barney! Barney, listen to me!” cried Margaret impetuously.

Barney sprang to his feet.

“No, you must listen to me. Sit down.” Barney obeyed her word and sat down. “Now, hear me, and hear me fairly. I am not going to say that Dick was free from blame, nor was Iola either. Whose was the greater I can't tell. They were both young and, to a certain extent, inexperienced in the ways of life. Circumstances threw them much together and on terms of almost brotherly and sisterly intimacy. That was a mistake. They ignored conventions that can never be safely ignored. Just at that time Dick's life was made hard for him. His Church had rejected him.”

“Rejected him?”

“Yes, rejected him. He was refused license by the Presbytery, was branded as a heretic and outcast from work.” Margaret's voice grew bitter. “Do you wonder that he grew hard? Perhaps they could not help it--I can't say--but he grew hard. Yes, and worse than that, grew away from his faith, from his friends, and from those things that keep men straight and strong. He grew weak. The hour of temptation came upon him. You and I have seen enough of that side of life to know what that means. He broke faith with you--no, not with you. He was loyal to you, but he broke faith with himself and with her. For a single moment, that moment at which you appeared, he yielded to passion, and bitterly, terribly, has he suffered since that moment. How terribly no one knows. He has tried to find you, but you would not be found. He wronged you, Barney, but you have made him and all of us suffer much.” The voice that had gone on so bravely and so firmly here suddenly trembled and broke.

“Made you suffer!” cried Barney, with bitter scorn. “How can you speak of suffering? You have everything! I have lost all!”

“Everything?” echoed Margaret faintly. “Ah, Barney, how little you know! But, no matter, God has brought you together and you must not do this wicked thing. You must not continue to break our hearts.”

“Break your hearts? Margaret, what's the use of words? I had a heart, too, and a brother whom I loved and trusted as myself, yes, more than myself, and--I had--Iola. All I have lost. My work satisfies me for a few months, but try as I can this awful thing hunts me down and drives me mad. There is nothing in life left for me. And there might have been much but for--”

“Stop, Barney!” cried Margaret impulsively. “There is much still left for you. God is good. How much better than we. You can't forgive a fellow-sinner. Oh, shame! But He forgives and forgets, and surely you ought to try--”

“Try! Try! Heavens above, Margaret! Try! Do you think I haven't tried? That thing is there! there!” smiting on his breast again. “Can you tell me how to rid myself of it?”

“Yes, Barney, I think I can tell you. God's great goodness will do this for you. Listen,” she said, putting up her hand to stay his words, “God is bringing a great joy to you to shame you and to soften you. Here, read this.” She handed him Iola's letter, went to the window, and stood with her back to him, looking out upon the great sweeping valley below.

“Margaret!” The hoarse voice called her back to him. His hard, proud, sullen reserve was shattered, gone. His lips were quivering, his hands trembling. The girl was touched to the heart. “Margaret,” he cried brokenly, “what does this mean?” He was terribly shaken.

“It means that she wants you, that she needs you. Dick was going to-morrow to bring her back to you, Barney. That was his one desire.”

“To bring her to me? To bring her back to me? Dick? Dear old boy! and I--Oh, Margaret!” He put his trembling hands out to her. “Forgive me! God forgive me! Poor Dick! I'll see him!” He started toward the door. “No, not how,” he cried, striving in vain to control himself. “I am mad! mad! For three long years I have carried this cursed thing in my heart! It's gone! It's gone, Margaret! Do you hear? It's gone!” He was shouting aloud. “I feel right toward Dick, my brother!”

“Hush, Barney dear,” said the girl, tears running down her face, “you will wake him.”

“Yes, yes,” he cried, in an eager whisper, “I'll be careful. Poor old boy, he has suffered, too. Dear old Dick! And she wants me! I'll go to-night! Yes, to-night! What's the date?” He tore at the envelope with trembling hands. The letter dropped to the floor. Margaret caught it up and opened it for him. “A month ago and more! Yes, I'll go to-night. Oh, Margaret, what a blasted fool I am! I can't get myself in hand.” Suddenly he threw himself into his chair. “Here!” he ground out between his teeth, “get quiet!” He sat for a few moments absolutely still, gathering strength to command himself. At length he got himself in hand. “No,” he said in a quiet voice, “I shall not go tonight. I shall wait till Dick is better. Just now he must be kept quiet. In the morning I expect to see him very much himself. We can only wait and see.”

Through the night they waited, Barney struggling mightily to hold himself in perfect control, Margaret quietly doing what was to be done, her whole spirit breathing of that self-forgetting love which finds its highest joy in the joy of another. At the break of day the nurse came to the door and found them still waiting.

“Mr. Boyle is awake and is asking for you, Miss Robertson.”

“Let me go to him,” cried Barney. “Don't fear.” His voice was still vibrating, but his manner was calm and steady. He was master of himself again.

“Yes,” said Margaret, “go to him.” Then as the door closed she stood once more before the Gethsemane scene. “Thank God, thank God,” she said softly, “for them the pain is over.”

For half an hour she waited and then went up to the sickroom. She opened the door softly, went in and stood gazing till her eyes grew dim. On the pillow, face down, Barney's head lay close to Dick's, whose arm was thrown about his brother's neck, and on Dick's face shone a look of rapturous peace. As Margaret moved to leave the room Dick called her in a voice faint, but full of joy.

“Margaret,” he said, a smile breaking like light through a dark cloud, “my head was broken, but I'd have all the bones in my body broken, just to have Barney set them. We're all right, eh, boy?”

Slowly Barney raised his face, tear-marked, worn, but radiant with a peace it had not known for many a day. “Yes, old chap,” he said in a voice still tremulous in spite of all his self-command, “we're right again, and, please God, we'll keep so.”

XXI

TO WHOM HE FORGAVE MOST

For three days Dick made steady progress toward health, but his progress was slow. Any mental effort produced severe pain in his head and sufficed to raise his temperature several points. As he gained in strength and became more and more clear in his thinking his anxiety in regard to his work began to increase. His congregations would be waiting him on Sunday, and he could not bear to think of their being disappointed. With no small effort had he gathered them together, and a single failure on his part he knew would have disastrous effect upon the attendance. He was especially concerned about the service at Bull Crossing, which was at once the point where the work was the most difficult, and, at the present juncture, most encouraging. Under his instructions Barney sought to secure a substitute for the service at Bull Crossing, but without result. Preachers were scarce in that country and every preacher had more work in sight than he could overtake. And so Dick fretted and wrought himself into a fever, until the doctor took him sternly to task.

“I don't see that it's your business to worry, Dick,” he said. “I suppose you consider yourself as working under orders, and it is your belief, isn't it, that the One who gives the orders is the One who has laid you down here?”

“That's true,” said Dick wearily, “but there's the people. A lot of them come a long way. It's been hard to get them together, and I hate to disappoint them.”

“Well, we'll get someone,” replied Barney. “We're a pretty hard combination to beat, aren't we, Margaret? There will be a man to take the service at Bull Crossing if I have to take it myself--a desperate resort, indeed.”

“Why not, Barney?” asked Dick. “You could do it well.”

“What? Did you ever hear me talk? I can talk a little with my fingers, but my tongue is unconscionably slow.”

“There was a man once slow of speech,” replied Dick quietly, “but he was given a message and he led a nation into freedom.”

Barney nodded. “I remember him. But he could do things.”

“No,” answered Dick, “but he believed God could do things.”

“Perhaps so. That was rather long ago.”

“With God,” replied Dick earnestly, “there is no such thing as long ago.”

“All the same,” said Barney, “I guess these things don't happen now.”

“I believe they happen,” replied his brother, “where God finds a man who will take his life in his hand and go.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” replied Barney, “but I do know that you must quit talking and sleep. Now, hear me, drop that meeting out of your mind. I'll look after it.”

But Saturday came and, in spite of every effort on Barney's part, he found no one for the service at Bull Crossing next day. There was still a slight hope that one of the officials of the congregation would consent to be a stop-gap for the day.

“I guess I'll have to take that service myself, Margaret,” said Barney laughingly. “Wouldn't the crowd stare? They'd hear the sermon of their lives.”

“It would be a good sermon, Barney,” replied Margaret quietly. “And why should you not say something to the men?”

“Nonsense, Margaret!” cried Barney impatiently. “You know the thing is utterly absurd. What sort of man am I to preach? A gambler, a swearer, and generally bad. They all know me.”

“They know only a part of you, Barney,” said Margaret gently. “God knows all of you, and whatever you have been you are no gambler today, and you are not a bad man.”

“No,” replied Barney slowly, “I am no gambler, nor will I ever be again. But I have been a hard, bad man. For three years I carried hate in my heart. I could not forgive and didn't want to be forgiven. And that, I believe, was the cause of all my badness. But--somehow--I don't deserve it--but I've been awfully well treated. I deserved hell, but I've got a promise of heaven. And I'd be glad to do something for--” He paused abruptly.

“There, you've got your sermon, Barney,” said Margaret.

“What do you mean?”

“'Forgive and ye shall be forgiven.'”

“It's the sermon someone wants to preach to me, but it's not for me to preach. The thing is preposterous. I'll get one of those fellows at the Crossing to take the meeting.”

On Saturday evening Dick again reverted to the subject.

“I'm not anxious, Barney,” he said, “but who's going to take the meeting to-morrow night at Bull Crossing?”

“Now, look here,” said Barney, “Monday morning you'll hear all about it. Meantime, don't ask questions. Margaret and I are responsible, and that ought to be enough. You never knew her to fail.”

“No, nor you, Barney,” said Dick, sinking back with a sigh of satisfaction. “I know it will be all right. Are you going down to-morrow evening?” he inquired, turning to Margaret.

“I?” exclaimed Margaret. “What would I do?”

“Of course you are going. It will do you a lot of good,” said Barney. “You may have to preach yourself or hold my coat while I go in.”

A sudden gleam of joy in the eyes, a flush of red upon the cheek, and the quick following pallor told Dick the thoughts that rushed through Margaret's heart.

“Yes,” said Dick gravely, “you will go down, too, Margaret. It will do you good, and I don't need you here.”

Many anxious days had Barney passed in his life, but never had he found himself so utterly blocked by unmanageable circumstances and uncompromising facts as he found facing him that Sunday morning. He confided his difficulty to Tommy Tate, whom he had found in “Mexico's” saloon toning up his system after his long illness, and whom he had straightway carried off with him.

“I guess it's either you or me, Tommy.”

“Bedad, it's yersilf that c'd do that same, an' divil a wan av the bhoys will 'Mexico' git this night, wance the news gits about.”

“Don't talk rot, Tommy,” said Barney angrily, for the chance of his being forced to take his brother's place, which all along had seemed to be extremely remote, had come appreciably nearer. With the energy of desperation he spent the hours of the afternoon visiting, explaining, urging, cajoling, threatening anyone of the members or adherents of the congregation at Bull Crossing in whom might be supposed to dwell the faintest echo of the spirit of the preacher. One after another, however, those upon whom he had built his hopes failed him. One was out of town, another he found sick in bed, and a third refused point blank to consider the request, so that within a few minutes of the hour of service he found himself without a preacher and wholly desperate, and for the first time he seriously faced the possibility of having to take the service himself. He returned to the shack of one of his brother's parishioners, where Margaret was staying, and abruptly announced to her his failure.

“Can't get a soul, and of course I can't do it, Margaret. You know, I can't,” he repeated, in answer to the look upon her face. “Why, it was only last week I fleeced 'Mexico' out of a couple of hundred. He would give a good deal more to get even. The crowd would hoot me out of the building. Not that I care for that”--the long jaws came hard together--“but it's just too ghastly to think of.”

“It isn't so very terrible, Barney,” said Margaret, her voice and eyes uniting in earnest persuasion. “You are not the man you were last week. You know you are not. You are quite different, and you will be different all your life. A great change has come to you. What made the change? You know it was God's great mercy that took the bitterness out of your heart and that changed everything. Can't you tell them this?”

“Tell them that, Margaret? Great Heavens! Could I tell them that? What would they say?”

“Barney,” asked Margaret, “you are not afraid of them? You are not ashamed to tell what you owe to God?”

Afraid? It was an ugly word for Barney to swallow. No, he was not afraid, but his native diffidence, intensified by these recent years of self-repression and self-absorption, had made all speech difficult to him, but more especially speech that revealed the deeper movements of his soul.

“No, Margaret, I'm not afraid,” he said slowly. “But I'd rather have them take the flesh off that arm bit by bit than get up and speak to them. I'd have to tell them the truth, don't you see, Margaret? How can I do that?”

“All that you say must be the truth, Barney, of course,” she replied. “But you will tell them just what you will.”

With these words she turned away, leaving him silent and fighting a desperate fight. His word passed to his brother must be kept. But soon a deeper issue began to emerge. His honour was involved. His sense of loyalty was touched. He knew himself to be a different man from the man who, last week, in “Mexico's” saloon, had beaten his old antagonist at the old game. His consciousness of himself, of his life purposes, of his outlook, of his deepest emotions, was altogether a different consciousness. And more than all, that haunting, pursuing restlessness was gone and, in its place, a deep peace possessed him. The process by which this had been achieved he could not explain, but the result was undeniable, and it was due, he knew, to an influence the source of which he frankly acknowledged to be external to himself. The words of the beaten and confounded pagan magic-workers came to him, “This is the finger of God.” He could not deny it. Why should he wish to hide it? It became clear to him, in these few minutes of intense soul activity, that there was a demand being made upon him as a man of truth and honour, and as the struggle deepened in his soul and the possibility of his refusing the demand presented itself to his mind, there flashed in upon him the picture of a man standing in the midst of enemies, the flickering firelight showing his face vacillating, terror-stricken, hunted. From the trembling lips of the man he heard the words of base denial, “I know not the man,” and in his heart there rose a cry, “O Christ! shall I do this?” “No,” came the answer, strong and clear, from his lips, “I will not do this thing, so help me God.”

Margaret turned quickly around and looked at him in dismay. “You won't?” she said faintly.