Part 21

“I'll take the service,” he replied, setting the long jaws firmly together. And with that they went forth to the hall.

They found the place crowded far beyond its capacity, for through Tommy Tate it had been noised abroad that Dr. Bailey was to preach. There were wild rumors, too, that the doctor had “got religion,” although “Mexico” and his friends scouted the idea as utterly impossible.

“He ain't the kind. He's got too much nerve,” was “Mexico's” verdict, given with a full accompaniment of finished profanity.

Tommy's evidence, however, was strong enough to create a profound impression and to awaken an expectation that rose to fever pitch when Barney and Margaret made their way through the crowds and took their places, Margaret at the organ, which Dick usually played himself, and Barney at the table upon which were the Bible and the Hymn-book. His face wore the impenetrable, death-like mark which had so often baffled “Mexico” and his gang over the poker table. It fascinated “Mexico” now. All the years of his wicked manhood “Mexico” had, on principle, avoided anything in the shape of a religious meeting, but to-day the attraction of a poker player preaching proved irresistible. It was with no small surprise that the crowd saw “Mexico,” with two or three of his gang, make their way toward the front to the only seats left vacant.

When it became evident beyond dispute that his old-time enemy was to take the preacher's place, “Mexico” leaned over to his pal, “Peachy” Bud, who sat between him and Tommy Tate, and muttered in an undertone audible to those in his immediate neighbourhood, “It's his old game. He's runnin' a blank bluff. He ain't got the cards.”

But painful experience shook “Peachy's” confidence in his friend's judgment on this particular point, and he only ventured to reply, “He's got the lead.” “Peachy” preferred to await developments.

The opening hymn was sung with the hearty fervour that marks the musical part of any religious service in the West. But there was in the voices that curious thrill that is at once the indication and the quickening of intense excitement.

“This here'll show what's in his hand,” said “Peachy,” when the moment for prayer arrived. “Peachy” was not unfamiliar with religious services, and had, with unusual keenness of observation, noted that when a man undertook to pray he must, if he be true, reveal the soul within him.

“Mexico” grunted a dubious affirmative. But “Peachy” was disappointed, for in a voice reverent, but unimpassioned, the preacher for the day led the people's devotions, using the great words taught those men long ago who knew not how to pray, “Our Father who art in Heaven.”

“Blanked if he ain't bluffed again! We've got to wait till he begins to shoot, I guess,” said “Peachy,” mixing his figures.

The lesson was the parable of the unforgiving debtor and the parallel passage containing the matchless story of the sinful woman and the proud Pharisee. In the reading of these lessons the voice, which had hitherto carried the strident note of nervousness, mellowed into rich and subduing fulness. The men listened with that hushed attention that they give when words are getting to the heart. The utter simplicity of the reader's manner, the dignity of his bearing, the quiet strength that showed itself in every tone, and the undercurrent of emotion that made the voice vibrate like a stringed instrument, all these, with the marvellous authoritative tenderness of the great utterance on a theme so closely touching their daily experience, gripped these men and held them in complete thrall.

When the reading was done the doctor stood for some moments looking his audience quietly in the face. He knew them all, men from the camps and the line, men from the hills and mining claims, men from the saloons and the gambling hells. Many he had treated professionally, some he had himself nursed back to health, others he had rescued from those desperate moods that end in death. Others again--and these not a few--he had “cleaned out” at poker or “Black Jack.” But to all of them he was “white.” Not so to himself. It was a very humble man and a very penitent, that stood looking them in the face. His first words were a confession.

“I am not worthy to stand here before you,” he began, in a low, clear tone, “God knows, you know, and I know. I am here for two reasons: one is that I promised my brother, the Reverend Richard Boyle”--here a gasp of surprise was audible from one and another in the audience--“a man you know to be a good man, better than ever I can hope to be.”

“Durned if he is!” grunted “Peachy” to “Mexico.” “Ain't in the same bunch!”

“An' that's thrue fer ye,” answered Tommy. But “Mexico” paid no heed to these remarks. He was staring at the speaker with the look of a man wholly bewildered.

“And the other reason is,” continued, the doctor, “that I have something which I think it fair to tell you men. Like a lot of you, I have carried a name that is not my own.” Here significant looks were gravely exchanged. “They gave it to me by mistake when I reached the Pass. I didn't care much at that time about names or anything else, so I let it go. There are times in a fellow's life when he's not unwilling to forget his name. My name is Boyle.” And then, in sentences simple, clean-cut, and terse, he told of his boyhood days, the Old Mill, the two boys growing up together, their love for and their loyalty to each other, their struggles and their success. Then came a pause. The speaker had obviously come to a difficult spot in his story. The men waited in earnest, grave, and deeply moved expectation. “At that time a great calamity came to me--no matter what--and it threw me clear off my balance. I lost my head and lost my nerve, and just then--” again the speaker paused, as if to gather strength to continue--“and just then my brother did me a wrong. Not being in a condition to judge fairly, I magnified the wrong a thousand-fold and I tried to tear my brother out of my heart. I could not and I would not forgive him, and I couldn't cease to love him. I lived a life of misery, misery so great that it drove me from everything in earth that I held dear, and for three years I went steadily down from bad to worse. I came to the Crow's Nest a year and a half ago. My life since then most of you know well.”

“Bedad we do! An' Hivin bliss ye!” burst forth Tommy Tate, who had found the greatest difficulty in controlling his emotions of indignation and grief during the doctor's self-condemnatory tale. At Tommy's words a quiet thrill ran through the crowd, for few men of those present but held the doctor in affectionate esteem. The sins of which he was conscious and which humiliated him before them were, in their estimation, but trivial.

For a moment the speaker was thrown off his track by Tommy's outburst, but, recovering himself, he went on. “It would be wrong to say that my life here has been all bad. I have been able to serve many of you, but my work has done far more for me than it has for you. But for it I should have long ago gone down out of sight. I confess that it has been a hard fight for me, an awful fight, to stay at my work, but the day that I heard that my brother was your missionary brought me the hardest fight I had had for many a day. I wanted to get away from the past. For nearly four years I had been carrying round a heart with hell in it. I had begun to forget a little, but that day it all came back. This week I met my brother. I found him dying, almost dead, up in the Big Horn Valley. That morning my heart carried hell in it. To-day it is like what I think heaven must be.” As he spoke these words a light broke over his face, and again he stood silent, striving to regain control of his voice.

“Blanked if he don't hold the cards!” said “Mexico” in a thick voice to “Peachy” Budd.

“Full flush,” answered “Peachy.”

“Mexico” was in the grasp of the elemental emotions of his untutored nature. His swarthy face was twisted like the face of a man in torture. His black eyes were gleaming like two fires from under his shaggy eyebrows.

“How it came about,” continued the doctor, in a quiet, even tone, “I am not going to tell. But this I am going to say, I know it was God's great mercy, His great kindness it was that took the hate out of my heart. I forgave my brother that day--and--God forgave me. That's all there is to it. It's the biggest thing that has ever come to me. I have got my brother back just as when we were little chaps at the Old Mill.” A sudden choke caught the speaker's voice. The firm lips quivered and the strong hands writhed themselves in a mighty effort to master the emotions surging through his soul.

Tommy Tate was openly sniffling and wiping his eyes. “Peachy” Budd was swearing audibly his emotions, but, most of all, “Mexico's” swarthy face betrayed the intensity of his feelings. He had grasped the back of the seat before him and was leaning toward the speaker as if held under an hypnotic spell.

Again the doctor, getting his voice steady, went on. “I have just a word more to say. I would like to give credit for this that happened to me to the One we have been reading about this afternoon, and I do so with all my heart. I came near being coward enough and mean enough to go away without owning this up before you. How He did it, I do not pretend to know. I'm not a preacher. But He did it, and that's what chiefly concerns me. And what He did for me I guess He can do for any of you. And now I've got to square up some things. 'Mexico'--” At the sound of his name “Mexico” started violently and, involuntarily, his hand went, with a quick motion, toward his hip--“I've taken a lot from you. I'd like to pay it back.” The voice was humble, earnest, kind.

“Mexico,” taken by surprise, shifted his tobacco to the other side of his mouth, stood up and drawled out, “Haow? Me? Pay me back? Blanked if you do! It was a squar' deal, wa'n't it?”

“Yes, I played fair, 'Mexico,' but--”

“Then go to hell!” “Mexico's” tone was not at all unfriendly, but his vocabulary was limited, and he was evidently deeply stirred. “We're squar' an'--an' blanked if I don't believe ye're white! Put it thar!” With a single stride “Mexico” was over the seat that separated him from the platform and reached out his hand. The doctor took it in a hard grip.

“Look here, men,” he said, when “Mexico” had resumed his seat, “I've got to do something with this money. I've got at least five thousand that don't belong to me.”

“'Tain't ours,” called a voice.

“Men,” continued the doctor, “I'm starting out on a new track. I want to straighten out the past all I can. I can't keep this money. I'd feel like a thief.”

But such an ethical code was beyond the men, and one and all protested to each other, in tones that were quite audible over the hall and with anathemas of more or less terrible import, that the money was not theirs and that they would not touch it. The doctor listened for a minute or more and then, with the manner of one closing a discussion, he said, “All right. If you won't help me I'll have to find some way, myself, of straightening this up. This is all I have to say. I'm no preacher and I'm not any better than the rest of you, but I'd like to be a great deal better man than I am, and, with God's help, I'm going to try. That's my religion.”

And with these words he sat down, leaving the people still staring at him and waiting for something in the way of closing exercises to what must have been the most extraordinary religious service in all their experience. Softly, Margaret began to play the old hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee!” The men, accepting it as a signal, rose to their feet and began to sing, and with these great words of aspiration ringing through their hearts they passed out into the night.

Among the many who lingered to speak to the doctor were “Mexico,” “Peachy,” and, of course, his faithful follower, Tommy Tate. “Mexico” drew him off to one corner.

“Say, pard,” he began, “you've done me up many a time before, but blanked if yeh haven't hit me this time the worst yet! When you was talkin' about them two little chaps--” here “Mexico's” hard face began to work and his voice to quiver--“you put the knife right in here. I had a brother once,” he continued in a husky voice. “I wish to God someone had choked the blank nonsense out of me, for I done him a wrong an' I wasn't man enough to own up. An' that's what started me in all this hell business I've been chasin' ever since.”

The doctor took him by the arm and walked him out of the room. “Take Miss Robertson home,” he said to Tommy as he passed.

An hour later he appeared, pale and as nearly exhausted as his iron nerve and muscle would allow him to be. “I say, Margaret, this thing is wonderful! There's no explaining it by any physical or mental law that I know.” Then, after a pause, he added, with an odd thrill of tenderness in his voice, “I believe we shall hear good things of 'Mexico' yet.”

And so they did, but that is another tale.

XXII

THE HEART'S REST

There is no sweeter spot in all the west Highlands of Scotland than the valley that runs back from that far penetrating arm of the sea, Loch Fyne, to Craigraven. There, after a succession of wild and gloomy glens, one comes upon a sweet little valley, sheltered from the east and north winds and open to the warm western sea and to the long sunny days of summer. It is a valley full of balmy airs, fragrant with the scents of sea and heather, and shut in from the roar and rush of the great world, just over the ragged rim of the craggy hills that guard it. A veritable heaven on earth for the nerve-racked and brain-wearied, for the heart-sick and soul-burdened; for it was the pleasure of the lady of Ruthven Hall, a kindly, homely mansion house that stood at the valley's head, to bring hither such of her friends or her friends' friends as needed the healing that soft airs and sunny days, with long quiet hours filled with love that understands, can give.

To this spot Lady Ruthven herself had been brought, a girl fresh from the shelter of her English home, the bride of Sir Hector Ruthven; and here for five happy summers they had come from the strenuous life of Diplomatic Service to find rest. Here, too, came Sir Hector, when his work was done, still a young man, to rest under the yews in the little churchyard near the Hall, leaving his lady with her little daughter and her infant son to administer his vast estates. After the first sharp grief had passed, Lady Ruthven took up her burden and, with patient courage, bore it for the sake of the dead first, and then for the sake of the living. Round her son, growing into sturdy young manhood, her heart's roots wound themselves, striking deep into his life, till one day he, too, was laid beneath the yew trees in the churchyard. From that deep shadow she came forth, bearing her cross of service to her kind, to live a life fragrant with the airs of Heaven, in fellowship with Him who, for love of man, daily gave Himself to die.

It was through her nephew, Alan Ruthven, artist and poet, pure of heart and clean of life, that Jack Charrington came to know Ruthven Hall and its dwellers. The young men first met in London, and later in Edinburgh, where both were pursuing their professions with a devotion that did not forbid attention to sundry social duties, or prevent them from taking long walks over the Lammermuirs on Saturday afternoons. To Ruthven Hall, Alan was permitted to bring his young Canadian friend, who, he was secretly convinced, stood sorely in need of just such benediction as his saintly aunt could bestow. The day of Jack Charrington's coming to Ruthven Hall was the birthday of his better life, when he had a vision of his profession in the light of that great ministry to the world's sick and wounded and weary by Him who came to the world “to heal.” In another sense, too, it was for him the beginning of days, for it was the day on which his eyes first fell upon sunny, saucy Maisie Ruthven. Thenceforth the orbit of Jack's life swung round Ruthven Hall, and thus it fell that when, on one of his visits to the great metropolis, he found Iola exhausted after her season's triumphs and forbidden to sing again for a year, and so well-nigh heart-broken, he bethought him of the little valley of rest in the far western Highlands. Straightway he confided to Lady Ruthven his concern for his co-patriot and friend, giving as much of her story as he thought it well that both Lady Ruthven and her daughter should know. Hence, when they went north to their Highland valley again, they carried with them Iola, to be rested and nursed, and to be healed in heart, too, if that could be. For Lady Ruthven, with her eyes made keen by grief and love, had not been long in discovering that, with Iola, the deeper sickness was that which no physician's medicine can reach.

Through the early summer they waited for signs of returning health to their guest, but neither the most watchful care nor the most tender nursing could keep the strength from gradually waning.

“She is fretting her heart out. That's the chief cause of this terrible restlessness,” said Alan Ruthven to his friend, who was visiting at the Hall.

“Partly,” replied Charrington gloomily, “but not altogether, I fear. This restlessness is symptomatic. We must have Bruce Fraser out again. But if we only could get track of Boyle it would greatly help. She wrote yesterday to her great friend, Miss Robertson, who, more than anyone, has kept in touch with him.”

“Charrington,” inquired Alan hesitatingly, “would you advise that he should be looked up? Of course, you credit me with being perfectly disinterested. I gave up my dream some time ago, you know.”

“Oh, certainly, Ruthven, I know, but--”

“You fear I'm prejudiced. Well, I confess I am. I hate to think of a girl like that having anything to do with a man unworthy of her, as from what you have told me of him he must be.”

“Unworthy!” cried Jack. “Did I ever call him unworthy? It depends upon what you mean. He gambles. He has terrific passions; but he's a man through and through, and he's clean and honourable.”

“Ah,” said Ruthven, drawing a deep breath, “then would to Heaven she could find him! For this fretting is like a fever in her bones.”

“At present, we can only wait for an answer to her letter.”

And so they waited, each one of the little group vying with the other in providing interest and amusement for the weary, restless, fevered girl. Often, at the first, the old impatience would break out, mostly in her talk with Charrington, at rare times to her hostess, too, but at such times followed by quick penitence.

“Dear Lady Ruthven,” she said one day after one of her little outbreaks, “I wish I were like you. You are so sweetly good and so perfectly self-controlled. Even I cannot wear out your patience. You must have been born good and sweet.”

For a few moments Lady Ruthven was silent, her mind going back swiftly to long gone years. “No, dear,” she said gently; “I have much to be thankful for. It was a hard lesson and slowly learned, but He was patient and bore long with me. And He is still bearing.”

“Tell me how you learned,” asked Iola timidly, and then Lady Ruthven told her life story, without tears, without repinings, while Iola wondered. That story Iola never forgot, and the influence of it never departed from her. Never were the days quite so bad again, but every day while she struggled to subdue her impatience even in thought, she kept looking for word from across the sea with a longing so intense that all in the house came to share it with her.

“Oh! if we only knew where to get him!” groaned Jack Charrington to her one day, for to Jack, who was the only link with her happy past, she had opened her heart. “Why does he keep away?” he added bitterly.

“It is my fault, Jack,” she replied. “He is not to blame. No one is to blame but me. But he will come some day. I feel sure he will come, I only hope he may be in time. He would greatly grieve if--”

“Hush, Iola. Don't say it. I can't bear to have you say it. You are getting better. Why, you walked out yesterday quite smartly.”

“Some days I am so well,” she replied, unwilling to grieve him. “I would like him to see me first on one of my good days. I am sure to hear soon now.”

They had hardly turned to enter the house when they saw a messenger wearing the uniform of the Telegraph Department approaching.

“Oh, Jack!” she cried, “there it is!”

“Come, Iola,” said Jack, almost sternly, “come in and sit down.” So saying, he brought her into the library and made her recline upon the couch, in that sunny room near the window where many of her waking hours were spent.

It was Alan who took the message. They all followed him into the library. “Shall I open it?” he asked, with an anxious look at Iola.

“Yes,” she said faintly, laying both hands upon her heart.

Lady Ruthven came to her side. “Iola, darling,” she said, taking both her hands in hers, “it is good to feel that God's arms are about us always.”

“Yes, dear Lady Ruthven,” replied the girl, regaining her composure; “I'm learning. I'm not afraid.”

Opening, Alan read the message, smiled, and handed it to her. She read the slip, handed it to Jack, closed her eyes, and, smiling, lay back upon her couch. “God is good,” she whispered, as Lady Ruthven bent over her. “You were right. Teach me how to trust Him better.”

“Are you all right, Iola?” said Jack, anxiously feeling her pulse.

“Quite right, Jack, dear,” she said.

“Then hooray!” cried Jack, starting up. “Let's see, 'Coming Silurian seventh. Barney.'” he read aloud. “The seventh was yesterday. Six days. She'll be in on the thirteenth. Ought to be here by Monday at latest.”

“Saturday, Jack,” said Iola, opening her eyes.