The Doctor

R >> Ralph Connor >> The Doctor



"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?"

"Yes. We got him ordained," replied the Convener, beginning to chuckle.
A delighted, choking chuckle it was. Any missionary who had worked in
his Presbytery would recognize the Convener in the dark by that chuckle.
It began, if one were quick to observe, with a wrinkling about the
corners of the sharp blue eyes, then became audible in a succession of
small explosions that seemed to have their origin in the region of the
esophagus and to threaten the larynx with disruption, until relief was
found in a wide-throated peal that subsided in a second series of small
explosions and gradually rumbled off into silence somewhere in the
region of the diaphragm, leaving only the wrinkles about the corners
of the blue eyes as a kind of warning that the whole process might be
repeated upon sufficient provocation. "Yes, we got him ordained," he
repeated when the chuckle had passed. "I was glad of your explanatory
note about him. It guided us in our arrangements for examination."

"What happened?" inquired the Superintendent, leaning forward. He dearly
loved a yarn, and he sorely hated to lose any of the more humorous
incidents of missionary life, not only for the joy they brought him,
but also because they furnished him with ammunition for his Eastern
campaigns.

"Well, it was funny," said the Convener, his lips twitching and his eyes
wrinkling, "though at one time it looked like an Assembly case with
all seven of us up before the bar. You know McPherson, our latest
importation in the way of ordained men? Somehow he had got wind of
Boyle's trouble with the Presbytery in the East. McPherson is a fine
fellow and doing good work."

"Yes," assented the Superintendent, "he's a fine fellow, but his
conscience gives him a hard time now and then and works over time for
other People."

"Well," continued the Convener, "McPherson came to me about the matter
in very considerable anxiety. I put him off, consulted with McTavish and
Murray, and we decided that Boyle was too good a man to lose, and as to
his heresy, it was not hurting Windermere as far as we could learn. So
it happened"--here the Convener pulled himself up short to suppress the
chuckle that threatened--"it happened that just as the examination
was beginning McPherson was called out, and before he had returned the
trials for license and ordination had been sustained. I think on the
whole McPherson was relieved, but there were some funny moments after he
came back into court."

"Heresy-hunting doesn't flourish in the West," said the Superintendent.
"There's no time for it. Some of the Eastern Presbyteries have too many
men with more time on their hands than sense in their heads."

"Certainly there was no time lost in this case," replied the Convener.
"We knew Boyle's scholarship was right. We knew his heart was sound. We
knew he was doing good work for us and we knew we wanted him. We were
not anxious to know anything else."

"What we want for the West," said the Superintendent, his voice
vibrating in a deeper tone, "is men who have the spirit of the Gospel
with the power to preach it and the love of their fellowmen, with tact
to bring it to bear upon them. A little heresy, more or less, won't hurt
them. Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy the other fellow's."

"In Boyle's case, I believe he was helped by his touch of heresy. It
gave him a kind of brotherly feeling with all heretics. It was that more
than anything else that broke up the Freethinkers' Club."

"Ah," said the Superintendent, bending eagerly forward, again on the
scent, "I didn't hear that."

"Yes," said the Convener, "Fink told me about it. Boyle went to
their meetings. He found them revelling in cheap scepticism of the
Ingersollian type. He took the attitude of a man seeking after a working
theory of life, and that attitude he stuck to--his real attitude, mind
you. He encouraged them to talk, combated none of their positions and,
as Hank said, 'coaxed them out into deep water and had them froggin' for
their lives. He was the biggest Freethinker in the bunch.' They invited
him to give a series of lectures. He did so, and that settled the
Freethinkers' Club. He never blamed them for doubting anything, and I
believe that's right." The Convener was a bit of a heretic himself and,
consequently, carried a tender heart toward them. "Let a man doubt till
he finds his faith. And that was Boyle's line. He let them doubt, but he
insisted that they should have something positive to live by."

"Our friend Hank," said the Superintendent, "would be delighted."

"Delighted? I should say so. But Hank 'joins trembling with his mirth,'
for Boyle got after him with the same demands."

The Superintendent was filled with delighted pride in his missionary.
"That's the kind of man we want. He ought to do well in your railroad
field."

"Yes," replied the Convener hesitatingly. "You think he ought to go?
Windermere will be furious. I wouldn't care to go in there after Boyle
is removed."

"It is hard on Windermere, but Windermere mustn't be selfish. That
railroad work is most pressing, and only a man like Boyle will do. There
will be from three to five thousand men in there this winter
between Macleod and Kuskinook. We dare not neglect them. I have had
correspondence with Fahey, the General Manager for the Crow's Nest line,
and he is not unfriendly, though he would prefer us to send in medical
missionaries. But that work he and his contractors ought to look after."

"There is a terrible state of things in the eastern division, I fear,
from all reports," replied the Convener. "By the way, there is a young
English doctor working on that eastern division from the MaCleod end
who is making a great stir. Bailey is his name, I believe. He began as a
navvy, but finding a lot of fellows sick, and the doctor a poor drunken
fellow, Bailey, it appears, stood it as long as he could, then finally
threw him out of the camp and installed himself in his place. The
contractor backed him up and he has revolutionized the medical work in
that direction. Murray told me the most wonderful tales about him. He
must be a remarkable man. Gambles heavily, but hates whiskey and won't
have it near the camp. You ought to look him up when you go in."

"I will. These camp doctors are a poor lot and the railroad people ought
to feel disgraced in employing them. They draw their fifty cents per man
a month, but their practice is shameful. It is a delicate matter, but I
shall take this up with Fahey when I see him. He is a rough diamond, but
he is fair and he won't stand any nonsense."

"And you think Boyle ought to go in?"

"Yes. On the whole, I think Boyle must go. These are a fine body of
men and must be looked after. A weaker man would make a mess of things.
Boyle is the man for the work. How did he seem? Cheerful?"

"No, I shouldn't call him so. But he is vastly better than when he came
to us. He was low in health, I think, and his face haunted me for weeks.
He strikes me as a man with a tragedy in his life."

The Superintendent said nothing. He had, in large degree, the rare
gift of silence. Even with his trusted lieutenants he would break no
confidence. But before he slept that night he wrote two letters, and
after he had sealed and stamped them he placed them, with a pile already
written, on the table and sat back in his chair indulging himself in a
few moments of reverie. He saw the orderly, well-kept kitchen in the Old
Stone Mill and, bending over his letter a woman, dark-faced and stern,
her wavy, black hair heavily streaked with white, for during the past
years the sword had pierced her heart. He saw the light break upon her
tragic Highland face as she read of her boy and his well doing. With
glad heart she had given him up, and now, with humble joy, she would
read that her offering had been accepted.

The other letter brought to him the Macdougalls' drawing-room with all
its beautiful appointments and the face of a young girl pleading for her
friend. He still could see the quivering lips and hear the words of her
invincible faith, "I know that if he got at his own work again it would
save him." He could still feel the grateful, timid pressure of her
fingers as he had pledged her his word that her desire should be
fulfilled. He had kept his word and her faith had not been put to shame.




XVI

THE CHALLENGE OF DEATH


"Be aisy now, ye little divils. Sure ye'd think it wuz the ould Nick
himself ye're dodgin'."

Thus Tommy Tate, teamster along the Tote road between the Maclennan
camps, admonished his half-broken bronchos.

"Stiddy now. The saints be good t'us! Will we iver git down this hill
alive? Hould back, will yez? There, now. The saints be praised! that's
over. How are ye now, Scotty? If ye're alive, kick me fut. Hivin be
praised! He's there yit," said Tommy to himself. "We're on the dump
now, Scotty, an' we won't be long, me bhoy, till we see the lights av
Swipey's saloon. Git along there, will ye!"

The bronchos after their fifteen-mile drive along the unspeakable bush
roads, finding the smooth surface of the railway grade beneath their
feet, set off at a good lope. It was now quite dark. The snow was
driving bitterly in Tommy's face, but that stout little Irishman cared
nothing for himself. His concern was for the man lying under the buffalo
robes in the sleigh. Mile after mile the bronchos kept up their tireless
lope, encouraged by the cheery admonitions and the cracking whip of
their driver.

"Begob, but it's cowld enough to freeze the tail aff a brass monkey.
I'll jist be afther givin' the lad a taste."

He tied the reins to the seat, gave his bronchos a parting lash, took a
flask from his pocket, and got down on his knees beside the sick man.

"Here, Scotty," he said coaxingly, "take another taste. It'll put life
into ye." The sick man tried to swallow once, twice, choked hard, then
shook his head. "Now, God be merciful! an' can't ye swally at all? An'
the good stuff it is, too! Thry once more, Scotty darlin'. Ye'll need
it an' we're not far aff now." Once more the sick man made a desperate
effort. He got a little of the whiskey down, then turned away his
head. The tender-hearted little Irishman covered him over carefully and
climbed into his seat. "He couldn't swally it," he said to himself in an
awed voice, putting the flask to his own lips, "Begorra, an' it's near
the Kingdom he must be!" To Tommy it appeared an infallible sign of
approaching dissolution that a man should reject the contents of his
flask. He gave himself to the business of getting out of the bronchos
all the speed they had. "Come on, now, me bhoys!" he shouted through
the gale, "what are ye lookin' at? Sure, there's nothin' purtier than
yerselves can be seen in the dark. Hut, there! Kick, wud ye? Take that,
thin, an' larn manners! Now ye're beginin' to move! Hooray!"

So with voice and lash Tommy continued to urge his team till they came
out into a clearing at the far end of which twinkled the lights of the
new railroad town being built about Maclennan's camp No. 1.

"Hivin be praised! we're there at last. Begob, it's mesilf that thought
ye'd moved to the ind of nowhere. We're here, Scotty, me man. In ten
howly minutes we'll have ye by the fire an' the docthor puttin' life
into ye wid a spoon. Are ye there, Scotty?" But there was no movement
in response. "Howly Mary! Give us a little more speed!" He stood up over
his team, lashing and yelling till the tired beasts were going at
full gallop. As he drew near the camp the sound of singing came on the
driving wind. "Now the divil fly away wid the whiskey! It's pay day an'
the camp's loose. God send, there's a quiet spot to be found near at
hand!"