The Doctor

R >> Ralph Connor >> The Doctor


"To hear Tommy talk," replied Margaret, "you would make up your mind
he was a saint. He tells the most heart-moving stories of his ways and
doings, nursing the sick and helping those who are down on their luck.
Why, he and Ben almost came to blows this morning in regard to the
comparative merits of the doctor and yourself."

"Ben, eh? I can never be thankful enough," said Dick earnestly, "that
you brought Ben West with you. It always makes me feel safer to think
that he is here."

"Ben will agree with you," replied Margaret, "I assure you. He assumes
full care of me and of the whole institution."

"Good boy, Ben," said Dick, heartily. "And he is a kind of link to that
old home and--with the past, the beautiful past, the past I like to
think of." The shadows were creeping up on Dick's face, deepening its
lines and emphasizing the look of weariness and unrest.

"A beautiful past it was," replied Margaret gently. "We ought to be
thankful that we have it."

"Have you heard anything?" inquired Dick.

"No. Iola's letter was the last. He had left London shortly after her
arrival, so Jack Charrington had told her. She didn't know where he had
gone. Charrington thought to the West somewhere, but there has been no
word since."

Dick put his head on the table and groaned aloud.

"Never mind, Dick, boy," said Margaret, laying her hand upon his head as
if he had been a child, "it will all come right some day."

"I can't stand it, Margaret!" groaned Dick, "I shut it out from me for
weeks and then it all comes over me again. It was my cursed folly that
wrecked everything! Wrecked Barney's life, Iola's, too, for all I know,
and mine!"

"You must not say wrecked," replied Margaret.

"What other word is there? Wrecked and ruined. I know what you would
say; but whatever the next life has for us, there is nothing left in
this that can atone!"

"That, too, you must not say, Dick," said Margaret. "God has something
yet for us. He always keeps for us better than He has given. The best is
always before us. Besides," she continued eagerly, "He has given you all
this work to do, this beautiful work."

The word recalled Dick. He sat up straight. "Yes, yes, I must not
forget. I am not worthy to touch it. He gave me this chance to work.
What else should I want? And after all, this is the best. I can't help
the heart-hunger now and then, but God forbid I should ever say a word
of anything but gratitude. I was down, down, far down out of sight. He
pulled me up. Who am I to complain? But I am not complaining! It is not
for myself. If there were only one word to know he was doing well, was
safe!" He turned suddenly to Margaret with an almost fierce earnestness.
"Margaret, do you think God will give me this?" His voice was hoarse
with the intensity of his passion. "Do you know, I sometimes feel that I
don't want Heaven without this. I never pray for anything else. Wealth,
honour, fame, I once longed for these. But now these are nothing to me
if only I knew Barney was right and safe and well. Yes, even my love for
you, Margaret, the best thing, the truest thing next to my love of my
Lord, I'd give up to know. But three years have gone since that awful
night and not a word! It eats and eats and eats into me here," he smote
himself hard over his heart, "till the actual physical pain is at times
more than I can stand. What do you think, Margaret?" he continued, his
face quivering piteously. "Every time I think of God I think of Barney.
Every prayer I make I ask for Barney. I wake at night and it is Barney I
am thinking of. Can I stand this long? Will I have to stand it long?
Has God forgiven me? And when He forgives, does He take away the pain?
Sometimes I wonder if there is anything in all this I preach!"

"Hush, Dick!" said Margaret, her voice broken with the grief she
understood only too well. "Hush! You must not doubt God. God forgives
and loves and grieves with our griefs. He will take away the pain as
soon as He can. You must believe this and wait and trust. God will give
him back to us. I feel it here." She laid her hand upon her heaving
breast.

For some moments Dick was silent. "Perhaps so," he said at length. "For
your sake He might. Yes, down in my heart I believe he will."

"Come," said Margaret, "let us go out into the open air, into God's
sunlight. We shall feel better there. Come, Dick, let us go and see the
Goat cavort." She took him by the arm and lifted him up. At the door she
met Ben. "I won't be gone long, Ben," she explained.

"Stay as long as yeh like, Miss Margaret," replied Ben graciously. "An'
the longer yeh stay the better fer the hinstitution."

"That's an extremely doubtful compliment," laughed Margaret, as they
passed down the winding path that made its way through the tall red
pines to the rocky bank of the Goat River. There on a broad ledge of
rock that jutted out over the boiling water, Margaret seated herself
with her back against the big red polished bole of a pine tree, while
at her feet Dick threw himself, reclining against a huge pine root that
threw great clinging arms here and there about the rocky ledges. It
was a sweet May day. All the scents and sounds of spring filled up
the fragrant spaces of the woods. Far up through the great feathering
branches gleamed patches of blue sky. On every side stretched long
aisles pillared with the clean red trunks of the pine trees wrought in
network pattern. At their feet raged the Goat, foaming out his futile
fury at the unmoved black rocks. Up the rocky sides from the water's
edge, bravely clinging to nook and cranny, running along ledges, hanging
trembling to ragged edges, boldly climbing up to the forest, were all
spring's myriad tender things wherewith she redeems Nature from winter's
ugliness. From the river below came gusts of misty wind, waves of
sound of the water's many voices. It was a spot where Nature's kindly
ministries got about the spirit, healing, soothing, resting.

With hardly a word, Dick lay for an hour, watching the pine branches
wave about him and listening to the voices that came from the woods
around and from the waters below, till the fever and the doubt passed
from his heart and he grew strong and ready for the road again.

"You don't know how good this is, Margaret," he said, "all this about
me. No, it's you. It's you, Margaret. If I could see you oftener I could
bear it better. You shame me and you make me a man again. Oh, Margaret!
if only you could let me hope that some day--"

"Look, Dick!" she cried, springing to her feet, "there's the train."

It was still a novelty to see the long line of cars wind its way like
some great jointed reptile through the woods below.

"Tell me, Margaret," continued Dick, "is it quite impossible?"

"Oh, Dick!" cried the girl, her face full of pain, "don't ask me!"

"Can it never be, Margaret, in the years to come?"

She clasped her hands above her heart. "Dick," she cried piteously, "I
can't see how it can be. My heart is not my own. While Barney lives I
could not be true and be another's wife."

"While Barney lives!" echoed Dick blankly. "Then God grant you may
never be mine!" He stood straight for a moment, then with a shake of his
shoulders, as if adjusting a load, he stepped into the path. "Come, let
us go," he said. "There will be letters and I must get to work."

"Yes, Dick dear," said Margaret, her voice full of tender pity, "there's
always our work, thank God!"

Together they entered the shady path, going back to the work which was
to them, as to many others, God's salvation.

There were a number of letters lying on the office desk that day, but
one among them made Margaret's heart beat quick. It was from Iola. She
caught it up and tore it open. It might hold a word of Barney. She was
not mistaken. Hurriedly she read through Iola's glowing accounts of
her season's triumph with Wagner. "It has been a great, a glorious
experience," wrote Iola. "I cannot be far from the top now. The critics
actually classed me with the great Malten. Oh, it was glorious. But I am
tired out. The doctors say there is something wrong, but I think it is
only that I am tired to death. They say I cannot sing for a year, but
I don't want to sing for a long, long time. I want you, Margaret, and I
want--oh, fool that I was!--I may as well out with it--I want Barney.
I have no shame at all. If I knew where to find him I would ask him to
come. But he would not. He loathes me, I know. If I were only with you
at the manse or at the Old Mill I should soon be strong. Sometimes I am
afraid I shall never be. But if I could see you! I think that is it. I
am weary for those I love. Love! Love! Love! That is the best. If you
have your chance, Margaret, don't throw away love! There, this letter
has tired me out. My face is hot as I read it and my heart is sore. But
I must let it go." The tears were streaming down Margaret's face as she
read.

"Read it, Dick," she said brokenly, thrusting the letter into his hands.

Dick read it and gave it back to her without a word.

"Oh, where is he?" cried Margaret, wringing her hands. "If we only
knew!"

"The date is a month old," said Dick. "I think one of us must go. You
must go, Margaret."

"No, Dick, it must be you."

"Oh, not I, Margaret! Not I! You remember--"

"Yes, you, Dick. For Barney's sake you must go."

"For Barney's sake," said Dick, with a sob in his throat. "Yes, I'll
go. I'll go to-night. No, I must go to see a man dying in the Big Horn
Canyon. Next day I'll be off. I'll bring her back to him. Oh! if I could
only bring her back for him, dear old boy! God give me this!"

"Amen," said Margaret with white lips. For hope lives long and dies
hard.




XX

UNTIL SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN


The Big Horn flowed by a tortuous and rapid course through rough country
into the Goat. The trail was bad and, in places, led over high mountain
shoulders in a way heartbreaking to packers. For this reason, all who
knew the ways and moods of a canoe chose the water in going up the
canyon. True enough, there were a number of lift-outs and two rather
long portages that made the going up pretty stiff, but if a man had
skill with the paddle and knew the water he might avoid these by running
the rapids. Men from the Ottawa or from some other north Canadian river,
like all true canoemen, hated to portage and loved to take the risk of
the rapids. Though the current was fairly rapid, going upstream was not
so difficult as one might imagine; that is, if the canoeman happened
to know how to take advantage of the eddies, how to sneak up the quiet
water by the banks, how to put the nose of his canoe into the swift
water and to hold her so that, as Duprez, the keeper of the stopping
place at the Landing, said, "She would walk on de rapide toute suite lak
one oiseau."

There was a bad outbreak of typhoid at the upper camp on the Big Horn,
and Dr. Bailey had been urgently summoned. The upper camp lay on the
other side of the Big Horn Lake, twenty miles or more from the steel.
The lake itself was six miles long by canoe, but by trail it was at
least twice that. Hence, though there would be some stiff paddling in
the trip, the doctor did not hesitate in his choice of route. He knew
his canoe and loved every rib and thwart in her. He had learned also the
woodsman's trick of going light. A blanket, a tea pail which held his
grub, consisting of some Hudson Bay hard tack, a hunk of bacon, and a
little tea and sugar, and his drinking cup constituted his baggage, so
that he could make the portages in a single carry. Many a mile had he
gone, thus equipped, both by trail and by canoe, in his journeyings up
and down these valleys, doing his work for the sick and wounded in the
railroad, lumber, and tie camps, and more recently in the new-planted
mining towns.

It was a great day for his trip. A stiff breeze upstream would help him
in his fight with the current and coming down it would be glorious.
The sun was just appearing over the row of pines that topped the low
mountain range to the east when he packed his kit and blankets under the
gunwale in the bow and slipped his canoe into the water. He was about to
step in when a voice he had not heard for many days arrested him.

"Hello, Duprez! Did you see the preacher pass this way yesterday? He
was--By the livin' jumpin' Jemima! Barney!"

It was Ben Fallows, gazing with open mouth on the doctor. With two swift
steps the doctor was at his side. He grasped Ben by the arm and walked
him swiftly apart.

"Ben," he said, in a low, stern voice, "not a word. I once did you a
good turn?"

Ben nodded, still too astonished for speech.

"Then listen to what I tell you. No one must know what you know now."

"But--but Miss Margaret and Dick--" gasped Ben.

"They don't know," interrupted the doctor, "and must not know. Will you
promise me this, Ben?"

"By Jove, Barney! I don't--I don't think--"

"Do you hear me, Ben? Do you promise?"

"Yes, by the livin'--"

"Good-bye, Ben; I think I can depend on you for the sake of old days."
The doctor's smile set Ben's head in a whirl.

"You bet, Bar--Doctor!" he cried.

"Good old boy, Ben. Good-bye, lad."

He stepped into the canoe and pushed her off into the eddy just above
the falls by which the Big Horn plunged into the Goat.

"Bo' voyage, M'sieu le Docteur!" sang out Duprez. "You cache hup de
preechere. He pass on de riviere las' night."

"What? Who?"

"De preechere, Boyle. He's pass on wid canoe las' night. He's camp on de
Beeg Fall, s'pose."

Barney held his canoe steady for a moment. "Went up last night, did he?"

"Oui. Tom Martin on de Beeg Horn camp he's go ver' seeck. He send for
M'sieu Boyle."

"Did he go up alone?"

"Oui. He's not want nobody. Non. He's good man on de canoe."

It was an awkward situation. There was a very good chance that he should
fall in with his brother somewhere on the trip, and that, at all costs,
he was determined to avoid. For a minute or more he sat holding his
canoe, calculating time and distances. At length he came to a resolve.
He must visit the camp on the Big Horn, and he trusted his own ingenuity
to avoid the meeting he dreaded.

"All right, Duprez! bon jour."

"Bo' jou' an' bon voyage. Gare a vous on de Longue Rapide. You mak' de
portage hon dat rapide, n'est ce pas?"

"No, sir. No portage for me, Duprez. I'll run her."

"Prenez garde, M'sieu le Docteur," answered Duprez, shrugging his
shoulders. "Maudit! Dat's ver' fas' water!"

"Don't worry about me," cried the doctor. "Just watch me take this
little riffle."

"Bien!" cried Duprez, as the doctor slipped his canoe into the eddy and,
with a smooth, noiseless stroke, sent her up toward the point where the
stream broke into a riffle at the head of the rapid which led to the
falls below. It may be that the doctor was putting a little extra weight
on his paddle or that he did not exercise that unsleeping vigilance
which the successful handling of the canoe demands, but whatever the
cause, when the swift water struck the canoe, in spite of all his
strength and skill, he soon found himself almost in midstream and going
down the rapids.

"Mon Dieu!" cried Duprez, dancing in his excitement from one foot to
the other. "A droit! a droit! Non! Don' try for go hup! Come out on de
heddy!"

The doctor did not hear him, but, realizing the hopelessness of the
frontal attack upon the rapid, he steered his canoe toward the eddy and
gradually edged her into the quiet water.

"You come ver' close on de fall, mon gar'!" cried Duprez, as the doctor
paddled slowly up the edge past him. "You bes' pass on de portage. Not
many mans go hup on de rapids comme ca."

"All right, Duprez. I hit her too hard, that's all."

Once more the doctor moved toward the riffle. He had done the thing
before and he was not to be beaten now. As the eddy bore him toward the
swift water again he carefully gauged the angle of attack, so that
when the nose of the canoe entered the riffle, with the trick that all
canoemen know, he held her up firm against the water, and, with no very
great effort, but by skilful manipulations of the force of the current,
he shoved her gradually across the riffle into the slow water near
the farther bank, and with a triumphant wave of the paddle disappeared
around the bend.

"He's good man," said Duprez to Ben Fallows, who had taken all this
time to recover from the shock of Barney's sudden appearance. "But de
preechere, he's go hup dat rapide lak one oiseau las' night."

"Did, eh?" answered Ben. "Well, he didn't put in three summers on the
Mattawa fer nothin'. He's a bird in the canoe, an' so's his bro--that
is--the doctor there. Wonder if he'll catch him!" Ben was much excited.

"Mebbe. He's cache heem comin' down, for sure!"

Meanwhile the doctor paddled on with steady, swinging stroke, taking
advantage of every eddy and cross current, stealing along the bank under
the overhanging trees, sidling across swift water, lifting his canoe
over rocky bits, till near mid-day he found himself at the portage below
the Long Rapid.

"Guess I'll camp on the other side," he said, talking aloud after
the manner of men who live much alone. He adjusted his paddles on the
thwarts, hooked his tea pail to his belt, shouldered his canoe, and,
taking his blanket pack in his hand, made the half mile portage without
a "set down."

"There," he said, setting his canoe carefully on the grass, "my legs are
better than my arms. Now we'll grub." He unpacked his tea pail, cut his
bacon into strips preparatory to toasting, built a fire, drew a pail of
water, threw in a handful of tea, swung it by a poplar sapling over the
fire, and sat down to toast his bacon. In fifteen minutes his meal was
ready--such a meal as can be had only in the mountains under the open
sky and at the end of a ten-mile paddle against the stream of the Big
Horn. After dinner he lit his pipe and stretched himself in the warm
spring sun for half an hour's quiet think. The old restlessness was
coming back upon him. His work as Medical Superintendent of the railway
construction was practically completed. The medical department was
thoroughly organized and the fight with disease and dirt was pretty much
over so far as he was concerned. And with the easing of the strain there
came fiercely upon him the soul fever that had for the last three years
driven him from land to land. Had it not been that his professional
honour demanded that he should hold his post and do his work, he had
long ago left a district where he was kept constantly in mind of what
he had so resolutely striven to forget. By the exercise of the most
assiduous care he had prevented a meeting with his brother during the
last three months. But in this he could not hope to be successful much
longer. Before his second pipe was smoked he had reached his resolve.
"I'll pull out of this," he said, "once this Big Horn camp is cleaned
up."

He packed his kit, carefully extinguished his fire, the mark of a right
woodsman, slipped his canoe into the water, and set off again. His
meeting with Ben Fallows seemed somehow to have brought his brother
near him to-day. Everything was eloquent of those days they had spent
together on the upper reaches of the Ottawa. The flowing river, the open
sky, the wood, the fresh air, and, most of all, the slipping canoe spoke
to him of Dick. The fierce resentment, the bitter sense of loss, that
had been as a festering in his heart these years, seemed somehow to-day
to have lost their stinging pain. With every lift of the paddle, with
every deep breath of the fragrant spring air, with every slip of the
canoe, the buoyant gladness of those old canoeing days came swelling
into his heart, and ere he knew he caught himself singing, to the
rhythmic swing of paddle and shoulders, the old Habitant canoe song:


"En roulant ma boule roulant."


As often as he found his body swinging to the song, so often did he
sternly check himself and resolutely set another air going in his head,
only to find himself in a short space swinging along again to the old
song to which he and his brother had so often made their canoe slip in
those great days that now seemed so far away.


"En roulant ma boule,"


sang his paddle in spite of all he could do. He could hear Dick's clear
tenor from the bow. "Here, confound it! Quit it, I say!" he said aloud
savagely.


"En roulant ma boule roulant,"


in a clear strong voice came the old song from around the bend. The
doctor almost dropped his paddle into the stream.

"Heavens above!" he muttered. "What's that? Who's that?"


"Visa la noir, tua le blanc,
Rouli roulant, ma boule roulant,"


sang the voice. There was only one who could sing that verse just that
way. With two swift heaves of the paddle he lifted his canoe into the
overhanging bushes, noiselessly leaped ashore, and pulled his canoe up
the bank after him. Down the river still came the song, and ever nearer.


"O fils du roi tu es mechant,
En roulant ma boule."


The doctor cautiously parted the bushes and looked out. Close to the
bank came the canoe, the singer sitting in the stern, his hat off and
his face showing brown against the fair hair. How strong he looked and
how handsome! Barney remembered his own boyish pride in his brother's
good looks. Yes, he was handsome as ever, and yet he was different.
"He's older, that's it," said the man in the bushes, breathing hard. No,
it was not that altogether. There was a new gravity, a new dignity, upon
the face. All at once the song ceased abruptly. The paddle was laid down
and the canoe allowed to drift. The current carried her still nearer
the shore. Every line in the face could now be seen. The man peering out
through the bushes was conscious of a sharp thrust of pain. The lines in
that grave, handsome face were lines drawn with some sharp instrument
of grief. The change was not that of years, it was more. Not simply the
gravity of responsible manhood, it was that, and something else. This
was the change, the old careless gaiety was gone out of the face and in
its place sadness, almost gloom. Straight down the river the grave, sad
face was turned, but the eyes were fixed with unseeing gaze upon the
flowing water. The canoe was now almost abreast the hiding place in the
bushes and still drifting. Suddenly the man in the canoe, lifting up his
face toward the sky, cried out, "I'll bring her back, please God, and
I'll find him, too!" The watcher drew back quickly. A stick snapped
under his hand. He threw himself face down and gripped his hands hard
into the moss as if to hold himself there. "A deer, I guess, but I must
get on," he heard a voice say, then a flip of the paddle and, looking
out through the bushes, he saw the swaying figure of the man he most
longed and most dreaded to see of all men in the world fast disappearing
from his view. Twice he raised his hands to his lips to call after him,
but even as he did so a vision held his voice, the vision of a room in
a city far away, the girl he loved, and this man pressing hot kisses on
her face.

"No," he said at length, grinding his foot hard into the moss, "let him
go." But still with straining eyes he gazed after the swaying figure
till the bend in the river hid it from his sight. Then he sank down on
the deep moss bank with the air of a man who has just passed through a
heavy fight.

The rest of the journey upstream was to him a weary drag. The brightness
had gone out of the light, the sweetness out of the air. A burning pain
filled his heart and clutched at his throat. The old sore, which his
work for the sick and wounded had helped to heal over, had been torn
open afresh, and the first agony of it was upon him again. He arrived at
the upper camp late at night and weary. But, weary as he was, he toiled
on in his fight with the typhoid outbreak till near the dawning of the
day, then, snatching an hour's sleep, he set off down the Big Horn,
resolved that ere a week had passed he would seek in some far land the
forgetting which here was impossible to him.

Steadily the paddle swung all the long morning, but without awakening
any rhythmic song in his heart. It was a heavy grind to be got through
with as soon as might be. Even the slip and leap of the canoe failed to
quicken his heart a single beat. It was still early in the forenoon when
he reached the Long Rapid. It was a dangerous bit of water, but without
a moment's considering he stood upright in his canoe and, casting a
quick glance down the boiling slope, he made his choice of passage.
Then getting on his knees he braced them firmly against the sides of his
canoe and before he was well ready found himself in the smooth, steep
pitch at the crest of that seething incline of plunging water. Two
long swallowlike swoops, then a mad plunging through a succession of
buffeting, curling waves that slapped viciously at him as he dashed
through, a great heave or two over the humping billows at the foot, then
the swirl of the eddy caught him, and lifted him clear over into the
quiet water. One minute of wild thrills and the Long Rapid was left
behind.