The Doctor

R >> Ralph Connor >> The Doctor


"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.

"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."