To Him That Hath

R >> Ralph Connor >> To Him That Hath


Jack had no thought of wife and family. There was Adrien. She had been a
great pal before the war, but since his return she had seemed different.
Everyone seemed different. The war had left many gaps, former pals had
formed other ties, many had gone from the town. Even Adrien had drifted
away from the old currents of life. She seemed to have taken up with
young Stillwell, whom Jack couldn't abide. Stillwell had been turned
down by the Recruiting Officer during the war--flat feet, or something.
True, he had done great service in Red Cross, Patriotic Fund, Victory
Loan work, and that sort of thing, and apparently stood high in the
Community. His father had doubled the size of his store and had been a
great force in all public war work. He had spared neither himself nor
his son. The elder Stillwell, high up in the Provincial Political world,
saw to it that his son was on all the big Provincial War Committees.
Rupert had all the shrewd foresight and business ability of his father,
which was saying a good deal. He began to assume the role of a promising
young capitalist. The sources of his income no one knew--fortunate
investments, people said. And his Hudson Six stood at the Rectory gate
every day. Well, not even for Adrien would Jack have changed places with
Rupert Stillwell. For Jack Maitland held the extreme and, in certain
circles, unpopular creed that the citizen who came richer out of a war
which had left his country submerged in debt, and which had drained away
its best blood and left it poorer in its manhood by well-nigh seventy
thousand of its noblest youth left upon the battlefields of the various
war fronts and by the hundreds of thousands who would go through life
a burden to themselves and to those to whom they should have been a
support--that citizen was accursed. If Adrien chose to be a friend
of such a man, by that choice she classified herself as impossible of
friendship for Jack. It had hurt a bit. But what was one hurt more or
less to one whom the war had left numb in heart and bereft of ambition?
He was not going to pity himself. He was lucky indeed to have his body
and nerve still sound and whole, but they need not expect him to show
any great keenness in the chase for a few more thousands that would only
rank him among those for whom the war had not done so badly. Meantime,
for his father's sake, who, thank God, had given his best, his heart's
best and the best of his brain and of his splendid business genius
to his country, he would carry on, with no other reward than that of
service rendered.



CHAPTER III

THE HEATHEN QUEST


They stood together by the open fire in the study, Jack and his father,
alike in many ways yet producing effects very different. The younger man
had the physical makeup of the older, though of a slighter mould.
They had the same high, proud look of conscious strength, of cool
fearlessness that nothing could fluster. But the soul that looked out of
the grey eyes of the son was quite another from that which looked out of
the deep blue eyes of the father--yet, after all, the difference may not
have been in essence but only that the older man's soul had learned in
life's experience to look out only through a veil.

The soul of the youth was eager, adventurous, still believing, yet
with a certain questioning and a touch of weariness, a result of the
aftermath of peace following three years of war. There was still,
however, the out-looking for far horizons, the outreaching imagination,
the Heaven given expectation of the Infinite. In the older man's eye
dwelt chiefly reserve. The veil was always there except when he found it
wise and useful to draw it aside. If ever the inner light flamed
forth it was when the man so chose. Self-mastery, shrewdness, power,
knowledge, lay in the dark blue eyes, and all at the soul's command.

But to-night as the father's eyes rested upon his son who stood gazing
into and through the blazing fire there were to be seen only pride and
wistful love. But as the son turned his eyes toward his father the veil
fell and the eyes that answered were quiet, shrewd, keen and chiefly
kind.

The talk had passed beyond the commonplace of the day's doings. They
were among the big things, the fateful thing--Life and Its Worth, Work
and Its Wages, Creative Industry and Its Product, Capital and Its Price,
Man and His Rights.

They were frank with each other. The war had done that for them. For
ever since the night when his eighteen-year-old boy had walked into his
den and said, "Father, I am eighteen," and stood looking into his eyes
and waiting for the word that came straight and unhesitating, "I know,
boy, you are my son and you must go, for I cannot," ever since that
night, which seemed now to belong to another age, these two had faced
each other as men. Now they were talking about the young man's life
work.

"Frankly, I don't like it, Dad," said the son.

"Easy to see that, Jack."

"I'm really sorry. I'm afraid anyone can see it. But somehow I can't put
much pep into it."

"Why?" asked the father, with curt abruptness.

"Why? Well, I hardly know. Somehow it hardly seems worth while. It is
not the grind of the office, though that is considerable. I could stick
that, but, after all, what's the use?"

"What would you rather do, Jack?" enquired his father patiently, as if
talking to a child. "You tried for the medical profession, you know,
and--"

"I know, I know, you are quite right about it. You may think it pure
laziness. Maybe it is, but I hardly think so. Perhaps I went back to
lectures too soon after the war. I was hardly fit, I guess, and the
whole thing, the inside life, the infernal grind of lectures, the
idiotic serious mummery of the youngsters, those blessed kids who should
have been spanked by their mothers--the whole thing sickened me in three
months. If I had waited perhaps I might have done better at the thing. I
don't know--hard to tell." The boy paused, looking into the fire.

"It was my fault, boy," said the father hastily. "I ought to have
figured the thing out differently. But, you see, I had no knowledge of
what you had gone through and of its effect upon you. I know better now.
I thought that the harder you went into the work the better it would be
for you. I made a mistake."

"Well, you couldn't tell, Dad. How could you? But everything was so
different when I came back. Mere kids were carrying on where we had
been, and doing it well, too, by Jove, and we didn't seem to be needed."

"Needed, boy?" The father's voice was thick.

"Yes, but I didn't see that then. Selfish, I fear. Then, you know, home
was not the same--"

The older man choked back a groan and leaned hard against the mantel.

"I know, Dad, I can see now I was selfish--"

"Selfish? Don't say that, my lad. Selfish? After all you had gone
through? No, I shall never apply that word to you, but you--you don't
seem to realise--" The father hesitated a few moments, then, as if
taking a plunge:

"You don't realise just how big a thing--how big an investment there is
in that business down there--." His hand swept toward the window through
which could be seen the lights of that part of the town which clustered
about the various mills and factories of which he was owner.

"I know there is a lot, Dad, but how much I don't know."

"There's $250,000 in plant alone, boy, but there's more than money, a
lot more than money--" Then, after a pause, as if to himself, "A lot
more than money--there's brain sweat and heart agony and prayers and
tears--and, yes, life, boy, your mother's life and mine. We worked and
saved and prayed and planned--"

He stepped quickly toward the window, drew aside the curtain and pointed
to a dark mass of headland beyond the twinkling lights.

"You see the Bluff there. Fifty years ago I stood with my father on
that Bluff and watched the logs come down the river to the sawmill--his
sawmill, into which he had put his total capital, five hundred dollars.
I remember well his words, 'My son, if you live out your life you will
see on that flat a town where thousands of men and women will find homes
and, please God, happiness.' Your mother and I watched that town grow
for forty years, and we tried to make people happy--at least, if they
were not it was no fault of hers. Of course, other hands have been at
the work since then, but her hands and mine more than any other, and
more than all others together were in it, and her heart, too, was in it
all."

The boy turned from the window and sat down heavily in a deep armchair,
his hands covering his face. His heart was still sick with the ache
that had smitten it that day in front of Amiens when the Colonel,
his father's friend, had sent for him and read him the wire which had
brought the terrible message of his mother's death. The long months of
days and nights heavy with watching, toiling, praying, agonising, for
her twin sons, and for the many boys who had gone out from the little
town wore out her none too robust strength. Then, the sniper's bullet
that had pierced the heart of her boy seemed to reach to her heart as
well. After that, the home that once had been to its dwellers the most
completely heart-satisfying spot in all the world became a place of
dread, of haunting ghosts, of acutely poignant memories. They used the
house for sleeping in and for eating in, but there was no living in it
longer. To them it was a tomb, though neither would acknowledge it and
each bore with it for the other's sake.

"Honestly, Dad, I wish I could make it go, for your sake--"

"For my sake, boy? Why, I have all of it I care for. Not for my sake.
But what else can we do but stick it?"

"I suppose so--but for Heaven's sake give me something worth a man's
doing. If I could tackle a job such as you and"--the boy winced--"you
and mother took on I believe I'd try it. But that office! Any fool could
sit in my place and carry on. It is like the job they used to give to
the crocks or the slackers at the base to do. Give me a man's job."

The father's keen blue eyes looked his son over.

"A man's job?" he said, with a grim smile, realising as his son did not
how much of a man's job it was. "Suppose you learn this one as I did?"

"What do you mean, Dad, exactly? How did you begin?"

"I? At the tail of the saw."

"All right, I'm game."

"Boy, you are right--I believe in my soul you are right. You did a man's
job 'out there' and you have it in you to do a man's job again."

The son shrugged his shoulders. Next morning at seven they were down at
the planing mill where men were doing men's work. He was at a man's job,
at the tail of a saw, and drawing a man's pay, rubbing shoulders with
men on equal terms, as he had in the trenches. And for the first time
since Armistice Day, if not happy or satisfied, he was content to carry
on.



CHAPTER IV

ANNETTE


Sam Wigglesworth had finished with school, which is not quite the same
as saying that he had finished his education. A number of causes had
combined to bring this event to pass. First, Sam was beyond the age
of compulsory attendance at the Public School, the School Register
recording him as sixteen years old. Then, Sam's educational career had
been anything but brilliant. Indeed, it might fairly be described as
dull. All his life he had been behind his class, the biggest boy in his
class, which fact might have been to Sam a constant cause of humiliation
had he not held as of the slightest moment merely academic achievements.
One unpleasant effect which this fact had upon Sam's moral quality was
that it tended to make him a bully. He was physically the superior of
all in his class, and this superiority he exerted for what he deemed the
discipline of younger and weaker boys, who excelled him in intellectual
attainment.

Furthermore, Sam, while quite ready to enforce the code of discipline
which he considered suitable to the smaller and weaker boys in his
class, resented and resisted the attempts of constituted authority
to enforce discipline in his own case, with the result that Sam's
educational career was, after much long suffering, abruptly terminated
by the action of the long-suffering head, Alex Day.

"With great regret I must report," his letter to the School Board
ran, "that in the case of Samuel Wigglesworth I have somehow failed to
inculcate the elementary principles of obedience to school regulations
and of adherence to truth in speech. I am free to acknowledge," went on
the letter, "that the defect may be in myself as much as in the boy, but
having failed in winning him to obedience and truth-telling, I feel
that while I remain master of the school I must decline to allow the
influence of this youth to continue in the school. A whole-hearted
penitence for his many offences and an earnest purpose to reform
would induce me to give him a further trial. In the absence of either
penitence or purpose to reform I must regretfully advise expulsion."

Joyfully the School Board, who had for months urged upon the reluctant
head this action, acquiesced in the course suggested, and Samuel was
forthwith expelled, to his own unmitigated relief but to his father's
red and raging indignation at what he termed the "(h)ignorant
persecution of their betters by these (h)insolent Colonials," for
"'is son 'ad 'ad the advantages of schools of the 'ighest standin' in
(H)England."

Being expelled from school Sam forthwith was brought by his father
to the office of the mills, where he himself was employed. There he
introduced his son to the notice of Mr. Grant Maitland, with request for
employment.

The old man looked the boy over.

"What has he been doing?"

"Nothin'. 'E's just left school."

"High School?"

"Naw. Public School." Wigglesworth Sr.'s tone indicated no exalted
opinion of the Public School.

"Public School! What grade, eh?"

"Grade? I dinnaw. Wot grade, Samuel? Come, speak (h)up, cawn't yeh?"

"Uh?" Sam's mental faculties had been occupied in observing the
activities and guessing the probable fate of a lumber-jack gaily decked
in scarlet sash and blue overalls, who was the central figure upon a
flaming calendar tacked up behind Mr. Maitland's desk, setting forth
the commercial advantages of trading with the Departmental Stores of
Stillwell & Son.

"Wot grade in school, the boss is (h)askin'," said his father sharply.

"Grade?" enquired Sam, returning to the commonplace of the moment.

"Yes, what grade in the Public School were you in when you left?" The
blue eyes of the boss was "borin' 'oles" through Sam and the voice
pierced like a "bleedin' gimblet," as Wigglesworth, Sr., reported to his
spouse that afternoon.

Sam hesitated a bare second. "Fourth grade it was," he said with sullen
reluctance.

"'Adn't no chance, Samuel 'adn't. Been a delicate child ever since 'is
mother stopped suckin' 'im," explained the father with a sympathetic
shake of his head.

The cold blue eye appraised the boy's hulking mass.

"'E don't look it," continued Mr. Wigglesworth, noting the keen glance,
"but 'e's never been (h)able to bide steady at the school. (H)It's 'is
brain, sir."

"His--ah--brain?" Again the blue eyes appraised the boy, this time
scanning critically his face for indication of undue brain activity.

"'Is brain, sir," earnestly reiterated the sympathetic parent. "'Watch
that (h)infant's brain,' sez the Doctor to the missus when she put 'im
on the bottle. And you know, we 'ave real doctors in (H)England, sir.
'Watch 'is brain,' sez 'e, and, my word, the care 'is ma 'as took
of that boy's brain is wunnerful, is fair beautiful, sir." Mr.
Wigglesworth's voice grew tremulous at the remembrance of that maternal
solicitude.

"And was that why he left school?" enquired the boss.

"Well, sir, not (h)exackly," said Mr. Wigglesworth, momentarily taken
aback, "though w'en I comes to think on it that must a been at the
bottom of it. You see, w'en Samuel went at 'is books of a night 'e'd no
more than begin at a sum an' 'e'd say to 'is ma, 'My brain's a-whirlin',
ma', just like that, and 'is ma would 'ave to pull 'is book away, just
drag it away, you might say. Oh, 'e's 'ad a 'ard time, 'as Samuel." At
this point the boss received a distinct shock, for, as his eyes were
resting upon Samuel's face meditatively while he listened somewhat
apathetically, it must be confessed, to the father's moving tale, the
eye of the boy remote from the father closed in a slow but significant
wink.

The boss sat up, galvanised into alert attention. "Eh? What?" he
exclaimed.

"Yes, sir, 'e's caused 'is ma many a (h)anxious hour, 'as Samuel." Again
the eye closed in a slow and solemn wink. "And we thought, 'is ma and
me, that we would like to get Samuel into some easy job--"

"An easy job, eh?"

"Yes, sir. Something in the office, 'ere."

"But his brain, you say, would not let him study his books."

"Oh, it was them sums, sir, an' the Jography and the 'Istory an' the
Composition, an', an'--wot else, Samuel? You see, these 'ere schools
ain't a bit like the schools at 'ome, sir. They're so confusing with
their subjecks. Wot I say is, why not stick to real (h)eddication,
without the fiddle faddles?"

"So you want an easy job for your son, eh?" enquired Mr. Maitland.

"Boy," he said sharply to Samuel, whose eyes had again become fixed upon
the gay and daring lumber-jack. Samuel recalled himself with visible
effort. "Why did you leave school? The truth, mind." The "borin'" eyes
were at their work.

"Fired!" said Sam promptly.

Mr. Wigglesworth began a sputtering explanation.

"That will do, Wigglesworth," said Mr. Maitland, holding up his hand.
"Sam, you come and see me tomorrow here at eight. Do you understand?"

Sam nodded. After they had departed there came through the closed
office door the sound of Mr. Wigglesworth's voice lifted in violent
declamation, but from Sam no answering sound could be heard.

The school suffered no noticeable loss in the intellectual quality of
its activities by the removal of the whirling brain and incidentally
its physical integument of Samuel Wigglesworth. To the smaller boys the
absence of Sam brought unbounded joy, more especially during the
hours of recess from study and on their homeward way from school after
dismissal.

More than any other, little Steve Wickes rejoiced in Sam's departure
from school. Owing to some mysterious arrangement of Sam's brain cells
he seemed to possess an abnormal interest in observing the sufferings
of any animal. The squirming of an unfortunate fly upon a pin fascinated
him, the sight of a wretched dog driven mad with terror rushing
frantically down a street, with a tin can dangling to its tail,
convulsed him with shrieking delight. The more highly organised the
suffering animal, the keener was Sam's joy. A child, for instance,
flying in a paroxysm of fear from Sam's hideously contorted face
furnished acute satisfaction. It fell naturally enough that little
Steve Wickes, the timid, shrinking, humpbacked son of the dead soldier,
Stephen Wickes, afforded Sam many opportunities of rare pleasure. It
was Sam that coined and, with the aid of his sycophantic following
never wanting to a bully, fastened to the child the nickname of "Humpy
Wicksy," working thereby writhing agony in the lad's highly sensitive
soul. But Sam did not stay his hand at the infliction of merely mental
anguish. It was one of his favorite forms of sport to seize the child by
the collar and breeches and, swinging him high over head, hold him there
in an anguish of suspense, awaiting the threatened drop. It is to be
confessed that Sam was not entirely without provocation at the hands
of little Steve, for the lad had a truly uncanny cunning hidden in
his pencil, by means of which Sam was held up in caricature to the
surreptitious joy of his schoolmates. Sam's departure from school
deprived him of the full opportunity he formerly enjoyed of indulging
himself in his favourite sport. On this account he took the more eager
advantage of any opportunity that offered still to gratify his taste in
this direction.

Sauntering sullenly homeward from his interview with the boss and with
his temper rasped to a raw edge by his father's wrathful comments upon
his "dommed waggin' tongue," he welcomed with quite unusual eagerness
the opportunity for indulging himself in his pastime of baiting Humpy
Wicksy whom he overtook on his way home from school during the noon
intermission.

"Hello, Humpy," he roared at the lad.

Like a frightened rabbit Steve scurried down a lane, Sam whooping after
him.

"Come back, you little beast. Do you hear me? I'll learn you to come
when you're called," he shouted, catching the terrified lad and heaving
him aloft in his usual double-handed grip.

"Let me down, you! Leave me alone now," shrieked the boy, squirming,
scratching, biting like an infuriated cat.

"Bite, would you?" said Sam, flinging the boy down. "Now then," catching
him by the legs and turning him over on his stomach, "we'll make a
wheelbarrow of you. Gee up, Buck! Want a ride, boys?" he shouted to his
admiring gallery of toadies. "All aboard!"

While the unhappy Steve, shrieking prayers and curses, was struggling
vainly to extricate himself from the hands gripping his ankles, Annette
Perrotte, stepping smartly along the street on her way from the box
factory, came past the entrance to the lane. By her side strode a
broad-shouldered, upstanding youth. Arrested by Steve's outcries and
curses she paused.

"What are those boys at, I wonder?" she said. "There's that big lout of
a Wigglesworth boy. He's up to no good, I bet you."

"Oh, a kids' row of some kind or ither, a doot," said the youth. "Come
along."

"He's hurting someone," said Annette, starting down the lane. "What? I
believe it's that poor child, Steve Wickes." Like a wrathful fury she
dashed in upon Sam and his company of tormentors and, knocking the
little ones right and left, she sprang upon Sam with a fierce cry.

"You great brute!" She seized him by his thatch of thick red hair and
with one mighty swing she hurled him clear of Steve and dashed him head
on against the lane fence. Sheer surprise held Sam silent for a few
seconds, but as he felt the trickle of warm blood run down his face and
saw it red upon his hand, his surprise gave place to terror.

"Ouw! Ouw!" he bellowed. "I'm killed, I'm dying. Ouw! Ouw!"

"I hope so," said Annette, holding Steve in her arms and seeking to
quiet his sobbing. But as she saw the streaming blood her face paled.

"For the love of Mike, Mack, see if he's hurt," she said in a low voice
to her companion.

"Not he! He's makin' too much noise," said the young man. "Here, you
young bull, wait till I see what's wrang wi' ye," he continued, stooping
over Sam.

"Get away from me, I tell you. Ouw! Ouw! I'm dying, and they'll hang
her. Ouw! Ouw! I'm killed, and I'm just glad I am, for she'll be hung to
death." Here Sam broke into a vigorous stream of profanity.

"Ay, he's improvin' A doot," said Mack. "Let us be going."

"'Ello! Wot's (h)up?" cried a voice. It was Mr. Wigglesworth on his way
home from the mill. "Why, bless my living lights, if it bean't Samuel.
Who's been a beatin' of you, Sammy?" His eye swept the crowd. "'Ave you
been at my lad?" he asked, stepping toward the young man, whom Annette
named Mack.

"Aw, steady up, man. There's naethin' much wrang wi' the lad--a wee
scratch on the heid frae fa'in' against the fence yonder."

"Who 'it 'im, I say?" shouted Mr. Wigglesworth. "Was it you?" he added,
squaring up to the young man.

"No, it wasn't, Mr. Wigglesworth. It was me." Mr. Wigglesworth turned
on Annette who, now that Sam's bellowing had much abated with the
appearance of his father upon the scene, had somewhat regained her
nerve.

"You?" gasped Mr. Wigglesworth. "You? My Samuel? It's a lie," he cried.

"Hey, mon, guairrd y're tongue a bit," said Mack. "Mind ye're speakin'
to a leddy."

"A lidy! A lidy!" Mr. Wigglesworth's voice was eloquent of scorn.

"Aye, a leddy!" said Mack. "An' mind what ye say aboot her tae. Mind
y're manners, man."

"My manners, hey? An' 'oo may you be, to learn me manners, you bloomin'
(h)ignorant Scotch (h)ass. You give me (h)any of your (h)imperance an'
I'll knock y're bloomin' block (h)off, I will." And Mr. Wigglesworth,
throwing himself into the approved pugilistic attitude, began dancing
about the young Scot.

"Hoot, mon, awa' hame wi' ye. Tak' yon young tyke wi' ye an' gie him a
bit wash, he's needin' it," said Mack, smiling pleasantly at the excited
and belligerent Mr. Wigglesworth.

At this point Captain Jack, slowly motoring by the lane mouth, turned
his machine to the curb and leaped out.

"What's the row here?" he asked, making his way through the considerable
crowd that had gathered. "What's the trouble, Wigglesworth?"

"They're knockin' my boy abaht, so they be," exclaimed Mr. Wigglesworth.
"But," with growing and righteous wrath, "they'll find (h)out that,
wotsomever they do to a kid, w'en they come (h)up agin Joe Wigglesworth
they've struck somethin' 'ard--'ard, d'ye 'ear? 'Ard!" And Mr.
Wigglesworth made a pass at the young Scot.