The Search Part 12

"But suppose you don't believe in Christ? I can't commit myself to anything like that till I know about it?"

"Well, you see, that's the first move in getting to know G.o.d," said the stranger with a smile. "G.o.d says he wants you to believe in his Son. He asks that much of you if you want to get to know Him."

Cameron looked at him with bewildered interest. Was here a possible answer to the questions of his heart. Why did this curious boy have a light in his face that never came from earth or air? What was there about his simple earnestness that was so convincing?

Another c.r.a.p game had started up on the other side of them. A musically inclined private was playing ragtime on the piano, and another was trying to accompany him on the banjo. The air was hazier than ever. It seemed strange to be talking of such things in these surroundings:

"Let's get out of here and walk!" said Cameron, "I'd like to understand what you mean."

For two hours they tramped across the frozen ground and talked, arguing this way and that, much drawn toward one another. At last in the solemn background of a wall of whispering pines that shut them away from the stark gray rows of barracks, Cameron took out his fountain pen and with his foot on a p.r.o.ne log, opened the little book on his knee and wrote his name and the date. Then he put it in his breast pocket with the solemn feeling that he had taken some kind of a great step toward what his soul had been longing to find. They knelt on the frozen ground beside that log and the stranger prayed simply as if he were talking to a friend.

Thereafter that spot was hallowed ground to Cameron, to which he came often to think and to read his little book.

That night he wrote to Ruth, telling in a shy way of his meeting with the Testament man and about the little book. After he had mailed the letter he walked back again to the spot among the pines and standing there looked up to the stars and somehow committed himself again to the covenant he had signed in the little book. It was then that he decided that if he got home again after quarantine before he went over, he would unite with the church. Somehow the stranger's talk that afternoon had cleared away his objections. On his way back to the barracks across the open field, up through the woods and over the crest of the hill toward the road as he walked thinking deeply, suddenly from down below on the road a familiar voice floated up to him. He parted the branches of oak underbrush that made a screen between him and the road and glanced down to get his bearings the better to avoid an unwelcome meeting. It was inevitable when one came near Lieutenant Wainwright that he would overhear some part of a conversation for he had a carrying voice which he never sought to restrain.

"You're sure she's a girl with pep, are you? I don't want to bother with any other kind. All right. Tell her to wait for me in the Was.h.i.+ngton station to-morrow evening at eight. I'll look for her at the right of the information booth. Tell her to wear a red carnation so I'll know her.

I'll show her a good time, all right, if she's the right sort. I'll trust you that she's a good looker!"

Cameron could not hear the response, but the two were standing silhouetted against a distant light, and something in the att.i.tude of the other man held his attention. For a moment he could not place him, then it flashed across his mind that this was the soldier Chambers, who had been the means of his missing the train at Chester on the memorable occasion when Ruth Macdonald had saved the day. It struck him as a strange thing that these two enemies of his whom he would have supposed to be strangers to one another should be talking thus intimately. To make sure of the man's ident.i.ty he waited until the two parted and Wainwright went his way, and then at a distance followed the other one until he was quite certain. He walked back thoughtfully trying to make it out. Had Wainwright then been at the bottom of his trouble that day? It began to seem quite possible. And how had Ruth Macdonald happened to be so opportunely present at the right moment? How had she happened to turn down that road, a road that was seldom used by people going to Baltimore?

It was all very strange and had never been satisfactorily explained. Ruth had evaded the question most plausibly every time he had brought it up.

Could it be that Wainwright had told her of a plot against him and she had reached out to help him? His heart leaped at the thought. Then at once he was sure that Wainwright had never told her, unless perhaps he had told some tale against him, and made him the b.u.t.t of a great joke.

Well, if he had she had cared enough to defend him and help him out without ever giving away the fact that she knew. But here, too, lay a thorn to disturb him. Why had Ruth Macdonald not told him the plain truth if she knew? Was she trying to s.h.i.+eld Harry Wainwright? Could she really care for that contemptible scoundrel?

The thought in all its phases tore his mind and kept him awake for hours, for the crux of the whole matter was that he was afraid that Ruth Macdonald was going to marry Lieutenant Wainwright, and he knew that it was not only for her sake, but for his also that he did not want this--that it was agony even to contemplate.

He told himself, of course, that his interest was utterly unselfish. That she was nothing to him but a friend and never would be, and that while it might be hard to see her belong to some fine man and know he never might be more than a pa.s.sing friend, still it would not be like seeing her tied to a rotten unprincipled fellow like Wainwright. The queer part of it was that the word "rotten" in connection with his enemy played a great part in his thoughts that night.

Somewhere in the watches of the night a memory came to him of the covenant he had made that day and a vague wistful reaching of his heart after the Christ to whom he was supposed to have surrendered his life. He wondered if a Christ such as the stranger had claimed He had, would take an interest in the affairs of Ruth Macdonald. Surely, such a flower of a girl would be protected if there was protection for anyone! And somehow he managed a queer little prayer for her, the first he had tried to put up. It helped him a little, and toward morning he fell asleep.

A few days later in glancing through his newly acquired Testament he came upon a verse which greatly troubled him for a time. His eye had caught it at random and somehow it lodged in his mind:

"Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye."

Somehow the principle of that verse did not fit with his proud spirit. He thought instantly of Wainwright's distasteful face and form. It seemed to loom before him with a smug triumphal sneer. His enmity toward the fellow had been of years standing, and had been deepened many times by unforgetable acts. There was nothing about Wainwright to make one forgive him. There was everything about him to make one want to punish him. When the verse first confronted Cameron he felt a rising indignation that there had been so much as a connection in his thoughts with his quarrel with Wainwright. Why, anybody that knew him knew Wainwright was wrong.

G.o.d must think so, too. That verse might apply to little quarrels but not to his feeling about the way Wainwright had treated him ever since they were children. That was not to be borne, of course. Those words he had called Cameron's father! How they made his blood boil even now! No, he would not forbear nor forgive Wainwright. G.o.d would not want him to do so. It was right he should be against him forever! Thus he dismissed the suggestion and turned to the beginning of his testament, having determined to find the Christ of whom the stranger had set him in search.

On the flyleaf of the little book the stranger had written a few words:

"And ye shall find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."--Jeremiah xxix: 13.

That meant no half-way business. He could understand that. Well, he was willing to put himself into the search fully. He understood that it was worth a whole-hearted search if one were really to find a G.o.d as a reward.

That night he wrote a letter to the minister in Bryne Haven asking for an interview when next he was able to get leave from camp. In the meantime he kept out of the way of Wainwright most adroitly, and found many ways to avoid a meeting.

There had been three awful days when his "peach of a captain" about whom he had spoken to Ruth, had been called away on some military errand and Wainwright had been the commanding officer. They had been days of gall and wormwood to Cameron, for his proud spirit could not bend to salute the man whom he considered a scoundrel, and Wainwright took a fine delight in using his power over his enemy to the limit. If it had not been for the unexpected return of the captain a day earlier than planned, Cameron might have had to suffer humiliations far greater than he did.

The bitterness between the two grew stronger, and Cameron went about with his soul boiling with rage and rebellion. It was only when Ruth's letters came that he forgot it all for a few minutes and lifted his thoughts to higher things.

XIII

It was a clear, crisp day in March with just a smell of Spring in the air, when Cameron finally united with the church.

He had taken a long time to think about it. Quarantine had extended itself away into February, and while his company had had its regular drill and hard work, there had been no leave from camp, no going to Y.M.C.A. huts, and no visiting canteens. They had been shut up to the company of the members of their own barracks, and there were times when that palled upon Cameron to a distressing degree. Once when it had snowed for three days, and rained on the top of it, and a chill wind had swept into the cracks and crannies of the barracks, and poured down from the ventilators in the roofs. The old stoves were roaring their best to keep up good cheer, and the men lay on their cots in rows talking; telling their vile stories, one after another, each to sound bigger than the last, some mere lads boasting of wild orgies, and all finally drifting into a chat on a sort of philosophy of the lowest ideals. Cameron lay on his cot trying to sleep, for he had been on guard all night, and a letter from Ruth was in his inside pocket with a comfortable crackle, but the talk that drifted about him penetrated even his army blankets when he drew them up over his ears.

The fellows had arrived at a point where a young lad from Texas had stated with a drawl that all girls were more or less bad; that this talk of the high standards of womanhood was all bosh; that there was one standard for men and women, yes, but it was man's standard, not woman's, as was written sometimes. White womanhood! Bah! There was no such thing!

In vain Cameron stuffed the blanket about his ears, resolutely shut his eyes and tried to sleep. His very blood boiled in his veins. The letter in his pocket cried out to be exonerated from this wholesale blackening.

Suddenly Cameron flung the blanket from him and sprang to his feet with a single motion, a tall soldier with a white flame of wrath in his face, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with fire. They called him in friendly derision the "Silent Corporal" because he kept so much to himself, but now he blazed forth at them:

"You lie, Kelly! You know you do! The whole lot of you are liars! You know that rot you've been talking isn't true. You know that it's to cover up your own vile deeds and to excuse your own l.u.s.tful pa.s.sions that you talk this way and try to persuade your hearts and consciences that you are no worse than the girls you have dishonored! But it isn't so and you know it! There _are_ good women! There always have been and there always will be! You, every one of you, know at least one. You are dishonoring your mothers and your sisters when you talk that way. You are worse than the beasts you are going out to fight. That's the rotten stuff they are teaching. They call it Kultur! You'll never win out against them if you go in that spirit, for it's their spirit and nothing more. You've got to go clean! If there's a G.o.d in heaven He's in this war, and it's got to be a clean war! And you've got to begin by thinking differently of women or you're just as bad as the Huns!"

With that he seized his poncho, stamped out into the storm, and tramped for two hours with a driving sleet in his face, his thoughts a fury of holy anger against unholy things, and back of it all the feeling that he was the knight of true womanhood. She had sent him forth and no man in his presence should defile the thought of her. It was during that tramp that he had made up his mind to ally himself with G.o.d's people. Whether it would do any good in the long run in his search for G.o.d or not, whether he even was sure he believed in G.o.d or not, he would do that much if he were permitted.

His interview with the minister had not made things much plainer. He had been told that he would grow into things. That the church was the shepherd-fold of the soul, that he would be nurtured and taught, that by and by these doubts and fears would not trouble him. He did not quite see it, how he was to be nurtured on the distant battlefield of France, but it was a mystical thing, anyway, and he accepted the statement and let it go at that. One thing that stuck in his heart and troubled him deeply was the way the minister talked to him about love and fellows.h.i.+p with his fellow men. As a general thing, Cameron had no trouble with his companions in life, but there were one or two, notably Wainwright and a young captain friend of his at camp, named Wurtz, toward whom his enmity almost amounted to hatred.

He was not altogether sure that the ministers suggestion that he might love the sinner and hate the sin would hold good with regard to Wainwright; but there had been only a brief time before the communion service and he had had to let the matter go. His soul was filled with a holy uplifting as he stepped out from the pastor's study and followed into the great church.

It had startled him just a little to find so many people there. In contemplating this act of allying himself with G.o.d he had always thought of it as being between himself and G.o.d, with perhaps the minister and an elder or two. He sat down in the place indicated for him much disturbed in spirit. It had always been an annoyance to him to be brought to the notice of his fellow townsmen, and a man in uniform in these days was more than ever an object of interest. His troubled gaze was downward during the opening hymns and prayers. But when he came to stand and take his vows he lifted his eyes, and there, off at one side where the seats grouped in a sort of transept, he caught a glimpse of Ruth Macdonald standing beside her tall Captain-cousin who was home for the day, and there was a light in her eyes that steadied him and brought back the solemnity of the moment once more. It thrilled him to think she was there. He had not realized before that this must be her church. In fact, he had not thought of it as being any church in particular, but as being a part of the great church invisible to which all G.o.d's children belonged. It had not occurred to him until that morning, either, that his mother might be hurt that he had not chosen her church. But when he spoke to her about it she shook her head and smiled. She was only glad of what he was doing. There were no regrets. She was too broad minded to stop about creeds. She was sitting there meekly over by the wall now, her hands folded quietly in her lap, tears of joy in her eyes. She, too, had seen Ruth Macdonald and was glad, but she wondered who the tall captain by her side might be.

It happened that Cameron was the only person uniting by confession at that time, for the quarantine had held him beyond the time the pastor had spoken of when so many were joining, and he stood alone, tall and handsome in his uniform, and answered in a clear, deep voice: "I do," "I will!" as the vows were put upon him one by one. Every word he meant from his heart, a longing for the G.o.d who alone could satisfy the longings of his soul.

He thrilled with strange new enthusiasm as the congregation of church members were finally called upon to rise and receive him into their fellows.h.i.+p, and looking across he saw Ruth Macdonald again and his beloved Captain La Rue standing together while everybody sang:

Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love; The fellows.h.i.+p of kindred minds Is like to that above.

But when the bread and the wine had been partaken of, the solemn prayer of dedication spoken, the beautiful service was over, and the rich tones of the organ were swelling forth, he suddenly felt strange and shy among all that crowd of people whom he knew by sight only. The elders and some of the other men and women shook hands with him, and he was trying to slip away and find his mother when a kindly hand was laid upon his shoulder and there stood the captain with Ruth beside him, and a warm hand shake of welcome into the church.

"I'm so glad," he said, "that you have taken this step. You will never regret it, Cameron. It is good that we can be of the same company here if we have failed in other ways." Then turning to Ruth he said:

"I didn't tell you, did I, Ruth, that I've failed in trying to get Cameron transferred to my division? I did everything I could, but they've turned down my application flatly. It seems like stupidity to me, for it was just the place for which he was most fitted, but I guess it's because he was too much of a man to stay in a quiet sector and do such work. If he had been maimed or half blinded they might have considered him. They need him in his present place, and I am the poorer for it."

There was a glow in Ruth's eyes as she put her hand in Cameron's and said simply: "I'm glad you're one of us now," that warmed his heart with a great gladness.

"I didn't know you were a member," he said wonderingly.

"Why, yes, I've been a member since I was fourteen," she said, and suddenly he felt that he had indeed come into a holy and blessed communion. If he had not yet found G.o.d, at least he was standing on the same ground with one of his holy children.

That was the last time he got home before he sailed. s.h.i.+pping quarantine was put on his company the very next week, the camp was closed to visitors, and all pa.s.ses annulled. The word came that they would be going over in a few days, but still they lingered, till the days grew into three weeks, and the Spring was fully upon them in all its beauty, touching even the bare camp with a fringe of greenness and a sprinkle of wild bloom in the corners where the clearing had not been complete.

Added to his other disappointments, a direful change had taken place at camp. The "peach of a captain" had been raised to the rank of major and Captain Wurtz had been put in his place. It seemed as if nothing worse could be.

The letters had been going back and forth rather often of late, and Cameron had walked to the loneliest spot in the camp in the starlight and had it out with himself. He knew now that Ruth Macdonald was the only girl in all the world to him. He also knew that there was not a chance in a thousand that he could ever be more to her than he now was. He knew that the coming months held pain for him, and yet, he would not go back and undo this beautiful friends.h.i.+p, no, not for all the pain that might come. It was worth it, every bit.

He had hoped to get one more trip home, and she had wanted to see the camp, had said that perhaps when the weather got warmer she might run down some day with his mother, but now the quarantine was on and that was out of the question. He walked alone to the places he would have liked to show her, and then with a sigh went to the telephone office and waited two hours till he got a connection through to her house, just to tell her how sorry he was that he could not come up as he had expected and take that ride with her that she had promised in her last letter. Somehow it comforted him to hear her voice. She had asked if there would be no lifting of the quarantine before they left, no opportunity to meet him somewhere and say good-bye, and he promised that he would let her know if any such chance came; but he had little hope, for company after company were being sent away in the troop trains now, hour after hour, and he might be taken any minute.