The Preacher of Cedar Mountain Part 5

"The divil an' all it is," said Jim. "Sure, ye ain't got the cheek to call a Methody s.h.i.+ndy hall the House of G.o.d. I think ye ought to be ashamed of yourself to give a lot of dacent farmers the hysterics like yer doin'."

"Young man, the spirit of the Lord is mighty, and cometh like a strong wind on the four corners of the house."

"Then why in the divil did ye blame me for it?" was the answer.

"Oh, son of Belial! h.e.l.l fire and eternal d.a.m.nation, a portion in the pit that burneth with fire, is the lot of those that desecrate the sanctuary of the Most High. I tell you it were better for you that you had never been born----"

"But sure, I am born; and it's mesilf that's aloive yet an' going strong."

"Oh, unregenerate blasphemer----"

But a sudden cry and commotion interrupted the preacher.

"Here, lay her down, get some water."

A little girl had been hurt in the crush and now she had fainted. The threats of the men had roused Jim to his joyful, battle enthusiasm. The onslaught of the preacher had stirred his sense of humour; but the poor, limp, and seemingly dead form of the little girl, a child whom he knew and had often petted, was an attack he was ill-prepared to meet.

"There, see what you have done. It were better that a millstone were hanged about your neck and that you were cast into the depths of the sea than that you should have harmed this little one. Her blood be on your head."

The mother was kneeling by the child, unwisely holding up its head. She was praying intently; the air was full of religious fervour. "Oh, G.o.d, spare my baby. Oh, G.o.d, be merciful."

Jim heard the words and they entered his soul like a two-edged sword.

All the fun of the incident was gone, and all the cruelty, the unkindness, the wickedness, loomed large and larger. With his intense nature, subject to the most violent reactions, the effect was profound.

It seemed to him, as he stood there, that a veil dissolved before his eyes and that he saw himself and his life for the first time. There had ever been two natures struggling in his soul, the calm and wise one of his Ulster blood of placid Saxon stock, and that of the wild and fiery Celt from Donegal, ready to fight, ready to sing, ever ready for fun, but ever the easy prey of deep remorse in even measure with the mood of pa.s.sion that foreran and begot it.

Smitten from within and without, utter humiliation, self-accusation, and abas.e.m.e.nt filled his soul. Jim sank to the ground by the little girl, and wept in an agony of remorse.

"Young man," said the exhorter, "if G.o.d in His mercy has sent me here to save your soul from eternal d.a.m.nation by this h.e.l.lish deed of yours, then shall I rejoice and praise the Lord, that out of fire and brimstone He can create a golden pathway."

The little girl now opened her eyes and with a cry of relief the mother sought to lift her up, but had not the strength. Jim's mighty arms were eager for service, and with that soft, limp little body against his broad chest, her head on his shoulder, his heart was filled with inexpressible emotion.

"Bring her in here," and the remnant of the congregation rea.s.sembled in the church. In the very front was Jim, sitting by the mother with the little girl between them. His head was bowed on his hands, his elbows on his knees.

Then the exhorter began again. Full of scriptural texts charged with holy fire, abounding in lurid thoughts of burning lakes, of endless torment; gifted with the fluency that sometimes pa.s.ses for logic and makes for convincement, he dwelt on the horrors and the might-have-beens. He shouted out his creeds of holiness, he rumbled in his chest and made graphic mouthings. He played on all the emotions until he found the most responsive, and then hammered hard on these. The big broad shoulders before him shook, tears fell from the half-hidden face. Then the preacher chanced to strike on the note, "your mother,"

and Jim Hartigan's breakdown was complete. He sobbed, "Oh, G.o.d, be merciful to me, a sinner," and rising, staggered to a place on the upraised bench--the seat of those who dared to hope for salvation--and wept.

Carried away by his own vehemence, the exhorter wept, too. There was no human being in the hall who could stand the overwhelming surge of emotion. The congregation wept. Then Jim arose and in broken voice said: "My mother's dying prayer was that I might join the Church and be a witness for G.o.d. As sure as she is looking down on me now I promise that I will join His people and niver rest till I have been made fit to stand among those who bear His message. I give my word as a man."

CHAPTER IX

Jim Hartigan Goes to College

Hartigan never walked in the middle of the road. He was either in the ditch or on the high place. Having "got religion" it was inevitable, with his nature, that he should become a leader in the fold. That vision of himself as a preacher, fully ordained, which had burst upon him at the revival, filled his mind. His mother's last wish resounded in his ears with all the imperative force of a voice from the grave and he was emotionally ripe for such inner urgings.

The difficulties in the way of such a course would have daunted most men; but Jim was going strong for the moment, and to him impossibilities were mere trivialities. The Rev. Obadiah Champ, with others who were proud of the new convert, took him before the Board of Deacons and there Jim made his ambitions known. He was illiterate, friendless, penniless, and already twenty-three. He had no taste for study or a life of self-control; meekness and spirituality were as much to his liking now as travelling on a bog is to a blooded horse.

But his magnificent presence, his glib Irish tongue, his ready wit, his evident warmth and sincerity, were too much for the reverend bearded ones of the Board. They were carried away, as most humans were, by his personal charm. They listened with beaming faces. They cast significant glances at one another. They sent Jim into another room while they discussed his fate. In twenty minutes he was brought back to hear their decision. "Yes, they would accept him as a chosen vessel to bear the grace of G.o.d abroad among the people. They would educate him without expense to himself. He might begin his college career at once."

In the ordinary course, Jim would have set to work with a tutor in Links to prepare himself to enter Coulter College at the next term. But life seemed to order itself in unusual ways when it was a question concerning Jim. He had no home in Links; he had no money to pay a tutor; he was as eager as a child to begin the serious work; and his ardour burnt all the barriers away. He became at once an inmate of Coulter, a special protege of the president's, admitted really as a member of the latter's family, and bound by many rules and promises. In preparation for his formal entry he was required to devote six hours a day to study, and those who knew him of old had given the president a hint to exact from Jim his "wurd as a mahn" that he would do his daily task.

In looking back on those days Jim used to revile them for their uselessness and waste. What he did not understand until life had put him through the fire was that the months at Coulter broke him to harness. It was beyond the wildest imagining that a youth brought up as Jim had been should step from a life of boisterous carousing in a backwoods settlement into a seminary and find congenial or helpful occupation among books. And yet the shock, the change of environment, the subst.i.tution of discipline for license and, above all, the heroic struggle of the man to meet this new order of existence--these were the things, the fine metals of a great soul, which life was hammering, hammering into shape.

What this period meant to Jim no one but himself knew. The agony of spirit and of body was intense. He had given his word to go through with it and he did. But every instinct, every a.s.sociation of his old life led his mind abroad. Every bird that flew to the roof or hopped on the lawn was a strong attraction; every sound of a horse's hoof aroused his wayward interest; and the sight of a horse sent him rus.h.i.+ng incontinently to the window. At the beginning, the football captain had pounced on him as the very stuff he needed, and Jim responded as the warhorse does to the bugle. He loved the game and he was an invaluable addition to the team. And yet, helpful as such an outlet was for his pent-up energy, his partic.i.p.ation merely created new tortures, so that the sight of a sweater crossing the lawn became maddening to him in the hours of study. He had never liked books, and now as the weeks went by he learned to loathe them.

It is greatly to be feared that in a fair, written examination with an impartial jury, Jim Hartigan would have been badly plucked on his college entrance. But great is the power of personality. The president's wife behaved most uncollegiately. She interested herself in Jim; she had interviews with the examiners; she discovered in advance questions to be asked; she urged upon the authorities the absolute necessity of accepting this promising student. The president himself was biased. He hinted that the function of examiners was not so much to make absolute measurement of scholastic attainments as to manifest a discretionary view of possibilities, and to remember that examination papers were often incapable of gauging the most important natural endowments of the candidate; that sometimes when it was necessary to put a blood horse over a five-barred gate, the wisest horseman laid the gate down flat.

The admonitions were heeded, the gate laid flat, and the thoroughbred entered the pasture. But to Jim, caught up in the wearisome cla.s.sroom grind, the days held no glimmer of light. Of what possible value, he asked himself again and again, could it be to know the history of Nippur? Why should the cuneiforms have any bearing on the morals of a backwoods Canadian? Would the grace of G.o.d be less effective if the purveyor of it was unaware of what Sprool's Commentaries said about the Alexandrian heresy? Was not he, Jim Hartigan, a more eloquent speaker now, by far, than Silas McSilo, who read his Greek testament every morning? And he wrote to the Rev. Obadiah Champ: "It's no use. I don't know how to study. I'm sorry to get up in the morning and glad to go to bed and forget it. I'd rather be in jail than in college. I hate it more every day." But Jim had given his "wurd as a mahn" and he hammered away sadly and sorrowfully as one who has no hope, as one who is defeated but continues to fight merely because he knows not how to surrender.

CHAPTER X

Escape to Cedar Mountain

It is generally admitted that a college offers two main things, book learning and atmosphere. Of these the latter is larger and more vital, if it be good. If the college lose ground in either essential, the loss is usually attributable to a leading set of students. Coulter was losing ground, and the growth of a spirit of wildness in its halls was no small worry to the president. He knew whence it sprang, and his anxiety was the greater as he thought of it. Then a happy inspiration came. Jim's dislike of books had intensified. He had promised to study for one year.

According to the rules, a student, after completing his first year, might be sent into the field as an a.s.sistant pastor, to be in actual service under an experienced leader for one year, during which he was not obliged to study.

To Jim this way out was an escape from a cavern to the light of day, and every officer of Coulter College breathed a sigh of relief as he packed his bag and started for the West.

It was in truth a wending of the Spirit Trail when Jim set out; as if the Angel of Destiny had said to the lesser Angel of Travel: "Behold, now for a time he is yours. You can serve him best." Jim's blood was more than red; it was intense scarlet. He hankered for the sparkling cups of life, being alive in every part--to ride and fight and burn in the sun, to revel in strife, to suffer, struggle, and quickly strike and win, or as quickly get the knockout blow! Valhalla and its ancient fighting creed were the hunger in his blood, and how to translate that age-old living feeling into terms of Christianity was a problem to which Jim's reason found no adequate answer. He talked of a better world, of peace and harps and denial and submission, because that was his job. He had had it drilled into him at Coulter; but his flas.h.i.+ng eye, his mighty sweeping hand, gave the lie to every word of meekness that fell from his school-bound tongue. He longed for life in its fullest, best, most human form. He was fiery as a pirate among the wild rowdies he had lived with yet he had that other side--a child or a little girl could bully him into absolute, abject submission.

Whoever knows the West of the late '70s can have no doubt as to where the whirlpool of red-blooded life surged deepest, most irresistibly; where the strong alone could live and where the strongest only could win. In the Black Hills the strongest of the savages met the strongest of the whites, and there every human l.u.s.t and crime ran riot. It was not accident but a far-sighted wisdom on the part of his directors that sent Jim to Cedar Mountain.

This town of the Black Hills was then in the transition stage. The cut-throat border element was gone. The law and order society had done its work. The ordinary machinery of justice was established and doing fairly well. The big strikes of gold were things of the past; now plodding Chinese and careful Germans were making profitable daily wages; and farmers were taking the places of the ranchmen. But there was still a rowdy element in the one end of the town, where cowboy and miner left their horses waiting for half the night, by the doors of noisy life and riot. This was the future field of pastoral work selected for the Rev.

James Hartigan by elders wise in the testing of the human spirit.

All alone, Jim set forth on his three days' journey from Coulter, by way of Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago, to the West, and seldom has a grown man had so little knowledge of the world to rely upon. On the train he met with a painted woman, whose smirks and overtures he did not understand; and some farmer folk of simple kindness. In the coach, where all slept on their seats at night, he was like another brother to the little folks, and when a lumberjack, taking advantage of his size, sought to monopolize two seats, whereby the old farmer was left standing, Jim's mild and humorous "Sure, I wouldn't do that; it doesn't seem neighbourly," as he tapped the ruffian's shoulder, put a new light on the matter; and the lumberjack, after noting the shoulders of the speaker, decided that it _wasn't_ neighbourly, and removed his feet.

Most of the pa.s.sengers said "good-bye" at Chicago, and the rest at Sidney Junction, where Jim changed cars for the last leg of the journey.

He had no sooner transferred himself and his bag to the waiting train than there entered his coach five new pa.s.sengers who at once attracted his full attention--a Jesuit missionary and four Sioux Indians. The latter were in the clothes of white men, the Jesuit in his clerical garb. They settled into the few available places and Jim found himself sharing his seat with the black-robed missionary.

All his early training had aimed to inspire him with hatred of the papist, and the climax of popery, he believed, was a Jesuit. He had never met one before, yet he knew the insignia and he was not at all disposed to be friendly. But the black-robe was a man of the world, blessed with culture, experience, and power; and before half an hour, in spite of himself, Jim found himself chatting amicably with this arch enemy. The missionary was full of information about the country and the Indians; and Jim, with the avidity of the boy that he was, listened eagerly, and learned at every sentence. The experience held a succession of wholesome shocks for him; for, next to the detested papist, he had been taught to look down on the "poor, miserable bastes of haythens,"

that knew nothing of G.o.d or Church. And here, to his surprise, was a priest who was not only a kindly, wise, and lovable soul, but who looked on the heathen not as utterly despicable, but as a human being who lacked but one essential of true religion, the one that he was there to offer.

"Yes," continued the missionary, "when I came out here as a young man twenty-five years ago, I thought about the Indians much as you do. But I have been learning. I know now that in their home lives they are a kind and hospitable people. The white race might take them as models in some particulars, for the widow, the orphan, the old, and the sick are ever first cared for among them. We are told that the love of money is the root of all evil; and yet this love of money, in spite of all the white man can do to inculcate it, has no place at all in the Indian heart."

Jim listened in astonishment, first to hear the dreadful savages set so high by one who knew them and had a right to speak, but chiefly to find such fair-mindedness and goodness in one who, according to all he had ever heard, must be, of course, a very demon in disguise, at war with all who were not of his faith. Then the thought came, "Maybe this is all put on to fool me." But at this point two of the Indians came over to speak to the missionary. Their respectful but cordial manner could not well have been put on and was an answer to his unspoken question.

"Are these men Catholics?" he asked.

"I'm afraid not yet," said the priest, "although I believe they are influenced strongly. They observe some of the practices of the Church and cling to others of their own."