Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police Part 47

Soothed by the cool shade, Cameron loitered along the path, pausing to learn of Tim the names of plants and trees as he went.

"Ain't yeh never comin'?" called Mandy from the gloom far in front.

"What's all the rush?" replied Tim, impatiently, who loved nothing better than a quiet walk with Cameron through the woods.

"Rush? We'll be late, and I hate walkin' up before the hull crowd. Come on!" cried his sister in impatient tone.

"All right, Mandy, we're nearly through the woods. I begin to see the clearing yonder," said Cameron, pointing to where the light was beginning to show through the tree tops before them.

But they were late enough, and Mandy was glad of the cover of the opening hymn to allow her to find her way to a group of her girl friends, the males of the party taking shelter with a neighbouring group of their own s.e.x near by.

Upon the sloping sides of the gra.s.sy hills and under the beech and maple trees, the vanguard of the retreating woods, sat the congregation, facing the preacher, who stood on the gra.s.sy level below. Behind them was the solid wall of thick woods, over them time spreading boughs, and far above the trees the blue summer sky, all the bluer for the little white clouds that sailed serene like s.h.i.+ps upon a sea. At their feet lay the open country, checkered by the snake fences into fields of yellow, green, and brown, and rolling away to meet the woods at the horizon.

The Sabbath rest filled the sweet air, breathed from the shady woods, rested upon the checkered fields, and lifted with the hymn to the blue heaven above. A stately cathedral it was, this place of wors.h.i.+p, filled with the incense of flowers and fields, arched by the high dome of heaven, and lighted by the glory of the setting sun.

Relieved by the walk for a time from the ache in his head, Cameron surrendered himself to the mysterious influences of the place and the hour. He let his eyes wander over the fields below him to the far horizon, and beyond--beyond the woods, beyond the intervening leagues of land and sea--and was again gazing upon the sunlit loveliness of the Cuagh Oir. The Glen was abrim with golden light this summer evening, the purple was on the hills and the little loch gleamed sapphire at the bottom.

The preacher was reading his text.

"Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to every man according to his several ability, and straightway took his journey,"

and so on to the end of that marvellously wise tale, wise with the wisdom of G.o.d, confirmed by the wisdom of human experience.

The Reverend Harper Freeman's voice could hardly, even by courtesy, be called musical; in fact, it was harsh and strident; but this evening the hills, and the trees, and the wide open s.p.a.ces, Nature's mighty modulator, subdued the harshness, so that the voice rolled up to the people clear, full, and sonorous. Nor was the preacher possessed of great learning nor endued with the gift of eloquence. He had, however, a shrewd knowledge of his people and of their ways and of their needs, and he had a kindly heart, and, more than all, he had the preacher's gift, the divine capacity for taking fire.

For a time his words fell unheeded upon Cameron's outer ear.

"To every man his own endowments, some great, some small, but, mark you, no man left quite poverty-stricken. G.o.d gives every man his chance. No man can look G.o.d in the face, not one of you here can say that you have had no chance."

Cameron's vagrant mind, suddenly recalled, responded with a quick a.s.sent. Opportunity? Endowment? Yes, surely. His mind flashed back over the years of his education at the Academy and the University, long lazy years. How little he had made of them! Others had turned them into the gold of success. He wondered how old Dunn was getting on, and Linklater, and little Martin. How far away seemed those days, and yet only some four or five months separated him from them.

"One was a failure, a dead, flat failure," continued the preacher.

"Not so much a wicked man, no murderer, no drunkard, no gambler, but a miserable failure. Poor fellow! At the end of life a wretched bankrupt, losing even his original endowment. How would you like to come home after ten, twenty, thirty years of experiment with life and confess to your father that you were dead broke and no good?"

Again Cameron's mind came back from its wandering with a start. Go back to his father a failure! He drew his lip down hard over his teeth. Not while he lived! And yet, what was there in prospect for him? His whole soul revolted against the dreary monotony and the narrowness of his present life, and yet, what other path lay open? Cameron went straying in fancy over the past, or in excursions into the future, while, parallel with his rambling, the sermon continued to make its way through its various heads and particulars.

"Why?" The voice of the preacher rose clear, dominant, arresting. "Why did he fail so abjectly, so meanly, so despicably? For there is no excuse for a failure. Listen! No man NEED fail. A man who is a failure is a mean, selfish, lazy chump." Mr. Freeman was colloquial, if anything. "Some men pity him. I don't. I have no use for him, and he is the one thing in all the world that G.o.d himself has no use for."

Again Cameron's mind was jerked back as a runaway horse by a rein. So far his life had been a failure. Was there then no excuse for failure?

What of his upbringing, his education, his environment? He had been indulging the habit during these last weeks of s.h.i.+fting responsibility from himself for what he had become.

"What was the cause of this young man's failure?" reiterated the preacher. The preacher had a wholesome belief in the value of reiteration. He had a habit of rubbing in his points. "He blamed the boss. Listen to his impudence! 'I knew thee to be a hard man.' He blamed his own temperament and disposition. 'I was afraid.' But the boss brings him up sharp and short. 'Quit lying!' he said. 'I'll tell you what's wrong with you. You've got a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're too lazy to live. Here, take that money from him and give it to the man that can do most with it, and take this useless loafer out of my sight.'

And served him right, too, say I, impudent, lazy liar."

Cameron found his mind rising in wrathful defense of the unhappy wretched failure in the story. But the preacher was utterly relentless and proceeded to enlarge upon the character of the unhappy wretch.

"Impudent! The way to tell an impudent man is to let him talk. Now listen to this man cheek the boss! 'I knew you,' he said. 'You skin everybody in sight.' I have always noticed," remarked the preacher, with a twinkle in his eye, "that the hired man who can't keep up his end is the kind that cheeks the boss. And so it is with life. Why, some men would cheek Almighty G.o.d. They turn right round and face the other way when G.o.d is explaining things to them, when He is persuading them, when He is trying to help them. Then they glance back over their shoulders and say, 'Aw, gwan! I know better than you.' Think of the impudence of them! That's what many a man does with G.o.d. With G.o.d, mind you! G.o.d!

Your Father in heaven, your Brother, your Saviour, G.o.d as you know him in the Man of Galilee, the Man you always see with the sick and the outcast and the broken-hearted. It is this G.o.d that owns you and all you've got--be honest and say so. You must begin by getting right with G.o.d."

"G.o.d!" Once more Cameron went wandering back into the far away days of childhood. G.o.d was very near then, and very friendly. How well he remembered when his mother had tucked him in at night and had kissed him and had put out the light. He never felt alone and afraid, for she left him, so she said, with G.o.d. It was G.o.d who took his mother's place, near to his bedside. In those days G.o.d seemed very near and very kind. He remembered his mother's look one day when he declared to her that he could hear G.o.d breathing just beside him in the dark. How remote G.o.d seemed to-day and how shadowy, and, yes, he had to confess it, unfriendly. He heard no more of the sermon. With a curious ache in his heart he allowed his mind to dwell amid those happy, happy memories when his mother and G.o.d were the nearest and dearest to him of all he knew.

It may have been the ache in his head or the oppressive languor that seemed to possess his body, but throughout the prayer that followed the sermon he was conscious chiefly of a great longing for his mother's touch upon his head, and with that a longing for his boyhood's sense of the friendly G.o.d in his heart.

And so as the preacher led them up to G.o.d in prayer, Cameron bowed his head with the others, thankful that he could still believe that, though clouds and darkness might be about Him, G.o.d was not beyond the reach of the soul's cry nor quite unmoved by human need. And for the first time for years he sent forth as a little child his cry of need, "G.o.d help me!

G.o.d help me!"

CHAPTER VII

THE CHIVAREE

There was still light enough to see. The last hymn was announced.

Cameron was conscious of a deep, poignant emotion. He glanced swiftly about him. The eyes of all were upon the preacher's face while he read in slow sonorous tones the words of the old Methodist hymn:

"Come, Thou Fount of every blessing!

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;"

all except the group of young men of whom Perkins was the centre, who, by means of the saccharine medium known as conversation lozenges, were seeking to divert the attention of the band of young girls sitting before them. Among these sat Mandy. As his eye rested upon the billowy outlines of her figure, struggling with the limitations of her white blouse, tricked out with pink ribbons, he was conscious of a wave of mingled pity and disgust. Dull, stupid, and vulgar she looked. It was at her that Perkins was flipping his conversation lozenges. One fell upon her hymn book. With a start she glanced about. Not an eye except Cameron's was turned her way. With a smile and a blush that burned deep under the dull tan of her neck and cheek she took the lozenge, read its inscription, burning a deeper red. The words which she had read she took as Cameron's. She turned her eyes full upon his face. The light of tremulous joy in their lovely depths startled and thrilled him.

A snicker from the group of young men behind roused in him a deep indignation. They were taking their coa.r.s.e fun out of this simple-minded girl. Cameron's furious glance at them appeared only to increase their amus.e.m.e.nt. It did not lessen Cameron's embarra.s.sment and rage that now and then during the reading of the hymn Mandy's eyes were turned upon him as if with new understanding. Enraged with himself, and more with the group of hoodlums behind him, Cameron stood for the closing hymn with his arms folded across his breast. At the second verse a hand touched his arm. It was Mandy offering him her book. Once more a snicker from the group of delighted observers behind him stirred his indignation on behalf of this awkward and untutored girl. He forced himself to listen to the words of the third verse, which rose clear and sonorous in the preacher's voice:

"Here I raise my Ebenezer, Hither by Thy help I'm come; And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home."

The serene a.s.surance of the old Methodist hymn rose triumphant in the singing, an a.s.surance born of an experience of past conflict ending in triumph. That note of high and serene confidence conjured up with a flash of memory his mother's face. That was her characteristic, a serene, undismayed courage. In the darkest hours that steady flame of courage never died down.

But once more he was recalled to the service of the hour by a voice, rich, full, low, yet of wonderful power, singing the old words. It took him a moment or two to discover that it was Mandy singing beside him.

Her face was turned from him and upwards towards the trees above her, through the network of whose leaves the stars were beginning to s.h.i.+ne.

Amazed, enthralled, he listened to the flowing melody of her voice.

It was like the song of a brook running deep in the forest shade, full-toned yet soft, quiet yet thrilling. She seemed to have forgotten her surroundings. Her soul was holding converse with the Eternal. He lost sight of the coa.r.s.e and fleshly habiliments in the glimpse he caught of the soul that lived within, pure, it seemed to him, tender, and good. His heart went out to the girl in a new pity. Before the hymn was done she turned her face towards him, and, whether it was the magic of her voice, or the glorious splendour of her eyes, or the mystic touch of the fast darkening night, her face seemed to have lost much of its coa.r.s.eness and all of its stupidity.

As the congregation dispersed, Cameron, in silence, and with the spell of her voice still upon him, walked quietly beside Mandy towards the gap in the fence leading to the high road. Behind him came Perkins with his group of friends, chaffing with each other and with the girls walking in front of them. As Cameron was stepping over the rails where the fence had been let down, one of the young men following stumbled heavily against him, nearly throwing him down, and before he could recover himself Perkins had taken his place by Mandy's side and seized her arm.

There was a general laugh at what was considered a perfectly fair and not unusual piece of jockeying in the squiring of young damsels. The proper procedure in such a case was that the discomfited cavalier should bide his time and serve a like turn upon his rival, the young lady meanwhile maintaining an att.i.tude purely pa.s.sive. But Mandy was not so minded. Releasing herself from Perkins' grasp, she turned upon the group of young men following, exclaiming angrily, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sam Sailor!" Then, moving to Cameron's side, she said in a clear, distinct voice:

"Mr. Cameron, would you please take my book for me?"

"Come on, boys!" said Perkins, with his never failing laugh. "I guess we're not in this."

"Take your medicine, Perkins," laughed one of his friends.

"Yes, I'll take it all right," replied Perkins. But the laugh could not conceal the shake of pa.s.sion in his voice. "It will work, too, you bet!"

So saying, he strode off into the gathering gloom followed by his friends.

"Come along, Mr. Cameron," said Mandy with a silly giggle. "I guess we don't need them fellows. They can't fool us, can they?"

Her manner, her speech, her laugh rudely dissipated all Cameron's new feeling towards her. The whole episode filled him only with disgust and annoyance.

"Come, then," he said, almost roughly. "We shall need to hurry, for there is a storm coming up."