Part 14

Mrs. Thorpe checked the sudden tears that sprang to her eyes. Years before she had believed that it was service that was demanded of her, and she had besought the Lord that she might see the fruit of her endeavor, the harvest of her labor; that a visible sign might be given her. Dare she doubt that her prayer was answered, or hesitate to recognize the answer? Dare she turn her eyes from this Infinite love, or escape this deluge of blessing, even though it overwhelmed and overpowered her? She thought of the children of Israel, how they had besought Moses to veil his face after he had talked with God. Was she, too, unable to bear the brightness of the light? Must she beseech the Lord to again draw the veil between her and His kingdom that the ecstasy of answered prayer might not become too great for her soul to bear?

Margaret, who had been assisting a girl who had lingered over her task, now crossed the room and joined them.

"Come with us to tea, Mrs. Thorpe," she urged. "We love to have you with us. Mother and Jamie will expect you to-night, I am sure."

"Yes, come with us, sister," added Max. "We are always wishing for your presence in our home."

"Very well," Mrs. Thorpe replied, "your hospitality is sweet to me."

After the evening meal was over they sat out on the broad cottage porch and discussed various aspects of their work. From adjoining cottages could be heard the chatter and laughter of children's voices. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers; the sun was nearing the horizon and its radiance lay over the Flat, no longer the unlovely Flat, but a collection of comfortable homes whose inmates, sure of employment and, more than this, sure of justice and equity, had in a measure fallen into harmony with the forces that make for righteousness.

The air of peace and quiet that had fallen over the little group on the porch was broken by the arrival of a carriage at the gate. Dr. Eldrige assisted his wife to alight, and Margaret and Max went down the walk to meet them. There was cordial frankness in their greeting, sincere and whole-hearted. As they neared the steps Mrs. Thorpe came forward, and after greeting Geraldine, stooped and put her arms about the child; he put his chubby arms close about her neck and laid his soft, pink cheek against her face. How dear to her heart was the love of this child!

The two men walked leisurely up to the house; Geraldine, in a simple white gown that caused her face with the golden hair above it to appear like the petals of some rare-tinted flower, stood against the dark outline of vines that screened the porch. All that her girlhood promised had blossomed into womanhood; maternity had developed all that was best and noblest in her.

From a nearby cottage a ripple of childish laughter floated out on the evening air. Geraldine turned to her companions.

"Does earth contain sweeter music than the laugh of a child?" she said. "I often think that the transformation of this Flat is more wonderful than any of the fairy tales that enchanted our childhood."

"It is a demonstration of the brotherhood of man, almost beyond belief," Dr. Eldrige replied.

"To do what lies before us, just that which comes to our hand to do, to be true to the best within us, is not so remarkable a thing to do," Max replied, and his eyes met Geraldine's honestly. "It is in the results that the wonder lies."

After a time the two men fell into a discussion of ways and means concerning both the health and morals of the laborers on the Flat, and Margaret took Geraldine to see her garden. Mrs. Thorpe accompanied them, and Mrs. McGowan and Jamie joined them. The child, with Jamie for an escort, played about the garden paths and filled his hands with flowers, and Margaret and her companions made themselves comfortable on a rustic garden seat.

Margaret had a gift of understanding that made it possible for her to read her husband's wishes and to know his needs; now she knew that he would join them, unless for some reason he wished to be alone with his friend. The loyal friendship of Dr. Eldrige Jr., freely given, had, she knew, been meat and drink to Max, and had been invaluable to him in his work.

After the matter concerning the work on the Flat was disposed of, the two men continued their talk.

"Old Edgerly is still in throes of incredulity over your operations on this side of the hill, Max," the doctor said.

"Yes, I have heard her groanings from afar; queer why the old town should suffer so!"

"Yes, it is strange; father has been roaring like a lion, but he has taken to silence, absolute silence!"

Max smiled at thought of the stormy old man reduced to silence.

"I had not supposed it was so bad as that," he said.

There was the best of comradeship between the two men, although little had been said concerning the past. Events had run their course in such a manner that Dr. Eldrige Jr. felt that he had no grievance to cherish; and however slow one might be to accept the reformation in Max Morrison's character, the transformation in his life and work was patent to all.

Max leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands back of his head.

"It's a queer world we live in, doctor," he said, "a queer old world."

Dr. Eldrige Jr. regarded him in silence; he was not quite sure of Max's attitude toward conditions, as he had found them since his return to his native land, and he had no desire to probe an old wound nor to inflict a new one. And, at best, Dr. Eldrige was a man of few words.

"I used to live over in Edgerly," Max continued, ignoring the doctor's silence, "over in Christian Edgerly. I had, I think, the heart of a man in me, yet I was a villain--you know what I was--I ought to have been shot, shot like a cur--yet Edgerly favored me, sought and pampered me. But now that I have put my hand to an honest work--to help the needy, to feed and clothe the poor--the good old town has at least every other day a new motive, each more sinister than the other, to impute to my actions." He sprang to his feet and walked the length of the porch and back. "Eldrige," he said, "I had thought never to impose on your friendship by bringing up the past; but I feel to-night as though I may break my good resolutions."

"Do not be afraid of imposing on my friendship, Max; speak of the past as freely as you like. You know me--we know each other."

"You know my temperament, Eldrige; I have always been a devil of a fellow when aroused; and the attitude of those good people over there beyond the hill arouses me a bit. There is a little woman here on the Flat that chides me for this attitude, and tells me that I am wasting good strength fighting windmills. But I have not arrived at a place where I can view other people's unaccountable conduct and shortcomings in the calm, unruffled manner in which Mrs. Thorpe views them."

"I find no difficulty in seeing Mrs. Thorpe's viewpoint, Max. She proves by her daily life and work that she is a follower of the one perfect Man; she heals the sick and reforms the sinner through her understanding of the Divine Law. This, to me, seems simple and natural, and she allows nothing to fret or trouble her. But I am going to be perfectly frank with you, and tell you that I cannot so readily understand your attitude. I think I have never deluded myself into believing that I understand you, Max; a man who has it in him to do the work that you are doing here on this Flat, aroused by adverse criticism--why man--"

"There, Eldrige, stop, please! I thought you understood me better than that. Why, man, criticism tones me up--puts me in good working order; antagonism exhilarates me, persecution inspires me. But what of those who criticise, antagonize and persecute? There's the rub--that's what arouses me. Why should professing Christian people hold up their hands and shout themselves hoarse because some fellow does an act of kindness to his fellow men? It's not criticism that I care for, but it does arouse the very devil in me to see Christian people stand in wide-eyed, open-mouthed astonishment before a Christian deed. You see, I have not the religion that Mrs. Thorpe has; in fact, I am not at all sure that I have any religion whatever. I think it possible, and I may say that I really hope it possible that I may some day come into the scientific understanding of life that Mrs. Thorpe has attained; but at present I am trying only to do the square thing by my fellow men."

The doctor looked him over deliberately.

"If ever I am able to understand the man you are, Max, I think it will be when I am a better man myself than I am now. You may not call yourself a religious man, but there is a force back of your life, a force of some kind that I did not know that the universe contained; there is some secret here that I have not been able to find out."

"I don't agree with you there, Eldrige; there's no secret about it, there's nothing hidden nor concealed; all is open and clear as the sun in mid-heaven. The trouble is our eyes are holden, we are blind and dumb and dead--I wish I could make you see things from my viewpoint--there are a thousand things I would tell you if I could."

Max was not looking at the doctor now; his eyes were far away upon the distant horizon. "I would tell you something of the influence of my early bringing up," he said, "a pampered child of wealth; something of the force of Christianity, as it was taught and lived in my home; something of the time when I passed from boyhood to manhood, idle, with more money than I could spend--honestly; something of the day when I first looked into the eyes of the woman I love--innocent, beseeching--"

He arose again and walked back and forth across the porch.

"I can't do it, Eldrige--I've no words to make you understand," he said, "you who have lived a clean life, you who have always worked--" He drew his chair up near to the doctor and sat down again. "I really think," he said, in a quieter tone, "that during that period of my life I was not so much bad as blind and dead--the man in me had never been born; I was a clod, a lump of clay, with the instincts of the beast. Our civilization! Our Christianity!--Damn!--I'll try not to be profane, doctor. But this is why I say I am not a religious man; I tell you I had as soon trust the chances of the brownest skinned, dumb beast of a man that I knew on those far islands of the sea as the chances of the son of the average wealthy Christian parents in this Christian land.

"I am not going to be profane, not if I can help it, and I am not going to allow myself to become unduly excited, but the rashest language that our vocabulary contains could not portray the fires of hell that burned within me when I left my native land, beaten and broken. I was furious--furious because I had missed the heart and center of life--why should I have missed it? I desired the beautiful, satisfying things of life; I had the base and unclean; and I was furious with myself, my family, society--the whole world."

There was silence for a few moments. The doctor said nothing; then Max spoke again: "I know, Eldrige, and you know, that the truth and purity in your wife's heart was the whip and scourge that drove me to my manhood."

The doctor extended his hand, and met Max's hand in a firm, keen clasp.

"When I found that truth and purity, uprightness and a clean soul are the real gems of life, the beautiful things, the lasting and abiding and satisfying things, I wanted them for myself," Max continued, "and no fires of hell can ever burn and sear as did the belief that I had lost them irrevocably; that through the conduct that my family had ignored and society had condoned I had with my own hand shut myself off from them forever. I think my indignation was directed not so much at myself as at the civilized world, the society, church, and family that had offered no resistance and put no check on my journey to perdition. But when I came back to my native land I had had some experiences that made another man of me. When a man goes down into the valley and stands on the border he sees things with a clearer vision. I had no desire then to shift the responsibility of my misspent life upon either people or institutions. I think I saw more clearly, perhaps, than I had before the faults and weaknesses in our institutions, and the lack of moral stamina in those who take upon themselves the training of the young; but these were not the things that counted with me then, not the things I cared about. No, I tell you I was face to face with my own soul then, and nothing else counted! The inexorability of it! There was no way to escape, no way to shift or turn, no excuses, no deceits, no subterfuges. Absolute, immovable Justice is the most grim-faced thing that a man can meet. It was not until after I had met this grim fellow, and laid my black life bare before him, asking nothing, deserving nothing, that any peace came to me. But after this I knew--I cannot tell you how I knew--but the knowledge came to me that over this sinning and suffering life there lies the great Life, tender, compassionate Love.

"When I came back to this Flat and found Margaret, and looked into her face, and saw the transformation there, then I knew that there is a God, and to know this, that there is a God, is to know that the whole duty, pleasure and profit of man is to serve Him by serving his fellow men, and this, without any meeting-house religion whatever, is what I have been trying to do.

"My mother and sister go every Sunday and worship in the beautiful church yonder on the hill. They have never recognized my wife, although my mother knows, as God knows, that the guilt was mine more than it was Margaret's. My mother is a Christian woman, according to accepted standards, and far be it from me to reproach or judge her, but the son that she reared had a long way to go and a hard battle to fight before he could see and know the purity of an honest love, the dignity of a human soul, whether it be in a high place or a lowly one. I have come to the conclusion that what we call the Christian world has in its social code and accepted standards of respectability a law of its own, the spirit of which never sprang from inspiration; a law that binds and holds absolutely, as the letter of the old Jewish law held the priests and scribes who cried 'Crucify, crucify the Truth unless it comes in the style and manner that we have marked out for its coming.' The simple, undressed truth is ignored, put aside and kept in the background; the so-called church of Christ keeps it there.

"You know, Eldrige, and I know, and every man in the world to-day knows, that there is something wrong, radically wrong, deep-seated and to the heart's core, with our church, society and home training when a man and woman, reared you might say, in the very shadow of the church, and having its precepts hurled at them from their infancy, yet can mistake passion, immorality and shame for the joy and pleasure of life; when to their young lives the hell-brewed poison of destruction appears like the rich, red wine of satisfaction.

"For what does the church over there on the hill stand? What is its mission? its object? its meaning? If there is anything in the power of the Son of Man there is everything--everything or nothing; and this attitude of people who call themselves Christians, standing between suffering, sin-sick mortals and the sinner's God is enough to make the angels weep--and mortals howl!"

"Well, well, Max, I believe you are aroused a bit; but I am afraid, my man, that you are probing to the heart and center of conditions that will never be righted in this world. Eternity alone, I think, will reveal the why and wherefore of some of the things that are troubling you."

"No, Eldrige, it will not require the revelations of eternity to convince me why the Church is cankered, worm-eaten and corrupt. I verily believe I can give you the reason this minute: it is because its advocates are _hearers_ of the Truth, but not followers of it. Over there in Christian Edgerly men and women profess to follow Christ, and in their hearts they know that they stop with the professing. Not one man in ten will read the words of Christ and admit that they can be taken as a rule of life and conduct.

"'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so to them.'

"Where is the man who does this? The poor, the needy, the suffering, the down-trodden, the unfortunate, they circle the globe, they are in every land, every clime, every city, town and hamlet; the voice of their cries by day and their groanings by night is never still; naked, they are not clothed; hungry, they are not fed; thirsty, they are not given drink; and these are 'the others.' Where is the man who does unto them as he would be done by? Do you? Do I?

"And where is the man who loves his neighbor as himself? Where would be the stress and strife of life, the wear and tear, the wrangle and scramble, the heartache and crime, the murder and suicide, if this precept were followed? Where would be all this agitation about labor and capital, the piling up of wealth on one hand and biting poverty on the other, if men--Christian men--loved their neighbors as themselves? Wise men of our generation are trying to devise ways and formulate plans to regulate the differences and disagreements among men; but even the reformers disagree among themselves and dissensions grow greater from year to year. Do men think that they are wiser than God? Do they think that if there is a better way Christ would have failed to tell us about it? Yet we are deaf to the simple words of the divine Teacher, the grandest precept ever given, the one and only panacea for the world's discord, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'"

"If only the world had such a religion as that, Max, Christianity would be Christian."

"And Christianity never will be Christian until men believe what they profess to believe. I am not much of a Bible scholar, I was brought up to reverence the Bible, not to read it, but I know that we are told that faith without works is dead. There is faith enough in the world, if it were alive, to save the world--but it is dead, dead and buried, and the devil is dancing to his hornpipes over its burial place--the opaque hearts of men. A general may fight a battle with an army of men, if they are alive--but if they are dead, dead in the trenches, they will not put up much of a fight. Yet the absurdity of fighting a battle with dead men is not greater than the inconsistency of a religion with a dead faith.

"I have not yet learned to understand the scientific principle back of the kind of religion that has been at work on this Flat; but I know that the faith of a grain of mustard seed would remove mountains of sin and crime and unholy desire from our land. A grain of mustard seed is alive, pregnant; given favorable conditions it will expand and increase, and flower and produce again, demonstrating the power of the Invisible. This work here on this Flat started from a grain of mustard seed; a grain sown and tended and watered and tilled by a woman's hand. And the Christian city and the stately church marvel that God has given the increase. You and I have special cause to honor this woman and her work, Eldrige, and we both owe her an endless debt of gratitude."

Again their hands met in silent companionship. Then Max arose. "I am afraid we have forgotten the ladies," he said. "Let us go and join them in the garden."

The doctor followed his friend, and he no longer felt that he failed to understand him; he was just an honest man, nothing more--nothing less.

*CHAPTER XX*

*THE REVELATION*

In a small village at the foot of a Colorado mountain, the Reverend Maurice Thorpe pitched his tent--literally pitched his tent--for he resolved to try the open air treatment for his malady.

He had tried the remedies that men have compounded and the devices that their skill have fashioned until the last one was tested and tried and found wanting; and when his faith in these was gone he resorted to the Nature cure--he resolved to let Nature have her way with him. So he set up his tent, lived in the open, bathed in the sunshine, breathed the mountain air; and he felt his strength returning. If there was something beside these things that helped his recovery he did not know of it at the time.

The good Book tells us that "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up," and there are yet some people in God's world who believe it.

The tent was pitched near the bank of a mountain stream. From far up the mountains it came, at times a turbulent, rushing stream and again narrowing to a silver rill. Part way down its course it came to a rocky formation which obstructed its flow and forced it into two different channels. During the summer months the larger of these two streams diminished in size and the other became dry. Following the dry course over stones and sand one was led through a region of wild and rugged grandeur. The circuitous course led through deep gorges and past great ledges of rock, and here and there huge stones stood out alone, like silent sentinels.

Mr. Thorpe, in his long walks over the mountains, often followed this course until he reached the chasm, or cave-like opening, where it ended. The rocks were dry and bleached now, except for here and there a patch of moss or bit of grass which grew among the crevices. Some birds had chosen the cave for their nesting place, and their cries echoed shrilly among the rocks. This wild, isolated spot was far removed from the usual haunts of men, but it held a peculiar charm for Mr. Thorpe, and he fell into the way of taking his books and reading there. Some goat-skins spread on the rocks served for a couch and a ledge of rock answered for a table; and here, one by one, his favorite books and magazines found a place. Here, alone with his silent friends, he became a recluse. The world that had so bitterly disappointed him, the life that had so grieved and vexed him, the love that had bowed and broken him, all were left behind.

The brook babbled noisily by the tent one rare morning in June; the birds called shrilly from the rocky ledges, and the sky was azure above the mountains. Mr. Thorpe looked over his letters and papers and laid aside those that he cared to take with him for the day. The canvas bag in which he carried his luncheon was packed and his water-bottle filled. He picked up his selection of papers, and as he did so his eyes fell on one that he had not noticed before. He examined it and saw that it was a copy of the Edgerly Times. Some headlines at the top of the page caught his eye: "The Transformation of the Flat. Once a Place of Vice and Want, Now a Thriving Factory Settlement." He glanced down the page and caught sentences that contained familiar names: "Mrs. Thorpe, former pastor's wife--Max Morrison, returned soldier--Dr. Eldrige Jr. and his young wife--"

Mr. Thorpe's face set in grim lines and the blue veins stood out prominently on his forehead. He folded the paper and thrust it in his pocket, picked up the canvas bag and water-bottle and made his way down the rocky course to the rock-walled cavern. His attitude was that of a man bowed, broken, vanquished.

When he reached the cavern he threw himself upon his goat-skins, drew the paper from his pocket and read the article carefully through to the finish. It dwelt at length on the factors that had brought about the change on the Flat.

When he finished the article he folded the paper slowly, methodically, as one whose mind is far away. His eyes were upon the stones at his feet, and slowly the doors of memory swung open, and before him were the hopes and aspirations of his life, its trials and disappointments--the questioning anguish of failure.