Part 37

Margaret turned upon her. “Gone? Yes. I have just seen him.”

“And I love him,” continued Iola, looking up at her with heavy eyes.

“Love him! You don't know what love means! Love him! And for your paltry, selfish ambition you send from you a man whose shoes you are not worthy to tie!”

“Oh, Margaret!” cried Iola piteously.

“Don't talk to me!” she replied, her lip quivering. “I can't bear to look at you!” and she passed into her room.

It was intolerable to her that this girl should have regarded lightly the love she herself would have died to gain. But long after Iola had sobbed herself to sleep in her arms Margaret lay wakeful for her own pain and for that of the man she loved better than her life.

But next day, as Iola was planning to go to the station, Margaret would not have it.

“Why should you go? You have nothing to say but what would give him pain. Do you want him to despise you and me to hate you?”

But Iola was resolved to have her way. It was Mrs. Duff Charrington who fortunately intervened and carried Iola off with her to spend the afternoon and evening.

“Just a few musical friends, my dear. So brush up and come away. Bring your guitar with you.”

Iola demurred.

“I don't feel like it.”

“Tut! Nonsense! The lovelorn damsel reads well in erotic novels, but remember this, the men don't like stale beer.”

This bit of worldly wisdom made Iola put on her smartest gown and lay aside the role she had unconsciously planned to adopt, so that even Mrs. Duff Charrington had no fault to find with the sparkling animation of her protegee.

But to the three who stood together waiting for the train to pull out that night there was only dreary, voiceless misery. There was no pretence at anything but misery. To the brothers the moment of parting would be the end of all that had been so delightful in their old life. The days of their long companionship were over, and to both the thought brought grief that made words impossible. Only Margaret's presence forced them to self-control. As to Margaret, Dick alone knew the full measure of her grief, and her quiet, serene courage filled him with amazed admiration. At length came the call of the bustling, businesslike conductor, “All aboard!”

“Good-bye, Margaret,” said Barney simply, holding out his hand. But the girl quietly put back her veil and lifted up her face to him, her brave blue eyes looking all their love into his, but her lips only said, “Good-bye, Barney.”

“Good-bye, dear Margaret,” he said again, bending over her and kissing her.

“Me, too, Barney,” said Dick, his tears openly streaming down his face. “I'm a confounded baby! But hanged if I care!”

At Dick's words all Barney's splendid self-mastery vanished. He threw his arms about his brother's neck, crying “Good-bye, Dick, old man. We've had a great time together; but oh, my boy, my boy, it's all come to an end!”

Already the train was moving.

“Go, old chap,” cried Dick, pushing him away but still clinging to him. And then, as Barney swung on to the step he called back to them what had long been in his heart to say.

“Look after her, will you?”

“Yes, Barney, we will,” they both cried together. And as they stood gazing through dimming tears after the train as it sped out through the network of tracks and the maze of green and red lights, they felt that a new bond drew them closer than before. And it was the tightening of that bond that brought them all the comfort that there was in that hour of misery unspeakable.

XIII

A MAN THAT IS AN HERETIC REJECT

The college year had come to an end. The results of the examinations had been published. The Juniors were preparing to depart for their summer work in the mission field. Of the graduating class, some were waiting with calm confidence the indications of the will of Providence as to their spheres of labour, a confidence undoubtedly strengthened by certain letters in their possession from leading members of influential congregations. Others were preparing with painful shrinking of heart to tread the weary and humiliating “trail of the black bag,” while others again, to whom had come visions of high deeds and sounds of distant battle, were making ready outfits supposed to be suitable for life and work in the great West, or in the far lands across the sea.

Two high functions of college life yet remained, one, the Presbytery examination, the other, Professor Macdougall's student party. The annual examination before Presbytery was ever an event of nerve-racking uncertainty. It might prove to be an entirely perfunctory performance of the most innocuous kind. On the other hand, it might develop features of a most sensational and perilous nature. The college barometer this year was unusually depressed, for rumour had gone abroad that the Presbytery examination was to be of the more serious type. It was a time of searchings of heart for those who had been giving, throughout the session, undue attention to the social opportunities afforded by college life, and more especially if they had allowed their contempt for the archaic and oriental to become unnecessarily pronounced. To these latter gentlemen the day brought gloomy forebodings. Even their morning devotions, which were marked by unusual sincerity and earnestness, failed to bring them that calmness of mind which these exercises are supposed to afford. For their slender ray of hope that their memory of the English text might not fail them in the hour of trial was very materially clouded by the dread that in their embarrassment they might assign a perfectly correct English version to the wrong Hebrew text. The result of such mischance they would not allow themselves to contemplate. On the other hand, however, there was the welcome possibility that they might be so able to dispose themselves among the orientalists in their class that a word dropped at a critical moment might save them from this mischance. And there was the further, and not altogether unreal, ground of confidence, that the examiner himself might be uneasily conscious of the ever-present possibility that some hidden Hebrew snag might rudely jag a hole in his own vessel while sailing the mare ignotum of oriental literature. Of course, the examination would also include other departments of sacred learning, for it was the province and duty of Presbytery to satisfy itself as to the soundness in the faith of the candidates before them. On this score, however, few indulged serious anxiety. Once the Hebraic shoals and snags were safely passed, both examiner and examined could disport themselves with a jaunty self-confidence born of a thorough acquaintance with the Shorter Catechism received during the plastic years of childhood.

It was, however, just in these calm waters that danger lurked for Boyle. On the side of scholarship he was known to be invulnerable. Boyle was the hero and darling of the college men, more especially of the “sinners” among them, not simply by reason of his prowess between the goal posts where, times without number, he had rescued the college from the contempt of its foes; but quite as much for the modesty with which he carried off his brilliant attainments in the class lists. Throughout the term, in the college halls after tea, there had been carried on a series of discussions extending over the whole range of the “fundamentals,” and Boyle had the misfortune to rouse the wrath and awaken the concern of Finlay Finlayson, the champion of orthodoxy. Finlay was a huge, gaunt, broad-shouldered son of Uist, a theologian by birth, a dialectician by training, and a man of war by the gift of Heaven. Cheerfully would Finlay, for conscience' sake, have given his body to the flames, as, for conscience' sake, he had shaken off the heretical dust of New College, Edinburgh, from his shoes, unhesitatingly surrendering at the same time, Scot though he was, a scholarship of fifty pounds. The hope that he had cherished of being able to find, in a colonial institution of sacred learning, a safe haven where he might devote himself to the perfecting of the defences of his faith within the citadel of orthodoxy was rudely shattered by the discovery that the same heresies which had driven him from New College had found their way across the sea and were being championed by a man of such winning personality and undoubted scholarship as Richard Boyle. The effect upon Finlayson's mind of these discussions carried on throughout the term was such that, after much and prayerful deliberation, and after due notice to the person immediately affected, he discovered it to be his duty to inform the professor in whose department these subjects lay of the heresies that were threatening the very life of the college, and, indeed, of the Canadian Church.