Black Rock Part 28

'Yes, you have, Rattray, you know you have,' said Wig again. But Rattray ignored him.

'I'll tell you, boys,' said Graeme. 'I want you to know, anyway, why I believe what I do.'

Then he told them the story of old man Nelson, from the old coast days, before I knew him, to the end. He told the story well. The stern fight and the victory of the life, and the self-sacrifice and the pathos of the death appealed to these men, who loved fight and could understand sacrifice.

'That's why I believe in Jesus Christ, and that's why I think it a crime to fling His name about!'

'I wish to Heaven I could say that,' said Beetles.

'Keep wishing hard enough and it will come to you,' said Graeme.

'Look here, old chap,' said Rattray; 'you're quite right about this; I'm willing to own up. Wig is correct. I know a few, at least, of that stamp, but most of those who go in for that sort of thing are not much account'

'For ten years, Rattray,' said Graeme in a downright, matter-of-fact way, 'you and I have tried this sort of thing'--tapping a bottle--'and we got out of it all there is to be got, paid well for it, too, and--faugh! you know it's not good enough, and the more you go in for it, the more you curse yourself. So I have quit this and I am going in for the other.'

'What! going in for preaching?'

'Not much--railroading--money in it--and lending a hand to fellows on the rocks.'

'I say, don't you want a centre forward?' said big Barney in his deep voice.

'Every man must play his game in his place, old chap. I'd like to see you tackle it, though, right well,' said Graeme earnestly. And so he did, in the after years, and good tackling it was. But that is another story.

'But, I say, Graeme,' persisted Beetles, 'about this business, do you mean to say you go the whole thing--Jonah, you know, and the rest of it?'

Graeme hesitated, then said--

'I haven't much of a creed, Beetles; don't really know how much I believe. But,' by this time he was standing, 'I do know that good is good, and bad is bad, and good and bad are not the same. And I know a man's a fool to follow the one, and a wise man to follow the other, and,' lowering his voice, 'I believe G.o.d is at the back of a man who wants to get done with bad. I've tried all that folly,' sweeping his hand over the gla.s.ses and bottles, 'and all that goes with it, and I've done with it'

'I'll go you that far,' roared big Barney, following his old captain as of yore.

'Good man,' said Graeme, striking hands with him.

'Put me down,' said little Wig cheerfully.

Then I took up the word, for there rose before me the scene in the League saloon, and I saw the beautiful face with the deep shining eyes, and I was speaking for her again. I told them of Craig and his fight for these men's lives. I told them, too, of how I had been too indolent to begin. 'But,' I said, 'I am going this far from to-night,' and I swept the bottles into the champagne tub.

'I say,' said Polly Lindsay, coming up in his old style, slow but sure, 'let's all go in, say for five years.' And so we did. We didn't sign anything, but every man shook hands with Graeme.

And as I told Craig about this a year later, when he was on his way back from his Old Land trip to join Graeme in the mountains, he threw up his head in the old way and said, 'It was well done. It must have been worth seeing. Old man Nelson's work is not done yet. Tell me again,' and he made me go over the whole scene with all the details put in.

But when I told Mrs. Mavor, after two years had gone, she only said, 'Old things are pa.s.sed away, all things are become new'; but the light glowed in her eyes till I could not see their colour. But all that, too, is another story.

CHAPTER XV

COMING TO THEIR OWN

A man with a conscience is often provoking, sometimes impossible.

Persuasion is lost upon him. He will not get angry, and he looks at one with such a far-away expression in his face that in striving to persuade him one feels earthly and even fiendish. At least this was my experience with Craig. He spent a week with me just before he sailed for the Old Land, for the purpose, as he said, of getting some of the coal dust and other grime out of him.

He made me angry the last night of his stay, and all the more that he remained quite sweetly unmoved. It was a strategic mistake of mine to tell him how Nelson came home to us, and how Graeme stood up before the 'Varsity chaps at my supper and made his confession and confused Rattray's easy-stepping profanity, and started his own five-year league.

For all this stirred in Craig the hero, and he was ready for all sorts of heroic nonsense, as I called it. We talked of everything but the one thing, and about that we said not a word till, bending low to poke my fire and to hide my face, I plunged--

'You will see her, of course?'

He made no pretence of not understanding but answered--

'Of course.'

'There's really no sense in her staying over there,' I suggested.

'And yet she is a wise woman,' he said, as if carefully considering the question.

'Heaps of landlords never see their tenants, and they are none the worse.'

'The landlords?'

'No, the tenants.'

'Probably, having such landlords.'

'And as for the old lady, there must be some one in the connection to whom it would be a G.o.dsend to care for her.'

'Now, Connor,' he said quietly, 'don't. We have gone over all there is to be said. Nothing new has come. Don't turn it all up again.'

Then I played the heathen and raged, as Graeme would have said, till Craig smiled a little wearily and said--

'You exhaust yourself, old chap. Have a pipe, do'; and after a pause he added in his own way, 'What would you have? The path lies straight from my feet. Should I quit it? I could not so disappoint you--and all of them.'

And I knew he was thinking of Graeme and the lads in the mountains he had taught to be true men. It did not help my rage, but it checked my speech; so I smoked in silence till he was moved to say--

'And after all, you know, old chap, there are great compensations for all losses; but for the loss of a good conscience towards G.o.d, what can make up?'

But, all the same, I hoped for some better result from his visit to Britain. It seemed to me that something must turn up to change such an unbearable situation.

The year pa.s.sed, however, and when I looked into Craig's face again I knew that nothing had been changed, and that he had come back to take up again his life alone, more resolutely hopeful than ever.

But the year had left its mark upon him too. He was a broader and deeper man. He had been living and thinking with men of larger ideas and richer culture, and he was far too quick in sympathy with life to remain untouched by his surroundings. He was more tolerant of opinions other than his own, but more unrelenting in his fidelity to conscience and more impatient of half-heartedness and self-indulgence. He was full of reverence for the great scholars and the great leaders of men he had come to know.

'Great, n.o.ble fellows they are, and extraordinarily modest,' he said--'that is, the really great are modest. There are plenty of the other sort, neither great nor modest. And the books to be read! I am quite hopeless about my reading. It gave me a queer sensation to shake hands with a man who had written a great book. To hear him make commonplace remarks, to witness a faltering in knowledge--one expects these men to know everything--and to experience respectful kindness at his hands!'

'What of the younger men?' I asked.

'Bright, keen, generous fellows. In things theoretical, omniscient; but in things practical, quite helpless. They toss about great ideas as the miners lumps of coal. They can call them by their book names easily enough, but I often wondered whether they could put them into English.

Some of them I coveted for the mountains. Men with clear heads and big hearts, and built after Sandy M'Naughton's model. It does seem a sinful waste of G.o.d's good human stuff to see these fellows potter away their lives among theories living and dead, and end up by producing a book!

They are all either making or going to make a book. A good thing we haven't to read them. But here and there among them is some quiet chap who will make a book that men will tumble over each other to read.'