White Fire Part 3

He had told them of his hopes, and the plans he and Gerson hoped to carry out--"The grandest man I have ever met, a most n.o.ble Christian gentleman," he said, in a burst of enthusiasm. He asked them for their help, their prayers, their sympathetic remembrance, their money--since the work had to be maintained from the outside, and even missionaries must live.

He spoke very simply, with no ornate periods or calculated sentences; but his voice was like a trumpet, and his eyes were like stars, and his words were illuminating and full of power, and now and again were flung out white hot from the glowing heart within. Though he spoke for the most part so restrainedly, now and again the brake would slip, and the sweet, white fire of a great, enthusiastic soul would flame through.

Perhaps he was a trifle over-confident of success--that is one of youth's glories and pitfalls; but there was no doubt that his whole heart was in his work--that here, for once at all events, a square man had found his own square hole.

"It was always the great hope and desire of my boyhood to go out into these unknown lands," he was saying. "Though perhaps at that time the inducement was chiefly the unknown, and the inhabitants, I fear, appealed to me more as possible hindrances than inducements. When I tended my uncle's cattle on the hillsides of the Cut----"

And then she knew him, and she sat up with a jerk, and stared at him as though she had only that moment awakened to the fact that he was speaking.

And such, to some extent, was the fact. She had been interested and puzzled. Now, in a moment, it was a new man she was looking at and listening to--a new man, but an old friend. And she was sitting on one piece of rock eating cookies, and he was sitting on another munching oatcake and cheese, and he was saying, "I'm going to be an explorer."

It was very wonderful--though she remembered that she had recognised him, even then, as a boy of different texture from most other boys.

And so he had got what he wanted--the greatest prize a man may win, she supposed: to desire vehemently a certain lofty course in life, and to attain to it.

And she? Yes, she remembered. She was going to be rich, and a lady, and do as she liked. Truly hers was but a poor attainment compared with his.

She did not hear much more of what he said, though she was gazing fixedly at him all the time. Her mind was away back to the hillside by the Cut, and it was only when they stood up to sing the last hymn that mind and body came together again.

Mr. Blair came down to shake hands with his many friends, and most of the people went forward for that purpose, Jean's aunts among them, and she with them; and as they sat at the back they were among the last to reach him.

She was shaking hands with him, and the straight blue eyes looking into her own set her heart jumping.

"Ah!" said the Rev. Archibald, all one vast beam of satisfaction at the general enjoyment of his little surprise. "Now we have you, Blair.

This lady, at all events, you can't claim as an old friend, though I am quite sure she is a well-wisher."

Blair still held her hand and looked steadfastly into her eyes.

"This is----" began Mr. Fastnet, and was stopped abruptly by a peremptory gesture of Miss Arnot's other hand.

"Yes--I think so," said the young man, breaking suddenly into a smile of enjoyable reminiscence, "Miss--Jean--Arnot? Or possibly now Mrs.----?"

"Jean Arnot is still good enough for me, Mr. Blair," she said brightly.

"How wonderful that you should remember me all these years!"

"Why more wonderful than that you should have recognised me, Miss Arnot? We are both a good deal changed since last we met."

"Why, what's all this?" said the Rev. Archibald jovially. "I had no idea you knew Miss Arnot, Blair."

"We met once, ten years ago, up on the Cut--and had lunch together,"

said Blair, with a smile. "I was keeping Highland cattle from goring little girls, and Miss Arnot was exploring. We have both travelled far since then."

"You much the farthest," she said quietly, "and going still farther. I congratulate you very heartily. It is what you desired then. Do you remember telling me?"

"Yes. I am very grateful."

Blair's thoughts were full of her. As they went home he quietly led Fastnet on to speak about her, and offered him the best inducement to plentiful speech in the appreciation with which he listened.

Fastnet enlarged upon her great wealth and generosity, her cleverness and culture, her independence of thought and deed, and incidentally mentioned that he had seen or heard some rumour of her possible marriage with Lord Charles Castlemaine, second son of the Duke of Munster, but he could not say what truth there was in it.

As a matter of fact, Jean Arnot would as soon have thought of marrying the ticket-collector at Monument Station as Lord Charles Castlemaine.

The gentleman with the snips at Monument Station is doubtless a most worthy individual, but I know absolutely nothing whatever about him.

Jean Arnot knew exactly as much, and one does not, as a rule, marry a man one knows absolutely nothing about, nor--a man about whom one knows considerably more than is to his credit. Jean Arnot knew a good deal about Charles Castlemaine, and there was not the slightest danger of her marrying him.

"Is he a good sort?" asked Blair.

"Much what dukes' younger sons mostly are, I imagine. The elder brother is not strong, so if it comes off you may perhaps count among your well-wishers a d.u.c.h.ess sooner or later."

"Miss Arnot's good wishes would weigh more with me than those of all the d.u.c.h.esses in the land," said Blair quietly. "There is something very taking in her face--it is so bright and eager." Then he laughed at his thoughts. "I remember, that day up on the Cut, I quite accidentally hit upon a nickname they used to her at home--Miss Inquisitive--and she flared up at me like a rip-rap. She was always wanting to know, I believe."

"She is still," said Fastnet, laughing, "though she must have learned a good deal in all these years. She told me once that she was born curious, and that she was especially curious to know all about what came after this life. She said she thought the thought that she was going to solve that greatest of all puzzles would take away all fear of death when the time came. That was just after I came here. She must have been about fifteen then."

Blair's time was very short. He left that afternoon for Edinburgh to spend his last two days with his old friends, Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish.

He was to join Mr. Gerson in London on Wednesday and sail on Thursday.

Mr. MacTavish had been a father to him from the time he walked along the Cut--the very day after little Jean Arnot's prattle had set him on the boy's track--and found him, prostrate on the flat stone, still wrestling with Prop. 47.

He had been just there himself when a small boy, struggling against the r.e.t.a.r.ding clay of a narrow agricultural home. He knew the st.u.r.dy independence that would be in the boy; and, in his own full knowledge, went to work warily. The slightest hint of charity, and the shy, proud one would be off.

So he never mentioned Jean, met the boy on his own ground as a perfectly new acquaintance, gradually won his confidence and his heart, guided, led, and finally enabled him by his own exertions to obtain a bursary and proceed to college. With that, nothing could keep him back. His heart was in it, his aims were high, and his course was a triumphal progress. He had learned, as a boy, that greatest of lessons--how to learn. The rough experiences of his boyhood on the hillside had given him splendid health and a body that never tired. He was tough as wire, and, among other things, was known at college for that pa.s.sion for personal cleanliness which, in its earlier days, had helped to introduce him to Jean Arnot on the hillside. He had, quite early--as soon, indeed, as he perceived the possibility of attaining to it--fixed on the mission-field as offering what his soul yearned for.

Perhaps at first it was the unknown that drew him. No matter. By degrees the known outrivalled the unknown, the greater absorbed the less, and his heart was fixed on the highest of all high work.

In these ten years he had learned mightily. Head, heart, and hand had toiled incessantly, and never felt it toil, since it was only the natural satisfaction of a great heart-craving. Then he had come across Gerson, home on leave for the first time in twenty years. Their hearts and eyes struck sparks the first time they met.

"That is a man!" said Gerson, "and I'll have him if I can get him."

"That is a saint and a hero!" said Blair. "I'm his man if he'll have me."

After that no power on earth could have kept them apart, and on Thursday they were to sail together for the outer fringes. Gerson was busily bidding his friends goodbye.

"You may hear of me from time to time. You'll never see me again--this side the veil at all events. We'll hope to meet on the other side," he said heartily, and grudged every day that lay between him and his work.

Blair, in telling Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish of his reception at the Greenock church, incidentally mentioned Miss Arnot, but doubted evidently whether they would know anything of her.

But the old man laughed gently, and said, in his quiet, old-fashioned, precise way, which was the very ant.i.thesis of the Rev. Archibald's jovial utterances: "I will explain to you now, my dear boy, what at the time I deemed wisest to treasure within the repository of my own heart.

It was from Miss Jean Arnot that I first heard about you. It was in consequence of her delighted account of her meeting with you, and the Euclid and the Latin grammar, that I sought you out on the hillside and tendered you the helping hand of which you have made such excellent use."

"It was Miss Arnot?" said the young man in amazement.

"Truly, yes! Though I do not for a moment suppose she knows anything whatever about it. I certainly never told her, and I never told you, because I had been a studious herd-laddie myself, and I knew what shy and hypersensitive colts they are, and the delicacy necessary to their proper handling."

"I thank you for telling me now, sir. It is as I would have it."

"I believe it would please her to know what you told me, sir," Blair broke out abruptly a little later on, and the old gentleman smiled at the evidence of the track of his thoughts.

"I will write and tell her, if you like, if you really think the knowledge would afford her any gratification."

"I think it would, sir."

And so Jean Arnot received two notes which gave her very deep pleasure.