The Preacher of Cedar Mountain Part 37

"I'll do that now," he replied. Taking the writing materials that she brought, he wrote and signed the formal call, with the intimation that it was for one year, subject to renewal.

As soon as their caller was safely gone, Jim picked up Belle in his arms and, marching up and down with her as if she had been a baby, he fairly gasped: "You are a wonder! You are a wonder! If I had gone my way, where should I be now? A drunkard or a cowboy; maybe in jail; or, at best, a doorkeeper in the Salvation Army. Oh, Belle, I swear I'll never pick a trail or open my mouth--never do a thing--without first consulting you."

And the elation of the moment exploded into a burst of Irish humour.

"_Now_, please ma'am, what am I to do?"

"What are _we_ to do, you mean," retorted Belle. "Well, in view of the fact that we haven't got the cash the folks here think we have, we must do something. Twenty-five hundred dollars a year is an improvement on three hundred a year, and as there is no other positive offer in sight, I vote for accepting."

"That settles it. What right has a worm like me to vote?"

"That's a poor metaphor, Jim; try again."

"All right! The mighty Captain of this wars.h.i.+p accepts the advice of the insignificant pilot--who happens to know the channel. How is that?"

"It can't be done, Jim. I may help the guiding, but without you I'd have nothing to guide. Each of us gives his best to the combine--each is a half of the arch; not simply are we twice as strong together, but twenty times as strong as we should be singly."

"Now for the call. Do you realize, Jim, that it means good-bye to the prairies, good-bye to the hills, and good-bye to Midnight?"

Jim nodded and looked grave. Belle went on: "But it also means living the life that you long ago elected to live--being a chosen instrument of good to bring blessings to those whose lives are black with sorrow and despair. It means giving up all the physical pleasures you love so deeply and rightly; but it also means following the Master. Which is it to be?"

"I know," he responded, "I know. But Belle, dear, I never had a moment of doubt when I had to decide between Belle and Blazing Star; why should I hesitate now when it's Midnight or Christ?"

So the letter was written and delivered forthwith at the Temperance Hotel. One week later Belle and Jim were driving again toward Cedar Mountain, headed for the railway which was to take them to Chicago. As they swung down the trail Belle looked out on the familiar objects and said:

"Here we are again at the beginning of a new chapter; and again it starts on the old Deadwood trail."

CHAPTER LI

These Little Ones

It was a long but easy journey down south to the Union Pacific, and finally east to Chicago. And when the young couple, whom the pa.s.sengers watched with much interest, arrived at the great city, they found half a dozen men and women of importance awaiting them at the Union Station, with more servants to a.s.sist them than they had pieces of luggage. Mr.

and Mrs. Hopkins, with their own carriage, were in attendance to offer the hospitality of their house to the Rev. James Hartigan and his bride.

It was a long drive to Englewood; but everything that kind friends, clear skies, and human forethought could do to make it pleasant was fully done. For the time being, they were installed in the Hopkins mansion--a veritable palace--and for the first time Jim had the chance to learn how the rich folk really live. While it was intensely interesting, he was eager to see the field of his future work. Belle, however, agreed with their host and hostess that it would be worth while to see a little of Chicago first.

The stockyards are either fascinating or intensely disgusting. The Hartigans had their fill of them in five minutes. The Art Inst.i.tute had not yet been built, but there were museums and galleries and good music in many places. Lincoln Park and the great rolling, gusty lake were pleasant to behold; but to Jim, the biggest thing of all--the thing of which the buildings and the crowds were mere manifestations--was the vast concentration of human life, strife, and emotion--the throb and compulsion of this, the one great heart of the West.

There was dirt in the street everywhere; there were hideous buildings and disgusting vulgarities on every side, and crime in view on nearly every corner; but still one had to feel that this was the vital spot, this the great blood centre of a nation, young, but boiling with energy, boundless in promise--a city with a vital fire in its heart that would one day burn the filth and dross away and show the world the dream of the n.o.blest dreamers all come true--established, gigantic, magnificent.

There is thrill and inspiration--simple, natural, and earthy--in the Canyon where the Cheyenne cut the hills; but this was a different thrill that slowly grew to a rumble in Jim's heart as he felt the current floods of mind, of life, of sin, of hope that flowed from a million springs in that deep Wabash Canyon that carved in twain the coming city of ten million hopes that are sprung from the drifted ashes of a hundred million black and burnt despairs.

Hartigan had ever been a man of the saddle and the open field; but gazing from the top of that tall tower above the station, sensing the teeming life, the sullen roar, far below, he glimpsed another world--a better thing, for it was bigger--which, in its folded mantle, held the unborn parent, the gentler-born parent, of the mighty change--the blessed cleanup that every wise man prays for and works to bring about.

What place were they to occupy in this maelstrom? Two ways were open--one, to dwell in the dungeons and the horrors as poor among the poor; the other, to come as different beings--as frequent visitors--from another world. Jim, with his whole-souled abandon, was for the former; but Belle thought that all he would gain in that way would be more than offset by loss of touch with the other world. At that time those two worlds were at war and she contended that his place was to stand between the world of power and the world of need.

Their compromise was a little flat on the second floor of a house in Englewood, near enough to the rolling Lake to afford a glimpse of it and convenient to the open stretch that is now the famous Jackson Park.

Here, with pretty rugs and curtains and pictures of horses and hills, they lined the home nest and gathered the best thoughts of the lives they had lived. Here at all times they could come a.s.sured of peace and rest.

Then came the meeting with the Board of Deacons, the preliminary visits to the field of work, where the streets were full of misery and the slum life rampant. A few short blocks away was another world--a world of palaces. Jim had never before seen ma.s.sed misery; he had never before seen profligate luxury, and the shock of contrast brought to him the sudden, overwhelming thought: "These people don't want preaching, they want fair play. This is not a religious question, it is an economic question." And in a flash: "The religious questions _are_ economic questions," and all the seemingly wild utterances of old Jack s.h.i.+ves came back, like a sudden overwhelming flood at the breaking of a dam. In an instant he was staggering among the ruins of all in religious thought that he had held holy.

When he reached their apartment that evening he was in a distraught condition. For some time he paced up and down. At last he said: "I must go out, Belle. I must walk alone." He spoke with intense emotion. He longed for his mountain; there was but one thing like it near--the mighty, moving lake. He put on his hat and strode away. Belle wanted to go with him, but he had not asked her; her instinct also said "no"; besides, there was the physical impossibility of walking with him when he went so striding. She sat down in the dusk to wonder--to wait.

He went to the lake sh.o.r.e. A heavy gale was blowing from the north and the lake was a wild waste. It touched him as the sage plains did; and the rough wind helped him by driving away all other folk afoot.

Northward he went, feeling, but seeing nothing, of the rolling waters.

Jack s.h.i.+ves with his caustic words came back to mind: "It's their 'fore-G.o.d duty to steal if their babies are hungry and they can't feed them any other way." Jim had never seen these things before; now they were the whole world; he had seen nothing else these slumming days. His spiritual ferment was such that, one by one, all the texts he had read came back as commentaries on this new world of terror. He recalled the words of the Master: "Your Heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things"; the fearful doom of those that "offend these little ones"; the strict injunction to divide with the needy and care for the helpless; and again, the words, "The Kingdom of heaven is within you"--not in a vague, unplaced world after death, but here, now--and those who thought that, by placating the custodians of costly edifices, they were laying up "treasure in heaven" were blindly going to destruction.

He strode in the night with his brain awhirl. The old texts held for him some new power: "Seek ye first the kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added into you"; and again, "The kingdom of heaven is within you"; "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor." In vain he sought for inspired words that would reestablish the happy land beyond the grave that his teachers had ever pictured in set phrase. Yet every word of the Master pointed the other way. "_Here_"; "_now_"; and "_first within_" was the kingdom. And the hollowness of all the rich man's preachment--that the poor must suffer patiently in hope of a reward beyond the grave--was more and more a hideous stratagem as in his mind arose together two portrait types: the pinched, sullen, suffering face of the slums and the bloated, evil face to be found on the boulevard.

The mockery of it horrified as the immensity of it all swamped him. He had no mind, no equipment, for the subtleties of theology, and his head was a whirl of maddening contradictions, till the memory of his mother's simple devotion came like a cooling drink in his fever: "Never mind trying to reason it all out; you can't do it; no one can. Only ask what would the Master have done?" Yes, that was easy. "Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick"; and turning, he wheeled homeward. The upheaval of all foundations seemed less dreadful. He could not expect to reason it all out. It was enough to do as the Master would have done; and, whether it was the feeding of the mult.i.tude, the healing of the lepers, the gentleness to the woman taken in adultery, or the helping of the man who fell among thieves, there was no doctrine, no preaching--only kindness shown as sympathy and physical help in their troubles, here and now. The words of another childhood friend came back to him--those of Fighting Bill Kenna. He used to say, "I don't care a dom what he is, if he's a good neighbour." Yet the neighbour in question was a papist and they were kind and friendly every day of the year, except on those two set apart by the devil to breed hate. Kenna was right where his heart led him and wrong where his creed was guide.

Hartigan could not have told why he went alone on that walk. He only knew that in this crisis something cried out in him to be alone with the simple big things. Why should the worldly-wise companion he had chosen be left out? He didn't know; he only felt that he wanted no worldly wisdom now. He wished to face the judgment day in his soul all alone. He would not have done so a year before; but the Angel of Destiny had led on an upward trail and now he was brought aside to the edge so that he might look over, and down, and know that he was climbing.

Belle met him at the door. Her face was anxious. But his look rea.s.sured her. He took her on his knees as one might lift a child and, sitting with his arm around her and gazing far away, he said: "I had a landslide, Belle. All my church thought and training were swept away in a moment. I was floundering, overwhelmed in the ruin, when I found a big, solid, immovable rock on which I could build again. It was not the Church, it was my mother gave it to me. She used to say: 'Don't try to reason it all out; no one can. Only try to do as the Master would do'; what that is we are not always sure; but one who followed Him has told us, 'Keep cool and kind and you won't go far astray.'"

She looked into his face and saw something that she had never seen there before. The thought that flashed through her mind was of Moses and how his countenance showed that a little while before he had talked with G.o.d. She was awed by this new something he had taken on; and her instinct hushed the query that arose within her. She only gripped his hand a little and looking far away, said slowly: "There are times when He comes to talk with His own. I think he wanted to walk with you alone by the lake and talk, as He one time walked with His men on the sh.o.r.e of Galilee."

"My mind is clear now, Belle," he continued, "if these people want me to begin here merely as orthodox pulpit preacher, I must give up the post.

That is what I want to be, but this is not the time or place for it. If, on the other hand, they will let me try to help those who need help, and in the form in which they need it--well and good; I will do my best to understand and meet the problems. But we must at once have a clear understanding."

She put her arms about him and after a little silence said: "I am with you to the finish, Jim. I know you have received a message and have guidance as to how it should be delivered."

It was in the little flat, with sagebrush in the vases, that they thought it out, and reached a solution that was the middle of the road.

The first presentation of his new understanding Jim made to the Board of Deacons two days later. He said:

"When a man is swimming for his life, he does not want to discuss politics. When a man's children are hungry, he can't be expected to respect the law that prevents him from feeding them. When a man has no property, you needn't look to him for a fine understanding of the laws of property. When a man has no chance for lawful pleasures in life, he cannot be blamed much for taking any kind that comes within reach. When a man's body is starved, cold, and tormented, he is not going to bother about creeds that are supposed to guide his soul."

"All of which we freely admit," said Mr. Hopkins, with characteristic gravity. "The problems that you name are very real and grave, but they are the problems of the nation. Rest a.s.sured that every man of force in America to-day is aware of these things, and is doing all he can to meet them squarely. Moreover, they are being met with success--slow, but continued success.

"Are you prepared to outline the plan by which you would contribute to the local solution of these national problems?"

Yes, Hartigan had it there on paper. "I must approach these people through the things which they know they need. They don't feel any need of a church, but they do feel the need of a comfortable meeting place where the wholesome love of human society may be gratified. Their lives are devoid of pleasure, except of the worst kinds. This is not choice, but is forced on them; there is not a man, woman or child among them that does not--sometimes, at least--hunger for better things--that would not enjoy the things that you enjoy, if they had the chance. I want harmless pleasures in abundance put within their reach.

"Man is an animal before he is a soul; so I would begin by providing the things needful for a body. All men glory in physical prowess; therefore I want a gymnasium, and with it, the natural accompaniments of bath house and swimming tank. In short, I don't want a church; I want an up-to-date People's Club, with a place for all and a welcome for all."

The deacons sat back and gazed at one another. "Well," said Deacon Starbuck, president of the Stock Bank, "you surely have a clear-thinking business head among your gifts."

There was a distinct split in the views of the Board. The older men objected that this was an organization for propagating the Gospel of Christ, not for solving economic problems, and proved with many Scripture texts that we must "first of all seek the Kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness," after having secured which, the rest would follow.

But the younger men took Hartigan's view that it was no time to talk politics to a man when he was swimming for his life. Fortunately, Hopkins was able to stave off action, pending a fuller discussion, and brought that on at once.

"Let us understand. Is the club to be a charity, a benevolence, or a business proposition--that is, a free gift, a partly supported inst.i.tution, or a dollar-for-dollar bargain?"

The older men believed in charity. Jim opposed it as wrong in principle.

As a business proposition it was hopeless, at present; so he definitely labelled it a "benevolence."