Black Rock, Ralph Connor [top novels of all time .txt] 📗

With the call to Mr. Craig I fancy I had something to do myself. The call came from a young congregation in an eastern city, and was based partly upon his college record and more upon the advice of those among the authorities who knew his work in the mountains. But I flatter myself that my letters to friends who were of importance in that congregation were not without influence, for I was of the mind that the man who could handle Black Rock miners as he could was ready for something larger than a mountain mission. That he would refuse I had not imagined, though I ought to have known him better. He was but little troubled over it. He went with the call and the letters urging his acceptance to Mrs. Mavor. I was putting the last touches to some of my work in the room at the back of Mrs. Mavor’s house when he came in. She read the letters and the call quietly, and waited for him to speak.

“Well?’ he said; ‘should I go?’

She started, and grew a little pale. His question suggested a possibility that had not occurred to her. That he could leave his work in Black Rock she had hitherto never imagined; but there was other work, and he was fit for good work anywhere. Why should he not go? I saw the fear in her face, but I saw more than fear in her eyes, as for a moment or two she let them rest upon Craig’s face. I read her story, and I was not sorry for either of them. But she was too much a woman to show her heart easily to the man she loved, and her voice was even and calm as she answered his question.

‘Is this a very large congregation?’

‘One of the finest in all the East,’ I put in for him. ‘It will be a great thing for Craig.’

Craig was studying her curiously. I think she noticed his eyes upon her, for she went on even more quietly—

‘It will be a great chance for work, and you are able for a larger sphere, you know, than poor Black Rock affords.’

‘Who will take Black Rock?’ he asked.

‘Let some other fellow have a try at it,’ I said. ‘Why should you waste your talents here?’

‘Waste?’ cried Mrs. Mavor indignantly.

‘Well, “bury,” if you like it better,’ I replied.

‘It would not take much of a grave for that funeral,’ said Craig, smiling.

‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Mavor, ‘you will be a great man I know, and perhaps you ought to go now.’

But he answered coolly: ‘There are fifty men wanting that Eastern charge, and there is only one wanting Black Rock, and I don’t think Black Rock is anxious for a change, so I have determined to stay where I am yet a while.’

Even my deep disgust and disappointment did not prevent me from seeing the sudden leap of joy in Mrs. Mavor’s eyes, but she, with a great effort, answered quietly—

‘Black Rock will be very glad, and some of us very, very glad.’

Nothing could change his mind. There was no one he knew who could take his place just now, and why should he quit his work? It annoyed me considerably to feel he was right. Why is it that the right things are so frequently unpleasant?

And if I had had any doubt about the matter next Sabbath evening would have removed it. For the men came about him after the service and let him feel in their own way how much they approved his decision, though the self-sacrifice involved did not appeal to them. They were too truly Western to imagine that any inducements the East could offer could compensate for his loss of the West. It was only fitting that the West should have the best, and so the miners took almost as a matter of course, and certainly as their right, that the best man they knew should stay with them. But there were those who knew how much of what most men consider worth while he had given up, and they loved him no less for it.

Mrs. Mavor’s call was not so easily disposed of. It came close upon the other, and stirred Black Rock as nothing else had ever stirred it before.

I found her one afternoon gazing vacantly at some legal documents spread out before her on the table, and evidently overcome by their contents. There was first a lawyer’s letter informing her that by the death of her husband’s father she had come into the whole of the Mavor estates, and all the wealth pertaining thereto. The letter asked for instructions, and urged an immediate return with a view to a personal superintendence of the estates. A letter, too, from a distant cousin of her husband urged her immediate return for many reasons, but chiefly on account of the old mother who had been left alone with none nearer of kin than himself to care for her and cheer her old age.

With these two came another letter from her mother-in-law herself. The crabbed, trembling characters were even more eloquent than the words with which the letter closed.

‘I have lost my boy, and now my husband is gone, and I am a lonely woman. I have many servants, and some friends, but none near to me, none so near and dear as my dead son’s wife. My days are not to be many. Come to me, my daughter; I want you and Lewis’s child.’

‘Must I go?’ she asked with white lips.

‘Do you know her well?’ I asked.

‘I only saw her once or twice,’ she answered; ‘but she has been very good to me.’

‘She can hardly need you. She has friends. And surely you are needed here.’

She looked at me eagerly.

‘Do you think so?’ she said.

‘Ask any man in the camp—Shaw, Nixon, young Winton, Geordie. Ask Craig,’ I replied.

‘Yes, he will tell me,’ she said.

Even as she spoke Craig came up the steps. I passed into my studio and went on with my work, for my days at Black Rock were getting few, and many sketches remained to be filled in.

Through my open door I saw Mrs. Mavor lay her letters before Mr. Craig, saying, ‘I have a call too.’ They thought not of me.

He went through the papers, carefully laid them down without a word while she waited anxiously, almost impatiently, for him to speak.

‘Well?’ she asked, using his own words to her; ‘should I go?’

‘I do not know,’ he replied; ‘that is for you to decide—you know all the circumstances.’

‘The letters tell all.’ Her tone carried a feeling of disappointment. He did not appear to care.

‘The estates are large?’ he asked.

‘Yes, large enough—twelve thousand a year.’

‘And has your mother-in-law any one with her?’

‘She has friends, but, as she says, none near of kin. Her nephew looks after the works—iron works, you know—he has shares in them.’

‘She is evidently very lonely,’ he answered gravely.

‘What shall I do?’ she asked, and I knew she was waiting to hear him urge her to stay; but he did not see, or at least gave no heed.

‘I cannot say,’ he repeated quietly. ‘There are many things to consider; the estates—’

‘The estates seem to trouble you,’ she replied, almost fretfully. He looked up in surprise. I wondered at his slowness.

‘Yes, the estates,’ he went on, ‘and tenants, I suppose—your mother-in-law, your little Marjorie’s future, your own future.’

‘The estates are in capable hands, I should suppose,’ she urged, ‘and my future depends upon what I choose my work to be.’

‘But one cannot shift one’s responsibilities,’ he replied gravely. ‘These estates, these tenants, have come to you, and with them come duties.’

‘I do not want them,’ she cried.

‘That life has great possibilities of good,’ he said kindly.

‘I had thought that perhaps there was work for me here,’ she suggested timidly.

‘Great work,’ he hastened to say. ‘You have done great work. But you will do that wherever you go. The only question is where your work lies.’

‘You think I should go,’ she said suddenly and a little bitterly.

‘I cannot bid you stay,’ he answered steadily.

‘How can I go?’ she cried, appealing to him. ‘Must I go?’

How he could resist that appeal I could not understand. His face was cold and hard, and his voice was almost harsh as he replied—

‘If it is right, you will go—you must go.’

Then she burst forth—

‘I cannot go. I shall stay here. My work is here; my heart is here. How can I go? You thought it worth your while to stay here and work, why should not I?’

The momentary gleam in his eyes died out, and again he said coldly—

‘This work was clearly mine. I am needed here.’

‘Yes, yes!’ she cried, her voice full of pain; ‘you are needed, but there is no need of me.’

‘Stop, stop!’ he said sharply; ‘you must not say so.’

‘I will say it, I must say it,’ she cried, her voice vibrating with the intensity of her feeling. ‘I know you do not need me; you have your work, your miners, your plans; you need no one; you are strong. But,’ and her voice rose to a cry, ‘I am not strong by myself; you have made me strong. I came here a foolish girl, foolish and selfish and narrow. God sent me grief. Three years ago my heart died. Now I am living again.