'' 1 t bit' , ' 'I ' , I H PR X5vi/r (&mm\l IBmm0itg Jitatg THE GIFT OF .^j^AAoddjj^.. 4S^3.^5 Sajizlv-j. 2041 „,y , ^ DATE 0^^ Cornell University Library PR 6029.X5W5 1904 White fire; 3 1924 013 660 778 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013660778 One sign of flinching and it is finished. WHITE FIRE Bj^ JOHN OXENHAM With Sixteen Illustrations by G. Grenvllle Manton Adversity doth make men strongs. Yet stronger still I count the man Who can sustain ^osferity unspoiled And turn it to high uses. The Tjuhite fire cf a great enthusiasm is the mightiest force in the world. AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY ISO J>fcu.tau Street NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO v-'^\ A'^(«l31i Co^rigJU, igo4, by John Oxenham. Transferred to American Tract Society, AU rights reserved. To THE Immortal Memory of Sfames! Ct)almetsi Great Heart of New Guinea — " Great Heart the Teacher, Great Heart the Joyous, Great Heart the Fearless, Great Heart of Sweet White Fire, Great Heart the Martyr. . . . Nor dead, nor sleeping / He lives on, his name Shall kindle many a heart to equal flame, A soul so fiery sweet can never die. But lives, and loves, and works through all eternity." ILLUSTRATIONS THEY WENT ON STEP BY STEP, WITH EYES FOR EVERY ROCK AND BUSH . . FrontisfUce PACE PAGE WAVED HIS HAND TO HER AND RECEIVED AN ANSWERING WAVE . . . .20 ONE SIGN OF FLINCHING AND IT IS FINISHED . 42 " MY LIFE IS FORFEIT TO THE PAST " . .55 " AND HE HAS REALLY HAD THE AUDACITY TO ASK YOU TO MARRY HIM " . . . .75 SHE HAD LONG AND PEREMPTORY INTERVIEWS WITH HER LAWYERS . . . . .84 BLAIR CALLED FOR THE MATE AND TOLD HIM CURT- LY WHAT HE HAD ALREADY TOLD THE CAPTAIN I40 "we shall see THEM AGAIN," SAID CAPTAIN CATHIE 164 IT MIGHT BE FOR THE LAST TIME . . . 222 STEPS ON THE ROAD TO SALVATION . . 224 "hello! what's THIS?" . . . .256 "quite HAPPY, JEAN?" ASKED BLAIR . .289 PEACE WITH A SPEAR .... 302 A BURLY INDIVIDUAL IN SAILORLY GARB CAME DOWN THE BEACH .... 306 BLAIR SPRANG UPRIGHT INSTINCTIVELY . . 328 WAVED HER FAREWELLS FROM THE SHORE . 360 CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAOE MISS INQUISITIVE 9 CHAPTER II THE MAN 22 CHAPTER III THE man's man 41 CHAPTER IV A SHAMELESS THING ! 58 CHAPTER V LEAP YEAR 63 CHAPTER VI A SUDDEN WIDE HORIZON 75 CHAPTER VII SOME ODD FURNISHINGS AND A HONEYMOON . 83 CHAPTER VIII GOING STRONG 92 CHAPTER IX ARMS AND THE MAN 97 CHAPTER X A BLACK OBJECT-LESSON IO3 CHAPTER XI TOO LATE 120 CHAPTER XII THE FLAMING SWORD 127 CHAPTER XIII THE man's man's MAN I36 CHAPTER XIV CLIPPING A BLACKBIRD IS4 CHAPTER XV WHERE THOU GOEST 166 CHAPTER XVI SAWDUST AND SHAVINGS l8x CHAPTER XVII PAGE FIRST FRUITS IQI CHAPTER XVIII SETBACKS 203 CHAPTER XIX FORWARD 215 CHAPTER XX MANY FORMS OF GRACE 224 CHAPTER XXI MIGHT OF RIGHT 232 CHAPTER XXII PAX 252 CHAPTER XXIII THE SCOURGE OF GOD 2S9 CHAPTER XXIV GAIN OF LOSS 271 CHAPTER XXV THE LIFTING VEIL 275 CHAPTER XXVI THE GENTLE MARTYR 280 CHAPTER XXVII PEACE WITH A SPEAR 292 CHAPTER XXVIII NO THOROUGHFARE 304 CHAPTER XXIX THE ACT OF GOD 3IO CHAPTER XXX WIPED OUT 329 CHAPTER XXXI REVERSIONS 34° CHAPTER XXXII FROM THE BEGINNING 345 CHAPTER XXXIII SALT OF THE EARTH 351 WHITE FIRE CHAPTER I MISS INQUISITIVE She was so dainty a little figure that the bare- armed women in the doors of the lands and closes turned and looked after her with enjoyment untinged even with envy. They scratched their elbows and commented on her points with complacent under- standing. "None o' your ten-and-six carriage paid in that lot, I'm thinking, Mrs. O'Neill," said one. "Thrue for ye, Mrs. Macfarlane. Purty as a daisy, she is. It's me that wud like to be on tairms with her maw when she's done with 'em." And a decidedly pretty little figure the small girl made, in her stylishly pleated blue serge, jaunty tam, natty leather belt, and twinkling brown shoes, and her absolute unconsciousness of anything un- duly attractive in her appearance. Her determined little face was set strenuously. She looked neithef to the right hand nor to the lo WHITE FIRE left, beyond a glance now and again for landmarks. And above all, and most inflexibly, she never once looked behind her; for she was bound upon an adventure, and her reward lay on ahead. "Past the cemetery gates," she said to herself. "Up a brae. Past a pond and up a cinder path. That's all right! That must be the woolen mill, and that's the paper mill, and that splashing white must be the Cut." As she took the cinder path, the gates of the two mills opened, and a flood of hurrying girls came down towards the town, mostly in bunches, laugh- ing and joking, some with linked arms, some few solitary. Then followed boys and men, with dinner in their faces, and an occasional word fired at the girls in front. The girls all fell silent, and resolved themselves into devouring eyes, as the dainty little figure stepped briskly past them. There were spasms of longing among them; they buried them under bursts of wilder laughter. The men and boys glanced at her out of the corners of their eyes, and did not understand why the sky looked bluer and the sunshine brighter than it had done a moment before. She came, presently, to a dividing of the ways, where the roads branched to the two mills, made a short reconnaissance of the flashing chute she had seen from below, then turned to the right, past the paper-mill and the manager's house, past the clump of fir-trees, and came out on a footpath by the side MISS INQUISITIVE ii of which the rushing brown waters of the Cut hur- ried down to the mills and reservoirs. "O-o-o-oh!" said the small girl rapturously, and her face was an unconscious Te Deum. And well it might be, for she had a great appre- ciation of the beautiful, and she was enjoying her first full glimpse of one of the finest sights in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland and the adja- cent Cumbraes. "O-o-oh !" and she sat down to enjoy it. Below her to the right rose the smoke of the town and the ceaseless clangor of the ship-building yards. A movement would have hidden them from her. But she did not move; she neither saw nor heard them. Her eyes were fixed absorbedly on the mighty panorama beyond : the lovely firth, blue as an Italian lake, and all alive with traffic; energetic little river steamers racing with rival toys; slow coasters toiling along like water-beetles; a great black American liner at the Tail of the Bank; the great grey guardship with its trim official lines and hovering launches; and farther out, near the oppo- site shore, the white sails of yachts flashing in the sun like seabirds' wings. And beyond — the hills, the mighty hills of God. She had known the hills in a general, wholesale way for long enough; but she knew now that she had never known them before. From this lofty vantage point she saw them now for the first time in all their grandeur and beauty, and they overwhelmed her. Such a mighty array of giants: green, rounded 12 WHITE FIRE hills ; rugged brown hills, flushed with the purple of the heather ; grey mountain peaks piled fantastically against the unflecked blue sky; bosky glens; dark patches of forest land; and all about them, down below, the silent strength of the sea, lapping the feet of the recumbent giants, creeping up among their sprawling limbs, and cradling the mighty bulks with tender caresses ! The girl sat for a long time drinking it all in, to the tune of the swirl and bubble and tinkle of the swift brown water behind her. Then she got up and went on along the path, which disclosed fresh beauties of the larger view at every step. She went on and on, heedless of everything but the wide, vast prospect and her own mighty enjoyment of it. She had some lunch in her pocket; she forgot it. The air was so sweet and strong that she felt no fatigue. She had walked for over an hour in this new heaven of delight, when she came tumbling to earth in truly feminine fashion. The path followed the Cut round the folds and wrinkles of the hillside. At times, on in front, it disappeared into the sky. She was nearing one such sharp turn, when a pair of mighty horns came wavering round it, and behind the horns an evil monster all in black and with baleful eyes. At sight of her it gave an angry bellow and pawed the ground. Alongside her was a small stone erection like an unfinished hut, on a little platform, below which white water trickled down a glen full of ferns and trees. She clasped her hands, gave her- MISS INQUISITIVE 13 self up for lost, and dropped out of the monster's sight behind the one end wall of the hut. Then a boy's voice rang out full and clear — "Ah, beast ! Bos ferocissime ! Get out o' that, or I'll do for you ! What's taken you to-day, you old villain?" Then followed more forcible argument in the shape of stones, and, with grateful twitches of her clasped hands, the small girl saw her discomfited enemy go crashing down the hillside among the whins and. ferns and rolling rocks. The beast was evidently possessed of an unusu- ally perverse disposition that day. It looked up once at the girl behind the wall, and made some spiteful remark, which elicited a dissuasive "Would you ?" and another shower of stones from its keeper. Then it went galloping away on the sides of its feet along the steep hillside. The boy, with an excla- mation, sprang down after it, and the girl caught sight of him for the first time — a sturdy little figure, with light hair and unlimited energy. He chased the beast with boyish objurgations, which broke out with new vigor when the chase led through, a piece of black swamp, with the natural results to the pursuer. He came back presently, hot and muddy, whis- tling like a blackbird. She was just about to get up and go on, when she heard him jumping down into the little glen below, and she craned over to see what he was about. 14 WHITE FIRE He scrambled down to a small round natural basin in the rock, threw off his jacket and waistcoat, un- buttoned his flannel shirt, and proceeded to a mighty wash. He seemed to revel in it so exceedingly that the girl sat and watched him with enjoyment. He had no towel, so did not waste any time in drying him- self, but allowed the sun and wind to do their duties. Then he came clambering up the slope again. There was a large flat stone in front of the embryo cabin. He came and sat down on it, and remained there so long and so quiet that at last she moved slightly and peeped round to see what he was doing. And what he was doing was so very astonishing that she gave an involuntary gasp of amazement. He was lying flat on his stomach, with a tattered book open in front of him. On the flat slab was a diagram drawn with the chunk of chalk he held in his hand, and he was studying it so intently that he did not hear her till her shadow fell across his work. "Hello! Where did you come from?" and he jumped up and stood staring at her. He was not aware of it, but he was dimly perceptive of the fact that she was very nice-looking. He remembered later — when her face evaded him — ^that she was very prettily dressed. "From behind there," she said. "That nasty bull frightened me." "He's a stupid beast." And then, suddenly be- thinking himself, "Have you been there ever since?" The girl nodded. She liked the look of him. His MISS INQUISITIVE 15 jacket and trousers were rough and well worn, but his face was wonderfully bright and clean. She did not know when she had seen a boy's face she liked so much. There was such a glow in it, and his blue eyes were so fearless and looked at her so very straight. She did not know very many boys, and did not care much for any of those she did know. They were always either teasing or silly, and always abominably selfish. Somehow this boy did not seem any of those things. "You'd no right to watch a gentleman washing himself." "You're not a gentleman, and I couldn't help myself. At least " "You're not a lady, and you could have gone away quite well. It's a good thing for you I didn't have a bath in the big pool there. You'd have watched just the same, I suppose, Miss Inquisitive !" "Oh !" she said sharply. "You rude thing ! How did you know?" "Know what?" "That ! Miss what you called me just now." At which he laughed out loud, a great merry laugh that did one good to listen to, and showed a set of sound white teeth and a quick apprehension. "Is that what they call you at home?" he asked, with a mischievous twinkle. "My aunties call me that. Father says 'Want-to- know gets on.' " "He's right," said the boy, with a blaze in the blue eyes. "I like your father better than your i6 WHITE FIRE aunties. Where were you going when the beast stopped you?" "Right along there," she nodded. "All the way to the Shells ? It's a gey long way for a bit lassie like you." "I'm not a bit lassie. I'm thirteen." "Really ! You're young for your age !" She was somewhat doubtful about this remark, but it felt like a compliment, so she let it pass. "What's your name ?" she asked. "Kenneth Blair. What's yours?" "Jean Arnot. How old are you?" "I'll be fifteen next July." This was August. "What's that you were drawing? Is it a wind- mill ?" staring intently down at it. "A windmill!" — with unutterable scorn. "And you say jpu're thirteen ! That's Euclid — Prop. 47. It's a thumper, too." "I haven't begun Euclid yet," she said meekly, and regarded him with a face full enough of ques- tioning to amply justify her nickname. "Will you please tell me something?" He began to laugh, and she knew that "Miss In- quisitive" was on the tip of his tongue. He only nodded, however. "Do all the herd-boys about here do Euclid?" "I d'n' know. There's nothing to stop them if they want to." "Why do you speak so differently from most other boys ? You speak almost as well as I do." MISS INQUISITIVE 17 A smile flickered in his face for a second, but died out, and he said quietly — "That's easily told, anyway. My father was schoolmaster at Inverclaver. He taught me." "And does he teach you still? Where is he schoolmaster now?" He looked at her a moment in silence, and then said — "I don't know. He's dead." "Oh ! But he can't be a schoolmaster anywhere if he's dead. I'm so sorry. And of course he can't teach you either." "I don't know," said the boy slowly. "I think sometimes " But she was off on another scent. "What are you going to be when you grow up ?" "Ah !" — with animation. "I'm going to be a big man." "You can't make yourself that. You're not very big now." "I've not done growing yet, and I'm very strong, and I've never been ill in my life. Besides " "I've just had measles and whooping-cough. That's why I'm here." - He nodded, as much as to say, "Yes, that's just the kind of thing girls would have" and went on, "And then I'm going to be an explorer." "O-o-o-h!" with snapping eyes. "Where?" "I don't know where. Anywhere where nobody's ever been before." She devoured him with hungry appreciation. His i8 WHITE FIRE face was so very clean, so radiantly bright, and the sparks in his blue eyes kindled answering sparks in her own. For she too possessed a lively imagina- tion, and a spirit many times the size of her body. "But will you be able to? Are you very rich?" "Rich? No, I'm not rich, but I'm not that poor either — not just now. I bought this last week," with a touch of superior pride, as he hauled out a Latin grammar, six-hand, but still boasting covers. "When I've finished it I'll feel poor till I get the next. But that's not yet." "Wouldn't you like to be very rich ?" "I d'n' know. I never tried it." "My father is very rich." "Is he? And what are you going to do when you grow up?" "Oh, I'm going to be a lady." "Yes, that's about all you can be, I suppose," he nodded, and looked really sorry for her. "I shall be very rich, and I shall do just what I like — except darning and needlework. They're hijjus !" "Hideous," he said, with a touch of pedantic re- proof which consorted oddly with his jacket and trousers. "I always say 'hijjus' when it's quite too awful and past words. How would you like to be a man- ager of one of my father's mills ?" "I don't know," he said, regarding her doubt- fully. "I'm thinking perhaps I wouldn't make a very good manager. Not yet." MISS INQUISITIVE 19 Then her hand happened to touch her pocket, which reminded her of her lunch. "Are you hungry?" she asked. "I'll sit down here and you shall have some of my lunch, and you shall tell me the names of all those hills and lochs opposite. Aren't they splendid?" "Ay, they're grand. I've been watching them for a year now." She wrestled her dainty little packet out of her pocket, and sat down on a rock looking out over the wonderful panorama in front. The boy sat down on another rock and hauled out a piece of newspaper in which were wrapped some broken pieces of thick oatcake and some rough fragments of cheese. "Do you like oatcake and cheese?" she asked. "Rather!" "Won't you have some of my sandwiches?" she said politely, but not without anxiety. He looked at the delicate provision, and said stoutly — "No, thank you. I like this best." And, as the little lady possessed the dainty but vigorous appetite of the fully-restored-to-health-and- got-to-make-up-for-lost-time, and as she was only thirteen, she was not rude enough to press him unduly. "Now tell me the names of all those hills and lochs," she said, and he proceeded to tell her all she wanted to know. "Yon's Dumbarton," — between bites; "you can 20 WHITE FIRE see Glasgow some days," and she regarded him doubtfully. "And yon's the Gare Loch. That big fellow with the shoulders is Ben Lomond. The one humped up like this is The Cobbler. That other big one is Bea Ihme. That's Loch Long and a bit of Loch Goil, and yon's Holy Loch and Ben More." When she had eaten her tiny sandwiches, and her two small cookies with jam inside, and her two bis- cuits, and hc^d learned the names and personal pecu- liarities of all the hills and lochs, and he had fin- ished the last crumbs of his oatcake and cheese, he convoyed her past the black menace down below, as far as the next stone dyke, and told her how she could shorten her journey by cutting across some fields, and so get down to the Inverkip road, and eventually to Ashton and the "caurs." He watched the sprightly little figure, with the gleaming mane of hair and swinging skirts and twinkling brown shoes, till she reached the next distant corner, waved his hand to her, received an answering wave from her, and turned back to his life — ^his unruly beasts, his treasured Euclid and Latin grammar, his dreams, his hopes, and ever so much more than he knew. But Prop. 47 was not amenable that afternoon. He smiled at thought of the windmill, and looked up to see her standing before him with her sweet childish face and questioning eyes. He thought much of the winsome little lady, both then and for a long time afterwards. He scanned the winding MISS INQUISITIVE 21 path by the Cut each day in hopes that she might come again. But she was away home to London, and at last only a memory of her remained, and that gro-v\|ing dimmer and dimmer till it was little more than a sentiment — simply the warm glow of a pleasant impression. And she ? Ah, she wrought better than she knew that day. For when she got home from her great adventure, and had been duly scolded by her aunts for under- taking so much, when they had only expected her to go up to the Cut and down again in a couple of hours or so — when she reached home, old Mr. MacTavish, the minister, was there, and he rejoiced in her prat- tling tongue, and delighted in drawing her out. She enlarged upon the very uncommon herd-lad- die she had met up on the Cut, — on his satisfactory looks, his unique cleanliness, his fearlessness in the matter of wild beasts, his understanding, and his aims in life. Her thoughts were full of him, and when Miss Jean Arnot had something on her mind her little world was by way of hearing of it. Old Mr. MacTavish had been a herd-laddie him- self in his time. Suifecit! CHAPTER II THE MAN Ten years later Miss Jean Arnot was visiting her aunts in Greenock again. Not but what she had been there many times in between, but this is the only occasion of which we need take note. There had been many changes in these ten years. For one thing, Jean's father was dead, and she was a very wealthy young woman. In many respects she was still very like the little Jean of earlier times. Her face was still the sweet, long oval of her child- hood, though the features were more pronounced and matured. But the chief impression it Ipft upon you was still that of eager questioning, a great long- ing to know, tempered somewhat by years and free- dom from all material care. "Want-to-know" was getting on in years — twenty-three, a great age — but there were still mysteries of life which she had not solved, wherein she found matter for surprise at times. But life ran very smoothly and pleasantly with her. She went out a little, and entertained a little in return, traveled much, and was not wanting in good deeds and charity. Her income was about ten times as large as was really good for her, and if she gave munificently she never missed what she gave, THE MAN 23 so that the recipients were the sole beneficiaries of her giving. She had hosts of friends, phalanxes of admirers; could have had hosts of aspirants to a still closer relationship, but so far would have none of them. She was enjoying herself exceedingly, and fulfilling in their entirety the aspirations of her childhood. She was a lady, she was rich, and she was doing as she liked — and she had not touched a needle since she came into her kingdom. That was the natural rebound, for Aunt Jannet Harvey, a famous needlewoman and housewife her- self, had rigorously insisted — so long as she was in power — on her niece leaning the minor as well as the major accomplishments of a gentlewoman, such as had obtained during her own long apprenticeship to that high estate. And that is how it came to pass that Miss Jean Arnot, wealthy heiress and society lady, really knew a very great deal more about some things than you would have imagined from the casual sight of her at dance or opera. The moment she was free, and a woman of herself, she relegated the "hijjus" things to what she con- sidered their proper place in the economy of her life, and, later, dug them up out of their dusty corners gratefully, and Aunt Jannet was justified. Aunt Harvey — Aunt Jannet Harvey, to distin- guish her from Aunt Lisbeth Harvey — ^had lived with them and mothered her since her own mother died, when she was a very small child indeed. Aunt Jannet was really her mother's aunt, early widowed 24 WHITE FIRE and childless, a wise and placid old lady — old, that is, in the eyes of efferyescent three-and-twenty — ■ with somewhat rigid ideas of right and wrong, ton- ing slowly, by coursv^ of time and easy circum- stances, into a tolerant acceptance of things as they came. Her husband had been a professor in Edin- burgh, and the society he and she had enjoyed in the modern Athens, thirty years before, was her standard of what society ought to be. She was, however, each year becoming more reconciled to the disparities of the lighter age with which John Ar- not's great success in life had forced her into con- tact. And Jean had been to her as her own daughter would have been, if she had had one, since the day she first took charge of her and began to endeavor to answer some of her questions, and quietly to shelve others for more suitable occasion of discus- sion. For little Jean Want-to-know had a most active brain and an insatiable curiosity, and never hesitated to ask for fullest details of anything she did not understand; and the wonderings and ques- tionings of such a child have no bounds at times, and are almost impossible of control, either from the inside or the outside. Jean made a point of spending a part of each year in Scotland, wherever else she and Aunt Jannet might wander at other times. On such occasions Aunt Jannet went to Edinburgh and lived again in the past, but in a yearly narrowing circle, so far as the personal element was concerned, and Jean went to Greenock and queened it over her aunts there. THE MAN 25 She was a great enjoyment, a continuous ripple of excitement, to their ordered household; and since they no longer sat upon her and answered her erst- while inconvenient questions by gentle snubs and nicknames, the times she spent with them were times of great enjoyment to her also. She rather patronized them, of course, which was perhaps inevitable; for she lived twenty to their one, and, moreover, possessed the means to do it and a will that carried all before it. She insisted, for instance, on paying for her board and lodging, and on a tariff of her own fixing, when- ever she came to stay with them, and flatly declined to come on any other condition. They were inde- pendent-minded, and declined to be dictated to in such a matter by a small thing whom they had known in frocks with skirts only thirteen inches long. She promptly scandalized them by going to the Tontine and putting up there. Then they gave way, and she had them. After that she was capable of anything, and they submitted to all her whims, which were always pretty and thoughtful ones, and — she assured them, just as they had been wont to assure her in the days of the thirteen-inch frocks — entirely for their own good and happiness. She salved the cicatrice of the Tontine wound by carry- ing them all off en masse to the Riviera for a month ; and Aunt Jean, after whom she was named, gravely suggested the advisability of frequently opposing her ideas, since the outcome was so eminently agree- able. 26 WHITE FIRE Then she was always making them presents, at which their independency kicked, but in which, nevertheless, they could not but own to enjoyment. But the girl was right, after all. She had much too much, and they had only enough, and that only with clever handling; and they would no more have accepted bald gifts of money than they would have burned down their house and claimed double the value of the furniture. Jean and her visits, and their visits to her, and with her to hitherto unattainable places, were the high lights of their lives. They loved her dearly, rejoiced in her greatly, were proud of her, and won- dered much when it would all come to an end in the centering of her thoughts and affections on one sole and — they fervently hoped, but were not without mis- givings, because of her wealth and her impulsive- ness — ^worthy man. They made ingenuous little attempts at sounding her on that subject, but she was much too clever for them, and skilfully eluded all approaches which might tend, even remotely, to any self-revelations. That there were no revelations to make only added piquancy to the game, from her point of view, since it kept the aunts in a state of perpetual mystification, and held no pitfalls. Among many other changes she had seen in the last ten years, old Mr. MacTavish had retired long ago, and a younger man occupied his pulpit, and, strange to say, gave satisfaction in it. The Rev. Archibald Fastnet was so exactly the THE MAN 27 opposite of his predecessor that it might have seemed impossible that where the one had pleased the other should do so. Mr. Fastnet was young, and he believed in — as he put it — making things jump. And he made both things and people jump at times. He was full of enthusiasms which were generally at white heat and — which is more unusual — remained so. The older generation said he kept them on the perpetual "keevee" to see what he would do next ; the younger people enjoyed him and the service he exacted from them. And on Sun- days they all, old and young, always turned out both morning and evening, since it invariably came to pass that, if they missed a service, something happened which made them feel out of the running for the whole of the following week. When Jean Arnot was at Greenock she did as good Greenock- ians do, and went to church twice every Sunday and one evening in the week as well. The Rev. Archibald never failed to furnish her with a certain amount of quiet amusement, and, apart from other feelings, she always went in ex- pectation and was rarely disappointed. On this particular Sunday morning Mr. Fastnet had prepared a little surprise for his people, which turned out, as his arrangements generally did, a per- fect success. It also afforded Jean Arnot the sur- prise of her life, and she never forgot it. You can forget many things in ten full years. If, for instance, you yburself had met a person infor- mally ten years ago, and spent half an hour with 28 WHITE FIRE him, just incidentally hearing his name, it is doubt- ful if you would recall him very distinctly if he pre- sented himself suddenly before you after the ten years had passed. Jean felt a rustle of surprise among her aunts in the pew, and she saw that two men passed up into the pulpit where the Rev. Archibald lorded it alone as a rule. The voluntary ceased, and he stood up, beaming all over, as usual when he had something unusually delectable up his sleeve for them. "Instead of speaking to you myself this morning," he said, "I have asked our friend Mr. Blair to say a few words to us. We all take a fatherly and motherly, and I may say a sisterly and brotherly, interest in Mr. Blair. Perhaps some of us regret that none of us has taken a still nearer and dearer- than-all-otherly interest in him" — at which Fast- neticism a smile rippled round. "Our young friend leaves this week to begin his work in the South Seas, where, as you know, he is about to join that valiant bearer of light into outer darkness, John Gerson, in his noble work. You will, I know, appre- ciate with me this chance — it may be the last chance — of hearing our young standard-bearer's voice be- fore he passes beyond the fringes of the night." Then he came down, and took his seat in a front pew and enjoyed a preacher's holiday. And, after a pause, and very quietly, young Blair rose in the pulpit and gave out the hymn. So far Jean Arnot had been only interested and amused. But the sound of his voice, clear and round THE MAN 29 and full as an organ tone, made her jump with sur- prise. He had spoken quite naturally, but there was a ring in it that told of immense possibilities behind, and there was something in it that plucked at some hidden chord of Jean's memory and set it humming as a harp-string responds to a bugle note. She stared at him eagerly. Had she ever by any possibility met him before? She could hardly have forgotten it if she had, she thought. For he was a young man of most striking appearance. Tall, square-shouldered and broad-chested — a command- ing figure in truth. It occurred to others besides Jean that if the natives needed more forcible argu- ments than words for their conversion, here was a likely man for the work. Light-haired and clean- shaven, his face seemed to glow with an inner radi- ance — a masterful face, and grave. His eyes were wonderfully magnetic; fearless and steadfast, they made you jump as their glance crossed your own, Jean had just jumped, so she knew. Now who was this ? Surely she had met him be- fore somewhere. Remember it was ten years since she had seen him, and then only for half an hour, and under very different conditions, and she had never heard his name since. She ordered her brain, or her heart, or whichever of her inner servants it was that held the key, to go find it, and sat gazing at him to give them such light as that might afford. But the clue evaded her till he was near the end of his quiet, forceful talk. 30 WHITE FIRE 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 noble Christian gentleman," he said, in a burst of enthusiasm. He asked them for their help, their prayers, their sympathetic re- membrance, 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 trum- pet, 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 re- strainedly, 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 the time the in- ducement was chiefly the unknown, and the inhabi- tants, I fear, appealed to me more as possible hin- drances 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 THE MAN 31 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 recognized 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 cer- tain 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 32 WHITE FIRE 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 recognized 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 traveled far since then." "You much the farthest," she said quietly, "and going still farther. I congratulate you very heart- ily. It is what you desired then. Do you remem- ber telling me?" "Yes. I am very grateful." THE MAN 33! 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 gen- erosity, her cleverness and culture, her independence of thought and deed, and incidentally mentioned that he had seen or heard some rumor of her possible marriage with Lord Charles Castlemaine, second son of the Duke of MutiSter, 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 duchess sooner or later." "Miss Arnot's good wishes would weigh more with me than those of all the duchesses in the land," said Blair quietly. "There is something very taking 34 WHITE FIRE 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 nick- name 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 after- noon 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 retarding clay of a narrow agricultural home. He knew the sturdy independ- ence 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 ofif. THE MAN 35 So he never mentioned Jean, met the boy on his own ground as a perfectly new acquaintance, grad- ually won his confidence and his heart, guided, led, and finally enabled him by his own exertions to ob- tain 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 col- lege for that passion 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 de- grees 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." ^ WHITE FIRE "Tliat is a saint anda hera!" said Blair. "I'm his man if heHI have me." After that no power on earth could have kept them apart, and on Thursday they were to sail to- gether 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 heart- ily, and grudged every day that lay between him and his work. Blair, in telling Mi-, and Mi-s. MacTavish of his" reception at the Greenock church, incidentally men- tioned 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 antithissis 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 conse- quence 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 yt)U have made such excellent use." "It was Miss Arnot?" said the young man in. amazement. "Truly; yes ! Though I do not for a moment sup- pose she knows anything whatever about it I cv- THE MAN 37 tainly 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 iittle 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 gratifi- cation." "I think it would, sir.'' And so Jean Arnot received two notes which gave her very deep pleasure. And the shorter one, of the two said simply : — "You will have learned by this time, from my^dear , old friend and second.father, what I myself . only karned three days ago — that it was your uncon- scious hand that set my unconscious feet on the ladder. I rejoice to know that it was so. The , knowledge of it would be an additional spur,, if any spur were needed. Time may come, however, when the remembrance of your kindness and all it has done for me, unconscious, though it was, may nerve me. for some critical passage in the life in front, for we are going among perilous peoples. It is not likely we shall ever meet again, but, having learned how this matter stood, I could not leave home .with- 38 WHITE FIRE out tendering you my most grateful and hearty thanks. "That your life may be a wide, and bright, and beautiful, and happy one will be the prayer of "Yours faithfully, "Kenneth Blair." "He is a good man," said Jean thoughtfully, as she folded the letter and put it carefully into a spe- cial corner of her desk, and then immediately took it out again and re-read it. "May God go with him also !" She read in the papers next day of his sailing in company with John Gerson, the prophet of the Dark Islands, and was surprised to discover in herself a curious feeling of loss, as though something had gone out of her life. Which, considering all the cir- cumstances of the case, was distinctly odd, you know. She had only met him twice in her life; for ten years she had hardly given him a thought ; and yet his going left a little blank in a life which was quite unaccustomed to anything of the kind. But the sudden sight of him in all his quiet strength of attainment, and the knowledge of what it all meant to him, together with this new under- standing of how it had all come about, and of the share she herself had unconsciously had in the mak- ing of him — well, perhaps after all it was not so odd. For she had felt a sudden glow of participation in his triumph, a sudden sense of increase such as no THE MAN 39 procurement of her wealth had ever brought her — and now it was as suddenly gone, and a blank re- mained. She caught herself thinking of him oftener than she had ever thought of any man before, and she said to herself in surprise — "Goodness gracious me! why does that herd- laddie stick in my brain so !" A quite dispassionate dissector of the emotions and their origins might have come to the conclusion that it was, after all, only a case of the heart per- forming its natural function of feeding the brain. For the heart is the life. She laughed at herself; but the herd-laddie re- mained in her thoughts, and one day, before she went south, she actually found herself sitting on that very same piece of rock where she had sat ten years before, and in imagination he sat on the adja- cent rock, munching his thick oatcake and broken pieces of cheese. "What a greedy little pig I was !" she said to her- self, as she sat leaning forward with her chin in her hand. "But I don't believe he'd have taken a bite from me, however much I'd wanted him to." She looked at the slab where the windmill had been, and at the pool where the gentleman had washed. He looked as if he had been strenuously washing ever since. What a radiant face he had! It did not come from much washing, she knew ; but somehow the two things linked themselves in her mind. It was the white fire inside that lit up the ,40 WHITE FIRE oDtside: a real man — a man to trust . infinitely — a man to She sat looking out over the mighty panorama of hills and lochs and mountains opposite — "Gare Lioch, Loch Goil, Loch Long, Ben Lomond, Ben Ihme, The Cobbler, Holy Loch." She knew most of them still. How the sight of them all brought him back to her ! And, in all probability, he would never see them again. "We are going among perilous peoples." Well ! he had done very wonderfully ; he was ful- filling the highest aspirations of his boyish heart. And she? She was a lady, and very rich, as she had said she would be. And she remembered the touch of scorn with which the herd-laddie had said, "Yes, that's about all you can be, I suppose." Close behind her the swift brown waters of the Cut hurried headlong to the town— one long, un- ceasing blessing. "Men may come and men may go, but we go on for ever," sang the bubbling waters against the rough rock walls of their narrow way. "Surely I am one of the most useless of God's creatures," said Jean Arnot, as she wandered slowly back towards the paper-mill and home. CHAPTER III THE man's man Unflecked blue sky above, with a blazing white sun in it. A mighty mountain peak, with bald sum- mit, seamed sides mantled with greenery, and round its waist, where it sat in the water, a narrow band of gleaming white sand and tufted cocoa palms, like an Island woman's girdle. A smooth, dark, ruffled mirror of lagoon; and farther out, with gaps here and there, a barrier reef on which the hungry sea chafed and roared in ceaseless thunder. Two white men and a menacing crowd of brown ones. "Ready ?" asked the elder of the two men. He was tall and thin, white-haired and grey- bearded, and his eyes shone like stars. His face was bronzed with much sun. There was a glow in it which did not come from the sun, a mighty deter- mination which did not come from mere strength of will, a sweet white soul-fire which had made him a power throughout the islands of the Southern Seas. "I am ready," said the younger man. His face was brown also, but not bronzed. There was a lighter patch of tightened skin above each cheek-bone. His jaw was set so grimly that it looked aggressive. His lips were tightly closed. His , eyes were unnaturally wide at the moment. He looked 41 42 WHITE FIRE slightly raised — in fact, as a man looks when he and death meet face to face in a narrow way. In front, the crowd of Islanders stood waiting for them at an angle of rock where the white beach curved round into the land. They carried clubs and spears, and swung them restlessly. Behind, on the smooth reflexive swell of the lagoon, a white boat, just pushed off from the shore, rode like a seabird with wings outstretched for swoop or flight. Far- ther out a waiting schooner, whose white sails shivered softly to a head breeze. "Remember, my son," said the elder man quietly, "one sign of flinching and it is finished. Now let us go." He bared his white head and said softly, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit," and went up towards the dark men like the courteous Christian gentleman he was. The younger man did the same. The natives drew back round the rock ; the white men followed. The men in the boat watched in- tently, and then listened and gazed at the angle ot the rock. Their orders were to wait. The two men passed out of sight, the elder, quiet and calm, as if going for a stroll in his mission gar- den, the younger, strung to martyr pitch, ready to endure to the utmost. The Islanders retreated foot by foot; the white men followed steadily. Then, suddenly, clubs whirled and spears bristled, and the brown men turned and rolled on the white like a flood and parted them. The elder man stood and eyed them steadfastly. THE MAN'S MAN 43 He had been through it many times before. Death and he had been old friends and fellow-travelers for many a year, and the passing of The Gate was to him but the entrance to a larger life. He spoke to them in words he thought they might understand. For a moment the two men were like two white rocks in a foaming mountain stream. Brown arms, clubs, spears whirled about them. Not one man in ten thousand could have stood it unmoved. The white-haired man was such a one. He stood. The younger man's face broke ; the strings had been drawn too tight. He cast one swift glance round. In an instant the silvery crown beside him ran blood, and disappeared. With bent head inside his folded arms the younger man dashed at the throng, and sent the brown men spinning, as he had sent men of a brawnier breed spinning on the football field at home. He burst through them in spite of blows and cuts. He was close up to the wild eddy under which his old friend lay when a well-flung club caught him deftly in the neck and brought him down in a heap. The brown men danced madly, and let their shouts go up. They took the younger man by the heels, and dragged him to where the body of the elder lay, and flung him down on top of it. Then the sailors from the boat burst on them with a yell, and sent them scattering. It was days before he recovered consciousness, weeks before he could lie in a chair on the veranda 44 WHITE FIRE of the distant mission house — weak from loss of blood, weaker still in other ways. They tended him lovingly. There were gracious women there who ministered to him like anj^els. To them he was a hero, saint, martyr but once re- moved. To himself ! He was almost too weak to think about it yet. He was hacked to pieces, and bruised to pulp. When he tried to move, it seemed to him that not one sound inch of flesh was left him. When he tried to think, all the little blood that was left in him rushed up into his head and set it humming and buzzing, and dyed his face crimson under the partly bleached tan. His mind was still in a state of confusion; his thoughts were almost as broken as his body. He remembered facing the bristling brown men. He could see their shaggy heads and twisted faces, their white teeth, their gleaming eyes, and the whirl, of their brandished weapons. After that all was blurred, and broke off into sudden darkness. He had a dim remembrance of intense strain and a sudden snap. He groped for the ends of the broken threads, but they were hidden in the outer void. He was still very weak. He accepted gratefully all that was done for him, but for the most part lay in silence. His sufferings were great, but no word of complaint ever passed his lips. If he had permitted himself any such, it would have been that he still lived when his leader died. To all he was a monument of patient resignation. So great was his depression, and so slow his recov- THE MAN'S MAN 45 ery, that it was decided at last to send him home, as the only hope of full recuperation. He acquiesced^ as he had done in everything they had suggested, but in this matter with evident reluctance. He thought it unlikely he would ever return. His heart had been in the work, but he had been tried and found wanting. The work, he said to himself, was for abler and more faithful hands. So the mission schooner carried him to the nearest port of call, and in due course he was lying in a deck chair carefully swathed in plaids, and the great steamer bore him swiftly homewards. The story of the martyrdom and his heroic defense of Tiis old friend: how they two had gone up alone to the peaceful assault of an island of the night; how he had fought for his leader till he could fight no longer, and had fallen at last wounded to death across his dead body, — it had all preceded him. The very sail- ors were proud to have him on board. The officers made much of him in an undemonstrative way. The ladies fluttered around his chair like humming-birds, and loaded him with attentions. And he suffered it all in silence. He was still very weak. How could he turn his sick soul inside out to these strangers, and what good to do so? He had not yet decided what course to take when he got home. He had thought and thought, until he was sick of thinking, sick of himself, sick of life. Ah ! why had he not died with the brave old man out there on the shore of the creek behind the rocks? Why had his nerve given way at that supreme moment? Why 46 WHITE FIRE had this bitter cross been laid upon him? Far better to have died — far easier, at all events. But easier and better run opposite ways as a rule, and have little in common. Should he confess the whole matter, and retire from the field and find some other way of life? Truly he felt no call to any other work. This had been the one desire of his life; he had grown from youth to man- hood in the hope of it. He believed he could still be of service when once he got over the effects of his present fall. Should he not rather bury the dead past, with God as only mourner, and start afresh? — to fail once more when the strain came again, he said to him- self with exceeding bitterness. He grieved over his lapse as another might grieve over a deliberate crime. But he postponed any final decision as to the future till he should feel stronger in mind and body. There was a noted writer on board, a realist of real- ists. He sought impressions at first hand. He cul- tivated the sick man's acquaintance, greatly to his dis- comfort. "Mr. Blair," he said, sitting down by his side one day, "I would very much like to know just how you felt, and what you thought of, when you were fighting those brown devils. Won't you tell me?" And the sick man roused himself for a moment, and looked at him with that in his eye which the other comprehended not, and said slowly, "I felt like the devil and I thought of the devil," and not another word would he say. And the writer pondered much THE MAN'S MAN 47 on the saying, but never got to the bottom of it or knew how true it was. His people met him at the landing-place, the rev- erend father and the white-haired mother, proud to be known even as the foster-parents of such a son, grate- ful for one more sight of him in the flesh. How could he break their hearts by telling them what a broken reed their trusted one had proved? They rejoiced over him greatly, and said to one another that as his strength came back the cloud that lay on his spirits would be lifted. Their gentle encomiums stung him like darts. But, by degrees, broken body and broken spirit were healed. Slowly and thoughtfully he made up his mind that the past should be past. He would go out again. He would take his stand in the forefront of the battle in the hope of an honorable death — for he held his life forfeit to the past. Decision brings a certain peace of mind. He was happier than he had been since he leaped out of the white boat on to the shore of the Dark Island that morning — so long ago that it seemed to belong to a previous life. The old people said God-speed to his decision. They had possessed him once again after giving him up for good. It was more than they had ever hoped for. They were thankful. All interested in mission work hailed his decision with enthusiasm. He was common property and too big to be monopolized by any one sect. They had not been able to make one quarter as much of him as they 48 WHITE FIRE had wrshed. He had quietly declined to be feted and lionized. They considered he carried his modesty to too great an extreme. They would have made capital out of him and kindled fresh enthusiasms for the cause by the sight and sound of him. It was with the greatest difficulty that he avoided it all, using the plea of ill-^health till his bodily appearance would no longer countenance it. Once his decision was made known, however, they decided to drag him out of his retirement, and by dint of persistent importunity prevailed on him at last to appear at a public meeting. He consented with reluc- tance, and only because it was represented to him as a matter of duty. As the time drew near he began to fear that he was in for more than he had expected. But he had given his word, and he would not draw back. There were clever men at the head of the movement. Thousands of ' interested men and women were hun- gering for a sight of the almost-martyr. They had seen his portrait in the illustrated papers — how joyously the old mother had responded to the many requests for it ! — but they wanted to see him with their eyes and hear him with their ears, and the younger folk were to remember all their lives that they had done so. And so, without going into details with him, the leaders of the various societies quietly arranged mat- ters on a generous scale. There were men of imagi- nation among them too, and they prepared a dra- matic touch for the meeting which they calculated THE MAN'S MAN 49 would make it go with a swing. It went beyohd their expectations. When the young missionary stepped on to the plat- form he stopped short, and for a moment looked almost as he had done when he had leaped out of the white boat that morning on the beach of Dark Island. But there must be no drawing back. He had flinched once — never again! The chairman of the meeting was a philanthropic Cabinet Minister. As he welcomed the hero of the hour the great audience rose and waved and shouted. The young man clasped the chairman's welcoming hand as though he were a drowning man, and that hand the one only hope of safety. Then he sank into the chair provided for him, and dropped his face into his hand. All this was torture to him. Why could they not have let him go out quietly to his work, to his death ? No bristling mob of savages that ever could confront him was half so appalling to him as that great well- dressed crowd of enthusiastic men and women and children, gathered to do him honor. Honor! And he before God a dishonored man — a man who had failed when the pinch came. He groaned in his heart, and wished that he had not come. But the chairman was speaking, speaking of him, and what he had done — what he was supposed to have done — in warm, appreciative words and flowing pe- riods, and the audience was as still as a flower-garden on a summer afternoon. In the young man's soul there was a great stillness also, a stillness equal almost to so WHITE FIRE that which had fallen on him when he came out of the shadows and lay in the veranda of the mission bouse. His eyes wandered unseeingly over those solid banks of faces, all turned on him in eulogy of what he had not done. Those thousands of eyes seemed to pierce his soul. One face caught his attention and held it, the face of a girl sitting in the third row from the front. Even in his agony he recognized it, as how could he help when it had been so constantly with him in his thoughts. The smooth white brow, like a little slab of polished ivory ; the level brows ; the large dark eyes looking up at him with something akin to reverence — '■ the beautiful eyes with lustrous points in them; the sweet oval of the lower part of the face; the firm little chin and slightly parted lips, emphasizing the old inquiring look which he knew so well: it was a face any man might remember with gratitude for the mere sight of it. It was the face he had at once longed for the sight of and feared to meet, since ever the thought of coming home had been suggested to him. And now here it was, more beautiful than even his dreams of it — inquiring, hopeful, trustful. And he must satisfy the inquiry — and dash the hope, and shatter the trust for ever. Oh, it was hard 1 It was grievously hard ! His life laid down then and there would have been a small price to pay for the confirmation of her belief in him. And he must destroy it and still live on ! But what was this? The chairman had turned to THE MAN'S MAN 51 him in his speech, the flower-garden in front had sud- denly become a fluttering snowbank. "Mr. Blair does not happen to belong to that par- ticular section of the Church to which I belong, and which, as the State Church of the realm, retains, and rightly retains, within its own hands the appointment of its own high officers. There are some of us who, as we grow older, and perhaps wiser, regret more and more that any differences should remain among the followers of Christ. We would fain see them done away with. We would cast down all fences and walls of partition, and meet our Christian brothers and sis- ters on an absolute equality, on the common platform of love and service to the one Master. "This meeting to-night, of many sects with one common object, is one step in the right direction — a great step. And here is another. The necessity for a supreme hand and head in the guidance of the mis- sion enterprises of the Outer Islands is apparent to all. For such a position we require a man of tried courage and endurance, a man who can look death in the face without flinching, a man who holds his own life of small account, and who is ready at any moment to lay it down in the service of the cause he loves. Of such stuff martyrs are made. That the man who has given us such signal proofs of his fidelity and courage should be chosen for so onerous and so honorable a post is a matter of great satisfaction to us all. Mr. Blair, as all the world knows, has proved his fitness in a time of grievous danger and perplexity — a time Which I do not hesitate to say would have tried the nerve of any man 52 WHITE FIRE to breaking-point, under a strain which might have broken any ordinary man, and small blame to him. But here"— and he jaid his hand upon young Blair's shoulder — '*we have the one man who did not break down, and it is this man whom we would rejoice to recognize as the first bishop of the Outer Islands. I am authorized to request Mr. Blair's acceptance of this arduous and honorable -post, without reference to any question of form or creed. And that request is made, not in the name or on behalf of my own Church only, but in the names and on behalf of all the Churches represented by the missions to the Outer Islands. It is a common point of union. Mr. Blair's acceptance of the post will, perhaps, be one step towards that greater union of the Churches to which we look hopefully for- ward, and I earnestly hope that he will see fit to accept this joint and unanimous request of the Churches." And he sat down with glowing face amidst thunders of applause. And Kenneth Blair? Oh! why could they not have left him to work out his redemption in quietness and silence? Now it was not possible. Those thous- ands of eyes burnt into his soul. The words he had listened to pierced him like two-'cdged swords. Silence was no longer possible. To accept all this, as if it were his rightful due, was to hang a millstone around his neck which would drag him down to perdition. When the tumult died at last into silence, the young man got up and stood and gripped the railing of the platform. THE MAN'S MAN 53 His face was white and set. "A man of (indomitable will," they said. His eyes burnt with a gloomy fire. "He has seen strange and. terrible things," they said. He swayed slightly once or twice before he found his voice. "He has been very near to death," they said. And then he began to speak, quietly, as one who. might need all his strength before he was done ; but there was a timbre in it, born of outdoor speakings which carried to the remotest corner,, and a thrill in it which found its way to every heart. And, of all that great assembly, the only face he saw with any dis^ tinctness was the face oi the girl in, the third; row, with its calm brow and its. lustrous up-glance. He spoke to it. He watched it. If he could convince that one face of all that was in him, he felt that it would he well with him. In his emotion he overlooked all formalities. He found his. voice at last, and said, "My friends, the words I have just been listening to have been tQjme as sword-thrusts through the heart." The silence was intense. Every ear and every eye were upon, him., He saw only the calm, sweet face of the girl in the third row. "I have a, very terrible confession to make to. you. Had I known what was intended this evening, I should not have been here, but no slightest.word of it reached me. My sole desire has been to get. back to my work out yonder, and to lay. down my life in it I have been told that I am a man oi courage and endurance ... of tried nerve ... of unflinching fidelity. There was a 54 WHITE FIRE time when I too believed this of myself." He spoke very slowly and with a solemn impressiveness which those who heard it never forgot to the last day of their lives. "But between that and this there is a deep gulf . . . and at the bottom of that gulf lies the dead body of my dear friend and chief. His death lies at my door." An almost imperceptible movement ran through the audience, as though a cold breath shook it with a simultaneous chill. The face of the girl in the third row remained steadfaistly calm. If anything, it seemed to glow with a deeper intensity of hopeful inquiry. "Say what you will, I believe in you !" it said. "The whole truth of what happened on that dreadful day has never been told. I will confess that I had dared to hope that it might never need to be told — that it might lie between myself and God — ^that I might be permitted by him to work out my redemption on the field of my failure, chastened, and perhaps strength- ened by what has passed. For, at a vital moment, when the flinching of an eyelid meant disaster, I . . . flinched. "This is what happened. As we went up towards the savages that day, my dear old friend asked me if I was ready. I was ready. I said so. He said, 'Remember, one sign of flinching and it is finished,' and we went up and round the corner. We were going, as I believed, to certain death, and I was ready -^at least, and truly, I believed so. When the savages rushed in upon us, the horror of it broke upon me like a deluge. I glanced round to see if there was no possi- THE MAN'S MAN 55 ble way of escape for us. But there was no way. My dear old chief's head was crimson already with blood, and he went down among them. I burst through — and I know no more. They tell me my body was found on top of his. It may be so. How it got there I do not know. What I do know is — that at that supreme moment, when I believed myself to be strong, I found myself weak. When I believed myself ready for a martyr's death, I tried to escape by shameful flight. I was weighed and found wanting, and the remem- brance of it has seared my heart like molten iron, night and day, since ever I came to myself. Whether we should have won through if I had remained firm, God only knows. But — I flinched and fled. It seems to me now that I would sooner die a hundred such deaths as I fled from then than stand here before you all and confess my default. I can accept no honors. Honors !" with a despairing lift and fall of the hand. "I can accept no position based on so terrible a mis- conception. All I ask, and I ask it with the deepest humility, is that I may be allowed to go out there again. My life is forfeit to the past. It shall be spent — if it be God's will, it shall be laid down joyfully — in the service to which I believe He called me, and from which I do not believe He has expelled me." He sat down and covered his face with his hands. There was a momentary silence. The chairman did not quite know what to do. The face of the girl in the third row was ablaze with emotion ; the dark eyes were swimming. She glanced restlessly about to see what was going to happen; she looked like springing S6 WHITE FIRE up herself with flaming words. But another did it. A tall, white-haired man, with a flowing white beard and a face like brown leather, stood up on the platform, and said, in a voice that went straight to all their hearts — "My friends, we have all heard. Some of us under- stand, because we have passed through that same dark valley as our young friend. Dare I, in all humility, remind you that a Greater than any shrank from the supreme moment, and prayed, with agonies no man may conceive of, that His bitter cup might pass from Him? I tell you, gentlemen," he cried, in a voice that rang like a trumpet, "that in doing what he has done here this evening our friend has proved himself a man among men. He has said that a hundred savage deaths appear to him less terrible than the confession he has just made. And it is a true saying. Ask your own hearts. I could prove to you that no man can answer absolutely for himself at such a moment; but I will not even argue the point. Our friend has been through the fire. He has been through God's mill. He has been hammered on God's anvil. I tell you that he is true metal. He has proved it here and now. I hold it an honor to grasp his hand and bid him God- speed." He stretched a. sinewy, leather-brown hand to Blair, and the young man gripped it with a new light in his face, and the two stood facing one another. Still holding the young man's hand, the old one turned to the front again. THE MAN'S MAN 57 "If you agree with me that this is the man we want for the work out there, rise in your seats." His voice had rung like a bugle-call through the outer darknesses of the earth ; his^ name stood but little lower than God's to tens of thousands who dwelt there, and was held in reverence wherever the English lan- guage was spoken. That great audience rose to his call as if a mine had exploded beneath it. His eyes shone with the light the black men knew and lovedl "Let us pray," he said; and the young man fell to his knees beside his chair and dropped his head into his hands again. CHAPTER rv; A SHAMELESS THING ! The night that followed that meeting at Queen's Hall was the most tempestuous time Jean Arnot ever passed through. The dramatic events of the meeting had shaken her hidden soul out of its sanctuary. She was thankful to get home intact — so far, at all events, as outward appearances went. She went at once to her own room. She locked her- self in, and paced the floor until she could pace no more. She could order her steps, but not her thoughts, and her thoughts took wings and climbed lofty heavens of white-piled clouds, and the white-piled clouds were all rosy-tipped, because the thoughts that scaled them came straight from her heart and were tinged with the rosy gold of her heart's desire. Oh, wonderful! wonderful! The great big soul of him! Was there a nobler man on earth? How easy to have let it pass ! to have kept it between God and himself only ! to have worked out his redemp- tion in secret ! But he could not, because he was a true man — ^the truest man ever born, and the bravest. Oh the great, big, noble soul of him! S8 A SHAMELESS THING! 59 To and fro she paced, and, no matter where she looked, his white, set face and blazing eyes looked out at her in that agonized strenuity of appeal which had stirred her so in the hall, stirred her to the depths till she had had difficulty in sitting still. It had seemed to her as though he lost sight of all those straining thousands and spoke only to her — as though they were all nothing, and she the whole world. Had he recog- nized her, she wondered, or had he perceived in spite of the disguisement of her steady face, the intensity of her sympathy, and had clung to it as to a one and only hope ? And as she paced, and sank down into her chair, which had lost all its ordinary sense of comfort, and started up and paced again, there sprang up in her heart a great golden-glowing purpose — a purpose that trapped her breath and set her gasping when first it peeped out, but which grew like an escaped genie, and filled the world of her thoughts before she knew, and was never to be confined within bounds again. An unheard-of thing! An incredible thing! A shameless thing! Nay, not that — and yet — ^yes! yes! Shameless indeed, for shameless meant without sense of shame, and no sense of shame had she — glory rather. An unmaidenly thing, then! That, without doubt, but not without precedent, and circumstances make laws unto themselves. But, whatever it was or was not, it grew and grew, stronger and stronger, and ever brighter in its glowing, gblden rose. 6q WHITE FIRE As she paced to and fro it seemed to her that her path, in life had suddenly flashed out before her on the darkness of the night. It was limned in lines and letters of fire, and they cried to her to follow, follow, follow. And now, as she thought it all out, with tight- ened lips, and crumpled brow, and, eyes that shone, it came home to her, like a revelation, that all her life had been working up to this starry point. She thought long and deeply, and then turned up the light and sat down to her writing-table with a purposeful face. It was done in a moment — a couple of: lines. But a single word has changed the destiny of a nation before this. Weighty things, words, at times ! Live shells are playthings to them. She folded and addressed her letter, and. then pon- dered the best way over a difficulty. She wrote, two more lines and enclosed them with her original letter in a larger envelope, and addressed it, and then she laid her white forehead on the packet for a moment as it lay on the table. And then, like one whose ships are burned, or whose golden bridge is built, she altered the indicator outside her door, so that her maid would call her at seven, and went to bed. Once, before she got to sleep, she smiled to herself and almost, laughed out, as she suddenly remembered that it was Leap Year. Then she cooled her burning cheek on the other pillow and went to sleep, and slept soundly for she had been living at high pressure these last few hours, and the morrow would need all her strength. When the maid brought up her cup of tea in. the A SHAMELESS THING! 6i morning, she handed her the letter which had ^tood'on the table by her !bedside all night, with these precise directions : "Tell William" — the grOom — "to ride into the city and deliver that letter. The answer he will take to whatever address may be given him." She got up and dressed, and went out for a quick walk in Kensington Gardens. At breakfast Aunt Jannet Harvey commented on her appearance. "Why, child, what a color you've got! What took you out so early?" "I've been bathing in dew and early sunbeams, auntie." "I couldn't sleep all night for thinking of that young man and his savages. It appears to me that that is a very great man, Jean. If he lives he will do very noble work. It needed a big soul to face that crowd and tell that story as he did it." "Yes," said Jean. She had never discussed Kenneth Blair with Aunt Jannet Harvey, not to the extent of one single word. After breakfast she found it difBcult to settle down to any of her usual avocations. She could neither read nor play, and she declined to go out. Aunt Jannet Harvey expressed the opinion that such early rising did not suit her, and Jean confirmed her views by going upstairs to her room and wandering about there at a loose end and doing nothing — nothing but think, think, think. Her maid brought her word that William had re- turned, having executed his mission in full ; and please would Miss Arnot ride in the afternoon. 62 WHITE FIRE Miss Arnot would neither ride nor drive that after- noon, nor would she require the brougham in the even- ing. Mary would please ask Mrs. Harvey if she wished to drive in the afternoon. If not, the men's services would not be required. CHAPTER V; LEAP YEAR Kenneth Blair received Miss Arnot's note as he sat at breakfast in the pleasant room of the quiet little hotel overlooking the Embankment, where he was stay- ing in company with Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish. He was to them as one come back from the dead, and they grudged every minute he was out of their sight. The incidents of the previous night had been rather wearing on them all, and they were later than usual that morning, and, at that, dallying over an enjoyment that would soon be of the memory only. The rare color filled his pale face as he read the two lines of Miss Arnot's note, and he read them sev- eral times, as though frequent perusal might provoke interpretation. "Dear Mr. Blair, — "I have an urgent wish to speak with you. Will you do me the favor of calling here at 3 p.m. to-day ? "Yours sincerely, "Jean Arnot." "I wonder what she wants?" he said meditatively, and handed the note to the old people. "I don't think I want to see anybody." 63 64 WHITE FIRE "I think you must comply with her request, my boy," said Mr. MacTavish. "She has more than ordinary claims upon your consideration, you know." Blair nodded, and winced involuntarily. It went a good deal deeper than the old man knew, and after last night he did not feel quite himself again yet. He had a morbid dread of hero-worship, and though the out- ward man was healed and shaping well again, the inner man still felt woefully sore and bruised and humbled. "She was there last night; she sat about three rows from the front," said Mrs. MacTavish. "I wish you could have seen her face while you were speaking, Kenneth. It was like the face of an angel." Kenneth had seen it, and nothing but it, and the thought of it made it none the easier for him to com- ply with her request. He said quietly : "Well, I'll think about it, and see how I happen to be situated for three o'clock. I have to see Mr. Campbell at eleven in Moorgate Street. If he has any appointments for me, I might be unable to go, in which case I'll send Miss Arnot a wire." But Mr. Campbell knew how short his time was, and so occupied as little of it as possible ; and three o'clock found him at Miss Arnot's dainty little house in Knightsbridge, overlooking the Park. He had hesitated — as an intelligent moth might flutter warily just outside the heat radius of a candle- flame — strongly tempted, desirous, but doubtful. For she had occupied much, very much, of his thoughts — too much, he had angrily said to himself at LEAP YEAR 65 times — since ever he learned the part she had had in the making of him. And quite apart from that, she was so very charming in herself. It could hardly be in the power of any man, he thought, to be much in her company and not have longings for still closer acquaint- ance and companionship — and such things were not for him. His way lay among the shadows of the outer night, and it must of necessity be, outwardly at all events, a somewhat lonely way. Companions he would doubtless have, and the best of all high company. But home, wife, child — these were not for him. In his mind's eye he saw the white beaches, the towering cliffs, and black bosky gorges of the Dark Islands, and the thunder of the surf was in his ear. And in his heart he said bravely, "My home, my wife, my children!" But his thoughts were never far from her, and now that, in spite of himself, he was to meet her face to face, they gathered head and had their way in spite of him. He had often wondered why she had not married. She was still young, of course; but, after all, twenty- five was not so very young for an unmarried lady of such unusual possessions of mind, body, and estate. She possessed, he could well believe, an independent spirit. Had she not, even at thirteen, told him that one of her aspirations was to do as she liked ? He had recognized her instantly, and with a start, the previous night. That was before the drama became exciting. And he had wondered then if she had 6& WHITE FIRE changed her name since last he saw her, or whether "Jean Arnot was still good enough for her." And what could she possibly want to say to him ? Possibly— quite likely — in the excitement of the evening's proceedings she had felt an impulse to do something more for the mission cause than she had done hitherto. That was it, no doubt. Well, they could do with Miss Arnot's assistance. Funds were never too ample for the work that cried aloud to be done. He was evidently expected. The maid led him along the hall, through green baize doors, down a passage, into the library, a beautiful and cozy room such as he had imagined wealthy people might possibly possess, if, in addition to all their other possessions, they possessed a love of books. It overlooked the garden and the Park, and was as bright and secluded a little holy of holies as the most devoted worshipper of the sacred flame might desire. The Island Mission houses were — not exactly geographically perhaps, but in every other attribute and particular — the absolute antipodes and antithesis of this charming little sanc- tum. The walls were lined with bookcases full of richly bound books, the table was strewn with books and magazines, among which, and queening it over them all, stood a great night-blue bowl of white lilac, filling the room with the perfume of the spring. There was a cheerful little fire of mixed peat and logs on a flat hearth, with brass dogs and chains. A sudden whiff of the peat, as he passed the hearth, carried him in an instant back into his boyhood. LEAP YEAR 67 He glanced at the bountiful shelves with the hungry look of the student whose pocket had never at any time been able to keep pace with his appetite. For knowl- edge of books is good, and possession of books is good, but knowledge and possession combined are still much better. He was standing looking out into the garden whence the lilac had come, when Miss Arnot came quietly in. He turned and bowed. He had made up his mind to hold himself tightly, but her welcoming hand drew forth his own, and carried his first line of defense in a walk-over. "It was good of you to come," she said impulsively, "and I thank you. I know your time is very short, and you must have much to do." "Yes, there is much to do," he said very quietly. "But I am grateful to you for, at all events, affording me another opportunity of thanking you in per- son " But she stopped him with a peremptory little hand. How beautiful she was, with her wistful face and commanding little ways! There was even more than usual of strenuous inquiry in those shining eyes of hers. "You are going back on the first of May?" Her speech was more rapid than usual. He saw that she was excited. Probably the remembrance of last night's meeting still held her, he thought. "Yes, on the first of May. And then 1 hardly think it likely I shall ever return to England." 68 WHITE FIRE "But why?" she jerked, in her old, quick, want- to-know way. "Well — ^you see — I really feel as if I had no right to be here at all. By rights I ought to be lying under a cairn on the beach of Dark Island." "Oh, but that is simply morbid, and the result of your long illness. You will not feel that way long." "I hope not. The work is crying to be done. Per- haps, after all, I shall be able to help it more above ground than below." "Of course you will. Don't you find it dreadfully lonely out there, with none but black people about you?" "They are very fine people, some of them. And the loneliness only nails one the tighter to the work. Besides there are- " "Has it never struck you that you might possibly help it quite as much by remaining here as by going out again ?" Oh, Jean ! Jean ! "Never," he said, with a slight flush. "My work lies there, and I hope to give my life to it, and to give it up for it if need be, as my dear old friend gave his." "But there are others who could do the work just as well, are there not?" "Many, I hope. I hope many will." "And if I understand aright. Missionary Societies are always short of funds, and the work is hindered, or at all events progresses more slowly, in conse- quence." "I have my own views as to that," he said quietly. LEAP YEAR 69 "Won't you tell me what they are? I am greatly interested." "They are not shared by many of my friends, and I do not obtrude them. I believe that the work is God's work, and when He sees fit to provide larger ways and means, larger ways and means will be forth- coming. If we had all the money we wanted, we might lose our heads, and go ahead too fast— ^scamp the work perhaps, and prove but jerry-builders in the end. One cannot forget that it has taken Christianity eighteen hundred years to arrive at its present position, and that for long periods it lay almost dormant; whereas, if the Founder had deemed it best to accomplish the work at one stroke. He could have done it." "Yes," she said thoughtfully. "I don't think I ever looked at it in that light before. And you are quite determined to go back ?" "Quite determined — only too grateful for the chance." "And nothing would keep you here?" "Nothing that I can imagine — except absolute incapacity for the work." "You would not stop even if" — and she bent forward, with hands tightly clasped to prevent them jumping visibly before him, and eyes that shone like stars. Oh! how beautiful she was! — "if I begged you to do so?" He jumped up hastily. "If you ? If you begged me to — what?" And her bright eyes, fixed intently on his lean face, caught the sudden fierce clench of the teeth inside. 70 WHITE FIRE which threw the cheek-bones into bolder prominence. She noted it — she could almost hear the grinding of his teeth; and the game was in her hands. She had the advantage of understanding what the game was, while he was completely in the dark. He stood gazing down at her for a moment, and then said more quietly — "I'm afraid I don't quite understand. Perhaps my illness has dulled my brain somewhat." "No, it hasn't, Mr. Blair. I was asking you in cold blood if you would not stay in England and marry me, and use my money from here for the furtherance of the cause out there." He stared at her still with all his great heart in his eyes — all of it that was not jumping in his throat like a baby rabbit. He gazed down at her for another moment, then bent suddenly before her and took her hand and kissed it, and said huskily and in jerks — ^between the rabbit-kicks — "You will think no ill of me — if I go — at once. I dare not stop " But she had gripped his hand and held it tight, and stood holding him, and her face shone and her eyes. "Then — will you take me with you, Kenneth?" "Take you with me?" Her rings cut into her next fingers under the fierceness of his sudden grip, and she could have sung aloud, for the grip came right from his heart and told his tale to her. "Do you mean it— Jean?" "Surely." LEAP YEAR 71 And yet he had a doubt. You must bear with him. You see, he had been half inside the gates of death, and — well, the proceeding was distinctly out of the common run of things. "Is it myself— or the work?" he asked almost fiercely. For the thought had flashed across him — and not unnaturally — that this was but one more result of the exdtement of the meeting last night. She had been shaken out of her usual discretion and decorum, had probably lain awake all night, and But her eyes were steady as stars, and as bright, as she said — "Both! But yourself first. I liked you the first time we met. I loved you the second. I have never ceased to think about you. Your going away left a blank in my life. After last night I love and trust you more than ever, if that be possible. Last night my way was made clear to me." "Now, glory be to God!" he cried, and kissed the wistful lips that looked as if they had been waiting long for just that seal to the compact. And then he sat down suddenly and covered his face with his hands, as though what was in him was not even for her eyes. She sank down on to a footstool beside his chair, and noticed how white his hand was compared with the great, strong brown hand which had held hers that day in the Greenock church. He was himself again in a moment — or suppose we say he came back from where he had been — and his face was full of the old radiant glow as he raised it to look at her. 72 WHITE FIRE "It is real, isn't it?" he asked in a light-hearted, boyish way. "I'm real," she said, smiling back at him. "You seem not quite yourself." "Did you ever try to imagine what it would feel like to have every single desire of your heart suddenly granted to you all in a lump ?" "I don't think I ever did. It sounds as if it might be too much for one." "It is — almost. And you wonder if it is real and true, or only a vain imagining. Jean, is it true that you care for me ? "No — love you, Ken, — dearly — every inch of you." "And that you are going to marry me?" "If you ask me properly." "Jean, will you marry me and come out with me and share my work?" "I will!" He gazed at her steadfastly, and said softly — "Thank God ! it is true !" He enjoyed that full sunshine of felicity for close on five minutes, and then said more soberly — "Do you quite understand, dear, all that you are giving up? Life out there " "It is enough for me at present to realize what I have gained. Can you not understand, dear, that to a woman the jtime comes when the heart's love of one man is more to her than all the rest of the whole wide world? Life touched its highest with me when you made my fingers bleed a few minutes ago." "I made your " and he snatched her hands and LEAP YEAR 73 saw the tiny wounds. "Oh, forgive me! I did not know " and he kissed them tenderly. "Sweet wounds!" she said. "They told me more than all you have forgotten to tell me — all that I was aching to know." "And you really care for me like that, Jean? For me! Is it possible? I wonder why?" "Perhaps God had something to do with it. It is so very good that it must be from Him." "Yes," he said emphatically. "And now — ^when are you going to tell me that you care a little for me, and are not just taking me because I threw myself at your head and you could not help yourself ?" "Oh, Jean! Jean! you knew — though how I can- not tell. You have been shrined in my heart since that second time we met, but I knew it was hopeless " "Clever boy! And you hardly knew me then." "I knew your eyes the moment I looked into them, and they have never left me since." "Such common brown eyes ! But you didn't know what lay behind them?" "The most beautiful eyes in the world." And by degrees they settled into quiet talk of the future. He still feared she did not fully understand all she was giving up, and conscientiously endeavored to make it clear to her. She listened to please him, and because it was sweet to hear him, for all his thought in the matter was for her and her well-being. 74 WHITE FIRE So she let him go on; and when he had exhausted all his arguments, she said quietly — "It is all nothing and less than nothing, dearest, compared with the rest. Where you go I go. Your work shall be my work, and your people my people, and nothing but death shall part us." And with a heart that seemed like to burst for very fulness of joy in her, he said, "Amen !" CHAPTER VI A SUDDEN WIDE HORIZON "Mr. Blair! The young man who spoke at the meeting the other night? Why, I didn't even know that you knew him, Jean!" said Aunt Jannet Harvey, gazing at her in wide-eyed wonder. "Oh, I've known him since I was thirteen!" "And you never spoke to me about him! Why I don't remember you ever even mentioning his name !" "I don't beheve I ever did. We will make Up for it now, auntie." "And he has really had the audacity to ask you to marry him?" "Yes, auntie," — very meekly. "And you've said 'y^s,' and you're going out with him to the South Seas ?" "Yes, auntie." "Well, child, let me tell you what I think about it. I think you might have looked much higher, and fared very much worse. He struck me the other night as a very noble young man indeed, and I wondered then why he hadn't made some woman happy. I believe you will be very happy, Jean, unless those cannibals kill you and eat you." "If they eat us both at the same time I don't care," said Jean boldly. "Yes, I shall be very happy, auntie, for he is the best man in the whole world." -jS WHITE FIRE "And when do you go?" "Our marriage will make some changes in his plans, of course, and he is seeing the Society people to-day about an extension of leave. We discussed it all yesterday — at least, all that we had time for. He is full of plans — such glorious plans! It is a grand thing to be a man, and to be built on a great big scale, and to have glorious ideas- " "And the means to carry them out ! And when did you say you'd be going?" "In about six weeks probably. You see, he wants to buy a steamer for his work among the islands, and we shall go out in her." "I shall be quite ready," said Aunt Jannet Harvey. "I shall want two or three new dresses suitable to the climate " "You, auntie? You will go too?" "Why, of course, child I You'll need me more than ever out there. Suppose you fell sick. Suppose — oh, I can look ahead farther than you can, perhaps! I can see a hundred ways in which I can be useful to you. And you don't need to fear that I'll be in your way — I'll see to that. But I'll be within reach when I'm wanted; and I've always had a hankering to see those outside parts of the world. It was my dear James's dream too. He was a great botanist, when he had any time to spare from his logic. He'll be glad to think the chance has come to me at last." And so when Blair came back next day from an exciting time in the city, Jean solemnly announced — A SUDDEN WIDE HORIZON 77 "You'll only find out by degrees all you've under- taken, young man. You've got to marry Aunt Jannet Harvey as well." "Polygamy is still practised out there," he said heartily. "As a matter of policy we have to counte- nance it at times; but we set our faces against it, because it does not work well. If this means that Mrs. Harvey has consented to accompany us " "Consented? She proposed it, or rather took it for granted, and won't hear a word against it." "Then my heart is lightened of one of its cares, and I am truly grateful to Aunt Jannet" — and Aunt Jannet was his from that moment. "God surely put the thought into your kind heart," he said, as he wrung the capable old hand warmly. "You will be more to Jean out there than words can tell. I thank you with all my heart." "I knew it," said Aunt Jannet, with emphasis. "I wanted to ask you, Mr. Blair " "Kenneth, surely, now, Aunt Jannet!" "Surely! — Kenneth — what the ladies wear out there." "Well, the native ladies don't wear much, and the ladies of the missions wear much what you would here, if you cared only for use and comfort, and nothing for fashion. They always look very neat and clean" — at which Jean smiled reminiscently. "I see," said Aunt Jannet. "Jean and I will lay our heads together. I think we can live up to that stand- ard, at all events." 78 WHITE FIRE He had a cup of tea with them, and then ran along to the hotel to bring old Mr. and Mrs. MacTavish over to dinner. And after dinner they sat and talked and talked, and he laid some of his ideas and plans before them, and had only just begun when it was time for the old people to go home to bed. For his plans and ideas were blossoming in the golden sunshine like an orchard kept back by a late spring, and flung suddenly into the quickening warmth of coming summer. He had gone down that morning to see the secretary of the society which had originally sent him out, and to whom he still felt officially bound, to inform him of the changes in his plans which his mar- riage would bring about, and to request an extension of leave. There happened to be a full meeting of the com- mittee in session when his name was brought in, and the secretary at once suggested his introduction to the meeting. And so, when Blair was shown into the board-room, expecting to meet Mr. Secretary alone, he found some fifty ladies and gentlemen eagerly awaiting him. The great glad light in his face — the light that Jean Arnot had helped to rekindle — drew all their eyes. They whispered among themselves that the Queen's Hall meeting had done him good after all. Some of them had been fearing the effects of such tremendous emotion on a weakened body. The chairman, the noble head of a house devoted to good deeds, gave him hearty welcome, and said the A SUDDEN WIDE HORIZON ^9 committee would be delighted to hear any further