Playing With Fire

The journey to America being determined, Dr. Lindsey went back to London to prepare his business for an absence of three months. Ian was glad of his companionship, and promised to meet him in Liverpool on the 25th of July. There they would take together passage for New York. This plan was fully carried out, but of the voyage, the journeyings and their life in California there is no necessity to write. Possibly most of my readers have crossed the Atlantic, and know far more about California than I do; so that I may well leave any descriptions to their memories or imaginations. It is the humanity of my story with which we have to do.

They had been eagerly looked for at Los Angeles, and were welcomed with unbounded love and respect. Donald and his father drew aside for a moment, but what they said to each other only God knows. There is a divine silence in forgiveness. When Peter first met Christ, after his denial of Him, what did Peter say? What did Christ say? We are not told; but great wrongs can be wiped out in one tender word, though such acts in the drama of life are not translatable. It was different with Macbeth. He greeted his guests with a proud and delightful extravagance.

"You are welcome, 'Men of St. Andrews!'" he cried; "you are tenfold welcome!" And for the next five weeks he gave himself to entertaining them in every possible way. The pretty Spanish wife was shy and reticent, but her three sons spoke for her, and Donald was evidently the idol of his house and in all his surroundings prosperous and happy.

Jessy Caird, however, had failed and faded physically more than she ought to have done, so Ian was not slow to take the first opportunity of speaking confidentially to her. She was sitting just within the open door of her bungalow. Her eyes were closed, her work had fallen from her hands, and there was no book of any kind within her reach. Ian wondered at these things. Jessy doing nothing! Jessy without a book! What could be the meaning of it?

She opened her eyes as she heard his approach, and said with a smile, "You are walking like your old self, Ian, but for all that sit down by me."

"That is what I am here for. I want to talk with you, and with you only. My dear sister, you look sick – or very unhappy. Which is it?"

"Ian, I am both sick and unhappy. In the first place, I am heartbroken for my native land. I want to see once more the green, green straths of Scotland – the green straths with a haze of bluebells over them! I want the gray, soft skies and the little silvery showers that blessed both humanity and nature with constant freshness. And O Ian, I want, I want, I want the living tongue of running water! Do you mind that, in all the summers we spent in Arran, we could not go anywhere on the island and lose the happy sound of running water? Do you mind how the waters leaped from rock to rock, and thundered down the craggy glens, and then went singing and gurgling along the roadside? Ian, Ian, take me home! I want to die in my own country!"

"Die! Nonsense, Jessy! You must live for others even if you want to die. I need you. You must go back to Scotland and help me. I have told you of the great work my uncle and I are planning. We cannot do without you."

Her face brightened, there was a smile in her eyes, and she looked eagerly at Ian as he continued:

"It would make you heartsick to see that fine house in the Square going to destruction. The Major's heart and head are in the building of the church, and the servant men are neglecting everything beneath their hands."

"It serves him right. The Major was set on having only servant men. Three or four tidy women would have – "

"To be sure. We shall soon get rid of the men when you and I get home."

"What are you meaning, Ian? Speak straight."

"I am going to live with my uncle. He is an old man and needs me."

"Stuff and nonsense! He will never need either you or anybody else. You may need him."

"I need him now, Jessy. He is mainly building the church. His heart and soul are in it. He has given up practically his large business."

"Given up his business! What does the man mean?"

"He is only retaining the charge of three estates until the heirs come of age. He promised to do that, and does not feel it right to break a promise made to the dead."

"Well, then, a man may live decently from three estates."

"Jessy, we have laid out together such a great and good work, but without your help we cannot carry it forward. We must have some good woman to look after our food and our home. We are counting on you, and you must stand by us."

"I will go with you gladly. I will soon put a stop to the wastrie and pilfering going on in the Major's house; and I will take good care of you two feckless, helpless men – but I am your sister, Ian; I must look to my position."

"You are right. You will be mistress. You will stand at my right hand, as you always did; and the Major said you were to have 'your will and want and wish,' whatever it was. Jessy, you are going home."

"How soon, Ian?"

"Any mail may bring me word to hurry back to Scotland. I feel that I ought to be there now. Get ready for an early journey."

In less than two weeks the expected letter, urging Ian's early return, came; and Ian and Jessy set their faces Scotlandward the next day; but Dr. Lindsey resolved to stay another month and see more of a country so wonderfully fresh and interesting. Jessy went away very quietly, and it struck Ian she was glad when the parting was over; and she acknowledged that in a certain way she was so.

"I was that feared I would die there," she said, "and I could not keep the little Border graveyard out of my thoughts. My kindred for three hundred years lie there, and I wanted to take my last rest among them." This feeling would be to an American an unthinkable source of anxiety, but to the Scotch man or woman it would be a real and potent promoter of the feeling. For they cherish the memory of their fathers – good or bad – and there burns alive in them a sense of identity with the dead, even to the twentieth generation. Ian thoroughly understood Jessy's worry and respected her for it.

"You should have written to me, Jessy. A word concerning your fear would have brought me to you at any time. Why did you think of dying? Were you not well treated?"

"I could not have been better treated. I was close to Donald's heart, the children loved me, and Macbeth wanted me to be his wife."

"And Mercedes?"

"Perhaps not so much. She was a wonderfully jealous little woman. She did not like Donald or the children or her father to be long in my company. She did her best to conquer the feeling, but how could she with centuries of Castilian blood in her veins? It was my own fault if I was not happy, but the longing for Scotland was above all other desires. I had too little to do. I wanted some work that was my work. No one can be content without it."

"The children are fine boys."

"Yes – do you remember the morning you would not hear of their father going either to the army or navy? You said he was the only Macrae to keep up the name of the family, and forthwith sent him to a desk in Reid's shipping office. You have four grandsons now, three of them Macraes. You see God knew, if you could only have trusted Him. What is the Major's worry now?"

"He has a hankering after a pulpit. I do not want one."

"But will your creed be respectable without a pulpit?"

"I have no creed."

"Ian!"

"Except the commandment that we love God and do unto others as we would like them to do unto us. Love is the fulfilling of the whole law. If this creed does not satisfy you, Jessy – "

"Oh, you know, Ian, I can abandon my creed at any time, but I shall carry my prejudices into eternity."

Thus discussing, in Jessy's various moods, their old religious differences, they came finally to the end of their journey, and found the Major waiting to receive them at the Buchanan Street railway station. He had ordered a feast to honor their arrival, and the men who prepared it – not knowing for whom it was prepared – cooked it badly and served it in slovenly fashion. The next morning they all went away forever, and three clever, active girls reigned in their stead. Then Jessy, the happy-tempered bringer of the best out of the worst, was satisfied; and the Major knew he would have a home to live in, and Ian, always fastidiously fond of order and quiet, was sure his domestic life would fill every necessity of his public work.

This work was progressing in spite of various delays, and at the end of the following year the beautiful building was fully ready for use. It was filled as soon as opened. Doubtless, curiosity had something to do with the crowded services; yet Ian was already much beloved among all classes and conditions of men and women, for the love of God, which filled and influenced his whole life, attracted to him the love of all who met him. Many remembered him as a haughty cleric, full of learning, and not very approachable, even to his own congregation. But this new Ian was always smiling and kindly, ready to cure the wounded and heal the sick and to give with love and sympathy all the consolations that flow from the reality of heavenly things.

The opening of the new church was a great day in Glasgow. There was not even standing room for one more worshiper, and when Ian saw a large contingent from the old Church of the Disciples present he was very happy. And as he looked at them his face shone with love and they saw it as the face of a Man of God. Tender and inspiring was the sermon he preached that day, and one sentence in it went – no one knew how – the length and breadth of Scotland. Yea, before it had been spoken half an hour there came to him testimony that it had begun its mission. For, as he was walking leisurely down Sanchiehall Street, Bailie Muir, an old class-mate at St. Andrews, joined him.

"O man! man!" he cried in an exultant voice, "I bless you for some words you said to-day! I have been longing to hear them, though I knew not until this morning what I wanted."

"And you know now, Bailie?"

"Yes. You said that we came here to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Listen! You said, 'Immortality is an achievement! It is not a favor, not a gift, not a selection, not a chance; it is something we must work for – something we must win. Immortality is an achievement!' Are these words true?"

"They are faithful and true words. Come home with me and we will talk them over."

Thus out of the old paths and into the brighter new ones this great heart led his people. By day or night he knew no weariness in well-doing. His loving kindness was a constant over-flowing of self on others – a heavenly thing, springing from the soul just at that point where the divine image is nearest and clearest.

Do you ask if he is preaching to-day? It is not impossible. Yet my feeling is that by the full employment of a holy life he arrived some years ago at maturity for death. Such a man could not linger too long on the Border Land. Christ himself would speak the compelle intrare, "Enter! Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!"

THE END

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