Chapter XIV: Girding on the Armour

The year that followed Gordon's departure for the North was my growing year. It was the sweetest, dreariest, love-brightest, loneliest year of all my life--and it was, as I have said, my progress year. I mean, by that, it was the year which led me farthest in to the real secret of living and the real springs of life. Of course, it was a desolate twelvemonth; I never saw Gordon's face from its beginning to its close; and this was a new side of life to me, to discover that I could miss any one face so much. Nothing pleased me more than the sadness that used to settle down on me every now and then, especially in the twilight hour, when the dear absent one filled all my thought. There was a kind of royal state about my widowhood--if that sombre word can be applied to such a hopeful year--that made me feel I was set apart from all other girls, especially from those who had their happiness on tap right at their hands. Mine seemed to be fed from far-off fountains, farther up the hill; and I felt a kind of envious pity for those whose unromantic luxury it was to see their sweethearts every night. I walked by faith; but they by sight, I thought, paraphrasing a text of Scripture--which, it occurred to me, was the proper thing for a girl with such ministerial prospects as my own. But I suppose they pitied me in turn; which only goes to show what a self-rectifying world this is.

Besides, so far as my own household was concerned, I was deliciously alone. I learned, in this connection, something of the martyr's mysterious joy. If there was one thing beyond another that made me love Gordon more and more wildly every day, it was that my family hardly ever spoke his name. Excepting mother, of course; she was still my mother, if a disappointed and saddened one--and sometimes great freshets of tenderness and sympathy flowed from her heart over into mine. But uncle was so stern about it all, so consistently silent. If he had been a rejected lover himself he couldn't have handed me Gordon's daily letter more solemnly than he used to do when he came in with the mail.

These I always read alone in secret, putting them away afterwards with reverent hands--and I kept the key myself this time. And such letters as they were! I could be famous over all the world, if I chose to publish the love-letters of Gordon Laird--they were a combination of poetry and fire. Yet I had always read, and heard, that Scotchmen, even when in love, were as reserved and cold as their native mountains. Perhaps they are--but my Scotchman must have been a Vesuvius, with Eolian harp accompaniment, as the world would concede if they could once get their eyes upon his letters.

I valiantly renounced everything I thought questionable for a girl whose promised husband was a minister of the Gospel. I gave up cards, of course, though not without a pang. Sometimes I still went to card parties, but I never did anything worse than punch the score cards, which I could do quite dexterously. I never cared for the business though; if there's a mean occupation on earth, it's punching score cards while everybody else is having all the fun. I fancy I felt a good deal like those famous pugilists that drop down at last to holding a sponge, or something of that sort. I began, too, to take a faint interest in temperance; forswore claret punch forever; thought seriously, for several weeks, of giving up syllabubs; even went so far at table as to ask Aunt Agnes if she thought brandy sauce was quite the thing. Aunt said I didn't raise the question till after I had had two helpings. With regard to "the light fantastic," I never danced anything stronger than Sir Roger; used to play, sometimes, while the others waltzed--but that's deadly dry, like punching score cards, or holding a sponge when your fighting days are done.

About the brandy sauce, mother told me after that I needn't worry. Did I know how expensive brandy was, she said. And I had already told her how much salary Gordon was getting in his mission field in Canada. There is no need to mention it here--but it was mighty little. He had a country station, somewhere in the rural districts; of which, to my mind at least, Canada seemed to be almost entirely composed. For all I knew of that Dominion was from the geography we learned at school; it gave only a few paragraphs to our nearest neighbour nation--and these were clustered round a picture that would chill you to behold, the picture of a man without coat or vest, knee-deep in snow, lifting up his axe upon the trees of the forest.

Gordon's letters, of course, were full of his work and his people. And they didn't contain much that would likely attract a girl brought up as I had been. Little gatherings of people, mostly in country schoolhouses, deadly singing--which must have been hard on Gordon--rude companionship, humble lodgings and humbler fare, long rides and walks, scant results for all his toil. But he seemed to love his work and his people, and never complained. Once or twice he said they were woefully conservative in their theology, and that they were sternly set against all the views of modern scholarship, even though they didn't know what they were. To tell the truth, I didn't know myself, but I felt uneasy at the term; far from religious though I was, I yet always felt that there were no doctrines worth the name except the old ones--the older the better, thought I. And when I asked Mr. Furvell about it he said he hoped Gordon wasn't a disciple of Robertson Smith, and added something darkly about a "higher critic." I didn't know exactly what this last might be--the adjective might apply to Gordon all right, I reckoned, but I didn't like the noun.

Anyhow, we were going to be married; that was the principal thing to me, and I went bravely on making preparations for the greatest event of all my life. I hadn't much to bring Gordon as a dower--practically nothing, indeed--for my mother's modest income left no margin for that, and was so bequeathed that it could not survive her. But I wanted to bring him a good true heart and a sound body--with a few lovely things to clothe it. Every girl wants that, or ought to, at least.

Of course, it was a sad feature of the case that we were not to be married at our own home. I suppose we might have been. In fact, mother told me as much, and I knew she had it straight from uncle. But I knew right well that it couldn't be a happy wedding there, with matters as they were; and, besides, it would have raked into fire the smouldering embers of that awful blaze that I have told about already. And the whole town would have been agog--not in the way, either, that every girl likes a town to be when she gets married. So it was arranged that our wedding was to take place quietly in Baltimore, at the house of a girl friend of mine whose marriage had taken her there to live. Gordon was to meet me there--though I really believe he would have preferred to beard the lions in their den--and mother was to go North and see me launched on this unknown sea.

The first time I was ever angry with Gordon was about six weeks before our wedding day. He wrote me a long letter, full of details about the humbleness of his position, and the slimness of his prospects--and the scarcity of his cash. He wanted to go ahead, of course, he said; but he thought it only fair to tell me, accustomed as I had been to a life of comparative luxury, of the great sacrifice I was making, and to give me a chance even yet, should I shrink from it, to etc., etc. I wrote him that very night and I told him I'd marry him if we had only the north side of a corn-cob to live on, which I inwardly thought was a pretty vigorous stroke and worthy of a nimbler pen than mine. Gordon always kept that letter, he told me long after, lest the corn crop should ever fail.

It was a lovely wedding, though there were only four people besides ourselves to see it. Gordon held my hand so tight in his; and what I felt the most, and gloried in, was this--that he was so much stronger than I. My gown looked beautiful, they all said; and I cried a little--two things that are necessary, it seems to me, to any really successful wedding. I remember how Gordon cautioned me to be careful about packing my lovely dress, because, he explained, he wanted his people to see me at my best. This struck me as rather odd, considering the class of people I was to live among--I fancied a linsey-woolsey would please them as well as anything else. And I wondered when I would ever get a chance to wear the beautiful creation. But I had no idea of the surprise that was in store for me.

Mother went home by train. My husband and I started on our way by boat. It was a sweet and delicate suggestion on Gordon's part that we should go southward again for a day or two, to begin our married life under the dear familiar skies I loved so well. Wherefore we set sail that evening, exactly at seven o'clock, on the Old Bay Line, our destination to be Old Point Comfort, which we would reach the following morning.

It is really a pathetic thought that the bridal joy comes only once into a maiden's life, so quickly past and gone. It leads, no doubt--or ought to lead--into a deeper peace and a more steadfast love; but it leads, too, away from the tranquil care-free days of youth, on in to the storm and stress of life's long battle. I remember yet, with a thrill that never seems to die, the rapture of that hour as we steamed slowly out from Baltimore. There were not many passengers--none that we had ever seen before. We were alone--together. And by and by we found a place on a deserted corner of the deck, our chairs close together, our hands sometimes passionately clasping as we looked out over the darkening bay and thought in silence of the waiting years through which we were to be parted never more. By and by the rising moon clothed the bay in a robe of glory; and thus, with love and light about us, as happy as though no storm could ever disturb our lifelong way, we started on the long, long journey we were to take together.

"I've got some news for you, dear," Gordon suddenly startled me by saying.

"Do tell me quick, Gordon," said I. Only Gordon wasn't the name I used.

"Try and guess."

I thought a moment. "They've papered that old house," I said, "without waiting till I came," for Gordon had told me that the natives of his country parish had designs on the old stone manse against my arrival.

"Oh, no," he said, laughing. "No, it's good news--at least, I hope it may turn out to be."

"Oh," I exclaimed, drawing a long breath, "I'm so glad--the paper they'd choose would give me the jimjams, I know. Well, tell me."

"We're not going to the old stone manse at all," he said, turning and looking radiantly at me in the moonlight. "We're not going to Rocanville--I've got a call, Helen."

"Where?" I gasped, leaning forward with my elbows on his knees, caring not who saw. "And why didn't you tell me---- Oh, Gordon, did you feel you couldn't trust me?" my voice trembling a little as the first pang of conjugal sorrow smote my bosom.

He laughed; then stooped and kissed me, having previously cast a swift Scotch glance about the deck. "I'd trust you with my life, my darling," he murmured--which comforted me a good deal. "But I wasn't exactly sure till two or three days ago--and I wanted to surprise you--and I wanted always to think that when my Helen gave herself to me, she thought she was going into the wilds for love's sweet sake. So it will always be just as precious to me as if you had actually gone."

"But where are we going?" I pressed eagerly, not lingering on the sweetness; "don't keep me waiting, Gordon."

"To Old Point Comfort," he said with the most provoking deliberation.

"Don't tease me, dearest," I protested. Wonderful, isn't it, how brides always employ the tenderest names when they are just a little bit exasperated.

And then he told me where it was we were to begin our married life. The church that had called us was named St. Andrew's; and it was the leading church, Gordon said, in Hertford, a Canadian city that shall so be named. "At least," he hastened to add, "it's the richest church, has the richest class of people in it--whether that makes it the leading church or not."

"Oh, I'm so glad," I exclaimed breathlessly, my face aglow. "So that's why you wanted me to be so careful of my wedding dress? Isn't it all like a lovely fairy tale? And are we going there right away?"

"Yes--after we leave Point Comfort. I'm to be installed there a week from to-day--and there's to be a reception to us in the evening."

"Oh, lovely!" I cried; "I didn't think I'd get a chance to wear my finery at all. Do tell me all about it, Gordon," as I snuggled closer in the moonlight. The deck was gloriously deserted now.

"There isn't much to tell," he said, and I wondered why he wasn't more jubilant about it all. "They invited me to preach before them a few weeks ago. I went--never dreamed they would call me, though. But they did. And the church isn't such a very large one--but it's very fashionable; too fashionable, I fear. A minister isn't always happiest in a church like that, you know," and again I caught the note in his voice which showed he didn't regard the prospect with unmixed enthusiasm.

"But I know we'll be happy, dear," I reassured him, quite frank in my exultation; "that class of people will suit you so much better. They'll appreciate you--you'd have been wasted on those common people at that other outlandish place."

"Not wasted, dear," he answered quietly; "a man's never wasted where he does his best. But I'm glad for your sake," he went on more brightly; "I don't think I'd have gone, only I thought you'd be happier there."

"I'd be happy anywhere with you," I replied in bridal bliss. "I'd have come to you just the same if you'd been assistant minister of an Indian church at the North Pole. But I'm glad," my happy words went on, "I'm so glad we're going to be among congenial people. And I'm sure we'll have a lovely time--we'll have a lovely social life, I mean."

"I hate social life--society life, at least," Gordon suddenly broke out in a voice that quite startled me; "and if they think I'm going to be a gossipy tea-drinking parson, they'll soon find their mistake."

"But, Gordon," I remonstrated seriously, "you shouldn't look at it that way. Consider the influence you can have over them--that is, through their social life. I think the minister of rich people has the greatest chance in the world--to do them good, I mean. And I'll help you--I'll help you, dearest."

"How?" my husband enquired after a little pause.

"Well," I answered slowly; "oh, well, I like that sort of thing. I'm not much good, you know, at--at--religious work, prayer-meetings and things," I floundered on; "but I can--I can do that part, because I like it. I'll try and help you, Gordon--in that department, you know," I concluded, realizing, I fear, that it wasn't a very heroic field.

"I want my little wife to help me in all the departments," he answered, smiling. "And you will, won't you, dearest--you'll love my work for its own sake, won't you?"

Which I promised swiftly. "But I think I'll love it more in that kind of a church," I added frankly, "than I would at Rocanville. And of course I won't play cards with them, or dance--or anything like that," I affirmed piously, looking to Gordon for an approving smile; "but I suppose it won't be any harm for me to go to those things, will it, dear?"

"I hadn't thought of that," he said, looking out over the shining bay; "but I want my wife to find her life-work in mine--and to help me be a truer and better minister, no matter where our field of work may be."

All of which I promised, with the gladdest, happiest heart. And I told Gordon I wanted him to write me out a little prayer, a kind of missionary prayer, for opening meetings with, and all that sort of thing. Gordon said I was a ritualist.

Then we arose to go inside, for the night was growing chill.

"Is there any danger, Gordon," I asked as we walked through the saloon, "any danger, do you think, that my trunks won't get to Hertford the same day we do? They have the reception that night, you said."

"Oh, no," he said; "the trunks have gone on ahead already."

"I'm so glad," I answered; "it would be too bad to begin our work there with--with any handicap like that, you know."