Chapter XIV: “hope”

Iris sat beside Turner in his small, tidy cabin. The old drunkard was ill; he had sent for Rees, but as the driver was away Iris and her cousin had come instead, bringing with them a large basket of good things. The patient had just been given a big basin of hot, delicious chicken broth they had brought in the thermos. The old man was feeling refreshed and lay back in his clean, though rather crumpled-looking, bunk.

Mrs. Henderson had brought some flowers from the garden and placed them in a bowl on the table; now she sat by the little window looking out on the small gate on the outside of which the drunkard had years ago painted the pathetic word “Hope.” It was still plainly visible, though the paint had peeled off in places. The man living behind its shelter seemed doomed; he had never risen above his craving; it had always bested him, even in this secluded spot, when men had been to neighbouring townships and brought the noxious liquor to his door. But, in spite of a lifetime of failure, he still clung almost tenaciously to the small word on his wooden gate.

He watched Miss Dearn with wonder and admiration. Never had a girl of her type been in his little hut before. Her beauty, her air of refinement and breeding, her simple naturalness, appealed to him. How easy it was to talk to her in spite of the unconscious grandeur emanating from her. She had crossed his threshold, introduced her cousin and herself, talked to him, given him soup, smoothed his pillow, as if she had known him for years and been in the habit of visiting such cabins, sitting on such hard wooden chairs, all her life.

While she talked to him now, she was making mental notes of all this little home needed to make it comfortable for the white-haired owner. It must have some carpet, two cosy chairs, new warm blankets, and many other things. She would go to the shop on her way home and order them and have the things procurable in the township sent up at once.

“When will Mr. Rees be back?” inquired Turner during the conversation.

“I think it will be a fortnight before he returns,” replied Iris. “He will be so sorry to know you are ill, but I will tell him we are trying to look after you in his absence.”

“You will write to him, then?”

“Yes,” replied the girl, the pink in her cheeks increasing a little.

“Give the dear lad my love when you do.” A great, soft lustre came into his pale brown eyes as he continued: “That’s a fine fellow, if ever there was one! I don’t know what we should do in this district without him--there is hardly a family he hasn’t helped in some way. He has saved my life twice: the other week when my horse bolted and a year ago when I was bad after a spell----” He looked shamefacedly down on the worn, threadbare quilt as he went on: “I dare say you know I have these--spells--been the curse of my life, broke my old mother’s heart, bless her!” He looked up again. “Ah, I did have a mother any boy could be proud of, but I----” He stopped and wiped his misty eyes with a crumpled red handkerchief. “It was the sorrow of her life that I should have these here spells. Many times she went on her knees begging me to give them up, but”--he shook his white head--“may I be kept from them awhile, but all unexpectedly the old feeling came back, and then I simply couldn’t resist.”

A tender light illumined the girl’s beautiful face as she said softly, “I notice you have ‘Hope’ written on your gate.”

“Yes,” he said in quavering tones, “I painted it on there because--it was hard to keep up heart when I felt it was no use, that help would never come my way; then I went out on the road and stood looking at that little word, and I remembered my mother’s prayers--ah! they were prayers, prayers with tears in them, prayers that seemed to bleed her heart; she prayed for her poor drunken boy like that.”

“Those prayers will be answered yet,” whispered Iris, laying her smooth white hand on the old wrinkled one.

He looked up at her and smiled through tears. “You think so--you don’t think it is too late?”

“No, it is not too late,” said the girl with profound conviction. “Prayers like that must be answered; it could not be otherwise. I have a friend,” she continued in a different voice, “who had a--failing like yours--it mastered him for years, but suddenly he was cured; some one began praying for him, prayers with tears and--heart-blood in them, as you say, and--he was cured. The awful craving left him and he has never had it again.”

“Was it his mother that prayed for him?” asked the old man with deep interest.

“No,” said Miss Dearn very gently, looking down on the rough, carpetless floor; “it was not his mother.”

“Really--I didn’t know any one else could love a man enough to pray for him like that.”

“Sometimes another woman can love strongly enough for that,” Iris replied, still not looking up.

The gaunt form of the drunkard moved a little closer to her. “I beg your pardon if I am too bold--just tell me if I am--but I should so like to know: was it--_you_ who prayed like that?”

A delicate flush crept over the girl’s fair face. “Yes,” she said very quietly, “it was.”

“And you say he is quite, quite cured?”

“Yes,” she answered, meeting his faded, eager eyes, “the craving has left him; he can go near even hotels and--and--not feel the least tempted to--go in.”

“That is marvellous!” He moved to the very edge of the bed and began to fidget with the dilapidated fringe on the quilt. “Miss Dearn,” he said falteringly, “my mother has been dead many years, but no doubt she is praying in Heaven for her poor, degraded boy; only it seems so far away and--it would be so nice to have some one praying for me down here on earth--I have no one to do that for me now--I wonder would it be too much if I asked you to--pray for me as you prayed for--your friend?” His withered, freckled hands still moved nervously on the edge of the counterpane.

Iris suddenly imprisoned one of the hard hands between her dainty, slim ones. “Of course it is not! I should just love to help you and see you quite cured too,” she replied with a radiant smile.

The old man looked up at her with a new light in his eyes; it seemed as if Hope, so long brooding over his gate, had leapt into his soul at last.

“Then you will?”

“Yes, I will!”

* * * * *

“Iris,” said Mrs. Henderson on their way home, “the sweet way you talked to that old man just broke me up; I couldn’t say a word, but simply had to sit and listen to you; and, if I had not known for a certainty that it was you, I should have felt sure it was some Celestial Being from another world coming straight from the Presence of God. Your prayer will be answered--I know it will! Iris,” she continued huskily, “I can understand how Justin was cured, now.”