The Doctor.

by Ralph Connor.

I

THE OLD STONE MILL

There were two ways by which one could get to the Old Stone Mill. One, from the sideroad by a lane which, edged with gra.s.sy, flower-decked banks, wound between snake fences, along which straggled irregular clumps of hazel and blue beech, dogwood and thorn bushes, and beyond which stretched on one side fields of grain just heading out this bright June morning, and on the other side a long strip of hay fields of mixed timothy and red clover, generous of colour and perfume, which ran along the snake fence till it came to a potato patch which, in turn, led to an orchard where the lane began to drop down to the Mill valley.

At the crest of the hill travellers with even the merest embryonic aesthetic taste were forced to pause. For there the valley with its sweet loveliness lay in full view before them. Far away to the right, out of an angle in the woods, ran the Mill Creek to fill the pond which brimmed gleaming to the green bank of the dam. Beyond the pond a sloping gra.s.sy sward showed green under an open beech and maple woods. On the hither side of the pond an orchard ran down hill to the water's edge, and at the nearer corner of the dam, among a clump of ancient willows, stood the Old Stone Mill, with house attached, and across the mill yard the shed and barn, all neat as a tidy housewife's kitchen. To the left of the mill, with its green turf-clad dam and placid gleaming pond, wandered off green fields of many shading colours, through which ran the Mill Creek, foaming as if enraged that it should have been even for a brief s.p.a.ce paused in its flow to serve another's will. Then, beyond the many-shaded fields, woods again, spruce and tamarack, where the stream entered, and maple and beech on the higher levels. That was one way to the mill, the way the farmers took with their grist or their oats for old Charley Boyle to grind.

The other way came in by the McKenzies' lane from the Concession Line, which ran at right angles to the sideroad. This was a mere foot path, sometimes used by riders who came for a bag of flour or meal when the barrel or bin had unawares run low. This path led through the beech and maple woods to the farther end of the dam, where it divided, to the right if one wished to go to the mill yard, and across the dam if one wished to reach the house. From any point of view the Old Stone Mill, with its dam and pond, its surrounding woods and fields and orchard, made a picture of rare loveliness, and suggestive of deep fulness of peace. At least, the woman standing at the dam, where the shade of the willows fell, found it so. The beauty, the quiet of the scene, rested her; the full sweet harmony of those many voices in which Nature pours forth herself on a summer day, stole in upon her heart and comforted her. She was a woman of striking appearance. Tall and straight she stood, a figure full of strength; her dark face stamped with features that bespoke her Highland ancestry, her black hair shot with silver threads, parting in waves over her forehead; her eyes deep set, black and sombre, glowing with that mystic light that shines only in eyes that have for generations peered into the gloom of Highland glens.

"Ay, it's a bonny spot," she sighed, her rugged face softening as she gazed. "It's a bonny spot, and it would be a sore thing to part it."

As she stood looking and listening her face changed. Through the hum of the mill there pierced now and then the notes of a violin.

"Oh, that weary fiddle!" she said with an impatient shake of her head.

But in a few moments the impatience in her face pa.s.sed into tender pity.

"Ah, well, well," she sighed, "poor man, it is the kind heart he has, whateffer."

She pa.s.sed down the bank into the house, then through the large living-room, speckless in its thrifty order, into a longer room that joined house to mill. She glanced at the tall clock that stood beside the door. "Mercy me!" she cried, "it's time my own work was done. But I'll just step in and see--" She opened the door leading to the mill and stood silent. A neat little man with cheery, rosy face, clean-shaven, and with a ma.s.s of curly hair tinged with grey hanging about his forehead, was seated upon a chair tipped back against the wall, playing a violin with great vigour and unmistakable delight.

"The mill's a-workin', mother," he cried without stopping his flying fingers, "and I'm keepin' my eye upon her."

She shook her head reproachfully at her husband. "Ay, the mill is workin' indeed, but it's not of the mill you're thinking."

"Of what then?" he cried cheerily, still playing.

"It is of that raising and of the dancing, I'll be bound you."

"Wrong, mother," replied the little man exultant. "Sure you're wrong.

Listen to this. What is it now?"

"Nonsense," cried the woman, "how do I know?"

"But listen, Elsie, darlin'," he cried, dropping into his Irish brogue.

"Don't you mind--" and on he played for a few minutes. "Now you mind, don't you?"

"Of course, I mind, 'The La.s.s o' Gowrie.' But what of it?" she cried, heroically struggling to maintain her stern appearance.

But even as she spoke her face, so amazing in its power of swiftly changing expression, took on a softer look.

"Ah, there you are," cried the little man in triumph, "now I know you remember. And it's twenty-four years to-morrow, Elsie, darlin', since--"

He suddenly dropped his violin on some meal bags at his side and sprang toward her.

"Go away with you." She closed the door quickly behind her. "Whisht now!

Be quate now, I'm sayin'. You're just as foolish as ever you were."

"Foolish? No mother, not foolish, but wise yon time, although it's foolish enough I've been often since. And," he added with a sigh, "it's not much luck I've brought you, except for the boys. They'll do, perhaps, what I've not done."

"Whisht now, lad," said his wife, patting his shoulder gently, for a great tenderness flowed over her eloquent face. "What has come to you to-day? Go away now to your work," she added in her former tone, "there's the hay waiting, you know well. Go now and I'll watch the grist."

"And why would you watch the grist, mother?" said a voice from the mill door, as a young man of eighteen years stepped inside. He was his mother's son. The same swarthy, rugged face, the same deep-set, sombre eyes, the same suggestion of strength in every line of his body, of power in every move he made and of pa.s.sion in every glance. "Indeed, you will do no such thing. Dad'll watch the grist and I'll slash down the hay in no time. And do you know, mother," he continued in a tone of suppressed excitement, "have you heard the big news?" His mother waited.

"He's coming home to-day. He's coming with the Murrays, and Alec will bring him to the raising."

A throb of light swept across the mother's face, but she only said in a voice calm and steady, "Well, you'd better get that hay down. It'll be late enough before it is in."

"Listen to her, Barney," cried her husband scornfully. "And she'll not be going to the raising today, either. The boy'll be home by one in the morning, and sure that's time enough."

Barney stood looking at his mother with a quiet smile on his face. "We will have dinner early," he said, "and I'll just take a turn at the hay."

She turned and entered the house without a word, while he took down the scythe from its peg, removed the blade from the snath and handed it to his father.

"Give it a turn or two," he said; "you're better than me at this."

"Here then," replied his father, handing him the violin, "and you're better at this."

"They would not say so to-night, Dad," replied the lad as he took the violin from his father's hands, looking it over reverently. In a very few minutes his father came back with the scythe ready for work; and Barney, fastening it to the snath, again set off up the lane.

II

THE DAUGHTER OF THE MANSE

Two hours later, down from the dusty sideroad, a girl swinging a milk pail in her hand turned into the mill lane. As she stepped from the glare and dust of the highroad into the lane, it seemed as if Nature had been waiting to find in her the touch that makes perfect; so truly, in all her fresh daintiness, did she seem a bit of that green shady lane with its sweet fragrance and its fresh beauty.

It had taken sixteen years of wholesome country life to round that supple form into its firm lines of grace, and to tint those moulded cheeks with the dainty bloom that seemed a reflection from the thistle heads that nodded at her through the snake fence. It had taken sixteen years of pure-hearted, joyous living to lend those eyes, azure as the sky above, their brave, clear glance; sixteen years of unsullied maidenhood to endow her with that divine something of mystery which, with its shy reserve and fearless trust, awakens reverence and rebukes impurity as with the vision of G.o.d.

Her sunbonnet, fallen back from her yellow hair, shining golden in the sun, revealed a face strong, brave and kind, with just a touch of pride. The pride showed most, however, in the poise of her head and the carriage of her shoulders. But when the mobile lips parted in a smile over the straight rows of white teeth one forgot the pride and thought only of the soft persuasive lips.

As she sprang up the green turf, she drew in deep breaths of clover-scented air, and exclaimed aloud, "Oh, this is good!" She peeped through the snake fence at the luscious rich ma.s.ses of red clover. "What a bed!" she cried; "I believe I'll try it." Over the fence she sprang, and in a thorn tree's shade, deep in the fragrant blossoms, she stretched herself at full length upon her back. For some minutes she lay in the luxury of that fragrant bed looking up through the spreading thorn tree branches to the blue sky with its floating, fleecy clouds far overhead. The lazy drone of the bees in the clover beside her, the languorous summer airs swaying into gentle nodding the timothy stalks just above her head, and all the soothing sounds of a summer morning, that many-voiced choir that sings to the great G.o.d Nature's glad content that all is so very good, rested and comforted the girl's heart and body, making her know as she had not known before how very weary she had been and how deep an ache her heart had held.

"Oh, it's good!" she cried again, stretching her hands at full length above her head. "I wish I could stay for one whole day, just here in the clover with the bees and the birds and the trees and the clouds and the blue sky, no children, no dinner, no tidying up."

As she lay there it seemed to her as if she had thrown off for the moment the load she had been carrying for many months. For a year she had tried to fill in the minister's household her mother's place.

Without a day's warning the burden had been laid upon her shoulders, but with the fine courage that youth and love combine to give, denying herself even the poor luxury of indulgence of the grief that had fallen upon her young heart, she had given herself, without thought of anything heroic in her giving, to the caring for the house and the household, and the comforting as best she could of her father, suddenly bereft of her who had been to him not wife alone, but comrade and counsellor as well.

Without a thought, she had at once surrendered all the bright plans that she, with her mother, had cherished for the cultivation of her varied talents, and had turned to the dull, monotonous routine of household duties with never a thought but that she must do it. There was no one else.

"I believe I am tired," she said again aloud; then letting her heart follow her eyes into and beyond the blue above her, she cried softly, "O mother, how tired you must have been with it all, and how much you did for me! For me, great, big lump that I am! Dear little mother. Oh, if I had only known! Oh, we were all so thoughtless!" She stretched up her hands again to the blue sky with its fleecy clouds. "For your sake, mother dear," she whispered. Not often had any seen those brave eyes dim with tears. Not often since that day when they had carried her mother out from the Manse and left her behind with the weeping, clinging children, and even now she hastily wiped the tears away, chiding herself the while. "I never saw HER cry," she said to herself, "not once, except for some of us. And I will try. I MUST try. It is hard to give up," and again the tears welled up in the brave blue eyes. "Nonsense," she cried impatiently, sitting up straight, "don't be a big, selfish baby. They're just the dearest little darlings in the world, and I'll do my best for them."

Her moment of self-pity was gone in a flood of shamed indignation.

She locked her hands round her knees and looked about her. "It is a beautiful world after all. And how near the beauty is to us; just over the fence and you are in the thick of it. Oh, but this is great!" Once more she rolled in an ecstasy of luxurious delight in the clover and lay again supine, revelling in that riot of caressing sounds and scents.