Black Rock by Ralph Connor (top non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

While the League was thus waiting, its interest centred upon Slavin, chiefly because he represented more than any other the forces of the enemy; and though Billy Breen stood between him and the vengeance of the angry men who would have made short work of him and his saloon, nothing could save him from himself, and after the funeral Slavin went to his bar and drank whisky as he had never drunk before. But the more he drank the fiercer and gloomier he became, and when the men drinking with him chaffed him, he swore deeply and with such threats that they left him alone.

It did not help Slavin either to have Nixon stride in through the crowd drinking at his bar and give him words of warning.

‘It is not your fault, Slavin,’ he said in slow, cool voice, ‘that you and your precious crew didn’t sent me to my death, too. You’ve won your bet, but I want to say, that next time, though you are seven to one, or ten times that, when any of you boys offer me a drink I’ll take you to mean fight, and I’ll not disappoint you, and some one will be killed,’ and so saying he strode out again, leaving a mean-looking crowd of men behind him. All who had not been concerned in the business at Nixon’s shack expressed approval of his position, and hoped he would ‘see it through.’

But the impression of Nixon’s words upon Slavin was as nothing compared with that made by Geordie Crawford. It was not what he said so much as the manner of awful solemnity he carried. Geordie was struggling conscientiously to keep his promise to ‘not be ‘ard on the boys,’ and found considerable relief in remembering that he had agreed ‘to leave them tae the Almichty.’ But the manner of leaving them was so solemnly awful, that I could not wonder that Slavin’s superstitious Irish nature supplied him with supernatural terrors. It was the second day after the funeral that Geordie and I were walking towards Slavin’s. There was a great shout of laughter as we drew near.

Geordie stopped short, and saying, ‘We’ll juist gang in a meenute,’ passed through the crowd and up to the bar.

‘Michael Slavin,’ began Geordie, and the men stared in dead, silence, with their glasses in their hands. ‘Michael Slavin, a’ promised the lad a’d bear ye nae ill wull, but juist leave ye tae the Almichty; an’ I want tae tell ye that a’m keepin’ ma wur-r-d. But’—and here he raised his hand, and his voice became preternaturally solemn—‘his bluid is upon yer han’s. Do ye no’ see it?’

His voice rose sharply, and as he pointed, Slavin instinctively glanced at his hands, and Geordie added—

‘Ay, and the Lord will require it o’ you and yer hoose.’

They told me that Slavin shivered as if taken with ague after Geordie went out, and though he laughed and swore, he did not stop drinking till he sank into a drunken stupor and had to be carried to bed. His little French-Canadian wife could not understand the change that had come over her husband.

‘He’s like one bear,’ she confided to Mrs. Mavor, to whom she was showing her baby of a year old. ‘He’s not kees me one tam dis day. He’s mos hawful bad, he’s not even look at de baby.’ And this seemed sufficient proof that something was seriously wrong; for she went on to say—

‘He’s tink more for dat leel baby dan for de whole worl’; he’s tink more for dat baby dan for me,’ but she shrugged her pretty little shoulders in deprecation of her speech.

‘You must pray for him,’ said Mrs. Mavor, ‘and all will come right.’

‘Ah! madame!’ she replied earnestly, ‘every day, every day, I pray la sainte Vierge et tous les saints for him.’

‘You must pray to your Father in heaven for him.’

‘Ah! oui! I weel pray,’ and Mrs. Mavor sent her away bright with smiles, and with new hope and courage in her heart.

She had very soon need of all her courage, for at the week’s end her baby fell dangerously ill. Slavin’s anxiety and fear were not relieved much by the reports the men brought him from time to time of Geordie’s ominous forebodings; for Geordie had no doubt but that the Avenger of Blood was hot upon Slavin’s trail; and as the sickness grew, he became confirmed in this conviction. While he could not be said to find satisfaction in Slavin’s impending affliction, he could hardly hide his complacency in the promptness of Providence in vindicating his theory of retribution.

But Geordie’s complacency was somewhat rudely shocked by Mr. Craig’s answer to his theory one day.

‘You read your Bible to little profit, it seems to me, Geordie: or, perhaps, you have never read the Master’s teaching about the Tower of Siloam. Better read that and take that warning to yourself.’

Geordie gazed after Mr. Craig as he turned away, and muttered—

‘The toor o’ Siloam, is it? Ay, a’ ken fine aboot the toor o’ Siloam, and aboot the toor o’ Babel as weel; an’ a’ve read, too, about the blaspheemious Herod, an’ sic like. Man, but he’s a hot-heided laddie, and lacks discreemeenation.’

‘What about Herod, Geordie?’ I asked.

‘Aboot Herod?’—with a strong tinge of contempt in his tone. ‘Aboot Herod? Man, hae ye no’ read in the Screepturs aboot Herod an’ the wur-r-ms in the wame o’ him?’

‘Oh yes, I see,’ I hastened to answer.

‘Ay, a fule can see what’s flapped in his face,’ with which bit of proverbial philosophy he suddenly left me. But Geordie thenceforth contented himself, in Mr. Craig’s presence at least, with ominous head-shakings, equally aggravating, and impossible to answer.

That same night, however, Geordie showed that with all his theories he had a man’s true heart, for he came in haste to Mrs. Mavor to say:

‘Ye’ll be needed ower yonder, a’m thinkin’.’

‘Why? Is the baby worse? Have you been in?’

‘Na, na,’ replied Geordie cautiously, ‘a’ll no gang where a’m no wanted. But yon puir thing, ye can hear ootside weepin’ and moanin’.’

‘She’ll maybe need ye tae,’ he went on dubiously to me. ‘Ye’re a kind o’ doctor, a’ hear,’ not committing himself to any opinion as to my professional value. But Slavin would have none of me, having got the doctor sober enough to prescribe.

The interest of the camp in Slavin was greatly increased by the illness of his baby, which was to him as the apple of his eye. There were a few who, impressed by Geordie’s profound convictions upon the matter, were inclined to favour the retribution theory, and connect the baby’s illness with the vengeance of the Almighty. Among these few was Slavin himself, and goaded by his remorseful terrors he sought relief in drink. But this brought him only deeper and fiercer gloom; so that between her suffering child and her savagely despairing husband, the poor mother was desperate with terror and grief.

‘Ah! madame,’ she sobbed to Mrs. Mavor, ‘my heart is broke for him. He’s heet noting for tree days, but jis dreenk, dreenk, dreenk.’

The next day a man came for me in haste. The baby was dying and the doctor was drunk. I found the little one in a convulsion lying across Mrs. Mavor’s knees, the mother kneeling beside it, wringing her hands in a dumb agony, and Slavin standing near, silent and suffering. I glanced at the bottle of medicine upon the table and asked Mrs. Mavor the dose, and found the baby had been poisoned. My look of horror told Slavin something was wrong, and striding to me he caught my arm and asked—

‘What is it? Is the medicine wrong?’

I tried to put him off, but his grip tightened till his fingers seemed to reach the bone.

‘The dose is certainly too large; but let me go, I must do something.’

He let me go at once, saying in a voice that made my heart sore for him, ‘He has killed my baby; he has killed my baby.’ And then he cursed the doctor with awful curses, and with a look of such murderous fury on his face that I was glad the doctor was too drunk to appear.

His wife hearing his curses, and understanding the cause, broke out into wailing hard to bear.

‘Ah! mon petit ange! It is dat wheeskey dat’s keel mon baby. Ah! mon cheri, mon amour. Ah! mon Dieu! Ah, Michael, how often I say that wheeskey he’s not good ting.’

It was more than Slavin could bear, and with awful curses he passed out. Mrs. Mavor laid the baby in its crib, for the convulsion had passed away; and putting her arms about the wailing little Frenchwoman, comforted and soothed her as a mother might her child.

‘And you must help your husband,’ I heard her say. ‘He will need you more than ever. Think of him.’

‘Ah oui! I weel,’ was the quick reply, and from that moment there was no more wailing.

It seemed no more than a minute till Slavin came in again, sober, quiet, and steady; the passion was all gone from his face, and only the grief remained.

As we stood leaning over the sleeping child the little thing opened its eyes, saw its father, and smiled. It was too much for him. The big man dropped on his knees with a dry sob.

‘Is there no chance at all, at all?’ he whispered, but I could give him no hope. He immediately rose, and pulling himself together, stood perfectly quiet.

A new terror seized upon the mother.

‘My baby is not—what you call it?’ going through the form of baptism. ‘An’ he will not come to la sainte Vierge,’ she said, crossing herself.

‘Do not fear for your little one,’ said Mrs. Mavor, still with her arms about her. ‘The good Saviour will take your darling into His own arms.’

But the mother would not be comforted by this. And Slavin too, was uneasy.

‘Where is Father Goulet?’ he asked.

‘Ah! you were not good to the holy pere de las tam, Michael,’ she replied sadly. ‘The saints are not please for you.’

‘Where is the priest?’ he demanded.

‘I know not for sure. At de Landin’, dat’s lak.’

‘I’ll go for him,’ he said. But his wife clung to him, beseeching him not to leave her, and indeed he was loth to leave his little one.

I found Craig and told him the difficulty. With his usual promptness, he was ready with a solution.

‘Nixon has a team. He will go.’ Then he added, ‘I wonder if they would not like me to baptize their little one. Father Goulet and I have exchanged offices before now. I remember how he came to one of my people in my absence, when she was dying, read with her, prayed with her, comforted her, and helped her across the river. He is a good soul, and has no nonsense about him. Send for me if you think there is need. It will make no difference to the baby, but it will comfort the mother.’

Nixon was willing enough to go; but when he came to the door Mrs. Mavor saw the hard look in his face. He had not forgotten his wrong, for day by day he was still fighting the devil within that Slavin had called to life. But Mrs. Mavor, under cover of getting him instructions, drew him into the room. While listening to her, his eyes wandered from one to the other of the group till they rested upon the little white face in the crib. She noticed the