An Orkney Maid by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

back in her mother's chair with closed eyes. She could not bear to look into the empty road watching for one who might be gone forever. Then in a blessed moment, Rahal whispered, "They are coming!"

"Both? Both, Mother?"

"Both!"

"Thank God!" And she would have cried out her thanks and bathed them in joyful tears if she had been alone. But Ian must not see her weeping. Now, especially, he must be met with smiles. And then, when she felt herself in Ian's embrace, they were both weeping. But oh, how great, how blessed, how sacramental are those joys that we baptise with tears!

During the serving of dinner there was no conversation but such as referred to the war and other public events. Many great ones had transpired since they parted, and there was plenty to talk about: the battles of Balaklava and Inkerman had been fought; the never-to-be-forgotten splendour of Scarlett's Charge with the Heavy Brigade, and the still more tragically splendid one of the Light Brigade, had both passed into history.

More splendid and permanent than these had been the trumpet "call" of Russell in the _Times_, asking the women of England who among them were ready to go to Scutari Hospital and comfort and help the men dying for England? "Now," he cried,


"The Son of God goes forth to war!
Who follows in His train?"


Florence Nightingale and her band of trained nurses, mainly from the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy, and St. John's Protestant House, was the instant answer. In six days they were ready and without any flourish of trumpets, at the dark, quiet midnight, they left England for Scutari and in that hour the Red Cross Society was born.

"How long is it since they sailed?" asked Rahal.

"A month," answered Ian, "but the controversy about it is still raging in the English papers."

"What has anyone to say against it?" asked Rahal. "The need was desperate, the answer quick. What, then, do they say?"

"The prudery of the English middle class was shocked at the idea of young women nursing in military hospitals. They considered it 'highly improper.' Others were sure women would be more trouble than help. Many expect their health to fail, and think they will be sent back to English hospitals in a month."

"I thought," said Ragnor, "that the objections were chiefly religious."

"You are right," replied Ian. "The Calvinists are afraid Miss Nightingale's intention is to make the men Catholics in their dying hour. Others feel sure Miss Nightingale is an Universalist, or an Unitarian, or a Wesleyan Methodist. The fact is, Florence Nightingale is a devout Episcopalian."

A pleasant little smile parted Ragnor's lips, and he said with an Episcopalian suavity: "The Wesleyans and the Episcopalians, in doctrine, are much alike. We regard them as brethren;" and just while he spoke, Ragnor looked like some ecclesiastical prelate.

"There is little to wonder at in the churches disagreeing about Miss Nightingale," said Rahal, "it is not to be expected that they would believe in her, when they do not believe in each other." As she spoke she stepped to the fireside and touched the bell rope, and a servant entered and began to clear the table and put more wood on the fire, and to turn out one of the lamps at Rahal's order. Ragnor had gone out to have a quiet smoke in the fresh air while Rahal was sending off all the servants to a dance at the Fisherman's Hall. Ian and Thora were not interested in these things; they sat close together, talking softly of their own affairs.

Without special request, they drew closer to the hearth and to each other. Then Ragnor took out a letter and handed it to Ian. He was sitting at Thora's side and her hand was in his hand. He let it fall and took the letter offered him.

"I cannot explain this letter," he said, "unless I preface it with some facts regarding my unhappy childhood and youth. I am, as you know, the son of Dr. Macrae, but I have been a disinherited son ever since I can remember. I suppose that in my earliest years I was loved and kindly treated, but I have no remembrance of that time. I know only that before I was five years old, my father had accepted the solemn conviction that I was without election to God's grace. Personally I was a beautiful child, but I was received and considered, body and soul, as unredeemable. Father then regarded me as a Divine decree which it was his duty to receive with a pious acquiescence. My mother pitied and, in her way, loved me, and suffered much with me. I have a little sister also, who would like to love me, but there is in all her efforts just that touch of Phariseeism which destroys love."

"But, Ian, there must have been some reason for your father's remarkable conviction?"

"That is most likely. If so, he never explained the fact to me or even to my mother. She told me once that he did not suspect that I had missed God's election until I was between five and six years old. I suppose that about that age I began to strengthen his cruel fear by my antipathy to the kirk services and my real and unfortunate inability to learn the Shorter Catechism. This was a natural short-coming. I could neither spell or pronounce the words I was told to learn and to memorise them was an impossible thing."

"Could not your mother help you?"

"She tried. She wept over me as she tried, and I made an almost superhuman effort to comprehend and remember. I could not. I was flogged, I was denied food and even water. I was put in dark rooms. I was forbid all play and recreation. I went through this martyrdom year after year and I finally became stubborn and would try no longer. In the years that followed, until I was sixteen, my daily sufferings were great, but I remember them mainly for my mother's sake, who suffered with me in all I suffered. Nor am I without pity for my father. He honestly believed that in punishing me he was doing all he could to save me from everlasting punishment. Yes, sir! Do not shake your head! I have heard him praying, pleading with God, for some token of my election to His mercy. You see it was John Calvin."

"John Calvin!" ejaculated Ragnor, "how is that?"

"It was his awful tenets I had to learn; and when I was young I could not learn them, and when I grew older I would not learn them. My father had called me John Calvin and I detested the name. On my eighteenth birthday I asked him to have it changed. He was very angry at my request. I begged him passionately to do so. I said it ruined my life, that I could do nothing under that name. 'Give me your own name, Father,' I entreated, 'and I will try and be a good man!'

"He said something to me, I never knew exactly what, but the last word was more than I could bear and my reply was an oath. Then he lifted the whip at his side and struck me."

Rahal and Thora were sobbing. Ragnor looked in the youth's face with shining eyes and asked, almost in a whisper, "What did thou do?"

"I had been struck often enough before to have made me indifferent, but at this moment some new strength and feeling sprang up in my heart. I seized his arms and the whip fell to the floor. I lifted it and said, 'Sir, if you ever again use a whip in place of decent words to me, I will see you no more until we meet for the judgment of God. Then I will pity you for the life-long mistake you have made.' My father looked at me with eyes I shall never forget, no, not in all eternity! He burst into agonizing prayer and weeping and I went and told mother to go to him. I left the house there and then. I had not a halfpenny, and I was hungry and cold and sick with an intolerable sense of wrong."

"Father!" said Thora, in a voice broken with weeping. "Is not this enough?" And Ragnor leaned forward and took Thora's hand but he did not speak. Neither did he answer Rahal's look of entreaty. On the contrary he asked:

"Then, Ian? Then, what did thou do?"

"I felt so ill I went to see Dr. Finlay, our family physician. He knew the family trouble, because he had often attended mother when she was ill in consequence of it. I did not need to make a complaint. He saw my condition and took me to his wife and told her to feed and comfort me. I remained in her care four days, and then he offered to take me into his office and set me to reading medical text books, while I did the office work."

"What was this work?"

"I was taught how to prepare ordinary medicines, to see callers when the doctor was out, and make notes of, and on, their cases. I helped the doctor in operations, I took the prescriptions to patients and explained their use, etc. In three years I became very useful and helpful and I was quite happy. Then Dr. Finlay was appointed to some exceptionally fine post in India, private physician to some great Rajah, and the Finlay family hastily prepared for their journey to Delhi. I longed to go with them but I had not the money requisite. With Dr. Finlay I had had a home but only money enough to clothe me decently. I had not a pound left and mother could not help me, and Uncle Ian was in the Madeira Isles with his sick wife. So the Finlays went without me; and I can feel yet the sense of loneliness and poverty that assailed me, when I shut their door behind me and walked into the cold street and knew not what to do or where to go."

"How old were you then, Ian?" asked Ragnor.

"I was twenty years old within a few days, and I had one pound, sixteen shillings in my pocket. Five pounds from an Episcopal church would be due in two weeks for my solo and part singing in their services; but they were never very prompt in their payment and that was nothing to rely on in my present need. I took to answering advertisements, and did some of the weariest tramping looking for work that poor humanity can do. When I met Kenneth McLeod, I had broken my last shilling. I was like a hungry, lost child, and the thought of my mother came to me and I felt as if my heart would break.

"The next moment I saw Kenneth McLeod coming up Prince's Street. It was nearly four years since we had seen each other, but he knew me at once and called me in his old kind way. Then he looked keenly at me, and asked: 'What is the matter, Ian? The old trouble?'

"I was so heartless and hungry I could hardly keep back tears as I answered: 'It is that and everything else! Ken, help me, if you can.' 'Come with me!' he answered, and I went with him into the Queen's Hotel and he ordered dinner, and while we were eating I told him my situation. Then he said, 'I can help you, Ian, if you will help me. You know