for three years i was supremely happy. before the first had quite spent its course, the call of a new life touched on lucy and the great rapture of parentage came to us. it was a little son.
oh! how i loved that little boy, and how proud i was of him, too! he was a bold and fearless little chap, and people said he was like me. sometimes when he smiled i caught a look that reminded me of myself, but i always saw his mother in his eyes.
a year later another boy came, and in all the wide world through there could not have been anywhere a family happier than was ours.
being now quite independent i had resigned my post at winter and winter and had taken to the thorny paths of literature. i was not without some gifts in that direction, and began to make headway in the commonwealth press.
life seemed all happiness to us then. the past troubled me no more. i never allowed myself to dwell upon it, and by tacit but unspoken agreement lucy and i never referred to it at all. she, because the doctors had told her, after my illness, that i had best forget it, and i— because i never wanted to recall the faintest memory of those dreadful days.
well, time rolled on and we had been married just over three years and a half, when a well-known revivalist preacher came to victor harbor and in an evil hour i went to hear him.
i went more out of curiosity than anything else, and at first i was only rather amused. he was not a patch on me as far as oratory was concerned, and the abrupt way in which he generally ended his sentences jarred horribly on my nerves. some of his ideas too were very crude and narrow and there was too much of that smug certainty about the next world, which so many preachers always affect.
but he was a man of great earnestness and sincerity, and in spite of myself i came under his thrall. his great theme was — repentance. who had sinned must one day repent, he insisted, or god would surely punish him — punish him either in himself or in them he loved best. no one could escape. however deep and long-forgotten were the sin, god had remembered it, and in his own good time would exact punishment — punishment sure and certain.
i had gone alone to hear him, and i left the chapel that night, very disturbed and most uneasy in my mind. what if my paradise were after all but the vain paradise of fools! what if all the happiness that then was mine were but to prepare me more fully for the punishment that was about to fall. how would the punishment come? might it, indeed, be lucy or my little sons who would suffer? the very thought affrightened me and i hurried home in fear.
directly i got home i thought lucy looked ill. she was much whiter than usual and very quiet. she hardly talked at supper and ate nothing at all. next morning she was too ill to get up, and i was in a perfect fear of dread.
in a great hurry i fetched the doctor. lucy had a high temperature and he could say nothing for certain. in two days, however, pneumonia had definitely set in and in a week she was going to die.
grief unutterable came upon me, and my mind almost gave way. all the reserve that i had built up against the memories of the past broke down, and i frankly recognized all that was now happening as the punishment for my dreadful crimes. lucy was to be the scapegoat — lucy and the little sons. lucy was going to die, and motherless for ever would my children be.
i threw myself upon my knees in an agony of grief and, choking back my tears, burst into prayer.
never had i prayed so before; never had prayer touched me as it touched me then. i promised my life if lucy were spared, all that i had. all that was in me, all my life long, should be consecrated and given up to the saving of men’s souls. the pleasures and the happiness of this world should no longer tempt me and i would live only for the conversion and salvation of others.
i almost fainted with the intensity of my emotion and i rose dazed and giddy from my knees, but i rose in faith and hope too.
lucy would live now and mine alone would be the cross and crown of thorns. i had sown and i should reap and the innocent would go free.
lucy got better. slowly but surely she threw off her sickness. gradually health returned, and in a month she was almost her old self again. a little thinner, perhaps, a little paler, but the same old lucy, with the gentle face and smiling ways.
it was i that had altered more. i had grown stern again. i was preoccupied and seldom smiled. when i played with the children i did it as a matter of duty and never allowed myself any happiness in their games. i had not forgotten my vow. one day i told lucy i was going to train for the ministry, but she laughed merrily and told me she disliked ministers, and if i became one she would never make love to me any more. she said nearly all good ministers of religion were ‘softs’ and, while the people tolerated them publicly, in private they always held them, at best, in more or less good-natured contempt. she tried to laugh me out of it, but i was not to be denied, and a month later entered a training college to prepare.
the restraint there, however, chafed upon me, and i found, too, that many of my views of life were too unorthodox to be acceptable to the governing bodies.
their creeds seemed cold and narrow to me, and they made such harm of little things. they frightened people away.
after six months’ residence in the college i resigned and came away; but full of my resolve i became a free-lance and offered my services to whomsoever would care to make use of them. i called myself a travelling evangelist.
it was not long before i had more preaching than i could do. sorrow and fear had purged my soul; and i was in deadly earnest in all i said. the gift of oratory was mine naturally, and all the added tricks i picked up quickly as i went along. i soon got a reputation. in less than a year, whenever i was announced to preach anywhere the place would be packed long before the meeting had begun. when i stood up to speak there was always that tense expectant hush, as when men look for great things. i could hold a congregation for an hour without them tiring. i could bring tears upon their faces and make them sob and cry. i could put fear into their hearts, and terrify them with visions of the wrath to come. then i could comfort them in their sorrow, and bring golden rays of hope and faith into their drab lives. i could lift them up in frenzied exultation and then bring them, silent and quaking, to their knees.
repentance was always what i preached about. repentance — and the atonement that must follow after.
as time went on i was called to all parts of the commonwealth and sometimes for weeks on end was away from home. i never spared myself, for it had become more and more an obsession with me that if i relaxed my efforts, even in the slightest degree, evil would fall at once again upon those i loved.
yes, i still loved lucy and my little sons, but remorse and fear had quite got possession of me, and i dared not give in. often i wanted to die, so that my sin at last might be expiated to the full.
it is two years now since i wrote the above, and i take up my pen again to add a few words. i am much saner now. i think i almost went mad. i am still a deeply religious man, but i believe now my sins are forgiven me. i gave up preaching because at last it came to an absolute breakdown. i had so worked myself up that in the end i could do no public speaking at all. when i stood up i could only stutter and stammer and find no speech for my thoughts. so i went back to lucy and my sons and i am happy and at peace again.
but i have never been unmindful that i owe some reparation to my country, and tomorrow i sail for europe in a unit of the army medical corps.
england has called to us in her peril, and i shall always like my children to remember that their father was one of the first to respond to her call.
i am sorry at times that i ever penned anything of these happenings, and often have been inclined to burn the manuscript. i shall let it be, however, for the present, but i shall take good care it may be so placed as to never see the light until all concerned in it have passed away.
