text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/371

 "Chief Skookum Charlie! I have come to throw myself entirely on your mercy."

But he had chosen words unfortunately; the old chief swelled like a turkey about to strut.

"Mercy?" he rumbled out of the age-broken depths of his voice, and his eyes narrowed shrewdly and glittered, opaque almost as ebony, save in the very center where was a tiny yellow pit out of which shot a beam that searched and seared. "Mercy!" rumbled the chief again, withering in his scorn, "Did the white man show mercy to my son, Adam John?" Not that Adam John was any son of Skookum Charlie's or even of his tribe, but—he was an Indian.

"But, Adam John" Mr. Boland was attempting to qualify, when the old chief interrupted imperiously.

"You big! Adam John little! You s-s-squash him like toad. Now me big! Chief Skookum Charlie heap big!" The old man smote his shrunken chest proudly and his bared yellow fangs dripped venom. "You little toad," he exulted fiercely. "Me squash-h-h you—flat!"

And that was all! That was all. The Indian's wrinkled face became a thing of stone. All its lines merged in resolution so implacable that Mr. Boland felt himself for once looking into the face of a man whose will was firmer than his could be, whose nature was more terrible in its tenacity. "An Indian is a poor thinker but he has got a long memory," Scanlon had once warned him; he had not felt the force of this till now when his spirit recoiled before this sprayed venom of Chief Skookum Charlie.

Boland tried to give him look for look but couldn't

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/371


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/372

 do it. He quailed before the smoldering judgment in those remorseless black beads of eyes and turned away glad enough to be facing them no longer. He tried to retire with dignity and perhaps managed it, but as he walked down the M.P.'s cleared space it was like running a gauntlet. He smarted under the curious and, as he felt, exulting glances bent on him. When he reached the car, his forehead, under the hatband, was wet with a sweat of physical and spiritual weakness. John Boland was almost in.

But at the very door of his car, he halted and turned and looked back over the heads of people, over the tops of tepces to the county jail. There his eyes roved until they found one window high up from which the bars were conspicuously missing. On this window he fixed his gaze for a few seconds and the expression of the lined face changed—changed as if hope sprang up again in him, for Old Two Blades was a very tenacious man.

There was hope even in Skookum Charlie, if he had known that the gleam in the old eyes was one half of humor—if he had known that Skookum Charlie, besides being a fierce and vengeful chief of a wronged and defrauded people, was also a mild and gentle elder of a Christian church. Yet, for that matter, neither did Skookum Charlie know that Boland, besides being a mighty creator of civilization, as well as a criminal optimist, was also an elder of a church.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/372


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/373

UT John Boland was not the only person who this day had looked with longing at the barless window on the jail's mansard roof. The whole harried populace of Edgewater was gazing at it or thinking about it. In the fickle masses, with their usual directness of speech and tendency to directness of action—never bothering to be consistent, scorning to dissemble, frank, tidal, pertinent, a mine was laid.

Now the spark was struck. While the homeless were still at their food a large touring-car with men in it and one woman had roared into the town, picked its way amid the street debris that was beginning to clear up, and come to a halt before the ceurthouse. At first nobody paid particular attention. Lots of crowded automobiles were roaring into the town; yet this particular car rewarded special scrutiny. The woman in it was Lahleet much elated.

In the next jump-seat to Lahleet, sat a man whose expression was the very opposite. He looked intensely dissatisfied and wore a sullen scowl. He was tallish and well set-up with a Vandyke beard, and in placid moments might have been handsome, yet his eyes were cunning and about them was a network of betraying lines—to any who had skill to read them.

Lahleet leaped out of the car and hurried into the courthouse. "Mr. White! Mr. White! Oh, Mr. White!" she clamored, dancing impatiently before that

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/373


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/374

 astonished but easy-going official. Take me to Mr. Harrington quick—quick! I have wonderful news for him, wonderful! He didn't do it, Mr. White! Everybody will know he didn't do it now."

Jailor White, cool and phlegmatic, was tantalizingly immobile, looking down at the little woman whose dark eyes were ablaze with such an eager, happy light. Her ardor was most persuasive; also quite convincing.

"Darn me if I ever thought he did," conceded Jailor White, reversing himself quite shamelessly.

"Oh, you—you good man!" beamed Lahleet, and seizing his elbows was almost for hugging him. "But hurry . . . hurry! I always knew Mr. Harrington didn't do it, of course; but I want to run quick and tell him that everybody is going to know it now."

By main strength of personality, the little woman was herding the jailor toward the first steel door. She leaped three steps ahead of him up the iron stairway to the second tier, then turned, her finger to her lips. "Whish-h-h-h!" she commanded. "I want to surprise him. Give me the key. I want to unlock. . . . I want to let him out myself."

Jailor White found his hands strangely weak against those wresting fingers. The girl, noiseless as the hopping of a bird, flitted down the corridor. Noiselessly she slipped the huge key into the massive lock; softly she was turning—had the handle ready to yicld before Harrington was aware that anyone was there; for, dull and dejected after his sleepless night, he sat brooding with his hands over his ears. Not even what the missionary of the Indians had come to say had cheered him up, because it pulled not one single stone from the barrier which kept him from the woman

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/374


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/375

 he loved, who would never need him more than at this moment.

"Hen-ree!" Lahleet burst out, unable to contain herself longer, and flung the door wide; but, instead of rushing in, stepped back and waited in the corridor. "You are free!" she cried wildly. "You are free! They are coming to let you out. You didn't kill the man. Everybody knows you didn't do it now."

Harrington had started up, staring dumbly.

"They've got the man that did!" Lahleet concluded, then stamped her foot, impatient for him to understand.

Henry was the more bewildered. "But you—then you" he stammered. The truth crashed into his mind. Neither had Lahleet killed the unknown in the ferns! A vast sickening sense of oppression lifted from him; and in the same instant he saw that she had never known that he thought she had—and that she must never be permitted to know it.

But her naive impatience could not endure that trifling interval of time which it took Harrington to do this much of thinking. She went bounding through the door and into his arms. "Henry!" she sobbed. "Henry!" and was crying on his breast.

He clasped her tight—a dear little burden—and then, tenderly, like a father, lowered her to the floor beside him and raised questioning eyes to White.

"Search me!" proclaimed the jailor with honest bewilderment. "I don't know a thing. She carried me off my feet. It must be all right though. She's about the last one to kid herself, that piece!"

"Of course, it's all right, you big goose!" Lahleet

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/375


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/376

 half-pouted, dashing the back of her hand across her eyes and then looking slyly at Henry. "They'll be coming to let you out in a minute."

"But who did kill him?" Harrington demanded dazedly.

"They'll tell you—they'll tell you in a minute," effervesced the girl, her natural love of sensation and climax asserting itself.

"But it was you that found out who, of course," divined Henry.

"Oh, yes—of course!" admitted little Miss Marceau, with impish pride.

Harrington, quite coming to, seized her arms and shook her joyously from head to foot. "You," he realized, "you got me out of this mess!" Then he held her off and gazed at her up and down, estimatingly, admiringly; so that the girl for a moment had an enraptured feeling that he was seeing her for the first time—really seeing her. She felt this more as he flung an arm about her and gave her a succession of ecstatic pressures while they walked behind Jailor White, along the corridor and down the stair.

But though Henry's arm was round Lahleet, they were proxy pressures that he gave her, for his mind was already racing up the hill to Billie. He had one of those delicious moments of feeling immensely strong—very rare in this last week. He saw himself as a huge and towering trec, snatched at by the storm, smashed at by lightning bolts; but the storm was over, the thunderings past, and he still stood—triumphant! In a few minutes he could be offering himself to Billie, not furtively but boldly, a bright and shining pillar for her to lean upon.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/376


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/377

 Henry was thinking thoughts like this as they sat in White's office waiting for something. . . for what? Oh, yes; the official deliverance. It was to come. Lahleet had said so. His mind, his eyes came back from distance and he turned to speak to Lahleet; but—why. . . where was she?

"She—she just sort of stepped out," remembered Jailor White, in answer to Henry's look of complete mystification.

"The little devil!" muttered Henry in the hollow tones of chagrin and self-reproach. "My mind just went off for one minute and she—she gets huffy and"

A confusion of voices echoed out of the tunnel of the causeway from the courthouse. It was the officers who had come with Lahleet. One of them was a United States Marshal. The three men in the tonneau represented among them the Secret Service of the United States and an international detective agency, while the fourth with the Vandyke beard was the man they had run down and captured—with the recent assistance of a woman—and after a chase that was more than twenty-four months long, a master criminal—one with a most unusual relationship to confidence men on one side and yeggmen upon the other—making him the most dangerous felon of his brand in all the country.

Behind them had arrived another car with local officers and a local prisoner.

"My old friend! Count Ulric!" exulted Henry, recognizing the beard. "Why—which materialization of yours is this Count? Where on earth did you come from?"

Count Ulric only scowled.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/377


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/378

 "That Indian teacher-girl put 'em on his trail," elucidated District Attorney Younger, who was one of the local officers with the party. "She dug up the clue that hung bracelets on Scanlon, too."

But Henry was already staring, astounded at the spectacle of the Chief Fixer in manacles.

"Scanlon killed that fellow on the island—killed him cold, Henry!" volunteered Younger.

"Scanlon!" barked Harrington, instantly livid with rage. "You—you did this to me? . . . You—you hound of hell!"

The Chief Fixer's face took on a grayer look, and weakly a wide tongue licked his flabby lips; but he kept his glance straight, yellow eyes aglow with sullen fire. At's right. Bawl me out, Harrington!" he said. "I'm going; you're coming," he recognized dejectedly. "When I got into a jam I played it crooked; when you got in the same fix, you played it straight, and the straight play wins. . . sometimes."

Harrington was astounded by the callous cynicism of the man. "But I'd never harmed you!" he protested.

"You were a living insult to me," denounced Scanlon, "—by being straight when I was crooked. Besides, I saw you stepping into my shoes and a man keeps always trying to save himself. Nothing else matters—once he's been crooked. That's how I got these"—he lifted his irons. "Ulric was threatening to double-cross me; and so I was doubling him. I had him tipped off about the gold and I went there to kill him. That was desperate; but I'd been brought to it. Only the Burns man got himself up to look so much like Ulric that I plugged him instead; and Ulric got the gold."

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/378


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/379

 "Careful. Anything you say can be used against you Scanlon," warned Younger.

"Then use it!" challenged Scanlon brazenly. "Do you think I don't know what I'm up against? It'll be the chair for me, but I'll take this double-crossing ——— with me. If they'll only let me hear his death yell first, I'll bump off to sweet music."

The next moment, however, Scanlon's air of bravado was abandoned for one of chastened earnestness, as he said:

"But one last word, Harrington; and not for me either—for Old Two Blades. John thinks he's right all the time. He figured some moral statute of limitations must have run against what was done back yonder about the survey. He figured he was God A'mighty's silent partner—and not so damn silent either."

Harrington, who had been listening with both interest and amazement, relieved himself of a quick gesture of contempt; for in those jail days of his he had come to hold John Boland as personally culpable—more culpable than anybody else, besides accusing him of a colossal cruelty to his own daughter.

"All the same, Harrington," answered Scanlon to that gesture, "old J. B. has never looked crooked to himself."

"I'll make him look crooked—even to himself," Harrington flamed out.

But by this time the officers had completed the formality of releasing one man and incarcerating two, and Jailor White came up to shake hands with Henry, who thanked him for his courtesies which had been numerous. Then Harrington turned toward the Court-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/379


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/380

 house, eager to get outside, with District Attorney Younger falling into stride beside him.

"I was getting pretty darned tired of being kicked around like a houn' dog, Younger," he was making talk, when tumultuous sounds began to issue from the causeway, a far-away murmuring that grew nearer quickly. Henry was surprised to hear his name rising above the clamor—his name—wild cries of "Harrington! Where's Harrington?" chantings of "We want Henry!" and the like.

He felt the district attorney squeeze his arm; strange sensations began to heave his breast; his throat grew lumpy and his knees a bit uncertain; his heart was leaping wildly as this volume of clamorous sound grew louder. As he rounded the turn from the jail a milling mass which had been pressing toward the sheriff's office sighted and dashed upon him, led by Gaylord and Schuler. Somehow these two had got there and inevitably gravitated to the front. They rushed upon Henry, seizing his hands and shaking them.

"I knew you didn't do it," cried Gaylord, bluff and unabashed even in apology; "I knew it all the time, except for a little while when I was off my nut."

"Henry, we gave you an awful deal," lamented Schuler tearfully.

"Oh, Henry!" A soft hand, but hearty, smote him upon the back. It was President Amelia Hutton of the Woman's Club; somehow she too had got into the front wave. The feather upon her hat was much awry but her eyes gleamed with suspicious brightness.

The corridor now seemed to contain none but old-time personal friends, each struggling to reach his

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/380


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/381

 side, shouting congratulations, mumbling shamefaced apologies, manifesting combined emotions of shame, joy and exultation.

Henry was exultant and joyous too. This was something like. It was something as he had pictured it. Resent these people now—be churlish with them—that was not in Henry Harrington. It had never been. They had been duped—that was all—tools, as he had been a tool—victims, as he had been a victim. Besides, he had had yesterday the satisfaction of heaping coals of fire upon the heads of these people of Edgewater, who had treated him so outrageously; and it is a law of the heart to soften toward the enemy it succors.

Every manifestation of regret was balm to his bruises and it gratified him immensely when with an air of proprietorship his townspeople surrounded him. They seized his arms, they pulled at his hands, they got behind and pushed him, shouldered him toward the front door. "We've come to take you out, Henry." "We're a committee to take you out," they cried.

Henry reached the space between the front pillars riding on the shoulders of his delirious, repentant friends. The Greek porch of wide stone slabs and the long granite steps were crowded; the nearer courthouse yard was filling and the conical tents of the houseless began to look like dunce-caps of khaki, afloat in a sea of upturned faces. It appeared that all Edgewater had suddenly gravitated hither; for the news had broadcasted rapidly from the moment when loiterers upon the curb had noted the arrival of the well known Scanlon and the unknown Ulric, both in irons, and learned from the local officers the meaning of what they saw.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/381


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/382

HOOSING his words haltingly but rather happily, Mayor Foster, in that high penetrating voice of his, boldly assumed to make confession for himself and for all.

"We did Henry Harrington about all the harm we could do him," he began bluntly, "and now we're here to 'fess up—to make his sore heart glad by telling him that he's about the most loyal citizen Socatullo County ever had and at last we've got sense enough to know it. When he was trying to tell us what was right, we wouldn't listen. We called him a traitor and we howled him down. He wasn't a traitor. We were a lot of suckers, and I guess I was the great big hesucker of 'em all. Furthermore, it's admitted he's not guilty of what he's been in jail for. The officers say so. Our hearts had acquitted him already. We are here to tell him how wrong we were—how ashamed we are—and to ask him what we can do to make it right."

The massed people had with difficulty restrained themselves. "That's right. That's right, Foster!" irrepressibles kept breaking in.

"Three cheers for Henry Harrington! Yip! Yip!" shouted a voice on the far edge of the throng to be followed immediately by a vast sustained outburst of emotional cheering, with hand-clappings, with wavings of and tossings of the same into the air.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/382


text:
A Sting in the Tale/Chapter 1

 * After this, Jesus travelled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chum, the manager of Herod's household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.
 * While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.’
 * When he said this, he called out, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear.'

 * His disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, 'The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,

 * "though seeing, they may not see;

 * though hearing, they may not understand."

 * 'This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.'

 * Luke 8:1-15

They were coming from all directions, like fans converging on a football ground. They came alone, they came in groups. Husbands brought their wives, mothers brought their children, youths brought their mates. Some seemed to have brought their whole town with them. They came because they were sick and handicapped and thought he might heal them. They came because they were poor and oppressed and thought he might deliver them. They came because they were bored and curious and thought he might amuse them. They came... well, some of them would have had a hard job explaining why exactly they had come, except that everybody else was coming. But with whatever company and with whatever motivation they came, there was one word on Jesus’ lips which intrigued and excited them all: 'kingdom'.

'The kingdom of God has come.' That's what they said he was preaching. For the rural masses of Galilee those words were like sparks on dry tinder.

Every society has its dream of a better world: the classless society, the American dream, Utopia; and first-century Jews were no exception. Down through the latter years of the Old Testament period, as inspired prophets had wrestled with their national experience of tyranny and oppression, a dream of a coming kingdom gained sharper and sharper focus in their minds. It became clear that it would take an extraordinary intervention on God's part to transform this present evil world into the sort of world where God's people would really feel at home. A decisive victory over the power of evil would have to be won, a victory no ordinary human being could achieve.

So they looked forward to the arrival of a supernatural deliverer, one who would be anointed like the mighty heroes of the past: a new David, but greater even than David was. They waited, in a word, for the Messiah. 'Don't worry,' said the prophets, 'things are pretty bad for us Jews in this present evil age. But soon the Messiah will step out of the wings of history. And then, at long last, the kingdom of God will begin.'

Can you imagine the shock, the tremor of hope that must have gone through the population of Galilee when Jesus, a young carpenter from Nazareth, started to wander around their towns and villages saying it had happened? 'The kingdom of God has come. Repent and believe the good news,' he said.

No doubt initially many were sceptical. They were not unfamiliar with lunatics who indulged their megalomaniac fantasies by pretensions to be the Messiah. But this man did not just make messianic claims. He cast out demons. He healed the sick. And he taught; oh, how he taught! There was a charisma about him that had not been seen in Israel since the days of the greatest prophets half a millennium before. There was even a rumour that he was Elijah or Jeremiah risen from the dead. That was the measure of the astonishing impact he had made.

Had he wanted to exploit the opportunity, he could have set in motion a bandwagon of religious revival and political revolution that the authorities in Jerusalem and perhaps even in Rome would have been unable to stop. That word 'kingdom' resonated with all the Galilean masses' most glorious dreams, fired their most fanatical zeal and inspired their most passionate commitment. All he had to do when confronted by this vast multitude was to work a miracle or two and deliver a suitably firebrand speech; the whole of the Galilean countryside would have erupted in volcanic enthusiasm for his messiahship.

But the extraordinary thing is, he didn't. Instead, he told them a story. Can you imagine it, this great crowd coming to him from town after town, full of expectancy, hanging on his every word, longing to be moved with emotive oratory and impressed by supernatural power—and he sits down and tells them a story! A bizarre, perplexing riddle of a story at that: a 'parable', he calls it.

Even his closest friends were utterly bewildered by his behaviour. 'What on earth are you doing, Jesus?' they asked him. 'What is this parable business all about?' That's when he explained it to them.

 * The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,
 * 'though seeing, they may not see;
 * though hearing, they may not understand.'
 * Luke 8:10

Unpopular and controversial words. They contradict the popular view of parables as moralizing stories told in picturesque imagery to aid the understanding of simple, unsophisticated rural people. On the contrary, Jesus says he speaks in parables not to make it easier for people to understand, but to make it harder. 'Though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'

Whatever you make of that, it's quite clear that Jesus was not as impressed by these crowds, streaming out of all Galilee to see him, as we might have been if we'd been there. He was not at all convinced that they were really on his wavelength. He'd grown up among them, you see. He knew perfectly well what their ideas of the kingdom of God were, and they were as different from his own ideas as chalk from cheese. The last thing he wanted to do was to foster their mistaken notions by courting popularity with them. He hints, in fact, that he feels rather as the prophet Isaiah did, when he was told to preach to a people whose hearts would be irredeemably hardened against his words. In Isaiah's day it seems that Israel had become so infatuated by pagan idols that they could neither see nor hear that God had judicially abandoned them to spiritual blindness and deafness themselves.

It's that divine decree from Isaiah 6:9 which Jesus is quoting when he speaks in verse 10 of listeners who cannot understand. The Galilean masses, according to Jesus, are in a similar spiritual state to the Jews of Isaiah's Jerusalem. They are incapable of comprehending the new revelation of the kingdom of God which he had brought because their minds are prejudicially closed against it. Some commentators go so far as to conclude from verse 10 that Jesus deliberately adopted a strategy of concealment, of hiding his true opinions from the masses. They suggest that he was so disillusioned with the Jewish people and convinced that like Isaiah's Jerusalem they would reject him in the end, that he deliberately camouflaged his message to confirm them in their condemned state of unbelief.

It's an arguable theory, but I think it somewhat overstates the case. After all, if Jesus wanted to conceal his message from the crowds altogether, why preach at all? And what are we to make of the impassioned exhortation, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear'? That certainly sounds as if he desires an intelligent response to his words.

I think it's closer to the truth to interpret Jesus as saying in verse 10 that he uses parables as a kind of filter. Among the thousands who come out to see him for all the wrong reasons, he believes there are some who are genuinely open to the truth. A tiny minority, maybe, amid that vast, spiritually deaf multitude; but though few, they did have ears to hear. His parables were a filter that identified those true disciples. Those who came to Jesus looking for just a political leader, a nationalist revolutionary or a spell-binding miracle-worker went away disillusioned. They found, to their disappointment, just a teller of stories. But those who were drawn to him by some deeper magnetism stayed. In their hearts God's Spirit was working. They were being inwardly called to follow him. Though they were perplexed at first, just like all the others, they were also intrigued, longing to understand what he was really getting at, sensing that somewhere buried in the tantalizing obscurity of his parables lay the clue to that kingdom of God for which their hearts longed. 'To you,' he says to them, 'the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given.' This is in fact a fundamental characteristic of all Jesus' ministry. You don't get to grips with his message from the safe distance of a detached curiosity. Spiritual illumination is the privilege of those who are personally committed to him, and share the intimacy of a personal relationship with him. Unlike so many orators, Jesus' head was never turned by the flattery of the crowds. He wasn't fooled by the illusion of success that big numbers conjure up. The 'megachurch' mentality with its consumer-oriented 'gospel according to market research' held no appeal for him. He saw through it. He was perfectly content to invest himself in just the twelve men and the handful of women whom Luke names for us. Provided they were real learners, real disciples, he was prepared to give the whole of himself to such a tiny band.

\Significantly, the interpretation of the parables that Jesus goes on to unfold elucidates this sifting process further. Behind the pastoral imagery of the sower and the seed is the solemn and serious truth that only some who hear his words are ultimately blessed by him. Tragically, many are evangelized, and yet not saved. Though the initial response may look promising, the path of disciple- ship proves too demanding.

Before we look at that interpretation in detail, it is worth noting that the simple fact that Jesus does interpret his parables in this fashion explodes two common contemporary theories about parables. Some recent New Testament commentators have argued that parables should not be interpreted at all, but simply retold in contemporary dress. A parable, they argue, is a rhetorical device that's designed to make an immediate impact on a live audience, so to interpret a parable is a bit like explaining a joke. The punch-line is bound to get lost in the very attempt to do so.

There is a profound element of truth in that view. Parables are deliberately mysterious and elusive. There is an air of paradox and surprise which is intended to subvert the presuppositions of the listener. By drawing us into his story Jesus disarms our psychological defences so that unwelcome and unpalatable truths can strike home to our hearts like a missile seeking its target. And in consequence it is undoubtedly difficult to preach the parables in a way that recovers that original dramatic impact. Nevertheless, Jesus clearly believed neither that it was impossible to explain parables, nor that their point was irretrievably lost in the process of trying to do so; because here he interprets a parable himself.

A second thesis commonly defended by scholars today, and also contradicted by Jesus' example here, is that parables are sermon illustrations designed to make a single point, and therefore should never be treated as allegories. Once again, there's an important element of truth in this. Medieval scholars sometimes allowed their imaginations to run riot in seeking hidden allegorical meanings within parables.

For example, if you study the conclusion of this parable in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, you'll find it ends slightly differently. The seed on the good ground yields varying quantities of harvest: some a hundred-fold, as here in Luke's account, but also some sixty-fold and some thirty-fold. Luke has abbreviated the story slightly in this respect. Medieval commentators eagerly seized upon the longer ending and engaged in all kinds of speculative ideas about its significance. One popular theory was that the hundred-fold yield represented martyrs who had given their lives for Christ; the sixty-fold yield represented monks who had taken a vow of celibacy; and the thirty-fold yield? 'Well,' it was argued, 'obviously the thirty-fold yield represents those whose diminutive contribution to the kingdom of God is simply that of being an obedient wife!'

Clearly such a reading of Jesus' picture language is illegitimate. There's no reason at all for believing that he intends to make any comment about martyrs, monks or obedient wives in the parable of the sower. Much of the detail in his parables in fact has no hidden, secondary meaning at all, but is there simply to add colour to the story.

It will not do, however, to insist that parables have only a single lesson to teach. For Jesus' own interpretation of this parable has decidedly allegorical features. The sower, the seed, the stony ground and the weeds all stand for different things. So it's clearly a mistake to draw too sharp a line between parable and allegory, or to place some arbitrary limit on how much teaching content a parable may be intended to convey.

In fact, I want to suggest to you that there are at least three vital lessons which Jesus is trying to communicate in this parable.

1. How the kingdom of God progresses

 * This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God (Luke 8:11).

We began with Jesus' gripping announcement of the kingdom of God. The powers of evil are fleeing before his face. Demons are being exorcised. Cripples are being healed. The signs of his messianic mission to transform the world are clearly apparent. But how is the world to be changed? That's the inevitable question: how is the kingdom to be brought in? What strategy will Jesus employ to precipitate this decisive transformation in world history? Will he raise up an angelic army and march on Jerusalem or Rome? Will he call down supernatural fire from heaven to consume the wicked? What means does he intend to use to bring in the kingdom of God? This was in fact a great source of debate among Jews in his day. And it is the answer to that very question to which he refers when he speaks of the 'secrets of the kingdom of God'. He claims to bring privileged information on this vital point from the highest possible intelligence source in the universe, from heaven itself. And the clue to that secret strategy, for those who are able to penetrate the parable in which it is encoded, lies in the cipher of the seed.

Putting the evidence of all his parables and teaching together, it is clear that Jesus anticipated that the kingdom of God would come in a way hitherto unforeseen by the Jewish people. It would arrive in three phases, rather than in a single apocalyptic crisis. First, there would be a time of planting as the Messiah arrived, incognito and disguised, to sow the seed of the kingdom in the hearts of a few chosen disciples. Then there would be a period of growth as that seed, multiplied through their testimony, fertilized many other lives until eventually the spores of the kingdom had become distributed throughout the world. And finally there would be a time of reaping when the Messiah would return, this time amid universal public acclamation, to harvest the fruit which the seed he had sown had produced, and so bring in the full manifestation of the kingdom of which the prophets had spoken.

So the answer to that vital question, 'How is the kingdom of God to arrive?' lies in the metaphor of the seed. And what is that seed, this vital instrument by which the new world of the kingdom is sown in the very midst of the old world? Here in his first parable Jesus leaves his disciples in no doubt on that point. The seed', he says, 'is the word.' The preaching of the gospel will be the seminal agent of change. It will germinate God's cosmic revolution. It brings in the kingdom. 'The seed is the word of God.'

It's hard to overestimate the importance of that single brief sentence. Sadly, the church through the centuries has not always believed it. Again and again, other things have usurped the prime place the Word ought to have on the Christian agenda. Once, for instance, the church revered bread and wine more than the Bible; the altar instead of the pulpit stood at the centre not only of her architecture but also of her theology.

There are still those who even today would take us back to such sacramentalist superstition if they could. But in our generation the threat to the primacy of the Word has usually come from other directions: social action, for instance. In recent years many Christians have become much more politically involved. For too long, Christians have treated the political arena as a no-go area, as if Jesus were Lord of everywhere else except there. Not so. Christians have a responsibility to be the salt of the earth in Council offices and in parliamentary debates, just as much as through evangelistic crusades or overseas missions.

Nevertheless, there is a danger of over-compensating for our previous neglect of social issues. People can lose touch with Jesus' priorities. The pendulum can swing to the opposite extreme. God's new society is not brought in by Act of Parliament, still less by machine gun. It is brought in through the Word.

Jesus was familiar enough with the revolutionary politics of his own day. Many of the zealot freedom fighters came from his home area of Galilee. But their tactics were not for him. It was the wrong seed, and he knew it. The seed is the Word. A Word which, when you hear it on the lips of Jesus and his disciples, does not concern itself directly with social and economic structures; a Word which offers no utopian strategy for the immediate overturn of institutional evil; a Word, rather, which is about personal repentance, personal forgiveness, personal faith and personal discipleship. It is a Word which, as we observe in this very parable, is targeted not on the politicized masses but on the hearts of responsive individuals. Notice the third person singular in Jesus' invitation: 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear' (Luke 8:8).

Superficially, no doubt, this seems a most unpromising strategy. How can we possibly bring about the dramatic transformation to which the prophets referred when they spoke of the kingdom of God merely by a 'Word'? But Jesus was convinced of it. That's why he eschewed the political path and chose instead to be a preacher and a teacher. That Word, as we shall see in our next parable, demands social action of a most practical and sacrificial kind. Jesus was certainly not unconcerned about political structures and economic injustice. But he insists that it is the Word that must come first. By his own public ministry he modelled his conviction that 'the seed is the Word of God'.

2. Inevitable failure and disappointment

 * Some fell on rock (Luke 8:6).

Look carefully at how Jesus tells the story. He describes, you notice, one homogeneous sowing and four different soils. If a modem expert in the science of advertising were to tell the parable, it might well be the other way round. He would speak of one homogeneous soil and four different sowers. 'The first sower sowed the seed this way, but it didn't work; the second sower used a different tactic, but that was no good either; the third tried yet another method, but still had no success; and then finally along came the sower who had done his market research and perfected his advertising technique, and so he got a harvest. Well done, sower!'

'No!' says Jesus. That's not the way it is. The success or failure of the seed of the Word does not seem to depend on the sower's technique at all. On the contrary, the seed is sown in what seems like an artless, almost wasteful way that demands no skill at all. It's just 'scattered'. For it is not the function of the sower to change one soil into another. It is rather, says Jesus, the function of the seed to highlight the intrinsic fertility or infertility of the soil. It is the quality of the soil, not the expertise of the sower, that determines the harvest.

Of course, we don't like that. It robs us of our best excuse for our rejection of the gospel, namely that the preacher was no good. It is the soil that makes the difference. Spiritual fertility does not lie in the gift of the teacher. But Jesus insists that this is the way it is. Spiritual fertility does not lie in the gift of the evangelist. And for that reason he must anticipate three categories of disappointment.

a. Those along the path

 * ...the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts... (Luke 8:12).

Jesus is candid here about the prolific waste of effort which sharing the good news of God's kingdom will often seem to be. As he speaks, he's looking out at that vast crowd, who are streaming to hear him. Many would be tempted, I'm sure, to label these casual adherents as 'converts'. After all, the mere fact that they were coming to Jesus from their homes surely indicates some kind of spiritual response, doesn't it? But Jesus is not so easily convinced. 'No,' he says, 'this is a very mixed multitude I see. Some of these people who have come out to hear me are quite obviously hardened against my Word.' That hardening may come from intellectual pride: 'He doesn't seriously expect me to believe that, does he?' Or from moral obstinacy: 'There's no way I'm going to stop doing that, just because he says so.' Or from self-righteousness: 'Me, a sinner? How dare he!' Or it may be simply the hardening of bored indifference: 'Guess this just isn't my scene. I'm into yoga, you see.'

Though they had come to hear his Word, it bounced off them like water off a duck's back. Their hearts were coated in spiritual Teflon, so nothing stuck. Perhaps they thought they were being clever, sophisticated, not taken in by all that 'kingdom of God' nonsense. But notice the one whom Jesus identifies as silently and secretly campaigning behind this defiant, cynical attitude. 'The devil comes and takes away the Word so they can't believe and be saved,' he says.

Jesus is convinced that a personal force of evil is at work seeking to discredit the Word, and to distract minds from giving attention to it. Every evangelist encounters his demonic opposition. Perhaps he's at work among readers of this book too?

b. Those on the rock

 * ... the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root... (Luke 8:13).

Others in the crowd represent only a superficial decision, an initial enthusiasm that doesn't last. Their response to the Word is pure emotion, the kind of animal excitement that you get from being part of a big crowd, or the kind of warm fuzzies that you get from watching a sentimental movie. They 'receive the word with joy', says Jesus, but then circumstances change, the adrenalin subsides, the intoxication of the moment fades. Perhaps they begin to feel cheated. 'They told me Christianity made you feel happy. Well, I don't! They told me Christianity would give me friends. Well, I haven't got any! It must have been just an adolescent phase I went through, just a flash in the pan. I'm not going to be a Christian any longer.' They have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they apostatize,' says Jesus. Who hasn't observed this? The spiritual five-minute wonders. For a while they're wonderful Christians. They go through all the baptismal or confirmation classes. They get involved in everything. But six months later they're nowhere to be seen.

c. Those among thorns

 * ... those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked... and they do not mature... (Luke 8:14).

There are still others who turn out to be distracted disciples. Again, there's an enthusiastic initial response. But unlike the case of the superficial decision, these people do not seem to renege on their commitment to Jesus altogether. They retain some kind of Christian identity. They don't 'fall away' in that sense. But as time goes on, Christ becomes less and less significant in their lives. The couch grass of rival interests clogs their energies. The bindweed of materialism and worldliness saps all those early hopes of spirituality.

In youth, perhaps, it is educational goals, sporting achievement or sexual attraction that's responsible for this diversion of interest. In mid-life it's financial stress, family responsibilities, or career ambition. In old age it's preoccupation with health, the garden or the grandchildren. Whatever stage in life we're at, there are dozens of such distractions. 'As they go on their way,' says Jesus, 'they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures.' And the result is that 'they do not mature'. They're in a state of arrested spiritual development. They call themselves Christian, but it's become just a church-going habit, not a vital, personal faith.

Make no mistake about it, telling the good news of God's kingdom is full of discouragement. Many people will hear and never return. Others will rush to make a decision for Christ, only to disappear. Still others will sit in the pew week after week like passengers on a train, but never display anything more than a nominal commitment.

In all this scene of disappointment there is, however, one comfort for the evangelist.

3. Enduring evidence

 * Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown (Luke 8:8).

The seed of the Word is the only way to increase the kingdom. And increase it will. In spite of frustrating losses and wasted efforts, Jesus assures us that the farmer will have a splendid crop at the end of the day. For there are those who 'with a noble and good heart... hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop' (Luke 8:15).

Commentators disagree about how many of these four soils may represent hope of salvation. All agree that the seed sown along the path certainly does not. The text itself excludes such a possibility. 'They cannot believe and be saved,' says Jesus of those hardened hearts.

But there are many who would like to argue that the other three soils, though differing in the degree of spirituality which they represent, all nevertheless represent a saving response to the gospel. 'After all,' they say, 'the seed sown among the stones and among the weeds still germinates, doesn't it? The Word is received. A decision for Christ is made. The path of discipleship is at least begun. Such responsive individuals are surely assured of eternal life. Even if their lack of sustained commitment and spiritual growth forfeits some heavenly rewards, it can't forfeit heaven itself.'

I am unconvinced by that optimistic viewpoint. What, I ask myself, about Jesus' searching words in the Sermon on the Mount about those nominal disciples who had made a verbal profession? 'Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord..." [and] I will tell them plainly, "I never knew you. Away from me...!"' (Matthew 7:21-23). Or what about that solemn picture of the vine he gives us in the gospel of John? 'The branch which does not bear fruit', he says, 'is cut off, and thrown into the fire' (see John 15:6). What about the solemn warning to apostates in the letter to the Hebrews? 'Land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless,' says the writer. 'In the end it will be burned' (Hebrews 6:8). What about the frightening admonition of the risen Christ to those half-hearted so-called believers in the church at Laodicea? 'Because you are lukewarm... I am about to spit you out of my mouth' (Revelation 3:16). The implication of this parable is that for Jesus the only adequate response to the Word is one that issues in an enduring spiritual productivity. Nothing less would do. John F. MacArthur put it very well in The Gospel According to Jesus:

 * Fruit-bearing is the whole point of agriculture. In the harvest weedy soil offers no more hope than does the hard road or the shallow ground. All are equally worthless for all are equally fruitless. Fruit-bearing is the whole point of agriculture and it is also the ultimate test, then, of salvation.

Jesus is warning us in this story that initial professions of faith are a misleading statistic. It is long-term changes in lifestyle, not mere short-term enthusiasm, that really cheer the heart of Christ. Some well-meaning Christians treat faith like fire insurance. 'Decide for Jesus right now!' they say, 'because once you've paid that single once-in-a-lifetime premium, you have eternal life, and you must never, never doubt it. By this simple step of faith you have guaranteed for yourself admission to heaven absolutely and irrevocably.'

But such a presentation can dangerously distort New Testament Christianity. It leads professing Christians to think they can live the rest of their life as they please. They've made their 'decision for Christ' - so they are safe. They may surrender to all kinds of moral failure or spiritual declension, and yet insist they are 'saved'. Didn't the evangelist tell them that they had eternal life and that they must never doubt it? They had got their fire insurance. They had paid their single lifetime premium. They were, as a result, eternally secure.

Well, the New Testament would not agree. It insists that assurance of eternal salvation is valid only if it is supported by the clear evidence of spiritual growth and productivity. That doesn't mean we are saved by our good works. But it does mean that the only reliable evidence of our salvation is goodness.

It is those who by persevering produce a crop who are secure, says Jesus. Endurance is the hallmark of the truly converted man or woman. Jesus offers no assurance to the complacency of fruitless branches.

The story is told of how the Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon, while walking to his church in London, came across a drunk clinging to a lamp-post. 'I'm one of your converts, Mr Spurgeon,' said the drunk.

'You may well be one of my converts,' replied Spurgeon, 'but you're certainly not one of God's converts, or you wouldn't be in this condition.'

The seed of the Word, when it is savingly received, doesn't just make a temporary impact. It produces enduring change. True faith is not an ephemeral whim in the emotional excitement of an evangelistic meeting. It's not just a nominal nod of the head in the direction of the altar when the Creed is repeated on a Sunday evening. True faith is a deliberate and determined pledge of the heart to a faithful obedience to Christ and his Word, which perseveres through trials and opposition and sustains its growth lifelong. I'm not saying Christians don't have setbacks; of course they do. But they endure. And it is only those who endure to the end who are saved.

There is on the other hand such a thing as an abortive conversion experience, just as there was Judas among the disciples. That's why the New Testament exhorts us:
 * See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God... We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first (Hebrews 3:12,14).

The kingdom of God begins in our lives when God's rule begins there. And how does God assert his rule in our lives? It is, says Jesus, by the obedient attention we pay to his Word.

title: A Sting in the Tale/Chapter 1


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/383

 Harrington stood, thrilling to the satisfactions of the moment, eyes sweeping the crowd, shoulders lifting, blood tingling, nostrils quivering with delight in it all. This was vindication; this was the triumph he had looked forward to—this was everything. . . but Billie! If she could only be here now—but of course she couldn't be—and he would be rushing to her in a few minutes now anyway.

Henry was touched with realizing how completely his townsmen had forgot their own great wrongs to undo a wrong to him. It filled him with a respect, a yearning, a compassion for them that was wholly unexpected. He lifted his hand and the crowd slowly stilled.

"Forget it, won't you?" he urged gravely, generously. "It was all a mistake anyhow—a very human mistake. There were times when I almost doubted myself. Forget it, won't you, please!"

"We can't ever forget it, Henry!" declared Mayor Foster loudly, and from the mass there were cries of: "You're right, Foster!" and "You bet your life we can't!"

"Speech!" "Speech!" the crowd began to call; and it came to Henry who had been planning only to get away, that in this plastic hour he might help these people with a few words that flamed into mind out of his so recent and so poignant experiences.

But it was not until some one shouted: "Tell us what we are going to do, Henry!" and there were spontaneous vociferations from many quarters of: "Yes; that's it; tell us what we are going to do;" that it dawned on Harrington that these distressed contrite people were not only looking to him but were

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/383


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/384

 looking up to him, trusting him, desiring guidance of him. He thrilled afresh at the perception. They had cast him out, then hailed him guiltless; and now they appealed to him as leader—to him who in his bitterness had said that he would never lead again.

It came to him with a new tingling of his veins that this was his real vindication; it came to him that he could lead these people; that he must; that for him a rare opportunity had come, bought with a very great price, and that he would be the Judas they had called him at the Chamber of Commerce meeting if he did not embrace the opportunity. He felt his soul harden with a sort of spiritual hardness that had never been there before. He remembered too what it was the Salisheuttes were waiting an opportunity to tell these squatters on their ancient domain, and at that memory his enthusiasm kindled.

"I'll tell you what we're going to do!" he trumpeted suddenly, stern in his acceptance of their challenge to leadership. "We're going to triumph over our adversity. We're going to build our homes again and make them better homes—build Edgewater again and make it a better Edgewater. We'll give it better principles. We'll build a town where the little man is equal to the big man before the law—where no man's private interest can ever be made the public interest.

"We'll remember what President Coolidge once said, that 'a thing is not right because it will pay; but that it will pay because it is right.' If we do that, we will have a community in which legal crimes like those against Soderman and Adam John, with their inevitable train of bloodshed, will be impossible—or the little one against me even."

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/384


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/385

 The crowd ceased to cheer, awed and self-convicted now.

"Oh, I do not say this with any bitterness," the speaker went on; "for the first thing I would insist upon in the new Edgewater is a spirit of charity, of brotherliness, where men at opposite poles of thought, like Jim Gaylord and Adolph Salzberg, can each recognize that the other has a point of view. Not that I am going to be mushy. Deliberate criminals must be punished, of course. I am not one who would line a murderer's cell with flowers, nor wash him with sentimental tears. I would send the flowers to the grave of his victim and reserve my tears for those bereft by his bloody hand. I would, as Roosevelt said once, 'rather seem hard in the heart than soft in the head.' But our crimes must be measured by the circumstances that created them. Our punishments must do justice and not injustice."

Again the audience was breathless, drinking down the thought—accepting it as authoritative from the man who had earned the right to speak with authority.

"And now let me tell you, my friends, that our most immediate duty is to be hopeful. There's hope in most any situation if you'll look for it. Today, instead of owning the ground you stand on, the Salisheuttes are your landlords; yet there's hope even in that."

But the mental attitude of the crowd was instantly changed and up from the face of it came a sort of mass groan; but Henry challenged this by going on stoutly:

"You will have to make your terms with them. They are not absentee landlords. They are here. I see them about me on the steps—curious spectators of a scene

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/385


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/386

 that we as white men can't be altogether proud of. Their missionary pastor, Mr. Collins, was just in the jail conferring with me. As this seems as representative an audience as can be gathered in Edgewater under present circumstances, I take for you the liberty of suggesting that he step up here and announce to you the terms of the Salisheuttes who have been declared by the highest court to be the owners of all that their eyes rest upon and far beyond."

There was an instant snarl. Terms? With the Salisheuttes? The idea was still unthinkable. Henry had jeopardized his new-gained leadership. Angry voices ejaculated and mutterings arose on every side; yet as the tall form of the Reverend Jedediah Collins forced its way upward to the flagged stone porch, a mildly intent expression on his bony, serious face, crowd anger was giving way to crowd anxiety. Facts were facts—and stubborn things.

Gaylord, over-excited, made himself the spokesman of this increasing chord of anxiety, and broke in upon the Reverend Jedediah before he could utter a word. "If you'll give us deeds and help us quiet title," he shouted rather frantically, from the base of a column that raised him over the heads of those about him, "we can bond the city for enough to make your Indians rich, them and their children till the end of time."

"Bonds!" reproved the Reverend Jedediah placidly, but in a trained speaking voice that carried easily as far as Gaylord's excited tone. Yet mildness and the timber of suasion was lost on the banker.

"They did nothing to make this town—to make it rich," Gaylord complained. "Let 'em be fair—let 'em be half-way fair!"

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/386


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/387

 "Fair?" reproached the Reverend Jedediah in a voice of sweetness and calm, and then rather lifted himself above Gaylord. "Be patient, my friends," he appealed; "and hear the message of the Salisheutte Indians to the distressed people of Edgewater. Chief Charlie, come here and stand beside me. Chief Big Fish, Chief William, and the others of you, come and stand in front of me on the top step here and witness to these distressed people if I correctly interpret your wishes."

Chief Charlie came, dignified as majesty, and stood below the missionary, facing the once more breathless masses. He was impassive as a graven image, except that his hand still nursed the bowl of the short pipe and his lips from time to time appeared to suck sustenance from it. Beside him ranged the other chiefs. Over them their spiritual leader lifted his voice once more.

"They ask me to assure you at once that it is white men who have tricked you; that they will not take advantage of your distresses; and to admit that the great court at Washington, in doing its duty, has given to them wealth which they did not create. It has snatched the ground from under you and given it to them. They ask me to tell you that you can have it back—freely. They give it to you now. They would put your minds at ease as quickly as possible."

Instant sensation swept the close packed masses.

"What? What's that? . . . What'd he say?"

Breathless questionings raced through the gaping crowd. Gaylord formulated the mental confusion of all when he lifted his voice to urge: "Make it plainer, Parson. I'm not sure I get you."

The missionary smiled, a patient, indulgent sort of smile, as if he, an apostle of light, dealt with a groping

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/387


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/388

 child of darkness. "Why, Mr. Gaylord, the banker—for they tell me that is who you are—I'm just saying that the Salisheutte Indians are not grasping like some white men. They have not learned to covet. They have been treated badly for so long, robbed of homes and hunting ground for so long, that they have a great sympathy for people deceived and despoiled and exploited as you have been. Therefore they give you back your homes."

"Give 'em back? How?" Gaylord seemed still not quite able to grasp the idea.

"Yes," affirmed the Reverend Jedediah. "They have decided to ask the Great Father at Washington to appoint a trustee for them—a man whom they trust very much and whom they are glad to see now that you have begun to trust again—a lawyer, a missionary of the human law, as I, in my humble way, am a missionary of the divine—Henry Harrington! He will act for them. When the proper power is given to him, he will confirm the titles of each of you."

"Without payment of any kind?" demanded Gaylord, incredulous to the last.

"Except in good will," smiled the Reverend Jedediah benevolently. "The Salisheuttes hope that the white men will treat them a little more as brothers hereafter." This hope was uttered modestly, appealingly.

"For nothing?" inquired the amazed citizens incredulously one of another.

"Why, that's not human nature!" echoed somebody right under the Reverend Jedediah's ear.

"It's Christian nature, my brother," he replied.

"It just shows you never can civilize an Indian!" complained Julius Hornblower in disgust.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/388


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/389

UT Hornblower's acid observation, like his presence, went unnoticed in the crowd; for after one more dazed moment a cheer had gone up.

"Hurrah! Hurrah for the Siwashes!"

The unbelievable had happened. Relief—mercy had come from where whites had least right to expect mercy. Men and women turned to look at each other and read in the faces before them confirmation of what they felt in their own hearts. There was shouting, there was shaking of hands, and pounding upon backs. Husbands and wives fell into each other's arms and wept. They had back the land their homes had stood on. Everybody was laughing, everybody was crying; some people were singing and it is just possible that some were praying. The crowd spread out as if seized with a sudden impulse to scatter the good news; householders felt all at once a desire to rush out and look at their lots again to make sure that they were there.

Neither were their benefactors forgotten. There was a rush of the more exuberant youth for Chief Charlie. "Let me kiss you, Charlie," one hilarious reveler cried, and the venerable Indian grected the proposal with a jagged grin. Immediately two lusties swung the old man to their shoulders, while crowding admirers slapped him playfully on the back, chucked him in the ribs, pulled at his arms, pinched him and otherwise manhandled his dignity with rude, bear-like

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/389


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/390

 manifestations of joy and good will. Within a minute his bearers had started down the steps with him.

Other joy-mad celebrants swung up the other chiefs to their shoulders. They even laid violent but approving hands upon the Reverend Jedediah Collins, and him also, laughing, they bore aloft. They caught up squaws and papooses, and headed a promenade that streamed like a human waterfall down the broad steps and along the concrete walk with the crowd milling in behind and forming a serpentine in the street, with shouts and cheers and songs and a more organized manifestation of the popular rejoicing.

For once in Edgewater the Siwash had his due.

Presently the tumult of good feeling subsided. The old chiefs, permitted to resume their feet and their gravity, gathered once more around their spiritual Moses and looked up into his face as meekly content with what his leadership had brought them to. Yet this resumption of satisfied impassive calm was almost immediately broken in upon. This was because, before anyone else in Edgewater knew that Henry Harrington was to be exonerated of the murder charge, John Boland knew—for he had heard what the detectives said to Scanlon in his library, and when he read confession in the consummate scoundrel's face, he backed away from him with horror burning in his eyes, his stunned mind trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Then he too accused Scanlon—but weakly, for he was weak. "And you—you let me do what I have done!" He gasped this charge and sat trembling. He had ceased to be any longer a self-confident man. His head sank weakly prone upon his library table and it lay there some time.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/390


text: Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/2


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/391

 It was lying there, a wrinkled, parchment face, like some grotesque paper-weight amid the litter of the desk, when, well, say, when Lahleet stepped so excitedly out of the automobile in front of the courthouse to be followed so sullenly by Count Ulric. But about the time when Lahleet was leading Henry from his cell, John Boland's head had got back upon his shoulders again. He was sitting up—by a supreme effort of the will, he was standing up; he was walking toward the door, then down the steps and out between the statues of Lewis and Clark. He had started for the jail but he never got there, being caught in this jam on the courthouse pavement within a dozen feet of the porch to find himself presently staring up into the face of Henry Harrington at a distance of no more than a dozen feet.

Held, perforce, a single unnoticed figure in this human mosaic, he witnessed Henry's vindication. With mortification scalding deeper every moment, his state of mind was violently upheaved. What—what was that this missionary fellow was saying? What—what was that he was proposing? The people—the people were to get their titles back! Mr. Boland's mind kindled and his heart leaped.

The Salisheuttes had become merciful to the townspeople. God in His heaven! Was there to be mercy also for him? The bare possibility struck a kind of mellowness into him that he had seldom known before—a sort of preparedness of soul as for some great spiritual light to break.

And so, when at length the abating crowd hysteria gave him his chance, he laid a hand, trembling in its eagerness on Chief Charlie's shoulder, and his voice,

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/391


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/392

 an oldish voice, husky with anxiety, importuned quaveringly: "You mean, Chief Charlie, that you were joking with me? That—that you will give me my land back too?"

The old Indian started and looked offense, then surprise, then sardonic gratification. His glance was one which sifted and weighed and found utterly wanting for a time, then seemed at length to discover in the strained features before him something that might be worthy at least of deliberation—say, before a referee.

"You askum that boy!" he directed bluntly, pointing with the short stem of his pipe; and, lo, there before Mr. Boland, looking at him level, was a half-breed with sloe-black eyes and twisted, half-emerged features.

Quite possibly Old Two Blades had never seen this man before; yet he recognized him intuitively—Adam John! Yes: whether assuming a breakdown of police power or sensing that atmosphere of general amnesty which had begun to spread itself abroad, or proudly indifferent to the chance he took—however it was, here was Adam John, standing among the Salisheuttes as if naively he expected that justice would be done to him automatically when it was done to them.

As Mr. Boland gazed at his patient features, mildly curious rather than hotly resentful, a sense that he had committed an enormity upon this inarticulate half-breed grew up in him swiftly. He recalled with shame how ruthlessly the mighty mass of his power and the trained cunning of his brain had been employed to crush this one superfluous little Indian. And now before this same insignificant Siwash the issues of his fortune were made to tremble.

Adam John had become the arbiter of John Bo-

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/392


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/393

 land's destiny. It had been left to him to say. It seemed as if God were mocking him.

Standing thus, harried by the look of the sloe-black eyes in this twisted intent face before him, illumination broke upon John Boland's mind. Wrongs, wrongs, wrongs! He perceived that he had wrought great, tremendous wrongs!

For the first time John Boland saw himself in a true perspective, his life as a vaster wreck than his fortune. All at once he wanted, not an opportunity to reconstruct the fortune, but respite in which to reconstruct the life—to undo some of its awful mistakes. It was the coldest, cruelest, meanest thing that could be conceived—what he had done to this boy! All at once he didn't want his acres back—didn't want anything, but just this stupid-looking half-breed's forgiveness. It was an odd craving to come to him but it came; it was there and demanding expression.

"Adam! Adam John!" he labored throatily, reaching toward him. "Can I make it right with you?" His feeling was deep enough that the light in his recessed eyes was dimmed and his long chin trembled. "Will you say so, Adam?"

But Adam John was cannily suspending judgment on this apparent penitence of the man who had dealt with him so ruthlessly. "Mebbe so—you keep off—my island?" he questioned gravely.

"Why—sure! Surely!" J. B.'s voice broke with the sudden surge of emotion that was sweet as he had ever known. "It's yours, boy; yours, of course!" he gulped, grateful tears streaming from the deep sockets of his eyes, while his groping hands found at length the hands of Adam John and shook them with all the

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/393


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/394

 energy of which he was capable. "I have no right there—never had any, I see now. I haven't got any right now anywhere," he conceded brokenly, with a new accession of humility.

Chief Charlie had been overlooking this dialogue from a higher step with a sort of paternal interest, and he appeared to see in this speech of Boland's evidence of a very genuine repentance, and to be touched by it. His seamed old countenance began to beam and there was a brightening moisture in his own opaque orbs. "Salisheuttes give you land back!" he grunted, and managed a smile, beautiful in its ugliness.

"Back?" cried Mr. Boland, incredulous now that he had got the very thing he had been asking for. "Back?"

"Mebbe so, you not squash little Indian now any more—mebbe so?" speculated the old chief.

"You rebuke me, Charlie! You rebuke me utterly!" cried Mr. Boland in anguish. At the same time he disengaged one of his hands from Adam John to reach up and grasp Chief Charlie's gnarled old claw. The chief took it heartily and it was a grotesque picture that they made, John Boland, sartorially correct as ever, overcome with emotion and supported fraternally between a half-breed in overalls and an old baboon in a rusty frock coat.

"You will need to see Henry Harrington, Mr. Boland," suggested the kindly voice of the Reverend Jedediah Collins, who from his six feet of stature had also been interestedly overlooking this spectacle of the magnate before the mercy seat. "He will act for my people. They will give him a power of attorney."

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/394


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/31

Rh he was so strange when we returned. He's right enough—improved, if anything."

"And is the worship of athletics, the cult of insensate activity, to be counted as an improvement?" put in Leyland, fixing a large, sorrowful eye on Eustace, who had stopped to scramble on to a rock to pick some cyclamen. "The passionate desire to rend from Nature the few beauties that have been still left her—that is to be counted as an improvement too?"

It is mere waste of time to reply to such remarks, especially when they come from an unsuccessful artist, suffering from a damaged finger. I changed the conversation by asking what we should say at the hotel. After some discussion, it was agreed that we should say nothing, either there or in our letters home. Importunate truth-telling, which brings only bewilderment and discomfort to the hearers, is, in my opinion, a mistake; and, after a long discussion, I managed to make Mr. Sandbach acquiesce in my view.

Eustace did not share in our conversation. He was racing about, like a real boy, in the wood to the right. A strange feeling of shame; prevented us from openly mentioning our fright to him. Indeed, it seemed almost reasonable to conclude that it had made but little impression


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/395

 See Henry Harrington! Boland had stripped Henry Harrington of everything that once-glowing young man possessed, and now he was being told that if he wanted to get back anything that he himself had possessed, he must receive it from this same Henry Harrington.

Two days before, that would have been the bitterest punishment devisable for him; now it only reminded him that to see Henry Harrington was what he had set out to do. But when he turned to look for him, that young man had disappeared.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/395


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/396

ARRINGTON had watched the demonstration of gratitude to the Salisheuttes get under way, then judged that the moment had come when he could slip off to attend to a private affair of paramount importance. The courthouse being so entirely surrounded, he decided that it would be good strategy to retire into the corridor and across the bridge of sighs to where White or one of the guards could let him out of the front door of the jail. This tactical movement developed perfectly. Not a soul was in sight nearer than some men absorbed in the exploration of debris in basements away off on the other side of Sound Avenue—not a soul, except that as he leaped down the steps Lahleet appeared most casually from under the trees.

"You little life-saver!" he cried, reaching for her with both hands. "What did you run away for?" Then, without waiting for an answer, he demanded eagerly: "Did you see it? . . . Wasn't it great? . . . Worth all the chamber of commerce agony—worth everything!"

"No! Not everything!" objected Lahleet, with a wayward switch of her shoulders. Evidently she was in a contrary mood, perhaps meaning to punish him for forgetting her a while ago; and Harrington noticed that the aboriginal in her was somehow less disguised than he had ever seen it. There was more of the feline in her expression; she was more wilful in manner and

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/396


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/397

 there was a smoldering something in her eyes which he had never noticed there before.

"Where are you going in such a hurry?" she demanded impishly, pulling herself free of his grateful handclasp.

But Henry's effervescent happiness was not to be choked up now by any temperamental outburst of his most loyal and serviceable friend. "To tell Billie that I didn't do it—that everybody knows now I didn't do it!" he overflowed, concealing none of his joy in the prospect.

"Huh!" shrugged Lahleet, and wrinkled her short nose. "That won't be any news to her!"

"It won't?" inquired Henry, startled by some pregnancy in the girl's tone. "What do you mean?"

"She knew you didn't do it all the time," Lahleet assured, then smiled as if at his naive simplicity.

"She—she knew?" stammered Harrington, astounded, indignant. Seizing her wrists fiercely, he demanded: "How do you know what she thought?"

Lahleet, accepting the captivity of his hands, gazed up demurely, hers the expression of a woman innocent of anything yet capable of everything—if Henry had had the keenness to interpret it. "I went to see her," the girl confessed without a blush, "that first night you were in jail—to—to tell her they were driving you insane; to plead with her to go your bail, to come to you, write to you, telephone to you, send you a flower even, do anything to—to"

"You—you did that?" murmured the shaken Harrington, surprised—incredulous—grateful, all in one. Then, forgetting everything but that this was his first opportunity to learn something of the state

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/397


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/398

 of Billie's mind during those awful days, he pressed on Lahleet what had been his most agonizing question. "But why—why didn't she help me?"

The girl seemed innocently unaware that Harrington was deeply stirred—as innocently unaware as that her first speech had been a mischief-making one or that this next one would complete its work of demolition. "She said she was trying to teach you a lesson," Lahleet intoned carelessly.

"Lesson?" groaned Henry unbelieving, horrified.

"Yes. She thought it would be a good lesson for you to"

"Lesson!" exploded Harrington. "Oh, my God!" Flinging Lahleet's hands from him, he leaned dizzily against the iron hand-rail, while across the screen of his mind there recled the film of all that he had endured. There had come to him the saving hypothesis that Billie actually believed him guilty, that because of that all her faith in him had been shattered; hence she must naturally be indifferent until his vindication came. Until his vindication came! That hypothesis had sweetened all his later sufferings, been the foundation of all of his surviving hopes. "But—but are you sure that she believed that I was—was innocent?" he besought Lahleet, hurt eyes peering.

"Oh, she knew it!" affirmed Lahleet, with satisfied assurance.

Harrington's glance was lowered while he gripped the hand-rail tighter.

The girl's expression was peculiar, relentless. She revealed now that she knew her words had hurt him, that they had been meant to, and the minute his eyes were off her, her own gleamed with savage joy. No

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/398


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/399

 ancestor of hers, torturing an enemy at the stake, could have taken keener delight in the pain he inflicted than Lahleet Marceau when she saw Henry Harrington writhing as from a fatal wound. She gazed at his unseeing face quite merciless, with the corners of her lips turned up. Ruthlessly she was killing something—not him but something in him that must hurt him all but mortally when it died.

That it could so hurt him was more nearly true than the single-minded Lahleet could have conceived; for love had been Henry Harrington's whole life for three years now. Why had he chosen all at once to strive and struggle up to where he had become a target? It was for love. What had blinded his eyes till he could so be made the victim of this designing group of men? It was love. Why had it hurt so when they hurled him down? Because he was in love. It was in the love chambers of his heart that he had suffered the agony that had so weakened him. And now he was understanding that he had loved a woman whose heart was calculatingly hard.

"And she knew I was innocent all the while?" he iterated once more, opening and closing his hands helplessly.

"She rather thought the more you suffered the quicker you'd come to your senses," explained Lahleet, hands casually busy with her back hair.

"Senses!" Harrington roared out angrily; and then broke swiftly away—away from the torturing voice which had told him these unpalatable truths, away too from the unpleasant conspicuousness of the place in which he had been standing. With no more design than that he blundered, by the simple accident of walking

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/399


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/32

Rh on him. So it disconcerted us when he bounded back with an armful of flowering acanthus, calling out:

"Do you suppose Gennaro'll be there when we get back?"

Gennaro was the stop-gap waiter, a clumsy, impertinent fisher-lad, who had been had up from Minori in the absence of the nice English-speaking Emmanuele. It was to him that we owed our scrappy lunch; and I could not conceive why Eustace desired to see him, unless it was to make mock with him of our behaviour.

"Yes, of course he will be there," said Miss Robinson. "Why do you ask, dear?"

"Oh, I thought I'd like to see him."

"And why?" snapped Mr. Sandbach.

"Because, because I do, I do; because, because I do." He danced away into the darkening wood to the rhythm of his words.

"This is very extraordinary," said Mr. Sandbach. "Did he like Gennaro before?"

"Gennaro has only been here two days," said Rose, "and I know that they haven't spoken to each other a dozen times."

Each time Eustace returned from the wood his spirits were higher. Once he came whooping down on us as a wild Indian, and another


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/400

 round the corner, into the one leafy seclusion that the whole outdoors of the town this day afforded. This was Lahleet's erstwhile bench of mourning beneath the tamarack tree, with the angle of two blind walls in front and a screening crescent of cedar shrubs surrounding. Grateful for the solitude, Henry sank down upon the bench, a prey to this final despair.

The girl had followed softly and stood at a little distance watching the lines of realization etch themselves steadily into his lean face—watched savage, relentless, exultant, till at length it seemed to her her hated enemy must have died. Then, like an autopsist trying to determine that the dead are dead, she began merciless verbal stabbings to see if sensation still remained.

"The girl's no good, Henry!" she announced tentatively, then waited. Harrington's bent head did not move, his graven face changed no expression, not so much as a single chiseled line.

"She isn't worth a damn!" the Indian girl experimented more boldly, and again waited. No answer.

"She hasn't got a kick in her—not one!" . . . Silence still.

"She's a doll—not a woman." This with tones of infinite scorn. "She was a business connection only; and now the business is busted. Forget her, Henry—dear!"

Harrington had let these insults to his love fall unchallenged. Perhaps his heart was past sensation.

Lahleet came boldly near now and sat down upon the bench. Harrington was motionless, bowed. The girl studied him critically, clinically almost, and at length the merciless lines about her mouth began to

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/400


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/401

 fade. The cold, penetrating light went out of her eyes to be replaced by one that was soft and compassionate. She appeared to see the man now, instead of something inside him, and at the sight all her expressions mellowed and grew tender. She touched his hand softly, experimentally. When it was not drawn away from her she took it fondly between her palms and warmed it, toyed with the fingers of it, petted it; and when presently she felt his figure less immobile, more responsive to her presence, heaved a sigh at last of grateful relief. She saw him too breathe deep at last and straighten. He was coming back to life—back to life. . . with her beside him!

"Henry," she breathed, "oh, Henry, dear!" and drew closer. "You are tired, dear; and no wonder! But you've won," she crowed. "You've whipped 'em all-l-l!" Her smile was wide. "And now what you need is rest—and love! Come away," she wooed softly. "Come away to Lahleet's island and rest. To my island! Wouldn't that be wonderful, Henry?" she coaxed, in soft, purring, arousing tones.

But Harrington's mind, still abstracted, associated only slowly. The thing that waked him like a magic was the mention of her island. Weary, jaded as he was, his imagination kindled at the contrast between these arid ashes and that enchanted speck of which his memory held so entrancing an experience. The island was soft and green and secluded, set like an emerald in a sapphire sea.

And Lahleet's lodge—with its low, down-stuffed couches of furs, with its soothing semi-darkness, with its glow of sun-gold at the cretonne-curtained windows, with its fragrance of herbs, with its broad fireplace in

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/401


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/402

 which were smothered simmering broths, roasting grouse and browning biscuit—with the padding footsteps of the little Indian maiden, with her bright face and playful, kittenish, comradely ways to feed him and coddle him and make over his bruised spirit! Why, that lodge on that island appealed to him as the most delectable spot in the world right now.

The picture took hold of him so violently that he rose to his feet in contemplation of its prospect; and Lahleet rose with him. They came up almost as one, with her suddenly clinging so to him that Harrington took quick, startled account of what was happening; he saw her eyes glowing up into his, her lips yearning toward his lips until their wistfulness was pain; and he felt her veins hot against his veins.

"My island, Henry," she panted, "and me!" Then her eyes closed, her chin pressed his breast.

Harrington himself was breathless; his heart stopped while he comprehended slowly. The girl was offering to his hectored spirit a haven that was paradise; but with it she was offering—herself! At last he realized it. Lahleet loved him; she was confessing it—proclaiming it; but even then he thought it had just broken out of her, and the fact seemed to him at once glorious and pitiful. The elemental in her had triumphed over the stoic. With heart of gold, but with coppery drops in the warm tide that visited it, she had suddenly found this new thing in her and scorned to suppress it for one moment. She had flung away the white maiden's coy inhibitions, if ever she had held them, and frankly, with the chaste simplicity of the natura] woman, disclosed to him a preference and a meaning that his eyes had been too blind to see.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/402


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/403

 As if, having given him time to understand, her eyes that had closed in one passionate sigh upon Henry's breast, opened now with redoubled intensity in their dark beams and a convulsive strength in her grasp that would not be resisted. Harrington swayed to it inevitably. But beside her passionate young strength, the man in him felt also the lure of the woman. Resistance was low; he was frayed, heart-weary, fed-up; and here was this beautiful, colorful little savage hanging about his neck and ingenuously proposing that they who owed each other much should abandon civilization and go off to her island to discharge their mutual debt.

Yet, after a moment, Harrington was, as it were, lifting his head clear of the vapors of passion. Her arms were still about his neck, but over her shoulders he stared at the blank wall. And that was what he saw—a blank wall. It would be so easy to take her—so easy to solace at least a part of him with her, now so plastic in his arms. Her warm, soft little body, her sparkling spirit were temptation—yes!

But didn't he owe her better than to yield—ever so much better? She loved him but would get over it in time. Should he do her so unkind a turn as do that which she would never get over?

And his townsmen? With that new leadership and sense of responsibility which he had just accepted—should he fail them now? . . . because a girl that he loved had failed him?

No! He had decided even as his mind formulated the questions. No! He owed his townsmen better as he owed Lahleet better. He even owed himself better, poor thing as he conceived himself now to be.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/403


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/404

 Taking the girl by her shoulders, gently, reverently indeed, he lifted her out of his embrace, his head shaking slowly from side to side, his eyes in hers, aglow with tenderness but no beam of responsive love.

The girl saw—she read his answer; there was no need to speak it. And then it was that the stoic came out in her again! Henry saw for a moment pain-filled eyes, pain-constricted lips, one dark moment of wicked resentment instantly conquered, and then, nostrils quivering, the whole dramatized struggle of pride crushing the show of suffering, battling resolutely till it ironed out even the sullen lines of defeat about the mouth.

Harrington had never felt so tenderly for Lahleet, never felt such devotion to her; and yet never dared so little to show any feeling of softness. He perceived that it would not do—it would be unkind.

Her self-control proved the greater, and it was she who spoke first, from some immeasurable sublimated height of renunciation to which she had been lifted by the trueness of her love for him. "Go your way, white man," she said gravely, in a deep throaty voice that was strange to her, "into the high places that are waiting for you. I go mine—back to the blanket!"

"No, no!" protested Henry sharply. "You are not savage. You are a woman—one of the finest, noblest, most inspiring! Everything that woman can be, you can be!"

"But not to you," she answered with a bitter smile.

"To me?" he asked, bitter also. "Who am I?"

Without daring another word, another touch—so they prepared to part: thwarted in love, cemented in friendship. Henry turned the corner, she following at

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/404


text:
Page:The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories - Forster (1912).djvu/33

Rh time he made believe to be a dog. The last time he came back with a poor dazed hare, too frightened to move, sitting on his arm. He was getting too uproarious, I thought; and we were all glad to leave the wood, and start upon the steep staircase path that leads down into Ravello. It was late and turning dark; and we made all the speed we could, Eustace scurrying in front of us like a goat.

Just where the staircase path debouches on the white high road, the next extraordinary incident of this extraordinary day occurred. Three old women were standing by the wayside. They, like ourselves, had come down from the woods, and they were resting their heavy bundles of fuel on the low parapet of the road. Eustace stopped in front of them, and, after a moment's deliberation, stepped forward and—kissed the left-hand one on the cheek!

"My good fellow!" exclaimed Mr. Sandbach, "are you quite crazy?"

Eustace said nothing, but offered the old woman some of his flowers, and then hurried on. I looked back; and the old woman's companions seemed as much astonished at the proceeding as we were. But she herself had put the flowers in her bosom, and was murmuring blessings.


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/405

 a little distance till he started once more up the stone steps.

"Where are you going, Henry?" she asked, and the casual wonder in her tone was a triumph of self-control.

"Back to jail!" he answered miserably.

Her eyes were on him till the iron door had swallowed him up, and she knew that his had slanted back for one last image of her.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/405


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/406

T WAS the jailor himself who admitted Harrington, gazing in unconcealed astonishment at the dejected figure of the man whom he had seen dart out of that same door half an hour before, radiating cheer and confidence.

"I've come back to you, White," Henry confessed hoarsely. "I want a place to kind of sit down and pull myself together. I've had one more wallop, White; and one more was the limit!"

"Sure," said the jailor sympathetically. "Sure, Henry! Come right in here to my office. Set there as long as you like."

Tactfully he led Harrington within and tactfully took himself out; but the door remained open and from the corridor he gazed speculatively upon the bowed shoulders of the young attorney—speculatively and, he fancied, knowingly. "Henry," he ventured presently, advancing to the door, "excuse me for butting in but there's one thing I probably oughta tell you."

"Yes?" inquired Harrington, without looking up, not relishing White's intervention yet recognizing its friendly intent.

"Sometimes a guy makes a promise he oughta break and I got a notion I oughta bust one now."

"Well?" interrogated Henry, raising his eyes and forcing a faint smile. "Let your conscience be your guide!"

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/406


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/407

 "It was the night of the fire, hell a-poppin' all round us," began White, edging inside and lowering his voice to a confidential note, when advancing footsteps—quick, impatient footsteps—interrupted and there loomed in the doorway the tall, once tough and wiry, but now fragile-looking figure of John Boland.

"Henry!" Old Two Blades faltered huskily. "Henry!"

"Gosh! Come in, Mr. Boland!" blundered Jailor White, unable to get over his long-instilled deference to the man, then faded somehow out of the room, while Mr. Boland advanced an eager stride and the door closed behind him.

Harrington straightened instantly, lifted to his feet by the sheer force of indignation. Was he to be boxed in willy-nilly with the man he hated more than any other in the world—the man whom he regarded as the sole author of that very despair which enveloped him at this moment?

"Henry!" faltered Boland, again.

"Don't 'Henry' me!" the young man blazed vehemently. "You did everything in your power to ruin me and it isn't your fault that you didn't succeed any farther than you have."

"That's right," admitted Old Two Blades, humble to the heels. "But you told me sometime I'd turn—and I have. You told me I'd see my mistake and I have. I've come back to you, Harrington, and I—I want you again."

"Well, I don't want you again!" scorned Henry, with vengeful emphasis. "That's a mortal cinch!"

"That's hard, Harrington," reproached Boland whitening to the lips.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/407


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/417

 Then comes the wet season, not here like the wet season in the Rivers, one grim, torrential waterfall; but daily heavy sheets of rain diversified with intervals of bright sunshine and accompanied by heavy steamy heat; with the Ogowé coming down daily muddier and muddier, floating along on its swift current bits of bank with the trees still growing on them, and surrounded by tangled masses of grass and drift-wood, forming the well-known floating islands which mariners often meet with miles out to sea off this coast.

Every day the river rises up the banks, flowing over their lowest parts into the low reaches of the forest, and threatening with destruction the clay or mud-cliffs with the villages perched on them; and often carrying this threat out, and tearing down parts of the clay bank, swamping and sweeping away the frail houses and ruining the plantations of plantains close by.

Between the Kama country and the Ouroungou country the channel of the Ogowé is, fortunately, broad, and there are opportunities for the swollen waters to flow easily away into the low-lying uninhabited parts of the forest. Were it not so those clay cliffs would have worse times of it than they now do, and villages would be more precarious residential sites than is now the case. In the Talagouga gorge, where the current is more fierce—the waters being hemmed in to a narrower channel, and the banks made of the hard rocks of the Sierra del Cristal—the rise of the waters twenty and thirty feet above the dry-season level does not work the destruction that occurs in the clay bank region.

The long wet season commences in September and lasts till the end of January, its greatest intensity being in November and December. In February comes the short dry, then the short wet till May. From May till September is the long dry. The seasons, however, are not to be depended on with that calm reliance you may place in their wetness or dryness on the Gold Coast or in the Rivers. The long dry is fairly worthy of its name, the long wet also.

The peculiarity of the dry season being the coolest season,


text:
Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/408

 "I feel hard," Henry bit out uncompromisingly.

"Naturally," conceded his caller, swallowing contritely; "but perhaps you won't feel so bitter when I tell you how horrified and ashamed I am at finding out what wrongs I did you."

"Ha! You admit that?" Henry exulted, rather in spite of himself, but with an implacable light in his stern gray eyes.

Boland wavered on his legs, not knowing how to go on. He was nonplused by such hardness. Why, this was as hard as he could have been in his own hardest days. He could make no impression—get no start with a real confession of fault. How was he to get over to this rightly outraged young man that he was a changed Two Blades now, a contrite, broken-shelled Two Blades, secking his own merely that he might right the wrongs that he had done with it before.

"I—I wanted to have a little talk with you," he stammered, and his face filled with yearning. "I—I" His voice broke as he passed over everything else to blurt out his one great objective—his now dearest hope: "Harrington, I—I wanted to ask you to be receiver of Boland General!"

Harrington only started, then laughed bitterly, almost mockingly. "Me? Receiver of Boland General? Ha, ha! That's a hot one! Ha, ha!" And yet there had been circumstances in which this would have seemed a marvelous, a grateful triumph to him. It was the very triumph he had looked forward to. "No. That would be impossible!" he declared with finality.

"Why?" persisted his petitioner, and persisted with a manner so damply abject that Henry felt that in justice to his own humanity he must give an answer.

title: Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/408