CHAPTER XI. ILLUMINATION
The life of the Reverend Titus E. Laurie contained two active principles. The first of these was a tireless enthusiasm for the propagation of the principles of Methodist Christianity, and this had moved him ever since he could remember. The second was solicitude for his daughter Margaret, which, necessarily, had been operative for only the last twenty years. During these twenty years he had been absent from America almost all the time; the total number of weeks he had spent with Margaret would scarcely have aggregated a year; so that his affection was obliged to take the form of voluminous letters from out-of-the-way places in Asia and Polynesia, and of remittances of more money than he could afford.
But his religious work took always first place in his mind. There never was, one might suppose, a man more clearly “called to the work” than Titus E. Laurie. He cared little for theology. He had never had any doubts of anything; if he had had them, they would not have troubled him. His temper was purely practical, and the ideal which filled his soul was the redemption of the world from its state of sin and death by the forces of the gospel as systematized by John Wesley. He was tolerant of other Protestant churches, but not of Roman Catholicism. He had preached when he was fifteen; at eighteen he was a “local preacher,” and at twenty he was in full charge of a church of his own in South Rock, New York.
He was shifted about on that “circuit” according to the will of the Conference till the opening of the war, when he went to the front as an army nurse. In three months, however, he came back, vaguely in disgrace. It appeared that he had been unable to resist the entreaties of his patients, and had supplied them surreptitiously with tabooed chewing tobacco and liquor. But this was an error of kindness and inexperience; it was easily condoned by his supporters, and he resumed his more regular pastoral work. In 1866 he was much in demand as a revivalist.
Mr. Laurie had charge of the funds of his church as well as of its souls. It was hard for a non-producer to live in the period of high prices succeeding the war. Just what he did with the money in his custody was never definitely ascertained; probably he could not have said himself; but he was unable to restore it when the time came. He did not face his parishioners; he left in the night for Mexico, leaving behind a letter of agonized remorse and promises of amendment.
In Mexico he worked for two years in the mines and on a coffee plantation, and sent home the whole amount of his embezzlement in monthly instalments. At the same time he undertook to conduct Methodist prayer-meetings among the mine labourers, who were chiefly Indians and half-castes. This brought him into collision with his employer, the local priest, and his prospective converts. He was threatened, stoned, ducked, and menaced with murder, but he persisted and actually succeeded in establishing a tiny Methodist community, which survived for six months after he left it.
Laurie was forgiven by his church, and returned to the North, but not to resume pastoral work. He became a bookkeeper in New York; but the evangelist’s instinct was too strong for him, and he took to mission work on the lower East Side. After a year of this, he succeeded in getting himself sent to the Sandwich Islands as a missionary, from which post he returned in five years, in disgrace once more. There were rumours of a shady transaction in smuggled opium, in which he had been involved, though not to his own pecuniary benefit.
He remained in America this time for three or four years, and married a lady much older than himself. These domestic arrangements were broken up, however, by his leaving once more for the South Seas, having been able to secure another appointment for the mission field. He never saw his wife again. She died a year later in giving birth to a daughter, who was taken in charge by an aunt living in the West.
Since that time his labours had extended over much of Polynesia, with digressions into Africa and China. He had sailed the first missionary schooner, the Olive Branch, among the Islands, and he had preached on the beach to brown warriors armed to the teeth, who had never before seen a white man. But the Reverend Titus E. Laurie escaped with his life. He thrived on danger, from the Fiji spears to the typhoons that came near to swamping his wretchedly found vessel on every voyage.
And yet he did not escape scathless. It was rumoured that the fascinations of certain of his female converts in Tahiti had proved too much for him; a scandal was averted by his leaving the station. He was accused of pearling in forbidden waters; and in the end he had to resign his command of the Olive Branch, as it was conclusively proved that the missionary schooner had run opium in her hold with the connivance of her chief. The Rev. Titus E. Laurie, in fact, was granite against hostility when in the regular line of his work. He was made of the stuff of martyrs, but responsibilities found him weak, and he could no more make head against a sudden strong temptation than he could deliberately plan a crime.