The Calling of Dan Matthews

by Harold Bell Wright

When the Elder was gone Dan's mind and heart clutched those words, "No one believes for a moment that you expect to marry this woman."

"To marry this woman—to marry—to marry!" He thought of his father and mother, and their perfect companionship. "What right have you in this case, to be so intimate with her, to seek her company so constantly?"

He started to go to the window that looks down on the garden, thinking to see her there, but checked himself. He knew now why the garden had grown to mean so much to him. He tried to realize what his life would be without this woman who had so grown into it.

Dan Matthews was no weakling who could amuse himself with a hundred imitation love affairs. In his veins ran the fierce, red blood of a strong race that had ruled by the simple strength of manhood their half-wild mountain wilderness. As the tiny stream, flowing quietly through peaceful meadow, still woodland, and sunny pasture—growing always broader and deeper as it runs—is unconscious of its quiet power until checked by some barrier, and rising, swelling to a mighty flood—seeks to clear its path; so Dan's love had grown. In the fields of friendship it had gained always depth and power until now—coming to the barrier—it rose in all its strength—a flood of passion that shook every nerve and fibre of the man's being, a mighty force that would not be denied.

Going to the other window he saw the cast-iron monument. And as he looked at the figure so immovable, so hideously rigid and fixed in the act of proclaiming an issue that belonged to a dead age, he felt as if his heart would burst with wild rage at the whole community, people and church.

"What right had he to the companionship of this woman?"

"The right that God has given to every man—nay to every beast and bird—the right to seek his mate; the right of the future. What right, indeed, had anyone to challenge him, to say that he should not win her if he could? If he could—"

As suddenly as the rage had come it left him, and he shrank hopeless within himself, cowering before the thought of his position in life, and of her attitude toward the church and its ministers.

"The Elder and his people need give themselves no uneasiness," he thought. "The barrier was too well-built to be swept aside by love of man and woman."

He saw that now, even the old friendship between them would be impossible. He wondered if his going out of her life would make any ripple in its calm, even current; if she would care very much?