Bert Lloyd's Boyhood: A Story from Nova Scotia

by J. Macdonald Oxley

A BOY NO LONGER.

Frank and Bert put their hearts into the city mission work, just as they did into everything else that they undertook, and it was well they did. For surely nothing save genuine zeal, and fidelity to a strong purpose could have carried them through the experiences that awaited them. The mission school was still small and struggling. But for the almost heroic energies of its superintendent, a clerk in a city banking house, it could not have been carried on at all. He was a small, slight, fragile-looking man, but he had a heart big enough for a giant, and having consecrated his spare hours to this most unattractive of all phases of Christian work, he carried it on with a self-denying earnestness that no difficulties could dampen, nor obstacles appal. He was as ready with his purse, to the extent of its slender ability, as he was with his Bible, and his splendid unselfishness was so well appreciated by the dangerous degraded beings among whom he toiled, that alone and unprotected he might go among them at any hour of the day or night, and meet with nothing but respect and rude courtesy.

Such a man was David McMaster, under whose direction Bert and Frank lost no time in placing themselves; and a right glad welcome they had from him, his pale, thin face fairly glowing with pleasure at the addition to his force of two such promising recruits. With him they went the rounds of squalid tenements, hideous back alleys, and repulsive shanties, the tattered children gazing at them with faces in which curiosity was mingled with aversion, and their frousy parents giving them looks of enmity and mistrust, no doubt because they were so clean and well dressed.

But apparently noting nothing of this, Mr. McMaster led the way from one rookery to another, introducing his new workers to their wretched inhabitants with an easy grace that disarmed all suspicion, and made them feel that so long as he was the presiding genius of the school, they had nothing to fear in the worst locality.

The following Sunday morning they began work on their own account. The school was held at ten o'clock, closing just in time to permit the teachers to get to church, and the part assigned to Bert and Frank was to go out into the highways and byways, and invite the children playing in the dirt to come to the school, or else to go to the homes, if such they could be called, of those whose names were already upon the roll, and secure their attendance at the service.

Then when the school opened they found plenty to do, distributing the hymn books, helping in the singing, keeping a sharp look-out for unruly behaviour, watching the door lest any scholar should take it into his head to bolt, insuring an equitable division of the picture papers, and so on until the hour came to close the school, and they turned their steps churchward, feeling with good reason that they had really been doing work for God, and hard work, too.

They soon grew to love Mr. McMaster as much as they admired his zeal. He was in many ways a quaint, curious character. His body seemed so small and insignificant, and his spirit so mighty. He knew neither fear nor despair in the prosecution of his chosen work, and it was impossible to be associated with him without being infected by his unquenchable ardour. For some time no special incident marked their work, and then Bert had an experience that might have brought his part with it to an end had he been made of less sturdy stuff.

In company with Mr. McMaster he was making the usual round previous to the opening of the school, beating up unreliable scholars, and had entered a damp, noisome alley, lined on either side with tumble-down apologies for houses. Mr. McMaster took one side and Bert the other, and they proceeded to visit the different dwellers in this horrible place. Bert had knocked at several doors without getting any response, for the people were apt to lie in bed late on Sunday morning, and then his attention was aroused by sounds of crying mingled with oaths, that came from the garret of a villainous-looking tenement. He could hear the voices of a woman and of a child raised in entreaty and terror, and without pausing to consider the consequences, sprang up the broken stairs to the room from which they issued.

On opening the door a scene presented itself that would have stirred the sympathies of a man of stone. Pat Brannigan, the big wharf labourer, had devoted the greater portion of his week's wages to making himself and his boon companions drunk with the vile rum dealt out at the groggery hard by. At midnight he had stumbled home, and throwing himself upon his bed sought to sleep off the effects of his carouse. Waking up late in the morning with a raging headache, a burning tongue, and bloodshot eyes, he had become infuriated at his poor, little girl, that cowered tremblingly in a corner, because she would not go out and get him some more drink. Half-crazed, and utterly reckless, he had sprung at the child, and might have inflicted mortal injury upon her had not the mother interposed, and kept him at bay for a moment, while she joined her shrieks to those the girl was already uttering.

It was just at this moment that Bert entered the room. As quick as a flash he sprang to Pat Brannigan's side, and seized his arm now uplifted to strike down the unhappy wife. With a howl of rage the big brute turned to see who had thus dared to interfere. He did not know Bert, and his surprise at seeing a well-dressed stranger in the room made him hesitate a moment. Then with an oath he demanded: