"Yes, I know it," said Gilbert as he assisted her to alight at the door. "I am aware of it, I mean, but I don't act upon it."
He looked up at her, standing on the steps above him, and felt again that longing her presence always inspired within him to do something good and great. Why was he such a sham? John McIntyre's words of praise returned, with their weight of humiliation, and he drove away in utter self-contempt.
At college, the boys always said that generally Easy Allen, as they called him, was only a very ordinary football player. He ambled cheerily about the field, and seemed to enjoy the game so much that he did not bother trying to do anything remarkable. But let something arouse him to a sense of responsibility, a goal for the other side, a knockdown that stirred his temper, then look out! He would put his head down and pitch himself into the fray, and then something had to give way, and the boys knew it wouldn't be Easy. To-day, something of that old conquering mood had come over him. He was possessed with a rage against his former dilatory self, and a fierce desire to win, to do the clean, square thing, no matter what the consequences. He had done it that New Year's morning, when John McIntyre's life lay in his hand. The call of duty had been imperative then. He had not even considered the possibility of shirking it, and in spite of all the disappointment and sorrow his action had brought, he had never once viewed it with regret. And now, once more, he had his head down, in fierce determination, and cared for nothing but to score and feel himself a man.
He marched straight past a group of patients waiting in his office and sat down at his desk. What a long time since he had written to Martin! He had almost forgotten his address. The letter was short and humble, and inside it he slipped a check. When he left it at the post-office, half an hour later, he was a poor man, and his prospects of starting a city practice in the spring were of the slimmest sort; nevertheless, he walked very straight, and held up his head with an air of pride, as though he owned the whole earth.
But his exultation did not last long. The next morning Miss Ella Anne Long handed him a letter; it was in Rosalie's handwriting. He tore it open on the street, not being able to wait till he reached home. It was merely a note, very short and very merry, telling how she had just returned from New York, and in a brief postscript, crowded in at the bottom, she announced her engagement to Guy Blackburn.
CHAPTER XIII
THE TREASURE-BOOK
And yet, O God, I know not how to fail!
Within my heart still burns an unquenched fire,
Like Israel of old I must prevail,
Or failing, still reach on to something higher.
They counted Him a failure when He trod
The slopes of Calvary that led to God!
—HELENA COLEMAN.
All winter the eldest orphan's reformed conduct had been the subject of joyous wonder on the part of his parents. Hannah was of the opinion that the boy had been converted at Mr. Scott's series of special meetings at Christmas time, but Jake, having been a boy himself, shook his head, and said it was likely just a spell he had taken with the cold weather, and it would work off when the summer came, like Joey's whooping-cough. But, strange to say, Tim went no more abroad with Davy Munn on lawless expeditions. Sawed-Off Wilmott and the young Lochinvar from Glenoro came regularly, on alternate evenings, to see Ella Anne Long, and never found ropes tied across the gate, nor whips nor lap-robes missing, as in Tim's unregenerate days. Even Miss Weir testified that sometimes he would not do anything particularly outrageous in school for a week at a time. The truth was that the eldest orphan had neither time nor inclination for childish mischief. Mentally, he had grown up. He dwelt no more in the common walks of humanity, but in the land of romance. For one who consorted with heroes, fought great battles, and performed mighty deeds of valor, childish pranks had no interest. He cared now for nothing in the world but to read all day long, and half the night; to read anything and everything, from the hair-raising cowboy tales Davy Munn loaned him, to the ponderous histories from the minister's book-shelf. Through this selfsame book-shelf the minister had become one of Tim's closest friends, and might have made a pastoral visitation every day in the week and been welcome. He had almost got ahead of the doctor in the eldest orphan's regard; for while the doctor had plenty of books, whole shelves of them, they were queer, stupid things, full of long, hard words, and never a battle or a shipwreck from one cover to the other.