The master of Deeplawn

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Chapter I From Prison Bars

T he night was falling, and its gloomy shadows began to fill a long and somewhat sombre room. That it was a library could be seen by a glance at the hundreds of volumes lining the walls from floor to ceiling.

A lad of fourteen lay face downward on a rug before the fire, his elbows resting on a huge book, whose illuminated pages he had been intently studying. The tome was more than a hundred years old, and his attention had been directed to it by his tutor because of the excellent specimens of ancient wood engraving which it contained. He had turned page after page with deepening interest until he was arrested at the eleventh chapter of Matthew, where from his cheerless prison John sent this question to the Christ: “Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another ? ” The lad looked eagerly for the reply made by the Master :

‘‘ Behold, they that wear soft raiment are in kings’ houses.”

He paused to think and a sudden rush of light, in no way related to the murky twilight, filled his mind. He had been a studious lad, loving books and eager to explore their secrets, but at the same time indulging a very decided relish for the luxuries which from his infancy he had found ready provided for him. He had only one brother — a man grown and out in the great world, eager to secure his full share of the good things of life in his too brief passage through it. Their parents were dead, and to each had been allotted the portion of worldly goods secured for them by the thrift and industry of departed ancestors ; in Alan’s case this could not be touched until he came of age, save the necessary expenses for suitably bringing him up. Reginald, the older brother, decided that the safest place for the lad was at his own home, under a painstaking tutor. At the schools he had himself acquired tastes which, although now as much a part of his being as his hands or feet and as hard to sever, his inherent good sense convinced him would better never have been learned. He had considerable affection for this younger brother, which was returned in full measure, and it would have been an exceedingly bitter experience to him to have Alan know the life he led in its minute particulars. He could remember

FROM PRISON BARS with perfect clearness the gentle mother who had so long ago faded out of life, and whose words still came to him, at times, with painful distinctness.

The maid entered the room with lights, and seeing Alan lying so quietly before the fire, fancied he was asleep and softly withdrew. A moment later he lifted the Bible and carried it to the table, anxious to find what more had been said by this wonderful Christ. He looked again at the picture of the rugged prophet gazing upward, beyond the prison bars, as if he were reveling once more in the freedom of those vast desert solitudes he had loved so well, upward to the regions whither his spirit was so soon to take its sudden and joyous flight. Alan read over again those words, catching at once their hidden meaning, and then turned back to the third chapter, fascinated by this prophet-hero, so indifferent to his housing and fare, and who had such power with God and with his fellow-men ; and whom afterward Christ pronounced the peer of the highest. He hunted up the marginal references, eager to learn everything concerning him, but was disappointed that the biographers of that age dealt so sparingly in personalities ; and the history ended at the pitiable tragedy where the over-scrupulous king kept his word at such heavy cost.

When the dinner bell rang he was still poring over the Bible, and at the table he was so silent that his tutor asked if he was not well. His reply in the affirmative was given in such an abstracted fashion that his tutor was puzzled to know what had come over the lad. It was the custom for them to spend an hour together in the library every evening, and another hour in the gymnasium ; and then, at nine o’clock, Alan retired. On this particular evening he went direct to the table on which he had left the Bible lying open, and drawing Mr. Bruee’s attention to the prophet, said :

“ Shall we read to-night about the John whom Herod beheaded in the prison ? ”

“ If you wish. ”

“ I have been able to find very little about him here ; perhaps you can tell me where to look for more.”

“ There is very little to learn save that which is given us in the Gospels. That is one great drawback with Scripture narratives ; one must allow his own imagination to do a good deal of filling in. From the character of the people and their modes of living one can frequently do this. But one often wishes as you do for definite information he cannot get.”

Mr. Bruee then went to the shelves and seleeted several books, but Alan soon found that it was as his tutor had said, and there was not much infor-

FROM PRISON BARS mation to be procured ; and hence when their hour’s reading ended the best satisfaction Mr. Bruce could give him was that he must wait for eternity when, with those heroic souls by his side, he might learn from their own lips their earthly histories. At Alan’s age this period seemed so remote that there was but small comfort in it.

Chapter II

ENDOWING A COLLEGE CHAIR ETHOUGH lie was disappointed that so little could be learned about the desert prophet, Alan continued the study of his illuminated Bible with unflagging interest. His days were methodically arranged, and had been for so long a time, that he scarcely thought of questioning his tutor’s right to plan his hours. Reginald highly approved of Mr. Bruce’s methods, regretting that his own boyhood had not been regulated on similar principles, and Alan felt almost as if he had more than he deserved of this world’s good things. They dined late, and there was always an hour before dinner which belonged entirely to him in which to amuse himself as best he liked. The maid, whose duty it was to look after the fire and lights in the library, confided to her fellow-servants her fear that Alan was not long for this world.

“ He spends every bit of his play-hour poring over that old Bible,” she declared. “He has it on a cushion before the fire, and he lies there reading it and studying the pictures just as if he didn’t expect to live a year ! ”

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II

‘‘ IVe known the like before,” the housekeeper responded, with an ominous shake of the head. “ Boys that’s going to live don’t study their Bibles much ; it’s not according to nature.”

For some time Alan’s health was watched with grave anxiety by his household. The servants had considerable interest in the matter, since it was an exceptionally pleasant house, with light work and no interference in their plans by exacting employers. If he became a victim to an early death, the probabilities were that they might not get such another congenial situation. Mrs. Dixon, the housekeeper, remonstrated with him one evening, taking Jane’s place in the library for the purpose.

“ What do you find so interesting in that old Bible? Your brother, to my knowledge, never read a chapter all by himself in his life, and I was here years before he went away to school.”

Alan looked up with a flush of pain, and replied :

“ I am going to speak to Rex about it ; he can’t know or he would read it. It is better than all the old poets and the modern ones put together ; it gives me better thoughts and more of them than everything else. I never knew till I was reading about John the Baptist what a wonderful book it is.”

He laid the Bible on the library table, and then

THK MASTER OF DEEPLAWN continued : “Just come and look at him in prison, and I will read what it says about him ; there is very little, but I make the rest up in my own mind. Here he is in the wilderness. When I am a man I am going there; I want to see the desert where he lived on locusts and honey ; wasn’t he strong to be content with such fare — I mean strong-souled ? ” He stood looking down at the very unsatisfactory grouping of rocks and vast spaces of the desert with shining eyes, seeing them, not as the stolid woman at his side saw them, but with his vivid imagination giving tone and color to those peaks bathed in the warm Syrian sunshine, with the arching blue of the far heavens brooding tenderly above them, as when John thought with God and walked with him in that vanished but majestic past. Then he turned the leaves to the place where, by the waterside, the multitudes were assembled when the plainly robed figure of the Man of Sorrows came among them to be baptized of the prophet. He looked at it eagerly, as if his eyes had never before rested on that illuminated page, and then he passed on to the prison scene where John was waiting for an answer to his question. It was not merely the faded engraving at which Alan gazed ; he saw in the eager, questioning look an expectancy for that for which prophets and kings had longed, but died without seeing. The prison walls and the

ENDOWING A COEEEGE CHAIR 1 3

world were forgotten; the joy and wideness of his desert life were with him now ; the mystery of his own message to the multitudes, its majesty and promise were still thrilling his soul.

“ How grand it is ! ” Alan murmured, with shining eyes.

“ Seems to me it’s a terrible gloomy sort of a picture. I’d a sight sooner look at a chromo,” was the response.

The lad looked disappointed, but turned to the last picture in the series; there was the same calm brow and serene face, with no trace of the death-agony, as the head was borne on the platter by the shrinking girl to her cruel mother.

“ People’s hearts in them times was crueller than they are now. I am sure if any one belonging to me had the chance of asking a gift from a king, I wouldn’t tell them to ask for a poor prisoner’s head, for ’twouldn’t be any earthly use.”

“ It is men like that who make our world great ; no matter how they die, they are living somewhere,” was Alan’s softly spoken reply.

“ Oh, yes, I reckon folks keep right on living somewhere after they leave here, but it must be dreadful uncomfortable getting on without one’s body.”

“ It seems to me that will be one of the luxuries of dying ; it will be so much easier getting around among the other worlds.”

14 the master oe deepeawn

“ If I was you I’d not be thinking about them things so much. It ain’t natural for young folks.” She spoke anxiously a minute later, asking : “ Do you ever cough any ? ”

“ Perhaps I do sometimes, when things go down the wrong way,” returned Alan.

He spoke indifferently, as if the ills of his body were of little account. Other duties then claimed her attention, and casting an anxious look at the lad who had again begun reading, Mrs. Dixon left the room.

Alan was beginning to feel the solitariness of his new thoughts. His tutor could converse more intelligently on the Bible than Mrs. Dixon, but he had no more enthusiasm on the subject. His thoughts presently turned to Reginald, and he resolved to write to him, asking him to take up the study of these great characters depicted in the Scriptures, of whom there were so many. What a revelation it would be to Rex, after associating with the gay folk that, by some fine instinct, Alan knew surrounded him, to get acquainted with the strong-souled heroes who seemed to him more like gods than the quarrelsome, selfish beings about whom the old Greek and Latin poets wrote. One day he asked Mr. Bruce if it was very expensive keeping up a college. The answer was in the affirmative. Alan had no idea of the extent of his own possessions, so a few days later, after

ENDOWING A CODDEGE CHAIR 15

thinking the matter well over, he asked how much he himself was worth.

“You will be a rich man when you attain your majority,” was the reply.

“Will I be able to have a college of my own?” “ I scarcely think so ; it takes a great many thousands of dollars for that at the present day.”

lyater on, however, Alan learned that it was possible to establish certain chairs in the great universities. With his new ideas about the way heroes should live he concluded to do this, and meanwhile he could himself become a teacher and live as cheaply as he liked. Reginald’s reply to his letter came duly, and with it the assurance that he knew all about the gentlemen referred to, and believed them to be excellent, well-meaning individuals, but hoped that Alan would not take them too seriously, since those who did so were apt to become “ cranks,” and were, as a rule, uncomfortable sort of people. Alan was bitterly disappointed, not so much in his brother’s estimate of these majestic Hebrews, as in his brother himself. There must be something organically wrong in a person who was intimately acquainted with their lives and words and yet could write so indifferently concerning them. It intensified his desire to have the boys of coming generations better acquainted with their teachings. He was sufficiently familiar with classic literature and the usages of those remote times, to know that the old heathen to whom was entrusted the training of youth, were particularly painstaking in their methods of teaching them the worship and study of the beings whom they called the immortal gods. He grew restless to have his brother home again ; it would be so much easier to talk with him than to write. He had not a facile pen, and after his severest exertions in composition he still felt that his best thoughts were unwritten. When his letter was written and sent it found Reginald in the midst of a very exciting love affair, which if neglected at that critical juncture, might utterly fail, so he wrote to say that he had just then a matter of very grave importance on hand. Alan was rejoiced to hear that he had at last begun to take matters seriously.

To humor the lad’s fancy, Mr. Bruce had permitted him to take a special course of study in the history and literature of the world’s early ages ; the Rig Veda of the Brahmins, the Kings of the Confucians, the Sutras of the Sikhs, the Zend- Avesta of the Parsees, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, and others of the most ancient religions, all of which he had studied with much the same eagerness that average lads absorb the lurid descriptions of scouts, pirates, and other excrescences of literature. He was certainly getting an excellent foundation laid for Oriental scholarship. As the long summer days drew on he used to take his fishing rod and a book and while waiting for the fish to attend to his bait, he would go back forty or fifty centuries, and for a while forget that he was living in an age of electricity and steam, daily papers and politics.

Deeplawn farm was patterned after the English estates. There were several hundred acres of land under a high state of cultivation, with laborers’ cottages along the road at intervals. There was a fine growth of wood, through which a stream of water flowed, well stocked with fish ; the water in places was quite deep and flowed silently ; in others it was shallow, and here Alan liked best to do his fishing, for its murmur as it hastened to greet the sea had a music of its own. He used to speculate about those men of the elder world who had possessed little human learning, but to whom the book of nature was opened wide, revealing her heart to them as she does to but few in this feverish, discursive age. Men then had time to meditate ; they were not forced to glean over vast areas ; were not appalled at the threshold of knowledge by the amount to be learned, and the brief time in which to learn it ; with them it was introspection rather than absorption, followed naturally by the attempt to create. To-day, with our immense equipment of literary lore, no poet is able to reach those upper notes touched so naturally by the poet who wrote the sublime epic called Job, and by some stray passages in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and prophecies, which only the lofty musical conceptions of the great masters can express. It is mainly in this latter way that our later generations have been able to utter their highest thoughts ; poetry itself fails, and only in harmony can expression be found. Forty centuries hence the wonders of our day, steam, electricity, and the multitudinous inventions to which they have been applied, will not influence those remote peoples as we are influenced by these voices from that long-vanished past. Men have gone on freighting themselves so heavily with the appliances of civilization, that thought and fancy are forced to the rear, and since life is too brief to secure both, most of us choose the former. There may be hope that future generations will grow wiser ; being surfeited with materialism, they may realize that one’s self, independently of his environments, is to be looked after first.

In those long hours of solitude with his books and the stories that came down to him from remote centuries, Alan found a satisfaction as distinct from that his brother sought, as the pure air of some breezy upland is different from the feverish atmosphere of the crowded slums. With quickened pulses the thought would come to him that the age for grand achievements was not gone forever. Not that he particularly craved to take his place in history ; he could live heroically without so much as a newspaper notice of the fact. If he were fitted for such work God would certainly not withhold it from him. If men are the architects of their own fate, it was a palace and not a hovel he wanted to be building day by day. Just now the work which he felt called upon to do was to fit himself to fight for the Bible, to force upon men’s minds their duty in reference to it, and to make it as obligatory for college students to study the Bible as the classics of Greece and Rome. Hitherto he had taken little interest in the Deeplawn tenantry. A lad now and then had been selected for playfellow in some of the games dear to a boy’s heart, which could not be indulged in alone. Now as he studied his Bible there came to him a revelation of what life meant, its duties and obligations, and he resolved to begin the work that lay nearest. Dike reformers generally he met with difficulties and in his own household. Mrs. Dixon asnred him that their entire staff of help were church-members, and in the habit of sending a trifle every year to convert the heathen, besides supporting their own churches at home.

“ Surely you did not take us for a pack of heathen?” she remarked, with considerable warmth.

“lam doubtful if you are all as good as some of the heathen I read about ; you never once mentioned to me that I could be a better boy if I asked God to help me.”

“ That wasn’t what we were hired here for.”

He looked at her curiously and then said, in a reflective way, which was particularly exasperating :

“I think I would rather take their chances than yours when mankind are getting judged. I do not think either Buddha or Zoroaster would have been so indifferent under similar circumstances.”

“You compare us to them dirty heathen ”

She paused. Alan, although only a lad of fifteen, was more manly than many a one twice his age, and it might not be safe to go too far.

“ It is not too late for you to mend. If any one is anxious to do his work well it is never too late to begin.”

“I never expected to see the day that any one would throw up to me that I neglected my work. ”

“You did not understand my meaning. I did not mean the trifles which make up your daily round here. There is other work that will be going on when Deeplawn and the world itself will have ceased to be.”

“You talk like a preacher ; ’twould be curious if you’d take to the other extreme from the way Mr. Reginald took. I won’t say but what it would be a good thing.”

When Alan spoke in a general way she rather enjoyed his remarks, but Mrs. Dixon did not relish preaching of a directly personal nature when sjie comprised the audience.

“ I am going to try to live as well as some of those old heathen who had only shadows to walk in where I have clear light.”

Chapter III

MR. DOLUVER

HERE was a small chapel at Deeplawn,

A where ministers of any evangelical church were welcome to preach as long as they did not interfere with each other’s appointments. For the most part the tenants were a church-going people, hence there was usually a fair congregation to welcome the preacher. It is true they sometimes got a mingling of doctrines, but this may have been a help, since it broadened the sympathies of the listeners when they found that in the main the same doctrines were held by all the great churches.

Alan had been in the habit of accompanying his tutor into the town on the Ford’s Day, joining the worshipers in a fine building, with stained-glass windows, pipe organ, and the luxurious appointments usual in a wealthy church ; but now he decided to join the humble congregation on his own property. It was certainly an act of self-denial to forego the exhilarating canter into the city on horseback, the mingling with the pleasant-looking company of people and listening to the eloquent sermon, the saunter in the park

MR. DOI.I.IVER after dinner with his tutor, and then the ride home in the evening. Mr. Bruce looked surprised when, one bright morning in May, Alan informed him that he was going to church with his tenants.

“ Surely not this morning, above all others, when the roadside along the way is one huge bouquet of apple blossoms ! It is as good as a sermon to pass through them,” he remonstrated.

“ I am sorry to miss them, but my mind is made up. You will please excuse me.”

Mr. Bruce did not attempt to argue ; he was beginning to find that what the lad thought was his duty he would carry out at any cost. When Alan entered the church and glanced around at the bare floors and uncushioned seats, he could not help speculating what some of the old heathen would say to him, if they could step across from other worlds, for permitting the worship of the immortal gods to be carried on in such rude fashion. He forgot to notice the looks of curiosity that greeted him while he began planning improvements that should be entered upon at once. As he glanced through the widows he resolved there should be no colored glass inserted to shut out those delicious glimpses of sky and cloud and hilltops. Before one window an adventurous apple tree concealed every other view with its satin petals and green leaves. Along every stage of its unfolding and decay he fancied it would be more a thing of beauty than the figures of the stained glass even, with blossom and fruit and the bare branches outlined against a wintry sky. While the choir sang to the wheezy accompaniment of a reed organ that had long outlived its usefulness, he ceased to listen to the sounds that jarred discordantly on his ear, but instead watched a bird far up in the sky brought out in relief against the deep blue. Years after, in the midst of keen activities and the world’s din, one of memory's most peaceful pictures was the scene he looked at that day. The preacher was an old man, with silver hair and a face so serene that Alan wondered if he had ever come in contact with sin and sorrow. There was something in his face and bearing which brought vividly to his mind the desert prophet. In his prayer there were few set phrases, but there was adoration as well as supplication, and toward the close he broke into joyous exultation as he referred to the joys awaiting God’s hidden ones on the other side of death. Alan felt a mist gathering in his eyes as he listened. Later on he learned that the aged minister could count his treasures in another world only ; wife and children were all gathered there, ' while old and homeless he could still go rejoicing on his way. As he preached, Alan felt, as seldom before, that the Bible is true, and goodness the highest possible attainment for man. After the

MR, DOLUVER benediction he tarried to invite the minister to dinner, thinking too, that perhaps he might stay and rest at Deeplawn for a few days. Speaking to him he noticed that he looked worn and his garments were threadbare. The invitation was accepted, and as the two walked home through the aisle of trees that bordered the path and interlaced overhead, they were both silent. At luncheon Alan asked the aged minister if he could not remain over night or perhaps stay a few days. The look of pleasure that passed over the worn face touched the lad’s heart.

‘ ‘ It would give me great pleasure to do so. I have often looked up at this house and thought I should like to be within its walls, but my way has lain, for the most part, among humble folk ; your people too, belonged to another communion.”

“ That should make no difference.”

“No, for we are all children of one Father; I thank him that my eyes have been opened to see that the difference is very largely in name : ‘ other sheep I have which are not of this fold : them also I must bring ! ’ ” He quoted the words softly, scarce thinking the lad would understand what he meant.

“Who said that?” Alan asked, eagerly.

“ The Master himself ; so it is true, it is true.” He repeated the words as if he found them exceedingly comforting.

“It may mean all, everywhere among other peoples than Christians, who long to live right,” Alan suggested, thoughtfully.

“Yes, all of them. I did not think so once, but God has shown me better. I am learning that he judges by the heart rather than by the knowledge.”

“lam very glad to hear you say that.”

“Is it possible that you have begun to think about these great problems ? ’ ’

The old man bent a keen look on the handsome face opposite, which hitherto he had regarded as somewhat stern and imperious, certainly not a youth given to meditating on the attractions of theology ; it seemed as if nature had intended him for a fighter rather than for a dreamer.

“Are they not the highest questions we can study — the most important ? ’ ’ There was an added flush on the ruddy cheek as Alan asked the question.

“ Some divines nowadays try to convince us that the fall in Eden was a fall upward, but with my experience with mankind, I am led to believe that we have received a terrible blow somewhere. I have the effects of it in myself. Our true evolution begins when we come back to God ; we are away from him — we must be born anew to get back to him.”

MR. DOLIvIVER

Alan presently broke the silence by a still more surprising question. “Was that what Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus : ‘ Ye must be born again ’ ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ I am trying to comply with the requirements given by him.”

“ Who has taught you ? ” was the astonished question.

“No one; I was looking through the Bible when I stumbled on the truth.”

“ It is a most unusual circumstance.”

“It should not be. I have been studying the sacred books of other great religions, giving all a fair chance ; but I find the Bible different from all the others.”

“ It was a dangerous experiment for a lad to study all those misleading lights.”

“No; the contrast only drew me the closer to our own religion. I have been surprised that men should begin doubting because there were mysteries. I like to know there are such. I am not anxious to know all things, not even in eternity. I want always to be going on in the solution of these mysteries but never to overtake all knowledge.”