The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beyond the Marshes, by Ralph Connor

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Beyond the Marshes

Author: Ralph Connor

Release Date: March 1, 2008 [eBook #24724]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND THE MARSHES***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

BEYOND THE MARSHES

by

RALPH CONNOR

Author of "Black Rock" and "The Sky Pilot"

The Westminster Company Limited
Publishers
Toronto

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, by The Westminster Company, Limited, at the Department of Agriculture.

Have you ever caught the scent of the clover as you were whirled away by the train beyond the city on a summer's day and sped through the rich pasture lands? And do you remember how you stepped forth at the first halting-place to secure a sprig of the sweet, homely flower that had spoken to you so eloquently in its own language, and how you pressed it in your book? Does not its perfume remain with you till this day? And every now and then a fragrance is wafted to our inner senses as we read some simple story which is to us as a breath of the clover, bringing us a message of sweetness and beauty, and going straight to our hearts with the power that belongs to the secrets which lie hidden at our lifers core.

And this sweet prairie idyll is surely one of those fragrant messages which lays its hold on us as we pause for a moment in the midst of our fevered lives and anxious thoughts, and step across the threshold of that chamber where we must needs put our shoes from off our feet, for the place whereon we stand is holy ground. And as we press on again to life's duties, may we bear with us something of the precious perfume diffused by plants which are divine in their origin and which must be divine in their influence.

ISHBEL ABERDEEN

[Transcriber's note: "ISHBEL" is correct. It is not "ISABEL", misspelled.]

BEYOND THE MARSHES

The missionary of the Bonjour field found me standing bag in hand upon the railway platform watching my train steam away to the east. He is glad to see me. I am of his own kind, and there are so few of his kind about that his welcome is strong and warm. He is brown and spare and tough-looking. For six months he has driven along the pitching trails and corduroy roads, drenched by rains, scorched by suns, and pursued by the flies. As to the flies there is something to be said. They add much to the missionary's burden, and furnish unequaled opportunity for the exercise of the Christian graces of patience and self-control. In early spring they appear, and throughout the whole summer they continue in varying forms, but in unvarying persistence and ferocity. There are marsh flies, the bulldogs, "which take the piece right out," the gray wings, the blue devils (local name), which doubtless take several pieces right out, the mosquitoes, unsleeping, unmerciful, unspeakable, the sand flies, which go right in and disappear, and the black flies.

"When do they go away?" I asked a native.

"Oh, them black fellows go away on snow-shoes."

These each and all have taken a nip and a suck from the missionary as he pushed on by night and by day through their savage territory. I glance at him, and sure enough they seem to have got all the juice out of him, but they have left the sinew and the bone. His nerve, too, is all there, and his heart is sound and "under his ribs," which one of his admiring flock considers the right spot.

It is Saturday afternoon, and we are to drive to the farthest of his three stations to be ready for the Communion Service there, at half-past ten to-morrow morning.

"Where does it lie?" I ask.

"Oh, away beyond the Marshes," was the answer. Every one evidently knows where the Great Marshes are.

But first we must drink a delicious cup of tea from a brave young Scotchwoman, who has learned the trick of making a home for her husband and babies amid the limitations of Canadian wilds, little like the Edinburgh home where she herself was a baby, and which she left not so very long ago.

Then we must take a look at the new manse of which the missionary feels he has the right to be modestly proud, for it is mostly the work of his own hand. He, like his great Master, is a carpenter, and day and night in the pauses of his preaching and visiting and studying, he has wrought at it, getting such help as he can, till there it stands, among the trees, the little cottage manse, announcing to all that the mission has come to stay. The front room, with writing-desk, book-shelf, table, all of the missionary's making, does for reception and dining room, study, and parlor. Behind it is the kitchen, with ingenious cupboards; and opening off from this the bedroom, five by seven, with bedstead and washstand, both home-made, and both nailed fast to the wall. Altogether a snug little, tight little house, going a long way to content one with being a bachelor.

And now we hitch up Golddust, and are off through the glorious yellow light and purple haze of this September afternoon. Golddust is the missionary's horse, and evidently the missionary's weakness. His name, and as his owner thinks his speed, his spirit, and other characteristics, he inherits from his sire, Old Golddust of Western racing fame. Old Golddust, if he has transmitted his characteristics, must have been a horse of singular modesty, for his son continues resolutely unwilling throughout this drive to make any display of his nobler qualities. By an extraordinary piece of good fortune, due to an evil but unfair report of Golddust in his young days, "they didn't know how to handle him." the missionary had bought him for twenty-five dollars! One result of the deal has been an unlimited confidence on the part of the missionary in his own horse-dealing instinct. It is quite true that Golddust has not always shown his present mild and trustful disposition. Indeed, the missionary goes on to tell how, being loaned for a day to a brother missionary up west, the horse had returned in the evening much excited, but not much the worse, with a pair of shafts dangling at his heels. The missionary brother did not appear till the day following, and then in a shocking bad temper. "He was a Methodist brother, and didn't understand horses"; and the happy, far-away look in the face of his present owner led me to doubt whether that day's exploit had lowered Golddust in his estimation.

Meantime we are drinking deep of the delights of this mellow afternoon. On either side of our trail lie yellow harvest fields, narrow, like those of eastern Canada, and set in frames of green poplar bluffs that rustle and shimmer under the softly going wind. Then on through scrub we go, bumping over roots and pitching through holes, till we suddenly push out from the scrub, and before us lie the Marshes. There they sweep for miles away, with their different grasses waving