Read The Preacher of Cedar Mountain: A Tale of the Open Country Page 10

  CHAPTER IX

  Jim Hartigan Goes to College

  Hartigan never walked in the middle of the road. He was either in theditch or on the high place. Having "got religion" it was inevitable,with his nature, that he should become a leader in the fold. That visionof himself as a preacher, fully ordained, which had burst upon him atthe revival, filled his mind. His mother's last wish resounded in hisears with all the imperative force of a voice from the grave and he wasemotionally ripe for such inner urgings.

  The difficulties in the way of such a course would have daunted mostmen; but Jim was going strong for the moment, and to him impossibilitieswere mere trivialities. The Rev. Obadiah Champ, with others who wereproud of the new convert, took him before the Board of Deacons and thereJim made his ambitions known. He was illiterate, friendless, penniless,and already twenty-three. He had no taste for study or a life ofself-control; meekness and spirituality were as much to his liking nowas travelling on a bog is to a blooded horse.

  But his magnificent presence, his glib Irish tongue, his ready wit, hisevident warmth and sincerity, were too much for the reverend beardedones of the Board. They were carried away, as most humans were, by hispersonal charm. They listened with beaming faces. They cast significantglances at one another. They sent Jim into another room while theydiscussed his fate. In twenty minutes he was brought back to hear theirdecision. "Yes, they would accept him as a chosen vessel to bear thegrace of God abroad among the people. They would educate him withoutexpense to himself. He might begin his college career at once."

  In the ordinary course, Jim would have set to work with a tutor in Linksto prepare himself to enter Coulter College at the next term. But lifeseemed to order itself in unusual ways when it was a question concerningJim. He had no home in Links; he had no money to pay a tutor; he was aseager as a child to begin the serious work; and his ardour burnt all thebarriers away. He became at once an inmate of Coulter, a special protegeof the president's, admitted really as a member of the latter's family,and bound by many rules and promises. In preparation for his formalentry he was required to devote six hours a day to study, and those whoknew him of old had given the president a hint to exact from Jim his"wurd as a mahn" that he would do his daily task.

  In looking back on those days Jim used to revile them for theiruselessness and waste. What he did not understand until life had put himthrough the fire was that the months at Coulter broke him to harness. Itwas beyond the wildest imagining that a youth brought up as Jim had beenshould step from a life of boisterous carousing in a backwoodssettlement into a seminary and find congenial or helpful occupationamong books. And yet the shock, the change of environment, thesubstitution of discipline for license and, above all, the heroicstruggle of the man to meet this new order of existence--these were thethings, the fine metals of a great soul, which life was hammering,hammering into shape.

  What this period meant to Jim no one but himself knew. The agony ofspirit and of body was intense. He had given his word to go through withit and he did. But every instinct, every association of his old life ledhis mind abroad. Every bird that flew to the roof or hopped on the lawnwas a strong attraction; every sound of a horse's hoof aroused hiswayward interest; and the sight of a horse sent him rushingincontinently to the window. At the beginning, the football captain hadpounced on him as the very stuff he needed, and Jim responded as thewarhorse does to the bugle. He loved the game and he was an invaluableaddition to the team. And yet, helpful as such an outlet was for hispent-up energy, his participation merely created new tortures, so thatthe sight of a sweater crossing the lawn became maddening to him in thehours of study. He had never liked books, and now as the weeks went byhe learned to loathe them.

  It is greatly to be feared that in a fair, written examination with animpartial jury, Jim Hartigan would have been badly plucked on hiscollege entrance. But great is the power of personality. The president'swife behaved most uncollegiately. She interested herself in Jim; she hadinterviews with the examiners; she discovered in advance questions to beasked; she urged upon the authorities the absolute necessity ofaccepting this promising student. The president himself was biased. Hehinted that the function of examiners was not so much to make absolutemeasurement of scholastic attainments as to manifest a discretionaryview of possibilities, and to remember that examination papers wereoften incapable of gauging the most important natural endowments of thecandidate; that sometimes when it was necessary to put a blood horseover a five-barred gate, the wisest horseman laid the gate down flat.

  The admonitions were heeded, the gate laid flat, and the thoroughbredentered the pasture. But to Jim, caught up in the wearisome classroomgrind, the days held no glimmer of light. Of what possible value, heasked himself again and again, could it be to know the history ofNippur? Why should the cuneiforms have any bearing on the morals of abackwoods Canadian? Would the grace of God be less effective if thepurveyor of it was unaware of what Sprool's Commentaries said about theAlexandrian heresy? Was not he, Jim Hartigan, a more eloquent speakernow, by far, than Silas McSilo, who read his Greek testament everymorning? And he wrote to the Rev. Obadiah Champ: "It's no use. I don'tknow how to study. I'm sorry to get up in the morning and glad to go tobed and forget it. I'd rather be in jail than in college. I hate it moreevery day." But Jim had given his "wurd as a mahn" and he hammered awaysadly and sorrowfully as one who has no hope, as one who is defeated butcontinues to fight merely because he knows not how to surrender.