Part 11 (1/2)

He shook his head.

'I left off p.r.i.c.king texts when I was five, and gave up painting when I was nine.'

'It is not what you do to the texts, Rodney; it is what the texts do to you!'

He left her, and, soon after, left London.

VI

Yes, he left her, and he left London; but he could not leave the text.

It confronted him once more. He had taken refuge in a little fis.h.i.+ng village on the East Coast. Up on the cliffs, among the corn-fields, flecked with their crimson poppies, he came upon a quaint old church. He stepped inside. In the porch was a painting of an old ruin--ivy-covered, useless and desolate--standing out, jagged and roofless, against a purple sky. The picture bore a striking inscription:

The ruins of my soul repair And make my heart a house of prayer.

'_The ruins of my soul!_' Rodney thought of the discord within.

'_Make my heart a house of prayer!_' Rodney thought of the maestro.

He pa.s.sed out into the little graveyard on the very edge of the cliff.

He was amused at the quaint epitaphs. Then one tombstone, lying flat upon the ground, a tombstone which, in large capitals, called upon the reader to 'Prepare to meet thy G.o.d,' startled him. Again he thought of the clas.h.i.+ng discords of his soul.

'Then, suddenly,' says Mrs. Barclay, 'the inspired Word did that which It--and It alone--can do. It gripped Rodney and brought him face to face with realities--past, present and future--in his own inner life. At once, the Bishop's motto came into his mind; the three words his gentle mother used to draw that her little boy might paint them stood out clearly as the answer to all vague and restless questionings: G.o.d IS LOVE!'

'_G.o.d is Love!_'

'_Prepare to Meet thy G.o.d!_'

How could he, with his old hate in his heart, stand in the presence of a G.o.d of Love?

Standing there bareheaded, with one foot on the p.r.o.ne tombstone, Rodney grappled with the pa.s.sion that he had cherished through the years, and thus took his first step along the path of preparation.

'I forgive the woman who came between us,' he said aloud. 'My G.o.d, I forgive her--as I hope to be forgiven!'

'As soon as a man comes to understand that _G.o.d IS LOVE_,' said Dr.

Chalmers, 'he is infallibly converted.' That being so, Rodney Steele was infallibly converted that day, and that day he entered into peace.

VII

When Robert Louis Stevenson settled at Samoa, the islands were ablaze with tumult and strife. And, during those years of bitterness, Stevenson did his utmost to bring the painful struggle to an end. He visited the chiefs in prison, lavished his kindnesses upon the islanders, and made himself the friend of all. In the course of time the natives became devotedly attached to the frail and delicate foreigner who looked as though the first gust of wind would blow him away. His health required that he should live away on the hill-top, and they pitied him as he painfully toiled up the stony slope. To show their affection for him, they built a road right up to his house, in order to make the steep ascent more easy. And they called that road Ala Loto Alofa--_The Road to the Loving Heart_. They felt, as they toiled at their labor of grat.i.tude, that they were not only conferring a boon on the white man, but that they were making a beaten path from their own doors to the heart that loved them all.

_G.o.d is Love_; and it is the glory of the everlasting Gospel that it points the road by which the Father's wayward sons--in whichever of the far countries they may have wandered--may find a way back to the Father's house, and home to the Loving Heart.

XI

THOMAS HUXLEY'S TEXT