The Zeit-Geist | Page 6

its heavy chains upon him before he
was well aware that his life had begun in earnest; and when he realised
that he was in possession of his full manhood, and that the prime of life
was not far off, he found himself chained hand and foot, toiling heavily
in the most degrading servitude. A few more years and he realised also
that, do what he would, he could not set himself free. No one in the
world had any knowledge of the struggle he made. Some--his mother
among them--gave him credit for trying now and then, and that was a
charitable view of his case. How could any man know? He was not
born with the nature that reveals itself in many words, or that gets rid of
its intolerable burdens of grief and shame by passing them off upon
others. All that any one could see was the inevitable failure.
The failure was the chief of what Bart himself saw. That unquenchable
instinct in a man's heart that if he had only tried a little harder he would
certainly have attained to righteousness gave the lie to his sense of
agonising struggle, with its desperate, rallies of courage and sinkings of
discouragement, gleams of self-confidence, and foul suspicion of self,
suspicion even as to the reality of his own effort. All this was in the
region of unseen spirit, almost as much unseen to those about him as
are the spirits of the dead men and angels, often a mere matter of faith
to himself, so apart did it seem from the outward realities of life.
Outwardly the years went easily enough. The father railed and stormed,

then relapsed into a manner of silent contempt; but he did not drive his
son from the plain, comfortable home which he kept. Bart would not
work, but he took some interest in reading. Paper-covered infidel books,
and popular books on modern science, were his choice rather than
fiction. The choice might have been worse, for the fiction to which he
had access was more enervating. Outside his father's house he
neglected the better class of his neighbours, and fraternised with the
men and women that lived by the lowest bank of the river; but his life
there was still one into which the fresh air and the sunshine of the
Canadian climate entered largely. If he lounged all day, it was on the
benches in the open air; if he played cards all night, he was not given
much money to waste; and there were few women to lend their
companionship to the many drunkards of whom he was only one. Then,
also, Bart did not do even all the evil that he might. What was the result
of that long struggle of his which always ended in failure? The failure
was only apparent; the success was this mighty one--that he did not go
lower, he did not leave Fentown Falls for the next town upon the river,
a place called The Mills, where his life could have been much worse.
He fell in love with Ann Markham; and although she was the daughter
of the wickedest man in Fentown, she was--according to the
phraseology of the place--"a lady." She kept a small beer-shop that was
neat and clean; she lived so that no man dared to say an uncivil word to
her or to the sister whom she protected. She did for her father very
much what Bart's father did for him: she kept a decent house over his
head and decent clothes upon his back, and threw a mantle of thrifty
respectability over him.
Ann was no prude, and she certainly was no saint. Twice a week there
was the sound of fiddling and dancing feet in a certain wooden hall that
stood near the river; and there, with the men and women of the worldly
sort, Ann and her sister danced. It was their amusement; they had no
other except the idle talking and laughing that went on over the table at
which Ann sold her home-brewed beer. Ann's end in life was just the
ordinary one--respectability, or a moderate righteousness, first, and
after that, pleasure. She was a strong, vigorous, sunbrowned maiden;
she worked hard to brew her beer and to sell it. She ruled her sister with
an inflexible will. She had much to say to men whom she liked and

admired. She neither liked nor admired Bart Toyner, never threw him a
word unless in scorn; yet he loved her. She was the star by which he
steered his ship in those intervals in which his eyes were clear enough
to steer at all; and the ship did not go so far out of the track as it would
otherwise have gone. When a man is