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All Toyner's thought and sense seemed to lose hold again of everything but that first realisation of the surrounding glory and joy and strength, and the feeling that he himself had to rest for a little while before any new thing was given him to do.
The word embodied the great new idea which had entered Toyner's soul, the idea of the love that had power to help him. "I want to get hold of God," he said; "but it isn't any use, for I shall just go and get drunk again."
After a while another thought came upon her with unexpected force. Christa's motive for taking to the religious life was only self-interest; her own motive was the same; and was not that the motive which she really supposed hitherto to actuate all religious people? Had she not, for instance, been fully convinced that self-interest was the sum and substance of Bart Toyner's religion?
The source of his strength had failed within him. He looked forward to defeat. As it happened Toyner's official responsibility for Markham's arrest was to be lightened. The Crown Attorney for the county had already communicated with the local government, and a detective had been sent, who arrived that morning by the little steamboat.
I did not know then that the beginning of this provincial salon, which Toyner's wife had kept about her for so many years, and to which she gave a genuine brilliance, however raw the material, had been a wooden shanty, in which a small income was made by the sale of home-brewed beer. I always remember Ann Toyner as I saw her that first time.
Christa returned indolently to lounging upon the bed and reading her novel. If Ann had had less strength, she would have paced the floor of the outer room in impatience; as it was she sat still by the table which held the beer and stitched her seam diligently. About eight o'clock she heard Toyner's step. Was he going to haunt the house again in order to keep her from going out of it?
If Toyner's stirring again before I get home, he'll find means to keep me from coming to-morrow night. Climb up now. I'll give you the things. There there isn't enough of the morphia drops to get you to sleep, only to make you feel easy; and here's the strips of blanket I've sewed together to tie yourself on with. It's nice and soft climb up now and fix yourself.
He could not doubt his new creed; but no sooner had he left the hospital walls than that burden came upon him of which the greatest stress is this, that in trying to fit new light to common use we are apt to lose the clearer vision of the light itself. In Toyner's former religious experience he had been much upheld by the knowledge that he was walking in step with a vast army of Christians.
This belief that he could never come to any desired haven was the one force above all others that went to the ruining of Toyner's life. Bart Toyner was more than thirty years old when the period of his reformation came. His father had grown old and foolish.
He had learned from his friend the preacher that when a man is tempted he must pray until he is given the victory, and then, calm and steadfast, go out to face the world again. If Toyner's had been a smaller soul, the need of his life would have imperatively demanded then that just what he expected to happen to him should happen, and in some mysterious way no doubt it would have happened.
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