‘Shamed by a dog!’ All the remains of the nobleness so long dormant in the nature of Moses—the passion, and valour, and love which he had allowed to die down long, long ago—awakened into life. For the first time for thirty years he forgot himself, and with a great light breaking round him, and sounds of sweetest music in his heart, he leapt into the Lodge, struck out for the struggling dog and its fainting burden, and strengthened and steadied both to land.
Many years before Moses had been immersed in the baptistery at Rehoboth by the old pastor, Mr. Morell. He stepped into those waters as Moses Fletcher, and he was Moses Fletcher when he came up out of them, despite the benediction breathed on his dedicated soul. But on this autumn afternoon Moses Fletcher—the cruel, exacting, self-righteous Moses Fletcher—was buried in baptism, and there stepped out of those moorland waters another man, bearing in his arms a little child.
III.
THE ATONEMENT OF MOSES FLETCHER.
On the evening of the day following the rescue of Oliver o' Deaf Martha's child, Moses Fletcher was walking over the moors towards his own home, a great peace possessing his soul, and a buoyant step bearing him through a new world. Above him the mellow moon of September dreamed in blue distances, the immensities of which were measured by innumerable constellations. Around, the great hills loomed dark in shadow, and bulked in relief against the far-off horizon of night. Along the troughs and gullies lay streaks of white fog, ever shaping themselves into folds and fringes, and, like wraiths, noiselessly vanishing on the hillside; while over all rested a great stillness, as though for once the fevered earth slept in innocence beneath the benediction of that world so vast, so high, and yet so near. Many a time, amid such surroundings, had Moses traversed the same path. Never before, however, had he passed through the same world. To him it was a new heaven and a new earth, for he carried with him a new soul.
Crossing the stretch of hill on the crest of which lay the Rehoboth burial-ground, Moses made his way to the stone wall fencing in that God's acre, and paused to lean his arms on its rude and irregular coping. There stood the old chapel, square and gaunt, its dark outline clearly cut against the moonlit sky, each window coldly gleaming in the pale light, while the scattered headstones, sheeted in mist, stood out like groups of mourners mute in their sorrow over the dead. Below lay the village—that little tragic centre of life and death—half its inhabitants in sleep, hushed for a few brief hours in their humble moorland nests. The fall of waters from the weir at the Bridge Factory came up from the valley in dreamy cadences; a light dimly burned in old Joseph's window; and a meteor swept with a mighty arc the western sky. The soul of Moses Fletcher was at peace.
He sprang with a light step over the low wall of boundary, and crossed the wave-like mounds that heaved as a grassy sea, and beneath which lay the unlettered dead, the long grasses writhing and clinging to his feet, as though loath to let him escape the dust upon which they fed and grew so rank. Heedless of their greedy embrace, he walked with long stride towards the lower end of the yard, until he stood before a gray and lichen-covered slab, on which were letters old and new. There, by the moonlight, he read the record of a baby boy of two, carrying back the reader forty years. Above it was the name of a father, dead these ten years, and between these, all newly cut, were the lines:
JINNY CRAWSHAW,
WIFE OF THE ABOVE, WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE,
For some moments Moses stood before the stone; then, taking the hat from his head, he knelt down on the cold grass and, kissing the newly-cut name, he vowed a vow. If, with the power of his Master, whom he had only just begun to serve, he could have raised the sleeper, as Lazarus and the widow's son and the ruler's little child were raised, then the great grief of his heart would have disappeared. But he could not—the past, his past, was irrevocable. But there were the living—Jim Crawshaw, his wife, his babe—these were still within his reach of recompense. And again he vowed his vow, and the still night air carried it far beyond the distant stars to where He sits who knows the thoughts and tries the reins of men.
‘Thaa'rt lat' to-neet, Moses; where hasto bin?’
‘Nowhere where thaa couldn't go wi' me, lass,’ and so saying, Moses kissed his wife, an act which he had dexterously and passionately performed several times since his immersion in the Green Fold Lodge on the previous day.
‘Whatever's come o'er thee, Moses? Thaa fair maks me shamed. It's thirty year an' more sin' thaa kissed me. Hasto lost thi yed?’
‘Yi, lass, but I've fun mi heart,’ and he again clasped his startled wife, and grew young in his caresses.
‘I thought thaa kept thi luv for Captain, Moses. But I durnd mind goin' hawves wi' th' owd dog. I awlus said that a chap as could luv a dog hed summat good abaat him somewhere—and thaa's luved Captain sum weel.’
‘And others a deal too little, lass. But all that's o'er’—and Moses burst into tears.
‘Nay, lad—forshure thaa'rt takken worse. Well, I never seed thee cry afore. Mun I ged thee a sooap o' summat hot, thinksto? or mun I run for th' doctor?’ and Mrs. Fletcher looked at her husband with a scared and troubled face.
‘Why, lass, I've been cryin' all th' day—and that's why I've bin so long away fro' thee—I didn'd want to scare thee. I cornd help but cry. I tell thee I've fun mi heart.’
And Moses again sobbed like a child.
That night, when his wife was in bed, and Captain slept soundly on the rug in front of the fire, Moses opened a safe that stood in the corner of the room, and, taking therefrom a bundle of deeds, selected one docketed ‘Crawshaw Fold.’ He then took from a drawer a number of agreements, and carefully drew forth those which gave him his hold on the Crawshaws. These he enclosed with the deeds in a large blue envelope, and in a clerkly hand addressed them, with a note, to James Crawshaw. After this he knelt down, and, as he prayed, Captain came and laid his head upon the clasped hands of his master.
‘Good-mornin', Abram. Hasto ought fresh daan i' th' village?’
‘Plenty, Enoch; hasto yerd naught?’
‘Nowe; I hevn't bin daan fro' th' moors sin' Sundo.’
‘Then yo've yerd naught abaat Moses Fletcher?’
‘Nowe; nor I durnd want. When yo' cornd yer owt good abaat a mon yo'd better yer naught at all.’
‘But I've summat good to tell thee abaat owd Moses.’
‘Nay, lad, I think nod. Th' Etheop cornd change his skin, nor th' leopard his spots.’
‘But Moses hes ged'n aat o' his skin, and changed it for a gradely good un and o'.’
‘And what abaat his spots, Abram?’
‘Why, he's weshed 'em all aat in th' Green Fowd Lodge wi' savin' Oliver o' Deaf Martha's little un.’
Enoch whistled the first bar or two of an old tune, and stood silent in thought, and then exclaimed:
‘Well, aw'v yerd o' th' seven wonders, but if what thaa sez is true, it mak's th' eighth.’
‘Yi, owd mon, but there's a bigger wonder nor that. He's gi'n Jim Crawshaw th' deeds o' Crawshaw Fowd, and towd him as he can pay him back when he geds th' brass.’
‘Abram, thaa'rt gammin'.’
‘Jim Crawshaw towd me this mornin', and I seed th' deeds wi' mi own een in his hond, and read th' letter Moses bed written.’
At this moment Mr. Penrose came along the field-path, and joined the two men. He, too, was strangely excited about Moses Fletcher, and, guessing what was uppermost in the minds and conversation of the two men, at once heartily joined them.
‘God moves in a mysterious way, doesn'd He, Mr. Penrose?’ said old Enoch.
‘He does indeed, Enoch. Here I've been trying to convert Moses with my preaching, and the Almighty sets aside His servant, and converts the sinner by means of a dog and a little child. After all, there's something can get at the heart besides theology and philosophy. The foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of man.’
‘Then yo' think he's convarted, Mr. Penrose?’
‘Well, if the New Testament test is a true one, he is, for he is indeed bringing forth fruits meet for repentance.’
‘He is so,’ said Enoch, ‘it what Abram sez is true. I awlus towd my missus that whenever Moses gave his furst hawve-craan it 'ud be his fust stride towards th' kingdom o' grace; but if he's gin Jim Crawshaw his deeds back he's getten a deal further into th' kingdom nor some o' us.’
Mr. Penrose attempted to continue the conversation, but in vain, for a lump rose in his throat, and the landscape was dimmed by the moisture he could not keep back from his eyes. And as with the pastor, so with his companions. A great joy filled all their hearts—a joy too deep for words, but not for tears.
In a little while Mr. Penrose said:
‘Moses called to see me last night to ask for re-admission into the Church. He wants me to baptize him next Sunday afternoon week, and would like to give his testimony.’
‘But he were baptized thirty year sin' by Mr. Morell,’ said Abram. ‘Why does he want dippin' o'er agen?’
‘Because, as he says, he never received his testimony before last Monday, when he saved Oliver's child from drowning.’
‘An' are yo' baan to baptize him?’ asked Enoch.
‘Why not? If the deacons are willing, I shall be only too glad.’
It was the first Sunday afternoon in October, and along a dozen winding moorland paths there came in scattered groups the worshippers to the Rehoboth shrine. Old men and women, weary with the weight of years, renewed their youth as they drew near to what had been a veritable sanctuary amid their care and sorrow and sin; while manhood and womanhood, leading by the hand their little ones, felt in their hearts that zeal for the house of prayer so common to the dwellers in rural England. Long before the hour of service the chapel-yard was thronged, and from within came the sounds of stringed instruments as they were tuned to pitch by the musicians, who had already taken their place in the singing-pew beneath the pulpit, which stood square and high, canopied with its old-fashioned sounding-board and cornice of plain deal. There was ‘owd Joel Boothman,’ who had played the double bass for half a century, resining his bow with a trembling hand; and Joe and Robert Hargreaves fondly caressing their 'cellos. Dick o' Tootershill and his two sons were delicately touching the trembling strings of their violins; and Enoch was polishing, beneath the glossy sleeve of his ‘Sunday best,’ ‘th' owd flute’ which had been his salvation.
In a few minutes Mr. Penrose ascended the pulpit. Never before was there such a congregation to greet him; and as the people rose to join in singing the old tune, Devizes, the worm-eaten galleries trembled and creaked beneath the mass of worshippers. Then followed prayer and the lessons, the hymn before the address being
‘Come, ye that love the Lord.’
With a great swell of harmony from five hundred voices, whose training for song had been the moors, the words of Dr. Watts went up to heaven, and when the second verse was reached—
‘Let those refuse to sing,
Who never knew our Lord,’
little Milly, who had hobbled to chapel on her crutch, turned to Abraham Lord, and said:
‘Sithee, owd Moses is singing, faither.’
And it was even so. Poor Moses! for so many years a mute worshipper, and whose voice had been raised only to harry and distress, no longer was silent in the service of song.
Mr. Penrose's address was brief. Taking for his text, ‘The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost,’ he said:
‘It was the best in man that was longest in being discovered. That which was lost was not the false man, but the true man—the heavenly. We were none of us vile in the sight of God, because God saw Himself in us. It was this God-self in us that was lost to us. Not knowing it to be the hidden root of our true life, we did not claim our dignity, nor walk as became the sons of God. A man who lost the sense of his freedom, though free, would be fettered still. A man whose sense of beauty was lost would be as in a desert in the paradise of God. A lost sense of freedom meant a slavish mind, and a lost sense of beauty meant a prosaic mind, no matter how free the man, nor how beautiful his environment. So men had lost the sense of their sonship. They did not know their royal descent, their kinship with the Father, and therefore they did not act as became sons. A lost sense of relationship begat in them disobedience and alienation. They possessed gold, but were content with brass; and instead of iron they built with clay. The eternal and abiding was in them, but lost to them, covered with incrustations of self and buried deep beneath the lesser and the meaner man. There were times in a man's life when the better nature gave hints of its existence. The mission of Christ was to awaken these hints. He came to tell them they were men, that they were souls, that they were sons and not servants, friends and not enemies of God. When He stirred these powers in men He stirred the lost. He set it before the eye of man, and made man see what he had within him, what he was really, and at the root of his being—a man, a Son of Man, a Child of God. How hard this was only Christ knew. Spiritually, men put themselves, through spiritual ignorance, in false relations. This wrong relationship lay at the root of all disorder. It was the secret of discomfiture, misery and sin. Men were not lost in badness, not lost in sin, but lost to that which when discovered to them made their badness unbearable—in other words, “took away their sin.” Lost souls, damned souls, souls in hell—as the theologians termed them—were simply souls lost to their right relationship. And the work of Christ was to find in men, and find out for men, what this right relationship was. This was what was meant in the text, the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. Their friend Moses Fletcher had found something in himself. He had found love, and courage, and a sense of goodness. These had been discovered to him by the One who was always revealing the good in us if we would but let Him, and if we would but open our eyes to see. He, Moses Fletcher, had seen the good, and believed in it, and he was saved because he allowed the good to move and have its being in him. It was his better self, so long unknown to himself, so long lost in him, and to him, that awoke and led him to save Oliver o' Deaf Martha's child. When he plunged into the Green Fold Lodge he found what had been so long lost to him: he found himself. Then was fulfilled the saying, “He that loseth his life shall save it.” That was salvation. Moses was now a saved man because he had found the sane and whole part of his nature. The Divine in him had been awakened. He was at last true to the law of his being.’
Then, closing his Bible, he asked Moses Fletcher to give his ‘testimony.’
Standing up, and with tremulous tones, which none recognised as the once harsh voice of Moses, he said:
‘Yo' happen willn't let me co yo' friends because I've bin an enemy to so mony on yo'! But Him as they co'd a friend o' publicans and sinners hes made me His friend, and He's made me a friend on yo' all. I know haa yo' all hated me, and I gave yo' good cause for doin' so. But He's put His love i' me, and naa owd Moses 'll never trouble ony on yo' ony more. Owd Moses lies i' Green Fold Lodge yonder, and he'll stop theer; it's time he wor done wi'. An' if you'll try me as God's baan to try me, aw think you'll happen larn to love me as I know I'm loved aboon.’
As he sat down many in the large congregation would fain have risen and grasped him by the hand, but propriety forbade.
In another minute Mr. Penrose came out of the vestry prepared for the rite of immersion, and Moses was a second time baptized in Rehoboth.
As he stepped out of the waters a cloud passed from before the October sun, and a flood of light poured through the open window above the baptistery, while a white dove from the neighbouring farm perched for a moment on the wooden sill. Then Milly once more turned to her father and said:
‘Yon's th' brid, faither, but I don't yer th' voice!’
‘What voice?’ whispered Abraham Lord.
‘Why, faither, thaa knows—“This is My beloved Son.”’
But Moses heard that voice in his heart.
III.
AMANDA STOTT.
I.
HOME.
She saw from afar the light of her cottage home, and her heart misgave her. It was not wrath she feared; for had the relentless anger of a parent awaited her, her step would have been braver, and her spirit more defiant. But she knew she was forgiven. The feeble ray emitted from the lamp in the far-off gable was the beacon of her forgiveness—the proof that love's fire still burned brightly. This it was that daunted her: she feared the scorch of its healing flame.
She had travelled far, having crossed the moors from Burnt Gap, climbing the ridge as the heavens began to kiss the earth with the peace of sunset. A lingering glory was then haunting the summits and crests and cairn-crowned hills that shut in the quiet of Rehoboth and forming an almost impassable rampart to those who, from the farther side, sought its shelter ere the close of day. As she then lifted her eyes to these many-coloured fires lighted by His hand who setteth His glory in the heavens, they had seemed to burn in wrath; while the great moors, dark in the foreground, raised themselves like barriers—uplands of desolation, across which no path of hope stretched its trend for returning feet.
As the girl climbed the Scar Foot the western sky was toning down to grays, while beyond, and seen through an oval-shaped rift in their sombre colours, lay a distant streak of amber that, moment by moment, slowly disappeared under the closing lids of evening cloud—the eye of weary day wooed to slumber by the hush of illimitable sweeps of moor. Even so would Amanda fain have closed her eyes and sunk to rest amid the purple clouds of heather that, like a great sky, lay for miles around her feet.
Passing through Nockcliffe plantation, a half-mile of woodland that straggled along the steep sides of a clough, a drop of rain fell between the branches and coursed down her cheek—a cheek fevered from want of tears, and flaming with a sense of shame. Then a low wind blew—a mere sob, but so preludious, so prophetic!—followed by a silence that discovered, as never before, the sense of her own loneliness, and in which she heard the tread of her own light footfall over the moss and herbage of the path she travelled.
Emerging from the plantation, an angry gust, laden with cold drops, dashed itself in her face, and she knew from the weather-lore which she, as a child of the hills, had learned in past years, that a wild night was between her and the house whose shelter she sought in her despair.
Phenomenally rapid was the onrush of the storm. At first the rain fell in short and sudden showers, driven from angry clouds eager for some atmospheric change whereby to be relieved of their pent-up burden. Then the wind, as though in answer to the prayer of the clouds, changed its course and stilled its moaning, and the sky ‘wept its watery vapours to the ground.’
When Amanda stood upon the fringe of the great moss that stretched for three miles between the Scars and Rehoboth her spirit sank within her. The season had been dry, and she knew the path by instinct; but the storm and the darkness seemed like twin enemies determined to bar her advance. She felt that Nature was her foe, even as man had been, and as Rehoboth would be when it knew of her return. Why did the rain hiss, and dash its cold and stinging showers in her face? Why did it saturate her thin skirts so that they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that strange, weird sound—the sound muttered by miles of herbage when beaten down by rain—the swish and patter and sigh of the long grass and of the bracken, as they bent beneath the continuous fall, and rose in angry protest, to fling off their burden on each other, or shake it to the ground? Then a mute sympathy sprang up in her desolate heart as she grew incorporate into this storm-swept, helpless vegetation, and she felt that she, too, like it, was the helpless prey of angry forces.
The moss traversed, the twinkling lights of Rehoboth broke the darkness. Yes, the old chapel was illuminated, the windows of that rude structure glowing with warmth and life; and as she passed the graveyard a hymn, only too well known to her in the happy days of the past, reached her ears. Once this had been her sanctuary, a shelter, a home, where as a happy girl she had sung that very strain—then a house of prayer, now a temple of judgment. And she grew rebellious as she saw in her mind the hard faces of its worshippers, and realized that nothing unholy or unclean must enter there. The native instinct, however, was too strong; and passing through the gate, and stealthily crossing the sea of graves, she paused to peep through the window, and, unobserved, took in the scene. The old faces—Enoch, and Abraham, and Moses Fletcher, and Malachi o' th' Mount, and Simon o' Long John's. Yes, the old faces as she knew them five years ago—the old faces, all save one. Where was the saintly Mr. Morell? In his place sat a young man whom she knew not.
Hastening on, she climbed Pinner Brow, on the summit of which lay her home. As she scaled the height the beacon in her mother's gable told she was not forgotten. Then it was she trembled. A rebuke—a curse—a refusal; these she could face. But forgiveness—welcome—love—never! She turned to fly.
‘Amanda!’
‘Mother!’
The great, good God had ordained that the despairing girl should fly into the arms of the one who had not forgotten, and who felt she had nothing to forgive. Amanda found herself in the stillest and strongest of all havens—the haven of a mother's breast.
In another moment Amanda permitted her mother to lead her as that mother had been wont to lead her when the warm, strong hand of the parent was a guiding touch—a magnet of love amid the dangers of an early life—and when, as now, there was but one shelter of safety—the home.
No sooner did the two women stand in the light and warmth of the kitchen-hearth, than the elder fell on the neck of the younger, and kissed the cold, rain-washed face of her child, with a love grown fierce by years of hopeless hope and unrequited longing. Once again those arms, thin and weak with age, grew strong; and in the resurrection of a mighty passion, all the old womanhood and motherhood of the parent renewed their youth, and filled out the shrunken and decrepit form until she stood majestic in the strength of heaven. To those who had been wont to see Amanda's mother bent and crushed with years and sorrow, the woman that now stood in the firelight would not have been recognised as Mrs. Stott. Once the fairest and most lithesome girl in Rehoboth, the pride of the village, the sought of many suitors, the proud wife of Sam Stott of th' Clowes, and the still prouder mother of Amanda, who matched her alike in beauty and in sprightliness, she had long been a prey to the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune. Years had played sad havoc with her, her money taking wings, her husband dying, and her last hope failing in the hour of need. Now she was herself again under the renewing hand of love.
As soon as Amanda recovered from the shock of her mother's appearance, and felt the warmth of her welcome, she gently, yet determinately, released herself and cried:
‘Durnd, mother, durnd! I'm noan come wom' to be kissed nor forgiven. I've nobbud come wom' to dee.’
‘What saysto, lass?’ exclaimed Mrs. Stott. ‘Come wom' to dee? Nay, thaa's bin deead long enugh a'ready; it's time thaa begun to live, and thank God thaa's come back to live at wom'.’
The girl shook her head, a stony stare in her eye, her mouth drawn into a hard and immobile line. And then, in cold tones, she continued:
‘Nay, mother; I've hed enugh o' life. I tell thee I've come wom' to dee.’
‘Amanda,’ sobbed the mother, ‘if thaa taks on like that thaa'll kill me. Thaa's welly done for me a'ready, but I con live naa thaa's come back, if thaa'll nobbud live an' o', and live wi' me. Sit thee daan. There's th' owd cheer (chair) waiting for thee. It's thi cheer, Amanda; awlus wor, and awlus will be. Sit thee daan. It looks some onely (lonely) baat thee.’
There stood Amanda's chair, the chair of her girlhood, the chair in which she had sung through the long winter nights, in which her deft fingers had wrought needlework, the envy of Rehoboth. The old arms mutely opened as though to welcome her; the rockers, too, seemed ready to yield that oscillation so seductive to the jaded frame. And the trimmings! and the cushion! the same old pattern, somewhat faded, perhaps, but as warm and cosy as in the days of yore. It was the chair, too, at which she used to kneel, the chair that had so often caught the warm breath from her lips as she had whispered, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven.’ But had she not forfeited her right to that chair? Of that throne of sanctity she felt she was now no longer queen. And again, as her mother pressed her to take her appointed place, she shook her head, her heart steeled with pride and shame, the hardest of all bonds to break when imprisoning a human soul.
The poor mother stood at bay—at cruel bay. She had used the mightiest weapon upon which she could lay her hand, and it had seemed to shiver in the conflict. But love's armoury is not easily depleted, and love's spirit is quick to return to the charge. There was still left to her the warmth of a bosom in which long years before Amanda had gently stirred, and from which she had drawn her first currents of life; and once more the mother clasped her girl, and pressed her lips on the sin-stained face.
‘Durnd kiss me, mother,’ cried the affrighted girl, stepping back; ‘durnd kiss me. Thaa munnot dirty thy lips wi' touchin' mine. If thaa knew all, thaa'd spurn me more like.’
‘'Manda,’ replied the woman, in the desperation of her love, ‘I'll kiss thee if thaa kills me for't. I connot help it; thaa'rt mine.’
‘I wor once, I wor once, but nod now.’
‘Yi! lass, but thaa art. Thaa wor mine afore th' devil geet howd on thee, and thaa's bin mine all th' time he's bed thee, and now he's done wi' thee, I mean to keep thee all to mysel.’
And afresh the mother bathed the still beautiful face of Amanda with her tears.
But Amanda was firm. Old as her mother was, she knew that mother's innocence, and shrank from the thought that one so pure, so womanly, should hang on those lips so sorely blistered by the breath of sin; and, once more stretching out her arm, she said:
‘Durnd touch me, mother—durnd!’
‘'Manda,’ cried the mother, defiantly and grandly, all the passion of maternity rising in her heart, ‘'Manda, thaa cornd unmother me. I carried thee and suckled thee and taught thee thi prayers in that cheer, and doesn'd ta think as Him we co'd “Aar Faither” is aar Faither still?’
‘Happen He's yours, mother; but He's noan o' mine.’
‘Well, 'Manda, if thaa'rt noan His child, thaa'rt mine, and naught shall come 'tween me and thee.’
‘And dun yo' mean to say that yo' love me as mich naa, mother, as when aw wor a little un?’ asked the girl, her steely eyes moistening, and the firm line of her drawn mouth tremulous with rising emotion.
‘Yi, lass, and a thaasand times more. Thaa wants more luv' naa nor then—doesn't ta? And hoo's a poor mother as connot give more when more's wanted. I'm like th' owd well up th' hill yonder—th' bigger th' druft (drought) th' stronger th' flow. Thi mother's heart's noan dry, lass, tho' thi thirst's gone; and I'll luv' thee though thaa splashes mi luv' back in mi face, and spills it on th' graand.’
And a third time the woman fell on the girl's neck, and kissed her flesh into flame with the passion of her caress.
‘Durnd, mother! durnd!’ said Amanda. ‘Blame me, if yo' like; curse me, if yo' like. But luv' I connot ston'; it drives me mad.’
‘Nay, lass; luv' noan drives folk mad. It's sin as does that. As Mr. Penrose towd 'em at Rehoboth t'other Sunday, it were luv' as saved th' world, and not wrath; and they say they are baan to bring him up at th' deacons' meeting abaat it. But he's reet. It's luv' as saves. It's saved thee to me; it's kept mi heart warm, and it's kept that lamp leeted every neet for five year.’ And then, seeing tears slowly stealing down her daughter's face, the old woman said: ‘I think we mud as weel put th' leet aat naa thaa's comed wom', 'Manda?’ and as the girl gave no more evidence of resistance, the mother went to the window, turned down the lamp, and drew the blind, saying, ‘He's answered mi prayers.’
At the going out of that light there went out in Amanda's heart the false fires of lust and pride and defiance, and in their place was kindled the light of repentance—of forgiveness and of love. For five years that faithfully-trimmed lamp told the whole countryside that Widow Stott was not forgetful of her own; and when once or twice rebuked by some of the Rehoboth deacons at the premium which she seemed to put on sin by thus inviting a wanderer's return, she always replied:
‘Blame Him as mak's a woman so as hoo cornd forget her child.’
Now that the lamp was out a flutter of excitement was passing through the village, Milly Lord being the first to discover it. She, poor girl! was sitting at her little window listening to the beat of the rain, and the swish of the grasses that grew in her garden below—sitting and wondering how it was there were no ‘angel een’ looking down at the earth, and keeping her eye fixed on the gable light of Mrs. Stott's lone homestead. Suddenly this light disappeared. If the sun had gone out at noonday Milly would not have been more startled. Night after night she had watched that light, and night after night she had heard her mother tell the oft-repeated story of Amanda's fall. Once, indeed, Milly startled her mother in its repetition by saying:
‘Happen, if I hadn't lost mi leg, mother, I should ha' sinned as Amanda did.’
And then Milly's mother drew the girl close to her heart, and thanked God for a lamb safe in the fold. No wonder when Milly saw the light go out that she cried:
‘Mother! mother! Amanda Stott's come wom'!’
‘Whatever will hoo say next?’ gasped Mrs. Lord.
‘I tell yo' Amanda's come wom'. Th' leet's aat—thaa con see for thisel!’ and the girl was beside herself with excitement.
‘So it is,’ said Mrs. Lord. ‘Bud it's noan Amanda; it's happen her mother as is takken bad. Awl put o' mi things, and run up and see.’
Hurrying up the Pinner Brow, it was not long before Mrs. Lord reached the home of Amanda, and raising the latch, with the permission which rural friendship grants, she saw the daughter and mother together on the so long lonely hearth. Taken aback, and scarcely knowing how to remove the restraint which the sudden interruption was imposing, she fell upon the instinct of her heart, and said:
‘Well, I never! if our Milly isn't reet! Hoo said as how hoo know'd Amanda bed come back. Hoo seed th' leet go aat and co'd aat at th' top o' her voice, “Amanda's come back.” Hoo remembers thee, Amanda, an' hoo's never stop't talkin' abaat thee. Tha'rt eight year owder nor hoo is—poor lass! hoo's lost her leg sin' thaa seed her. It wor a bad do, aw con tell thee; but hoo's as lively as a cricket, bless her! and often talks abaat thee, and wonders where thaa'd getten to. Let's see, lass, it's five years sin thaa left us, isn't it?’ And then, remembering the whole story of Amanda, which in her excitement she had forgotten, and the great trouble and the great joy which that night fought for supremacy in the little moorland home, she stopped, and with a tear-streamed face rushed up to Amanda, and said: ‘What am I talkin' abaat, lass? I'd clean forgetten,’ and then she, too, imprinted on Amanda's lips a caress of welcome.
It was late that night when Milly asked her father to go up Pinner Brow and fetch her mother home. When he reached the house he found the two women and the girl upon their knees, for Milly's mother was a good woman, and to her goodness was added a mother's heart. Her own sorrow had taught her to weep with those who weep, and a great trial through which she had passed in her girlhood days, and through which she had passed scathless, led her to look on Amanda with pitying love. Abraham paused upon the threshold as he heard the sound of his wife's voice in prayer, and when, half an hour afterwards, they together descended the brow towards their home, he said:
‘Thaa sees, lass, Milly's angel een wor on th' watch a'ter all.’
‘Yi,’ said his wife, ‘and they see'd a returnin' sinner. But hoo's safe naa; hoo's getten back to her mother, and hoo's getten back to God.’
‘Where hes hoo bin, missus, thinksto?’
‘Nay, lad, I never ax'd her. I know where hoo's getten to, and that's enugh. I'm noan one for sperrin (asking questions) baat th' past.’
‘But they'll be wantin' to know up at th' chapel where hoo's bin.’
‘They'll happen do more good by doin' by Amanda as th' Almeety does.’
‘Doesto mean i' His judgments?’
‘Nowe! theer's summat more wonderful nor them.’
‘What doesto mean?’
‘I mean His FORGEETFULNESS.’
II.
LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.
While Amanda's return aroused the curiosity of Rehoboth, it drew few callers to the cottage on Pinner's Brow. Not that the villagers were all wanting in kindliness, but Amanda's mother, being a woman of strong reserve, had fenced herself off from much friendly approach; while the nature of the trouble through which she was now passing was felt by the rude moorlanders to impose silence, and deter them from all open signs of sympathy.
Apart from Mrs. Lord and a girl friend or two of Amanda's, the joy of return was pent up in the heart of the mother—a joy which she, poor thing, would fain have sought to share with others had not delicacy of instinct and sense of shame forbade. She felt it to be indeed hard that she could not go among her neighbours and friends and say, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my child which was lost.’
But the mother's joy was also mixed with the alloy of Amanda's despair. On the day after the return, the girl had taken to her bed; and despite a mother's love and Mrs. Lord's kind counsel and cheery words, Amanda went down into the valley of the shadow. Seldom speaking, save to reiterate the statement that she had come home to die, and that all was dark, she lay anticipating the hour when, as she said, ‘the great God would punish her according to her sins.’ This idea had taken fast hold of her mind: she was going to hell to burn for ever and for ever, and she would only get her deserts; she had sinned—she must suffer.
With the strain of constant watching, and the long hours of solitude, and the nightmare of her girl's damnation hanging over her yearning heart, the poor mother's condition verged on madness, until at last she summoned courage to ask Mr. Penrose to call and drop some crumbs of his Gospel of comfort and love at the bedside of her child; for, as she said to Mrs. Lord, ‘even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's table.’ The truth was that hitherto Mr. Penrose had not cared to risk the scandal which he knew would be created in the village by a visit on his part to Amanda Stott. When, however, he received his summons from the mother, and a sharp reprimand from Dr. Hale, who told him that a minister was as free to visit without risk to his character as a doctor, he resolved to throw aside proprieties and obey the call.
As Mr. Penrose was walking up Pinner Brow, towards the house of Mrs. Stott, he unexpectedly met Amos Entwistle, the senior superintendent of the Sunday-school, and known to the children as ‘Owd Catechism,’ because of his persistent enforcement of the Church tenets on their young minds.
‘Good a'ternoon, Mr. Penrose. And what may bring yo' in this direction?’
‘I'm looking after some of my sheep, Amos.’
‘Not th' black uns, I hope.’
‘No! I am looking after the hundredth—the one that went astray.’
‘Better leave her alone, Mr. Penrose. There's an owd sayin' i' these parts that yo' cornd go into th' mill baat gettin' dusted. That means in yur talk that yo' cornd touch pitch baat gettin' blacked. If thaa goes to Mrs. Stott's they'll say thaart goan for naught good. If thaa wur a married mon, naa, and bed childer, it 'ud happen be different; but bein' single, thaa sees, th' aatside o' yon threshold is th' reight side for such as thee and me.’
(Amos, be it known, was an old bachelor of over seventy years of age.)
‘Nonsense, Amos; you are reversing the teaching of the Master. He went after the sinner, did He not?’
‘Yi, He did; and He lost His repetation o'er it. They co'd Him a winebibber, and a friend o' all maks o' bad uns. I couldn't like 'em to say th' same abaat thee. Rehoboth 'ud noan ston' it, thaa knows.’
Mr. Penrose did not know whether to laugh or to be serious. Seeing, however, that Amos was in no laughing mood, he turned somewhat sharply on the old man, and said:
‘The Stotts are in trouble, and they ask for my presence, Good-afternoon; I'm going.’
‘Howd on a bit,’ said Amos, still holding the minister by the lapel of his coat. ‘Naa listen to me. If I were yo' I wouldn't go. Th' lass hes made her bed; let her lie on't. Durnd yo' risk yor repetation by makkin' it yasier, or by takkin' ony o' th' thorns aat o' her pillow. Rehoboth Church is praad o' her sheep; and it keeps th' black uns aatside th' fold, and yo'll nobbud ged blacked yorsel if yo' meddle wi' 'em. But young colts 'll goa their own gait, so pleeas yorsel.’
At first Mr. Penrose was inclined to think twice over the old Pharisee's advice; but, looking round, he saw Mrs. Stott's sad face in her cottage doorway, and her look determined his advance. In a moment reputation and propriety were forgotten in what he felt were the claims of a mother's heart and the sufferings of an erring soul.
‘Ay, Mr. Penrose, I'm some fain to see yo',’ cried the poor woman, as the minister walked up the garden-path. ‘Amanda's baan fast, and hoo sez 'at it's all dark.’ And then, seizing Mr. Penrose's hand, she cried: ‘Yo' durnd think hoo's damned, dun yo'?’
For years the sound of that mother's voice as she uttered those words haunted Mr. Penrose. He heard it in the stillness of the night, and in the quiet of his study; it came floating on the winds as he walked the fields and moors; and would sound in mockery as he, from time to time, declared a Father's love from the old pulpit at Rehoboth. What cruel creed was this, prompting a mother to believe that God would damn the child whom she herself was forced, out of the fulness of her undying love, to take back into her house and into her heart?
As the minister and Mrs. Stott sat down in the kitchen, the poor woman, in the depths of her despair, again raised her eager face and asked:
‘But yo' durnd think Amanda's damned, dun yo'?’
‘No, I do not, Mrs. Stott.’
This was too much for the mother; and now that the highest passions in her soul received the affirmative of one whom she looked up to as the prophet of God, she felt her girl was safe. The fire of despair died out of her eyes, quenched in the tears of joy, and she realized, as never before, that she could now love God because God had spared to her, and to Himself, her only child.
‘But, Mr. Penrose, Amanda says it's all dark. Dun yo' think yo' could lift th' claads a bit?’
‘Well, we'll do our best; but to the One who loves her the darkness and the light are both alike.’
And with these words on his lips, he followed the mother to where the sick girl lay.
Mr. Penrose had often heard of Amanda Stott, and of that face of hers which had been both her glory and her shame. Now, as he looked upon it for the first time, he saw, as in a glass, the reflection of a character and a life. There was the gold and the clay. The brow and eyes were finely shaped and lustrous, giving to the upper half of the face grandeur and repose, but the mouth and chin fell off into a coarser mould, and told of a spirit other than that so nobly framed under the rich masses of her dark hair. It was a face with a fascination—not the fascination of evil, but of struggle—a face betraying battle between forces pretty evenly balanced in the soul. But there was victory on it. Mr. Penrose saw it, read it, understood it. There were still traces of the scorching fire; these, however, were yielding to the verdure of a new life; the garden, which had been turned into a wilderness, was again blossoming as the rose.
‘Amanda, here's Mr. Penrose to see thee. I've bin tellin' him it's all dark to thee. It is, isn't it?’
But Amanda turned her head towards the wall, and answered not.
‘Amanda!’ said the mother, in tones that only once or twice, and that in the great crises of maternity, fall from woman's lips—‘Amanda, speyk. Tell him what's botherin' thee.’
But the girl was silent.
Mr. Penrose was silent also, and nothing was heard in the room save the tremulous beat of an old watch that hung over the chimney-shelf—one of the memorials of a husband and father long since taken, and now almost forgotten.
At last Amanda, without turning her face towards the pastor, said:
‘Sir, I'm a sinner—a lost sinner.’