‘No, you are not,’ replied Mr. Penrose.
And overawed and astonished with the boldness of his statement, he relapsed into silence.
Amanda turned and looked at him clearly and unflinchingly, and cried:
‘How dare yo' say that?’
‘Because you've repented,’ was the quiet reply.
‘Haa do yo' know I've repented?’
‘Because repentance is to come home; and you've come home, have you not?’
‘Repentance is to come wom'?’ slowly repeated the girl, as though some ray of light was penetrating the darkness. ‘Repentance is to come wom', sen yo'?’
‘Yes.’
And then Mr. Penrose repeated the words: ‘And he arose and came to his home; and when he was a great way off his father saw him and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him.’
‘Aw dare say; that's what mi mother did to me on th' neet I come wom'. But mi mother's noan God, is hoo?’
‘No; but if you had had no God, you could not have had a mother. You tell me your mother kissed you. Did you not feel God's kiss in that which your mother gave you?’
The girl shook her head; the pastor needed to make his message more plain.
‘It's in this way, you know,’ continued Mr. Penrose. ‘If there were no rain in the heavens there would be no springs in the valleys, would there? The well is filled because the clouds send down their showers; and so it is with love. Your mother's heart is full of love because God, who Himself is love, fills it. Your mother stands to you for God, and she is most like God when she is doing most for you; and when she kissed you and took you back again home, she was only doing what God made her do, and what God did Himself to you through her.’
‘But theer's summat else beside forgiveness, Mr. Penrose. I feel I've lost summat as I con never ged agen. I know I've getten back wom', but I haven't getten back what awv' lost.’
‘You may have it back, though, if it's worth having back. There was One who came to seek that which was lost. You are like the woman who lost one of her pieces of silver; but she found it again, and what you have lost Jesus will find and restore to you.’
‘But theer's th' past, Mr. Penrose, as well as th' lost. It's all theer afore me. Aw see it as plain as aw see yon moors through th' window, only it's noan green and breet wi' sunshine—it's dark.’
‘If God forgets the past, Amanda, why should you recall it? Look out through that window again. There's a cloud just dying away on the horizon yonder. Do you see it? It is changing its colour and losing its shape, and in a moment it will be gone. Watch it! It is almost gone. See! now it is gone—gone where? Gone into the light of that sun which is making the moors so green and bright. Now that is what God is doing with your past—with what you call your sins—blotting them out like a cloud. It is God's mercy that stands like the everlasting hills, and it is our sinfulness and our past that pass away like clouds. As you look at those hills you must think of His mercy, and as you watch those vanishing clouds you must think of your past.’
Once more there was silence in the sick-chamber, and the little watch ran its race with the beating, flickering pulse of Amanda. The girl turned her face towards the window that overlooked the moors, and begged her mother to open it so that she might again feel the cool airs that swept across their heathery wastes.
Mrs. Stott at once unhasped the casement, and a tide of life came stealing in, noiselessly lifting the curtains, and cooling the hectic flame that glowed on Amanda's wasted cheeks, and bearing, too, on its waves fragrances that recalled a long-lost paradise, and sounds—the echo of days when no discordant note marred the music of her life. These moorland breezes—how redolent, how murmurous of what had been! In a few moments Amanda closed her eyes, the wind caressing her into peacefulness and singing her to slumber.
It was the hour before dawn—the dark hour when minutes walk with leaden feet and the departing vapours of night lay chilliest finger on the sick and dying, and on those who watch at their side. From the mantelshelf the lamp emitted its feeble rays, dimly lighting the lonely chamber, and holding, as with uncertain hand, the shadows which crowded and cowered in the distant corners and recesses of the room, and throwing into Rembrandtesque the pallid face of the wakeful mother, and the flushed and fevered face of the slumbering child. The little watch beat bravely to the march of time, eager to keep pace with that never-flagging runner; while the quick and feeble breathing of the girl told how she was fast losing in the race with the all-omnipotent hours. On a small table stood two phials, in which were imprisoned dull-coloured liquids, powerless, despite their supposed potency, to stay the hunger of the disease so rapidly consuming the patient; and by their side was a plate of shrivelled fruit, the departing lusciousness of which had failed to tempt an appetite in her whose mouth was baked with the fever that fed on its own flame. There, gathered into a few cubic feet of space, met the great triune mystery of night, of suffering, of sin—the unfathomable problems of the universe; there God, the soul, and destiny, together and in silence, played out their terribly real parts.
As Mrs. Stott looked at her daughter tossing in restless sleep, the natal hour came back to her, and in memory she again travailed in birth. She recalled the joy of the advent of that life now so fast departing, and tried to say, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ The words died on her lips. Had it been a blessed thing on the part of God to give to her a child who brought disgrace on her family name? And now that her child was restored, with a possibility of redeeming the past, was it a blessed thing of God to take her? As these hideous thoughts chased one another through her over-wrought mind, they seemed to embody themselves in the terrible shadows that leapt and fought like demons on the wall, mere mockeries of her helplessness and despair.
Her eye, however, fell on the Bible, and taking it up and opening it at random, she read, ‘Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.’ Hurriedly turning over the leaves, her eyes again fell upon words that went like goads into her heart: ‘Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day, because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb.’
‘What!’ cried she, the old Calvinist life reasserting itself in her soul—‘what! have the curses o' God getten howd o' me?’
‘Mother!’
It was the voice of Amanda, and its sound called back the ebbing tides of maternity as the clear notes of a bugle rally the dispirited and flying forces on an undecided field.
‘Mother, will yo' draw that blind?’
‘What doesto want th' blind drawin' for, Amanda?’
‘I want to see th' morn break.’
‘Whatever for, lass?’ asked Mrs. Stott, as she drew the cord with tremulous hand.
For a few minutes the girl looked out at the distant horizon with a breaking light in her own eyes. Then, taking her mother's hand, she said:
‘Dun yo' see that rim o' gowd (gold) on the hills yonder?’
‘Yi, lass; forsure I do. What abaat it?’
‘Watch it, mother! See yo', it geds broder—more like a ribbin—a brode, yollow ribbin, like that aw wore i' mi hat when I were a little lass. Yo' remember, durnd yo'?—I wore it one charity sarmons.’
‘Aw remember, Amanda,’ said the parent, choking with the reminiscences of the past which the old hat and its yellow ribbon aroused.
‘Naa see, mother,’ continued the girl, her eye fixed on the opening sky; ‘it's like a great sea—a sea o' buttercups, same as used to grow in owd Whittam's field when yo' couldn't see grass for flaars.’
‘Yi, lass, I see,’ sobbed Mrs. Stott.
‘And thoose claads, mother! See yo' haa they're goin'. And th' hills and moors? Why I con see them plainer and plainer! Haa grond they are! They're awlus theer. Them, Mr. Penrose said, stood for God's love, didn't he, mother?—and them claads as are lifting for my sins.’
‘Yi, lass; he did, forsure.’
The dawn advanced, and before its majestic march there fled the shadows of night that for such long hours had made earth desolate. In the light of this dawn were seen those infinite lines of strength which rose from broad and massive bases, and, sweeping upwards, told of illimitable tracts beyond—mighty waves on the surface of the world's great inland seas, on whose crests sat the green and purple foam of herbage, and in whose hollows lay the still life of home and pasture. Silent, changeless, secure, perpetual sublimity rested on their summits, and unbroken repose lay along their graceful sweeps. They were the joy-bearers to the poor child of sorrow, who with eager eye looked out on their morning revelations. To her the mountains had brought peace.
That day was a new day to Amanda—a birthday—a day in which she realized the all-embracing strength and sufficiency of a Divine love. As the hours advanced the clouds gathered and showers fell, only, however, to be swept away by the wind, or dissolved into the light of the sun. These ever-changing, ever-dissolving, many-coloured vapours were watched by Amanda, who now saw in them the fleeting and perishable sins of her past life, and again and again, as one followed the other into oblivion, she would breathe a sigh of relief, and then allow her eyes to rest on the great hills that changed not, and which seemed to build her in with their strength.
From that day forward a great trust came upon her. She ceased to fret, and never again recalled what had been. Just as the chill of winter is forgotten in the glory of the springtide, and just as the child in the posied meadow sports in unconsciousness of the nipping frost that a few weeks before forced the tears to his eyes, so Amanda, playful, gladsome, and full of wonder in the new world in which she found herself, knew no more her old self, nor remembered any more her old life. The day had broken and the shadows flown, and God's child was like a young hart on the mountains of Bether.
‘Mother, dun yo' think they'd put my name on th' Church register agen at Rehoboth?’
‘I cornd say, mi Jass, I'm sure. But why doesto ax me?’
‘Becose I should like to dee a member of th' owd place. Yo' know I were a member once. Sin' I've been lyin' here I've had some strange thoughts. Dun yo' know, I never belonged to God then as I do naa, for all I were baptized and a communicant. It's queer, isn't it?’
‘Ey, lass; thaa'd better tell that to Mr. Penrose. I know naught abaat what yo're talkin' on. Bud it does seem, as thaa ses, quare that thaa belongs more to God naa nor thaa did when thaa went away.’
‘Nay, mother, it's noan exactly as yo' put it. I durnd mean as God's changed; it's me as has changed, durnd yo' see? I never knew or loved Him afore, and I know and love Him naa.’
That afternoon, when Mr. Penrose called, Amanda's mother told him all her daughter had said, and made known to him as the pastor of the Church the request for readmission and the administration of the sacrament.
Mr. Penrose, however, shook his head. As far as he was concerned, no one would have been more willing. But the deacons ruled his Church, and many of them were hard and exacting men—men with the eye and heart of Simon of old, who, while they would welcome Christ to meat, would put the ban upon ‘the woman who was a sinner.’ Nor dared Mr. Penrose administer the sacrament to one whose membership was not assured, for he ministered to those of a close sect, and a close sect of the straitest order. As the mother pleaded for her child, he saw rising before him a difficulty of which he had often dreamed, but never before faced—a difficulty of ministering to a Church fenced in by deeds, the letter of which he could not in his inner conscience accept.
The mother was importunate, however, and eventually the pastor promised to bring the matter before his deacons.
What the decision of these deacons was will be told in another Idyll of Rehoboth.
‘I'm noan for bringin' th' lass back into th' Church. Hoo's noan o'er modest, or hoo would never ax us to tak' her back.’
‘Same here, Amos! What does hoo want amang dacent Christian fo'k?’ And so saying, Elias Bradshaw opened a large pocket-knife and closed it again with a sharp click, and then toyed with it in his hand.
‘It wur bad enugh for th' owd woman to tak' her back wom', but if we tak' her back into th' Church we's be a thaasand times wur,’ continued Amos.
‘But surely,’ pleaded Mr. Penrose, ‘if the angels welcome a returning sinner, might we not venture to do the same?’
‘We're noan angels yet, Mr. Penrose,’ replied Amos. ‘It'll be time enugh to do as th' angels do when we live as th' angels live; an' I raither think as yo'd clam if yo' were put o' angels' meat. Ony road, ye con try it if yo' like; it'll save us summat i' th' offertory if yo' do.’
‘Come, Amos, thaa's goin' a bit too fur,’ interrupted Abraham Lord. ‘If yo're baan to insult th' parson, yo've no need to insult them as is up aboon—“ministerin' sperits,” as th' apostle cos em.’
‘We know thaa'rt no angel, Amos, baat thi tellin' us,’ said Malachi o' th' Mount. ‘And it ever they shap thee into one thaa'll tak' some tentin!’ (minding).
‘I durnd know as I want to be one afore mi time, Malachi: an' I'm noan baan to do as they do till I ged amang 'em. I'd as soon pool a warp ony day as play a harp; but when th' Almeety skifts me fro' th' Brig Factory to heaven, mebbe I'll shap as weel at a bit o' music as ony on yo'.’
‘Wilto play thi music o'er sich as Amanda, thinksto?’ asked old Malachi.
‘Thee mind thi business, Malachi. When th' Almeety maks me an angel, I'll do as th' angels do. But noan afore, noather for yo', nor Amanda Stott, nor Mr. Penrose, nor onybody else, so naa thaa knows.’
‘Spokken like a mon,’ assented Elias Bradshaw. ‘Stick to thi text, Amos.’
‘And yet, after all,’ said Dr. Hale, ‘I think we ought to receive Amanda back again into our communion. The only One who ever forgave sins drew no line as to their number, nor shade as to their degree.’
‘But durnd yo' think, doctor, that if we do as yo' want us we's be turnin' th' Church into a shoddy hoile?’ asked Elias Bradshaw.
‘There are no shoddy souls,’ said the doctor.
‘No,’ continued Mr. Penrose; ‘it was not shoddy that Christ came to seek and save.’
‘Who wur it said th' gate were strait and th' road narro'?’ cried out an old man who was always known by the name of ‘Clogs.’
‘That's no reason why yo' should want to turn th' gate into a steele-hoile (stile), is it?’ retorted Malachi.
‘Gate or steele-hoile, it's narro'; and that's enugh for me, an' it were noan us ut made it narro'; it wur th' Almeety Hissel',’ replied Clogs.
‘At any rate, He made it wide enough for Amanda,’ said Dr. Hale, ‘and that is the matter we are now considering.’
‘I'm noan so sure o' that, doctor. There's a good bit o' Scripter agen yo' if yo' come to texes.’
‘Then so much the worse for Scripture,’ was the unguarded, yet honest, retort of Mr. Penrose; and Dr. Hale laid a kind hand on the young minister's shoulder to restrain his haste.
‘It seems to me,’ said Elias Bradshaw, ‘as Mr. Penrose spends a deal too mich time in poolin' up the stumps and makin' th' strait gate into a gap as ony rubbige con go thro'. I could like to yer him preych fro' the fifteenth verse o' th' last chapter i' Revelation. I once yerd a grond sarmon fro' that text i' th' pulpit up aboon here; and when it were oer, Dickey o' Sams o' the Heights went aat o' th' chapel, and tried to draan hissel' i' Green Fold Lodge. Naa, that's what I co powerful preychin'!’
‘Pardon me, Mr. Bradshaw. We are not here to discuss the merits of preaching. We are here to consider the request of Amanda Stott—’
‘An' axin' yor pardon, Mr. Penrose, that's whod I wur comin' to. I'm noan a fancy talker like yo'. Aw never larned to be, and I'm noan paid to be. Whod I wur baan to say, if you'll nobbud let me, wur this: As Jesus Christ wur a deal more particular who He leet in than who He kept aat. That's all.’
‘But who did He keep out?’ asked Dr. Hale.
‘Haa mony, thinksto, did He leet in, doctor? I could welly caant um o' on both mi hands.’
‘It seems to me yo' want to mak' saints as scarce as white crows,’ said Abraham Lord.
‘Nay, Abram; we want to keep th' black 'uns aat o' th' nests.’
‘Then yo' mud as weel fell th' rookery,’ was Abraham's sharp retort, which called forth a hearty laugh.
‘If I read th' Bible reet,’ said Amos Entwistle, returning to the fray, ‘if I read th' Bible reet, a felley once coome to Jesus Christ an' axed Him if mony or few wur saved; and all he geet for an answer wur, “Thee mind and geet saved thisel'; it'll tak' thee all thy time wi'out botherin' abaat others.” An' I think it'll tak' us all aar time baat botherin' abaat Amanda Stott. I move as we tak' no more notice on her axin' to come back amang us. It's geddin' lat, an' my porritch is waitin' for me at wom'.’
This was more than Mr. Penrose could bear, and rising to his feet, he asked, in suppressed tones, that the matter under discussion might receive the care and wisdom and mercy that a soul demanded from those who held in their hands the shaping of its earthly destiny; and then, in a voice stifled with emotion, he ventured to draw the contrast between the last speaker, who would fain hurry, for the sake of an evening meal, decisions that had to deal with the peace of a repentant girl, and He who, in the moments of bodily hunger, putting aside the refreshment brought by His disciples, said, ‘I have meat to eat that ye know not of.’
Nor did Mr. Penrose plead in vain. Those who listened to him were moved by his words, and Amos Entwistle sat down, to utter no further word against Amanda.
From this time the tone of the discussion changed. Not that Mr. Penrose devoutly listened; indeed, he was listless, only recovering himself, now and again, as some striking sentence, or scrap of rude philosophy, fell on his indifferent ear. Leaning back in his chair, his eye rested on the hard features of the men sitting on either side of the deacons' table. They were men of grit, men of the hills, men whose religious ancestry was right royal. Their fathers had fayed out well the foundations on which the old chapel stood, and hewn the stones, and reared the walls, and all for love—and after the close of hard days of toil. They were men who knew nothing of moral half-lights—there were no gradations in their sense of right and wrong. Sin was sin, and righteousness was righteousness—the one night and the other day. They drew a line, narrow and inflexible, and knew no debatable zone where those who lingered were neither sinners nor saints. And so with the doctrines they held. Severity characterized them. Justice became cruelty, and faith superstition. They knew nothing of progressive revelations. The old Sinaitic God still ruled; the mountain was still terrible, and dark with the clouds of wrath. Fatherhood in the Deity was an unknown attribute, and tenderness a note never sounded in the creed they held. They had been bred on meat, and they were strong men. They knew nothing of the tender tones of Him whose feet became the throne of the outcast. Their God was a consuming fire.
As Mr. Penrose looked into their faces, many bitter thoughts poisoned the waters of his soul. He thought of Simon the Pharisee; he thought, too, of St. Dominic; and of Calvin with the cry for green wood, so that Servetus might slowly burn. He thought, too, of the curse of spiritual pride—pride that enthroned men as judges over the destiny of their fellows, and damned souls as freely and as coolly as a commander marched his forlorn hope into the yawning breach. And then, realizing that among such his lot was thrown—realizing also the dead hand that rested on his teaching and preaching—his heart went down into a sea of hopelessness, and he felt the chill of despair.
The gong of the chapel clock announced the hour of nine, in thin, metallic beats, and looking up, he noted the swealing tapers in the candelabra over his head. In his over-wrought, nervous condition, he imagined he saw in one of the flickering, far-spent lights the waning life of Amanda Stott, and the horrible thought of eternal extinction at death laid its cold hand on the larger hope which he was struggling to keep aflame in his darkening soul. Turning his glances towards the pulpit that rose gaunt and square above the deacons' pew, and over which hung the old sounding-board, as though to mock the voices, now for ever silent, that from time to time had been wont to reverberate from its panels, he began to wonder whether the message the Church called revelation was not, after all, as vain as ‘laughter over wine’; and as he looked on the frowning galleries and the distant corners of the chapel, gloomy and fearsome—the high-backed pews, peopled with shadows thrown from the waning lights—he felt the force of the words of one of his masters: ‘What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.’
Suddenly he was recalled to his position as the pastor of the church by the voice of old Enoch, mellow as the tones of the flute on which he so often tuned his soul in moods of sorrow and sin. How long Enoch had been talking Mr. Penrose knew not; but what he heard in the rude yet kindly vernacular of the moors was:
‘Let's show mercy, lads! Noan o' us con howd up aar yeds baat it. Him as has put us here expects us to show yon lass o' Stott's same as He's shown to us Hissel'. There's one bit o' readin' i' th' New Testament as noan o' yo' has had owt to say abaat—I mean where th' Lord tells o' th' two debtors. Th' fust geet let off; but when he wouldn't let his mate off, it were a sore job for him. Durnd yo' think as th' Almeety cares as mich abaat us as we care for aar childer? I somehaa thinks He does. Didn't him as played on th' harp say, “Like as a faither pitieth his childer, so th' Lord pitieth them that fear Him”? An' him as said that had a bad lad an' o'—an' didn't he say he'd raither ha' deed than th' lad? Aw welly think as th' Almeety con find room for Amanda, and if He con, I think we mud be like to thrutch (push) her into Rehoboth. Let's mak' room for her, hoo'l happen not want it so long; and when hoo's gone we's noan be sorry we took her in; who knows but what we shall be takin' in the Lord Hissel? I'm no scholard, but I've read abaat 'em takin' in angels unawares; and th' Lord said if we took onybody in ut wur aat i' th' cowd, we wur takin' Him in. If we shut Amanda out we's mebbe shut Him aat, and if He's aatside, them as is inside will be on th' wrang side. Coome, lads, let's show mercy.’
There were other voices, however, besides Enoch's, and speakers as apt at quotation from the Scriptures as he. Indeed, the Bible was torn into shreds of texts, and—the letter so re-patched as to destroy the pattern wrought by its great principles of mercy and love. The grand words—righteousness, grace, law, were clashed, and wildly rung, like sweet bells jangled out of tune, and the court of souls resembled the vindictiveness of Miltonic demons rather than the seat of those who claimed to represent Him who said: ‘I will have mercy and not sacrifice.’ When the vote was taken the door was shut against Amanda.
Passing out of the dimly-lighted chapel into the blackness of the night, Dr. Hale took the arm of the young minister, saying:
‘Let me guide you, Mr. Penrose. I know these roads by instinct.’
‘Yes, doctor, I not only need your guidance, but that of someone else. Black as the night is, it isn't so black as the souls of those benighted inquisitors we've left behind us. There are stars behind those clouds; but there are none hidden behind the murky creed of the deacons of Rehoboth. Do they expect me, doctor, to carry their decision to Mrs. Stott and her daughter?’
‘I believe they do. Hard messages, you know, must be delivered both by ministers and doctors. It is my lot sometimes to tell people that their days are numbered, when I would almost as soon face death myself.’
‘Well, I have made up my mind, doctor, to face the resignation of Rehoboth rather than carry their heartless decision to Amanda.’
‘Wait until morning, and then come on to my house and consult with old Mr. Morell; he is staying with me for a day or two. You never met with him. Perhaps he can guide, or at any rate help you. Wisdom lies with the ancients, you know.’
‘But are not the men who have refused admission to Amanda the spiritual children of Mr. Morell? If his preaching has brought about what we have seen and heard to-night, what guidance or help can I get from him?’
‘Just so,’ said the doctor. ‘I was not thinking of that. It's true he was pastor here for over forty years, and our deacons are his spiritual offspring. For all that, the old man's heart is right if his head is wrong; and, after all, it's the heart that rules the life.’
‘Nay! no heart could thrive on a creed such as Rehoboth's. Why, God's heart would grow Jean on it.’
‘But Mr. Morell's heart is not lean, Mr. Penrose. It is not, I assure you,’ emphasized the doctor, as his companion uttered a sceptical grunt. ‘He is tenderness incarnate. You know one good thing came out of Nazareth, despite the scepticism of the disciple.’
‘Certainly a good thing did come out of Nazareth; but Nazareth, bad as it was, was not a Calvinistic creed. I very much question whether the creed of Rehoboth can preserve a tender heart.’
‘Come and see,’ laconically replied Dr. Hale.
‘Very well, then, I'll treat my scepticism honestly. I will come and see. To-night the hour is too late. I will look in to-morrow morning.’
Mr. Penrose continued his homeward walk, conscious of the first symptoms of the reaction which follows hours of tension such as those through which he had just passed. He was limp. Morally as well as physically his nerve was gone. He thought of the Apostle who fought with beasts at Ephesus, and envied him his combatants. His fretful impatience with those who differed from him theologically rose to a tide of insane hatred, and he lost himself in a passion against his deacons as bitter as that which they had shown towards Amanda Stott and himself.
Entering his lodgings, and lighting his lamp, he threw himself on the couch, resenting in bitterness of spirit the limitations of creeds, and the exactions imposed on men who, like himself, were called to minister to brawling sects. Thrice he sat down at his desk; thrice he wrote out his resignation, and thrice he committed it to the flames. Then, recalling the words of an old college professor who often used to tell his students that the second Epistle of the Corinthians was the ministerial panacea in the hour of depression, he took up his Testament and read:
‘Ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distress ... by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by love unfeigned, by the Holy Ghost, by the word of truth, by the power of God.’
And there came on the young pastor a spirit of power, and of love, and of a new mind, and he slept.
On the following morning Mr. Penrose set out to call on the old pastor at the house of Dr. Hale, conjuring up as he went pictures of the man whom he knew only by report, and, as he deemed, exaggerated report too. To Rehoboth people Mr. Morell was a prodigy—a veritable prophet of the Most High; and his successor's sojourn was not a little embittered by the disparaging contrasts so frequently drawn between the old order and the new. To be for ever told the texts from which Mr. Morell used to preach, to hear in almost every house some pet saying or scrap of philosophy wont to fall from his lips, to be asked, if not bidden, by the deacons to tread in the footprints of one who was believed to wear the seven-league boots, became intolerable; and had not discretion guarded the speech of Mr. Penrose, many a time his language of retort would have been strange to covenanted lips. Often, too, he asked himself what manner of man he must be who nursed and reared this narrow sect of the hills—a sect setting judgment before mercy, and law before love—a sect narrowing salvation to units, and drawing the limit line of grace around a fragment of mankind.
On his arrival at Dr. Hale's, however, a surprise greeted him, and as he responded to the old pastor's outstretched hand, he knew he met with one in whom firm gentleness and affable dignity were the chief charm of character. There was not, as he anticipated, coarse, crass assertiveness—a semi-cultured man whose narrow creed joined hands with barren intelligence. Far otherwise; he stood before one whose presence commanded reverence, one at whose feet he felt he must bow.
Mr. Morell was tall and erect, with a fine Greek head whose crown of snowy hair lent dignity to a face sunny with the light of kindness, while every line of expression, those soul-inscriptions written by the years on the plastic flesh, told of thought and culture. The accent, too, was finished, and every gesture betrayed refinement and ease.
At first the conversation was restrained, for both men instinctively felt that between them lay a gulf which it would be difficult to bridge; but, as Dr. Hale played well the part of middleman, the ministers were drawn out towards each other, and in a little while struck mutual chords in one another's hearts.
During the morning the two men talked of art, of philosophy, and of history, the discussion of these calling out a light of intelligence and rapture on the old man's face. When, however, the graver questions of theology were broached, his voice became hard and inflexible, a shadow fell, and the radiancy of the man and scholar became lost in the gloom of the divine.
Whenever Mr. Penrose ventured to hint on some phase of the broader theology, the old man was provoked to impatience; and when he went so far as to quote Browning, and declare that—
‘The loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds,’
a gleam of fire shot from the mild eye of Mr. Morell, significant as a storm-signal across a sea of glass.
The younger man was often taken at disadvantage, for, while he was in touch with modern thought, he did not possess the old dialectician's skill. Once, as Mr. Penrose remarked that science was modifying theology, Mr. Morell, detecting the flaw in his armour, thrust in his lance to the hilt by replying that science and Calvinism were logically the same, with the exception that, for heredity and environment, the Calvinist introduced grace.
Whereupon Mr. Penrose cried with some vehemence:
‘No, no, Mr. Morell! that will not do. I cannot accept your statement at all.’
‘Can't you?’ said the old man, rising from his chair, the war spirit hardening his voice and flaming in his eye. ‘Can't you? What says science of the first hundred men which will pass you, if you take your stand in the main thoroughfare of the great city over the hills yonder? Watch them; one is drunk, another is linked arm in arm with his paramour, a third is handcuffed, and you can see by the conduct of him who follows that he is as reckless of life as though the years were for ever. Why these? Ask science, and it answers election—the election of birth and circumstance. Ask Calvinism, and it, too, answers election—the election of decrees.’
‘But science does not do away with will, Mr. Morell.’
‘Well, then, it teaches its impotence, and that is the same thing. It bases will on organization, and traces conduct to material sources. Huxley tells us the salvation of a child is to be born with a sound digestion, and Calvinism says the salvation of a child is to be born under the election of grace. Logically, the basis of both systems is the same; the sources of life differ, that is all. One traces from matter, the other from mind—from the mind and will of the Eternal.’
‘But science fixes it for earth only—you fix it for eternity,’ suggestively hinted the younger man.
‘Yes, you are right, Mr. Penrose; we do.’
‘Then a man is lost because he cannot be saved, and punished for things over which he had no control?’
‘Ask science,’ was the curt reply.
‘Well, Mr. Morell, I will ask science, and science will yield hope. Science says, take a hundred men and a hundred women, and let them live on a fruitful island and multiply, and in four generations you will have an improved stock—a stock freer from atavism, hysteria, anomalies, and insanities. Science holds out hope; you don't. You say God's will and decrees are eternal, and what they were a thousand ages since they will be a thousand ages to come. Science does eventually point to a new heaven and new earth, but Calvinism throws no light across the gloom.’
The old man quietly shifted his ground by asking his opponent if he ever asked himself why he did, and why he did not, do certain things.
‘I suppose the reason is because of my choice, is it not?’
‘And what governs choice—or, if you like, will?’
‘I do, myself.’
‘Who are you, and what part of you governs it? Will cannot govern Will, can it? And can you divorce will from personality?’
‘Tennyson answers your question, Mr. Morell.
‘“Our wills are ours, we know not how,”
that is the mystery of existence.
‘“Our wills are ours, to make them Thine,”
that is the mystery of salvation.’
‘Then, Mr. Penrose, I ask you—why don't we make our wills God's?’
Mr. Penrose was silent, and then he made a slip, and played into his opponent's hands by saying:
‘My faith in a final restitution meets that difficulty. We shall all be God's some time; His love is bound to conquer.’
‘Suppose what you call Will defies God's love, what then?’
‘It cannot.’
‘Then it is no longer will.’
‘Cannot you conceive of Will winning Will?’
‘I can conceive of Will, as you define it, defying Will, and that for ever. But we escape your contradictions; we accept the fact that some men are under a Divine control they cannot resist—’
‘Then you both agree as to the principle,’ broke in Dr. Hale; ‘you are both Calvinists, with this difference: you, Mr. Morell, say only the few will be called; Mr. Penrose, here, says all will be called. Let us go in for the larger hope.’
‘You are right, doctor. I am a Calvinistic Universalist,’ cried Mr. Penrose in triumph.
And Mr. Morell was bound to admit the doctor had scored.
It was not long, however, before Mr. Penrose found a spring of tenderness hidden beneath the crust of Calvinism that lay around the old man's soul, and on which were written in fiery characters the terrors of a merciless law. And the rod that smote this rock and tapped the spring was none other than the story of Amanda's return and repentance, told in part by Dr. Hale and in part by the young pastor himself.
As the story was unfolded, the old man evinced much feeling, often raising his hand to shade fast-filling eyes, or to brush away the tears that fell down his furrowed face. They told him of Amanda's silence as to the past, and he commended her for it, remarking to Mr. Penrose that the true penitent seldom talked of the yesterdays of sin; they told him how she counted herself unworthy of home and of love, seeking blame and not welcome from the mother to whom she had returned, and he declared it to be a token of her call; they told him of the great light and peace that fell on her as she rested on the goodness of God, and they heard from him the echo of his Master's words over Mary—‘She hath loved much, for she hath had much forgiven’; and then they told him of her desire for the restoration of her name on the Rehoboth register, and he was silent—and for some minutes no sound disturbed his reverie.
That silence was God's speaking hour. Within the old pastor's soul a voice was whispering before which the thunderings of the creed of a sect were hushed. He, poor man, knew full well that it was a voice which had long striven to make itself heard—a still, small voice that would neither strive nor cry—a haunting voice, a voice constant in its companionship during his later years. How often he would fain have listened to it! But he dared not, for was it not a contradictory voice? Did it not traverse the letter which he had sworn to uphold and declare? What if the voice were the voice of God? No! It could not be. God spoke in His Book. It was plain. Wayfaring men might read, and fools had no need to err. But was God's voice for ever hushed? Had He had no message since the seal was fixed to the Canon of Scripture? What if that which he heard was one of those messages concerning which Christ said, ‘I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.’ Had the now in his life passed? Had the then come when a fuller revelation was about to be vouchsafed? Nay! even the Apostle—the man inspired—only knew in part. Why should he, then, try to pry into the clouds and darkness that were round about the awful throne? And yet in Him who sat on that throne was no darkness at all. Supposing the feelings struggling in his heart now were rays of light from Him—rays seeking to pierce the clouds, and bring more truth—truth which, in his highest moments, he had dreamed of, but never dared to follow. Was not Dr. Hale right after all? Was it not better to trust what we knew to be best in us, and follow the larger rather than the lesser hope?
And so, in the silence, the two voices reasoned in the soul of Mr. Morell.
In a little while Mr. Morell, roused from his reverie, turned to the young pastor, and said:
‘Your poet is right, Mr. Penrose. The loving worm within its clod is diviner than a loveless god amid his worlds. Let us go as far as the chapel.’
As they walked along the narrow, winding roadways, broken by projecting gables, and fenced by irregular rows of palisades, the old pastor began to re-live the long-departed days. Objects, once familiar, on which his eye again rested, restored faded and forgotten colours, and opened page after page in the books of the past. Many cottages mutely welcomed him, their time-stained walls memorials of generations with whom he held sacred associations. There was the Old Fold Farm, with its famous fruit-trees, on which, in spring evenings, he used to watch the blanching blossoms blush beneath the glowing caress of the setting sun; and Alice o' th' Nook's garden, with its beds of camomile, the scent of which brought back, as perfumes are wont to, forms and faces long since summoned by the ‘mystic vanishers.’ There, too, stood the old manse—now tenantless—so long the temple of his studies and domesticities, the shrine of joys and sorrows known to none save himself. How the history of a life lay hidden there, each wall scored with fateful characters, decipherable only to the eye of him who for so many ears sought the shelter which they gave.
On the summit of the hill in front of him was the chapel, its sagging roof silhouetted against the blue of the morning sky, the tombstones, irregular and rude, rising from the billowy sea of grave-mounds that lay around their base. Beyond him, in grandly distant sweeps, rose the moors. How well he knew all their contours, their histories, their names! How familiar he used to be with all their moods—moods sombre and gladsome—as now they were capped with mist, now radiant in sunlight, their sweeps dappled with cloud shadows, moving or motionless, or white in the broad eye of day. Thus it was, within the distance of a half-mile walk, his past life, like an open scroll, lay before him; and he remarked to Mr. Penrose that he had that morning found the book of memory to be a book of life and a book of judgment also.
As the three men passed through the chapel-gates they were met by old Joseph, who was hearty in his welcome of Mr. Morell.
‘Eh! Mr. Morell,’ he said, grasping his hand in a hard and earthy palm, ‘aw'm some fain to see yo'. We've hed no gradely preachin' sin yo' left Rehoboth. This lad here,’ pointing to Mr. Penrose, ‘giz us a twothree crumbs betimes; but some on us, I con tell yo', are fair clamming for th' bread o' life. None o' yo'r hawve-kneyded duf (dough), nor your hawve-baked cakes, wi' a pinch o' currants to fotch th' fancy tooth o' th' young uns. Nowe, but gradely bread, yo' know.’
Mr. Morell tried to check the brutal volubility and plain-spokenness of Joseph, but in vain. He continued the more vehemently.
‘It's all luv naa, and no law. What mak' o' a gospel dun yo' co it when there's no law, no thunerins (thunderings), Mr. Morell, no leetnins? What's th' use o' a gospel wi'out law? No more use nor a chip i' porritch. Dun yo' remember that sarmon yo' once preached fro' “Jacob have I luved, but Esau have I hated”? It wur a grand un, and Owd Harry o' th' Brig went straight aat o' th' chapel to th' George and Dragon and geet drunk, 'cose, as he said, he mud as well ged drunk if he wor baan to be damned, as be damned for naught. Amos Entwistle talks abaat that sarmon naa, and tells bits on it o'er to th' childer i' th' catechism class, and then maks 'em ged it off by heart.’
How long old Joseph would have continued in this strain it is hard to say, had not Mr. Morell, who did not seem to care to hear more of his pulpit deliverance of other days, silenced him by demanding the vestry keys.
As the three men entered the vestry a close, damp atmosphere smote them—an atmosphere pervading all rooms long shut up from air, and with foundations fed by fattened graves.
Nor was the vestry itself more inviting. Gloomy and low-ceiled, the plaster of its walls, soddened and discoloured from the moisture of the moors, lay peeling off in ragged strips, while its oozing floor of flags seemed to tell of sweating corpses in their narrow beds beneath.
Through a small window, across which a spider had woven its web, a shaft of sunlight lay tremulous with the dance of multitudinous motes; and, falling on the dust-covered table, lighted up with its halo a corroded pen and stained stone jar, half filled with congealed ink.
On the right of this window stood a cupboard, with its panels of dark oak, behind which lay the parchments and papers of the Rehoboth Church—parchments and papers whose inscriptions were fast fading, whose textures were fast rotting—companioning in their decay the decay of the creeds they sought to preserve and proclaim.
It was to this cupboard Mr. Morell turned, taking therefrom two time-stained, leather-bound volumes—the one a record of the interments of the past hundred years, the other containing the roll of Rehoboth communicants since the establishment of the Church. Laying the former aside, he took up the latter with a tenderness and devoutness becoming one who was touching the sacred books of some fetish of the East. It was, indeed, to him a book to be reverenced; and as he slowly and sadly turned over its time-stained pages, his eye rested on many names entered in his own small handwriting—names which carried him back to companionship with lives for ever past. Some he had known from birth to death, blessing them in their advent, and committing them at the grave to Him who is the sure and certain hope. There were those, too, whom he piloted along the rocky coasts of youth—those with whom he once wept in their shadowed homes, and from whom he never withheld his joy in their hour of triumph. As name after name met his eye, it was as though he travelled the streets of a ruined city—a city with which in the days of its glory he had been familiar. Memories—nothing but memories—greeted him. He heard voices, but they were silent; he saw forms, but they were shadowy.
As he turned over page after page he read as never before the record of his half-century's pastorate—his moorland ministry among an ever-changing people, and there passed before him the pageant of a life—not loud in blare, nor brilliant in colour—but sombre, stately, and true.
Continuing to turn over the pages, he came to where a black line was drawn across the name of Amanda Stott, and where against the cancelled name a word was written as black as the ink with which it was inscribed.
Again there came a pause. Long and tearfully the old pastor looked at that name disfigured, as she, too, who bore it had been, by the hand of man. Then, taking up the corroded pen and filling it, he re-wrote the name in the space between the narrow blue-ruled lines, and, looking up with smiling face, said:
‘Yet there is room.’
And the shaft of sunlight that fell in through the cobwebbed window of the Rehoboth vestry lay on the newly-inscribed name, as though heaven sealed with her assent the act of the old man who felt himself the servant of the One who said, ‘I will in no wise cast out.’