JOSHUA STOPS HIS WATCH.
Little Bethel was crammed to suffocation on the Sunday that followed
the burial of Oswald Pentreath. Not only had the flock assembled in
fullest force to hear their pastor improve the occasion, and enlarge
upon the evil that had been wrought against him by the Philistine,
but many who were not of Joshua’s sect had been drawn to his
tabernacle by curiosity. They wanted to see how the man would bear
himself under circumstances so trying to manly fortitude.
The flock were not disappointed in the demeanour of their minister.
Never had Joshua conducted his simple service with greater dignity.
His prayers, those eloquent extemporary supplications modelled upon
the theology of William Law, yet, with something of Jeremy Taylor’s
florid warmth in their colouring, carried his congregation along
with him like rushing waters down which a fleet of frail boats are
driven tumultuously, knowing not whither they drift. It was by his
eloquence in prayer chiefly that Joshua had established his power
over his flock. He elevated their souls by his own enthusiasm; they
felt themselves raised to a spiritual height which of themselves
alone they could never have obtained. They heard their cares and
sorrows, their petty doubts and difficulties, their failures and
shortcomings and evil acts laid at the foot of the great Throne, with
such appeals for pardon and pity as their dull minds could never
frame, their uneloquent lips never utter. Joshua took them up in
his arms, as it were, and held them at the feet of their Saviour,
and called down the eternal mercy for them. He used the Scriptures
for their benefit, as a skilful barrister uses precedents for the
extrication of his clients. He found bounteous promises that they
had never dreamed of in those familiar words of Holy Writ, covenants
and pledges of grace and mercy. He held a golden key, with which he
opened the treasury of Heaven, and brought forth promises and favours
for his people.
To-day his prayers took a tone of deepest self-humiliation. He
laid himself prostrate before offended Heaven, and there was none
of the exultant pride which the flock expected to discover in his
supplications, no thanksgiving for an unsullied conscience and a
soul clear of offence, for rectitude which could laugh to scorn
the revilings of the evil-minded. It was the publican and not the
Pharisee who stood up to pray in that rural temple.
The hymn he chose was of a gloomy cast--but all his ministrations had
of late been of a gloomy character. When he went up into the pulpit,
and looked round at the upturned faces, and slowly opened his Bible,
there was a hush of expectancy. It was thought that his text would
have some bearing on the strange event of the past week, and that in
his sermon he would take occasion publicly to declare the falsehood
and iniquity of the charge that had been brought against him.
But when he had given out the text, with his usual deliberate
distinctness, there was a general sense of disappointment--the verses
he had chosen seemed to have so little bearing on the subject which
filled the public mind.
‘In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a
sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one
shall die for his own iniquity.’ Only Naomi understood the meaning
of those words of assurance. For each the burden of his own sin;
the assassin’s innocent children were to have no portion in the
shame and agony of his guilt. Upon this text Joshua Haggard enlarged
with more than his accustomed power. Very awful was the picture
which he painted of the sinner’s earthly doom, the slow agonies of
conscience, the shameful shrinking from the face of his fellow-men,
the caresses of his children stinging him like the sting of serpents,
the reverence and obedience of his household a mockery and a
reproach--the light of day intolerable, the sun a burden, the quiet
night accursed. And when from this picture of the sinner’s suffering
on earth he turned to the contemplation of his punishment hereafter,
the vision assumed a darker and more terrible aspect. Before the
titanic tortures of that land of shadows, earth’s puny torments
shrunk to the sting of buzzing summer flies as measured against the
venom of the cobra or the rattle-snake. Joshua conjured up those
visions of horror with a strange uncanny power, as if the fiend had
lifted the corner of hell’s curtain, and showed him the fiery gulf
behind. He dwelt on these terrors with a gloomy relish, and spoke of
hell and doom with a familiar knowledge, as if he had steeped his
soul in the fires of Pandemonium.
‘But for the sinner’s children,’ he cried at last, withdrawing his
mind, as by an effort, from this contemplation of the nethermost pit,
‘they shall go free, Heaven will not lay upon them the burden of a
father’s sin. He shall perish, he shall go to his doom, but they
shall remain scathless. On earth, perchance, their portion may be
shame and suffering, for earth’s judgments are lying judgments; but
God is righteous, and will keep this promise, and will adjust the
balance.’
* * * * *
Coming out of chapel, amidst the crowd, Naomi found herself close to
a stranger who was talking of her father.
‘I can believe anything of this man now I’ve heard him preach,’ he
said.
‘Why?’ inquired his companion.
‘Because I am very sure he is a madman.’
‘I don’t see that,’ said the other, startled by the assertion. ‘His
sermon was violent and gloomy, but sane enough.’
‘No sane man ever preached as that man preaches, and you may take my
word for it.’
Here the crowd parted Naomi from the speaker, but what she had heard
impressed her deeply. It was hardly a new thought which was thus
abruptly presented to her. The change in her father had inspired
her with fears, to which she had hardly dared to give their actual
form. Who was to discriminate between perpetual gloom, moody
silence, an unbroken reserve, and the tokens and indications of a
mind distraught? That her father’s whole character had undergone an
alteration since the day of Oswald Pentreath’s disappearance, she
well knew. Was it not possible that, on that day, the clear light
of reason was darkened for ever? From that fatal hour he had broken
loose from all old ties--from children and wife, and friends and
business--he had been like an owl of the desert, a pelican in the
wilderness.
But even with the horror of the thought there came a blessed sense
of relief. If reason had left him in the hour of temptation, if the
light was quenched before he did that fatal deed, her father was not
accountable for his sin. It was not with his whole mind that he had
broken the Divine Law. The clouded brain had not taken the measure of
the act.
This offered a way out of her deepest sorrow. Dreadful as earthly
penalties might be--shameful, intolerable, revolting--it was Heaven’s
anger she most dreaded for the father she so devotedly loved. Sure
of God’s pardon and pity for the sinner, she could see him perish on
the scaffold with only earthly sorrow, with only sense of earthly
suffering and loss; secure of a fair hereafter, a glorious meeting
in a land of rest and peacefulness, where the red robes of repentant
sinners were to be washed whiter than snow.
Awful, then, as this thought of mental alienation was, there was
comfort in it. She could cling closer to her afflicted father,
pitying and pardoning him; full of remorse for her own share in his
suffering, ascribing to herself half his guilt.
‘If I had but spared him the knowledge of that letter, Heaven might
have spared me this anguish,’ she thought.
Joshua was absent from the family board at the two-o’clock Sunday
dinner, an uninteresting repast of cold provisions, which James
Haggard regarded as one of the privations and trials of his career.
Other people in Combhaven rioted in hot joints and savoury potatoes,
reeking with unctuous grease and gravy, followed by huge fruit pie or
pasty, and perchance a bowl of cream.
‘I don’t call it honouring the Sabbath to sit down to a worse dinner
than on a work-a-day,’ Jim remarked argumentatively. ‘And all that
Sally may sit in a corner of our pew and breathe hard all through the
sermon.’
‘Eat your dinner, and be thankful,’ said aunt Judith severely; ‘or
leave it, and hold your tongue. I wonder you can be so base-minded
as to think of your meals at such a time, with such affliction come
upon your house as we’ve had to bear.’
‘Do you mean Captain Pentreath bringing that charge against father?’
asked Jim contemptuously. ‘I’m not such a fool as to fret about that.
Any lunatic might accuse us of murder, or arson, or high treason,
or gunpowder plot. Poor Pentreath’s head’s been turned by finding
his brother at the bottom of Matcherly mine. I was over at the First
and Last when the inquest was going on, and heard everybody saying
that it was worse than madness to lay such a crime at father’s door.
There’s not a man in Combhaven would believe a word against father.’
‘It would be hard if they would,’ retorted Judith, ‘after the life
your father has lived among ’em all these years, and no one able
to bring a reproach against him, unless it was for foolishness in
marrying a silly girl for the sake of her pretty face.’
‘I never saw any silliness in Cynthia,’ said Jim; ‘and for my part I
wish she was home again. I miss her pretty face, though it was sad
enough for the last twelvemonth, goodness knows. I don’t think we any
of us made her too happy.’
‘She’s a deal better away,’ replied Judith, with a sour look. ‘She
turned your father’s thoughts from his duties, and never brought
anything but trouble into this house. Let her stop with friends of
her own station, if she has any.’
‘Ain’t it rather like turning her out of doors to let her stop away
so long?’ asked Jim.
‘I didn’t know it was a son’s place to find fault with his father’s
doings,’ said Judith. ‘Your father’s the best judge of his duty to
his wife, I should hope. It isn’t for us to interfere. He didn’t ask
our leave when he brought her home, and it’s not likely he’d want our
leave to send her away.’
‘It’s a pity things couldn’t go smoother, anyhow,’ pursued Jim
persistently; ‘for she’s a pretty little thing, and a good little
thing, that would never do harm to any one.’
‘That’s all you know, Mr. Clever. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to
keep your opinion till you’re asked for it. Why don’t you eat your
dinner, Naomi?’ inquired Miss Haggard sharply. ‘It’s as good a bit of
beef as ever was cooked, and I suppose _you’re_ not too dainty to eat
cold meat on the Sabbath?’
‘I’m not hungry, aunt,’ said Naomi.
She had been sitting with her plate before her, making no attempt
to eat, hearing her aunt and brother talking, but in nowise
understanding them. Her thoughts were with her father in his
lonely room. He had pleaded a headache, and gone quietly up to his
bedchamber when he came in from chapel. How was he bearing his
burden? Without consolation, without sympathy. Yes, verily without
human sympathy; but for this believer, even in his depth of guilty
despair, there still remained a pitying Ear that would listen to his
groaning, and take account of his anguish. The Friend of sinners
would not be deaf to his cry.
‘I think I’ll go up-stairs and see how father is, and if he wants
anything,’ said Naomi, rising from her seat at the table.
‘If I was you, I wouldn’t go bothering and disturbing him,’ said
Judith, with her accustomed tartness; ‘but of course you can do as
you like about it.’
This was an indirect order not to go, but for once in her life Naomi
disobeyed, and went straight to Joshua’s room.
She knocked, but there was no answer, and she went in quietly, hoping
to find her father asleep.
He was sitting in front of the open escritoire, his arms folded,
his eyes bent upon the ground. He did not stir, or look up at his
daughter’s entrance, nor even when she came close to him and laid her
hand gently on his shoulder.
She stood for a few moments in silence, waiting for him to take some
notice of her; but he sat like a statue, and never lifted his eyes
from the ground.
‘Dear father,’ she began, in a low and tender voice, as she would
have spoken to him had he been lying ill, at death’s door, ‘I was
obliged to come to you. I could not bear to think of you alone and
unhappy. Dearest, it is a heavy affliction that has fallen upon us,
but not heavier than we can bear. Father,’ sinking on her knees
beside his chair, and putting her arms round him, ‘if your guilt
is deep, I am guilty too. I sinned grievously when I gave you his
letter. I suffered my evil passions to get the better of me. My heart
was full of hatred and rancour. Let us repent, and seek for mercy
together. We both have sinned.’
‘The letter,’ muttered Joshua, with a bitter laugh, ‘the letter was
not so much. I saw him hold her in his arms and kiss her--saw her
yield herself up to a love that was stronger than honour or duty,
or her love of God--saw her folded to his heart under Heaven’s
all-seeing eye.’
‘It was my fault, father. But for that letter you would never have
known of that last meeting. It was but a stolen farewell, and they
both meant to do their duty. They were so young, and had erred for
want of thought.’
‘They were thoughtful enough to plan secret meetings--thoughtful
enough to deceive me. And I believed her purest among women--free
from all taint of sin. Do not speak of her--or of him. They sinned,
and have reaped the fruit of sin. “The wages of sin is death.”’
‘Father, we have sinned grievously, you and I; and we can have no
hope of mercy unless we repent,’ said Naomi, horrified at Joshua’s
hardness of tone, which implied an unconsciousness of the weight and
measure of his crime.
‘My life has been one long atonement. I have laboured always in the
work of salvation.’
‘But by one sinful act all might be undone--in one dark hour the
labour of a lifetime might be lost,’ urged Naomi.
Her father made no answer.
‘Dearest, will you not kneel and pray with me?’ she pleaded. ‘Will
you not help me to lift this burden from my soul? I am weary with the
weight of my sin. I loved him, and yet betrayed him to you. O, it was
the act of a Judas! _He_ must have loved his master. It was jealousy
that made him a traitor. Father, if you cannot be sorry for your sin,
be sorry for mine.’
In vain; the brooding eyes were never lifted from the ground. Naomi
looked up into the rigid face. Yes, there was an expression there
as of light quenched, at least a temporary aberration. He was not
listening, he was not following her.
He sat for some time thus, Naomi still kneeling by him and watching
him, but in silence. Then he stretched out his hand to the open Bible
that lay upon his desk, and began to read.
‘Leave me, my dear,’ he said; ‘I am better alone.’
‘I would so much rather stay with you, dear father. I will not
disturb you.’
‘Go, dear; I wish to be alone. I have to command my thoughts. It will
be time for chapel presently.’
‘I will go then, dear father. But while we are alone, let me say one
thing.’
‘I am listening.’
She put her arms round his neck, and rested her head on his shoulder.
‘You know how I loved Oswald, father, to the last, even after his
heart had gone away from me. But I told you then, as I tell you now,
you were always first and dearest, always the object of my highest
reverence and love. That could never change in me. No act of yours
could lessen my love, no affliction Heaven could bring upon you could
lower you in my esteem. Remember that always, father. Come what may,
I am your loving daughter to the end!’
With this assurance she left him, a little more at peace with herself
for having thus spoken.
The afternoon service was gone through very quietly. Joshua had a
subdued and weary air, as if worn out by the effort of the morning.
The congregation were less alert and exalted in their piety, as was
natural in people who had dined heavily, and given way to fleshly
snares in the shape of too-substantial pastry. Even the hymns had a
slumberous tone, and acted as lullabies upon some elder members of
the flock whose feeble knees were an excuse for a sitting posture.
After service, Joshua taught for half an hour in his school, and
said a few earnest words to the young men of his adult night-school,
a class in which he had taken a special interest. They were very
touching words, and well remembered afterwards.
Joshua was absent from the tea-table as he had been from the
dinner-table. His headache was worse, he told his sister, and he was
going to lie down. Naomi had an evening Scripture class to attend to
after tea, a task that would occupy her for about an hour. She went
to this duty at half-past six o’clock, while Judith enjoyed the one
Sabbath luxury which she permitted herself, a half hour’s nap in the
chintz-covered arm-chair by the best parlour-window, screened from
the gaze of passing pedestrians, going by at the rate of one in ten
minutes, by the graceful droop of the well-starched curtain.
Joshua was alone, sitting by the escritoire, as he had sat when Naomi
went to him in the afternoon. He had locked the door, determined to
be free from all intrusion--free even from his daughter’s pitying
love. He wanted nothing between him and that awful solitude in which
he had lived of late--the isolation which a mind unhinged makes for
itself.
He sat thus till the twilight thickened and the pages of his open
Bible grew dim. Even in the troubled state of his brain--a trouble
which had been growing for months--that book was his rock of defence,
his sheet-anchor. He looked into those pages for justification, for
assurance of grace and redemption, and he seldom looked in vain.
If he had sinned, had not David sinned also, and yet retained his
exalted place in the love of God and men? Was he to humble himself
more than David humbled himself? Had David ever ceased to be King,
and Priest, and teacher, chief and supreme among the people? If _he_
had fallen, had not Peter also fallen, and yet received that divine
commission which gave him charge of Christ’s flock?
‘I will preach the Gospel and teach men while I have breath,’
protested Joshua, laying his hand upon the sacred book. ‘What have
the burdens on my conscience to do with my teaching? What does it
matter that I know myself a sinner if I can expound the word of God?
He has given me a gift, and I will use it--to the uttermost and to
the last. If this is to be a hypocrite, my hypocrisy shall go with me
to my grave.’
This was the summing-up of his position in one of his calmer moods;
but his mind was not always so clear, or his views so fixed and
resolute. There were moments to-night, as he sat in the summer dusk
while the shadows grew and deepened in the lonely old-fashioned
room, grotesque shadows of familiar things which he had known from
childhood--there were intervals in which his brain grew clouded, and
past and present were alike dim and distorted. His thoughts flashed
far and wide like the erratic gleams of a lantern--now alighting upon
some picture of the past, now plunging into the dark gulf of the
future. He saw himself as he had been at the outset of his laborious
career--eager for self-sacrifice, careless of all worldly loss,
sustained by an enthusiast’s exaggerated hopes, and an enthusiast’s
indifference to suffering. He had laboured, and had been plenteously
rewarded. He had been a wandering light shining in dark places and
forgotten corners of the earth, and had brought many lost sheep
home to the fold. Then his father had died, and he had been called
back to his native place, to find that, after all, he had lost
nothing of earthly gain by his constancy, for, despite the old man’s
threatenings, he had left all to his only son.
This day of inheritance Joshua felt to have been in some measure a
time of temptation and falling away. He had turned aside from the
desert and desolate places to dwell in a land of fatness. He had
been content to serve a few instead of serving many. He had sat down
under his vine and fig-tree, and taught one little flock instead
of wandering from village to village seeking those whom the Church
had forgotten, or cared for with a lukewarm love. True that he had
laboured hard for his flock, walked many miles, stretched his cure of
souls to its utmost limits, taught the young, brought the light of
education, both spiritual and secular, into many dark places; but he
had from this time ceased to be a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth,
a disciple who has given up all things for his Master.
Then came his prosperous first marriage, the birth of his children,
new ties that bound him to the old home.
How strange and remote those early years seemed as the fitful light
of memory shone upon them!
The picture changed. Those peaceful monotonous days were past. He
was standing on the Cornish common in the pure sunshine, the great
Atlantic glittering in the distance, the sandy knolls and hollows all
ablaze with yellow furze, the subtle scent of that golden blossom in
the air--standing on the threshold of a new life. Never after that
hour was he to be the same man, independent of all human influence.
Henceforth he was to be chained to humanity by mankind’s most pitiful
weakness, an unreasoning love for a weak fellow-creature.
‘I verily believe I loved her from that first day,’ he thought.
‘Her image never left me. She was always before me, sitting in the
sunlight, with her drooping hair like pale gold. Can I doubt that
Satan set her there for my entanglement and ruin? “His heart shall
be heavy for her sake, he shall be so troubled that he shall grow
dumb,” said the fiend. But I have cheated him of his prey. He has
had my heart, and bruised and broken it, but he has not quenched my
spirit--he has not silenced me. I have borne my burden and continued
to teach and exhort, and will so continue to the end. No snare of the
Arch-tempter hiding behind a fair face shall destroy me.’
Then followed a moment of relenting.
‘She seemed so innocent, so pure. She was so gentle and obedient,
and owned so meekly that she had been tempted, and had sinned in
hearkening for a little while to the tempter. O God, there could be
no vileness in the soul that looked up at me from those gentle eyes.
And I thrust her from me with violence and contumely, and sent her
back to servitude and dependence. My wedded wife, the one creature I
have loved most on earth!’ He clasped his hands, and looked upward in
exaltation of mind.
‘Surely that was an atonement for my weakness. Surely that was a
sacrifice which Heaven must approve. And yet I have known no peace
of mind since that day. Heaven has given me no token of approval or
forgiveness.’
That intense egotism which is one of the characteristics of a mind
off its balance had taken possession of him. He felt himself the
centre of the universe. The Bible had been written for him. He stood
face to face with his Creator, and felt himself worthy to be saved.
His daughter knocked at the door presently, and asked him if he would
not have a light.
‘No,’ he answered; ‘my soul can hold communion with God in the
darkness. I am alone, as Elijah was upon the mountain, waiting for
the voice of the Lord.’
It was after midnight when he laid himself upon his bed, wearied with
meditations in which his brain had been hyper-active. Tired as he
was with the long day and its double service, the long evening and
its protracted thoughtlessness, he could not easily sleep; and when
at last his weary eyelids closed, his slumber was more like a trance
than a sleep.
He saw his wife’s face looking up at him as she had looked that last
day in the lane, pleadingly, piteously, full of grief and love. He
saw it more vividly than faces are seen in dreams--saw it close to
him as he lay upon his pillow, and was dimly conscious of lying
there, and the hour of the night, and that this face was looking
at him from afar off, though it seemed so near that he could have
stretched out his hand and touched it.
Then came a voice that thrilled him:
‘Joshua, Joshua, come to me!’
He was awake and on his feet in an instant. It seemed to him that
his waking ears had heard that voice--that it was something more
than a part of his dream. He stood listening for some moments, half
expecting to hear the cry repeated, and his wife’s hand upon his door.
He went to the door, and opened it, and looked out upon the landing
faintly lighted by the stars.
No, the place was empty, the lower part of the house was dark and
silent. Nothing had happened. It was only a dream.
‘But it is a dream sent by Heaven,’ he said. ‘I will hearken to it,
and go. Yes, my love, I forgive you; I am coming to you. I bring you
pardon and love.’
He struck a light from the old tinder-box, lighted his candle, and
began to dress himself hurriedly. He had looked at his watch on first
rising, wondering to find so little of the night was gone. It was
twenty minutes past one o’clock.
Joshua took his watch from under his pillow, lifted the glass, and
laid his finger on the hands and stopped them. Only once before in
his life had he ever done this thing, and that occasion was the
moment of his conversion, the instant in which the divine assurance
of his election and calling had been breathed into his soul. At that
blessed moment he had stopped his watch that it might for ever record
that one hallowed hour. It was the watch he had used as a young
man, and was still in his desk: he had never carried it afterwards,
and had endured no small inconvenience for the want of it till his
father’s fine old timekeeper had descended to him as a part of his
inheritance.
It was a curious fancy which moved him to do the same thing to-night.
He could have given no reason for the impulse, but he obeyed it
blindly, and the loud ticking of the watch grew still at twenty
minutes past one.