As Rotha left the weaver's cottage she found Liza in the porch.
“I'm just laughing at the new preachers,” she said huskily. She was
turning her head aside slyly to brush the tears from her eyes into a
shawl which was over her head.
“There they are by the Lion. It's wrong to laugh, but they are real
funny, aye!”
The artifice was too palpable to escape Rotha's observation. Without a
word she put her arms about Liza and kissed her. Then the lurking
tears gushed out openly, and the girl wept on her breast. They parted
in silence, and Rotha walked towards a little company gathered under
the glow of a red sun on the highway, and almost in front of the
village inn. They were the “new preachers” of whom Liza had spoken.
The same that had, according to Robbie's landlady, foretold the
plague. They were three men, and they stood in the middle of a ring of
men, women, and children. One of them, tall and gaunt, with long gray
hair and wild eyes, was speaking at the full pitch of his voice.
Another was emphasizing his words with loud hallelujahs. Then the
third dropped down on his knees in the road, and prayed with
earnestness in a voice that rang along the village street--silent
to-day, save for him--and echoed back and back. Before the prayer had
quite ended a hymn was begun in a jaunting measure, with a chorus that
danced to a spirit of joyfulness.
Then came another exhortation. It was heavy with gloomy prediction.
The world was full of oppression, and envy, and drunkenness, and vain
pleasures. Men had forsaken the light that should enlighten all men.
They were full of deceit and vanities. They put their trust in priests
and professors who were but empty hollow casks. “Yet the Lord is at
hand,” cried the preacher, “to thrash the mountains, and beat them to
dust.”
Another hymn followed, more jubilant than before. One by one the
people around caught the contagion of excitement. There were old men
there with haggard faces that told of the long hard fight with the
world in which they were of the multitude of the vanquished; old
women, too, jaded and tired, and ready to slip into oblivion, their
long day's duty done; mothers with babes in their arms and young
children nestling close at their sides; rollicking boys and girls as
well, with all the struggle of life in front of them.
The simple Quaker hymn told of a great home of rest far away, yet very
near.
The tumult had attracted the frequenters of the Red Lion, and some of
these had stepped out on to the causeway. Two or three of them were
already drunk. Among them was Garth, the blacksmith. He laughed
frantically, and shrieked and crowed at every address and every hymn.
When the preachers shouted “Hallelujah,” he shouted “Hallelujah” also;
shouted again and again, in season and out of season; shouted until he
was hoarse, and the perspiration poured down his crimsoning face. His
tipsy companions at first assisted him with noisy cheers. When one of
the men in the ring lifted up his voice in the ardor of prayer, Garth
yelled out yet louder to ask if he thought God Almighty was deaf.
The people began to tremble at the blacksmith's blasphemies. The
tipsiest of his fellows slunk away from his side.
The preacher spoke at one moment of the numbers of their following.
“You carry a bottle of liquor somewhere,” cried Garth; “that's why
they follow you.”
Wearied out by such a shrieking storm of discord, one of the three
Quakers--a little man with quick eyes and nervous lips--made his way
through the crowd to where the blacksmith stood at the outskirts of
it. Garth propped his back against the wall of the inn and laughed
hysterically at the preacher's remonstrance: “Woe to thee and such as
thee when God's love passes away from thee.”
Garth replied with a mocking blasphemy too terrible for record. He
repeated it, shouted it, screamed it.
In sheer horror the Quaker dropped on his knees in front of the
blacksmith and muttered a prayer that was almost inaudible:--
“God grant that the seven devils, yea seven times seven, may come out
of him!”
Then Garth was silent for a moment.
“I knew such a one as thou art five years ago,” said the Quaker; “and
where thinkest thou he died?”
“Where?” said Garth, with a drunken hiccup.
“But he was a saved man at last--saved by the light with which Christ
enlightened all men--saved--”
“Where?” repeated Garth, with a hideous imprecation.
“On the gallows--he had killed his own father--he was--”
“Curse you! Curse you on earth and in hell!”
The people who had crowded round held their hands to their ears to
shut out the fearful blasphemies. Garth, sobered somewhat by rage
which was no longer assumed but real, pushed them aside and strode
down the lane.
Rotha turned away from the crowd and walked towards Shoulthwaite.
Before her, at fifty paces, the blacksmith tramped doggedly on, with
head towards the ground. Drunk, mad, devilish as at this moment he
might be, Rotha felt an impulse to overtake him. She knew not what
power prompted her, or what idea or what hope. Never before had she
felt an instinct drawing her to this man. Yet she wished to speak with
him now. Would she had done so! Would she had done so--not for his
sake or yet for hers--but now, even now, while the impieties were hot
on his burning lips!
Rotha ran a step or two and stopped. Garth shambled sullenly on. He
never lifted his eyes to the sky.
When he reached his home he threw himself on the skemmel drawn up to
the hearth. He was sober now. His mother had been taking her Sunday
afternoon's sleep on the settle, which stood at one side of the
kitchen. His noisy entrance awoke her. He broke the peat with the
peat-stick and kicked it into the fire.
“What's come ower thee?” said Mrs. Garth, opening her eyes and
yawning.
“What's come over you more like?” growled Joe.
“What now?”
“Do you sell your own flesh and blood?” said Joe. “Sell? What's thy
mare's nest now, thou weathercock? One wouldn't think that butter wad
melt in thy mouth sometimes, and then agen--”
“I'm none so daft as daftly dealt with, mother,” interrupted the
blacksmith.
“I've telt thee afore thou'rt yan of the wise asses. What do you mean
by _sell?_”
“I reckon _you_ know when strangers in the street can tell me.”
The blacksmith coiled himself up in his gloomy reserve and stared into
the fire.
“Oh, thou's heard 'at yon man's in Doomsdale, eh?”
Joe grunted something that was inarticulate.
“I mean to hear the trial,” continued Mrs. Garth, with a purr of
satisfaction.
“Maybe you wouldn't like to see me in his place, mother? Oh, no;
certainly not.”
“Thou great bledderen fool,” cried Mrs. Garth, getting on to her feet
and lifting her voice to a threatening pitch; “whearaway hast been?”
Joe growled again, and crept closer over the fire, his mother's brawny
figure towering above him.