I HAD now been some months with Mr. Richardson, and had gained a closer
acquaintance with his methods and means of influence. To all sinners and
backsliders who admitted their frailties he was lenity itself; albeit the
sworn enemy, by instinct and persuasion, of those prim respectabilities
who never do a wrong thing or (worse still in his eyes) never a foolish
one.
For example. To a lad who had lapsed into vice with the hot-headedness
of youth, he was a kindly adviser; but hard as the nether millstone to
the lad’s father, when he found he had ejected the prodigal from house
and home, and then taken credit to himself for having re-adjusted his
household with the wisdom of Solomon.
Of his boldness in dealing with the difficulties of his creed, I had a
notable experience in the summer days that were with us.
The evening was an exceptionally warm one, and he and I were lingering
till late on the terrace, watching them carry the last loads of hay from
the glebe that lay beyond the Rectory stream. Everyone was working his
hardest, for it was clear to the least experienced eye that the fine
weather was nearing its end. Thick rain clouds were gathering in the
west, and occasionally dull muffled roars, heralded by distant flashes,
ran round us on the level of the horizon.
The Rector, I thought, looked perturbed and anxious. At last he spoke.
“I detest more than I can say that new machine which my tenant has
introduced this year.” And he pointed to what looked like a
threshing-machine that was piling the hay from a huge elevator on to the
rick. “Of course it saves labour, but I’m sure it’s most horribly
dangerous. It gives the men not a moment of peace to secure their
footing, which is never too safe. If they stop for an instant, their
work overpowers them. And what with the dust and the noise, and the
hay-cloud in which they are buried, I wonder we’ve got along so far
without an accident. It isn’t fair to ask a man to work under such
conditions. Of course with a threshing-machine it’s different. The
straw delivers itself slowly, giving the men time to place and arrange
it.”
All at once, and even as he was speaking, the din was suddenly hushed by
the stoppage of the engine, and a silence, all the more palpable for the
tumult that preceded it, fell on the crowd of busy workers.
The scene of intense unresting energy had been transformed in a moment
into a still picture of arrested life. Like figures that the wand of
some Arabian magician had charmed into statues, each labourer stood rigid
at his post, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the rick where the
nearest of them had gathered and closed round something that lay prone
and motionless on the ground. Only the voice of the engine was heard
through the stillness, where it stood panting under a full head of steam,
as if in protest against the indignity which had so abruptly arrested its
forces.
“Something of what I feared,” said the Rector, who was already leaving my
side. “Pray God not the worst. Will you wait for me here? Later on you
may be able to help me. But for the moment I had better go to them
alone. As yet, you see, you are a stranger among us, but one, I am sure,
who will soon be a friend.”
“‘The only son of his mother, and she was a widow,’” I heard him
whispering on his return, “and, what is more, the best of sons.”
“It was Harry Hayman,” he added aloud, “the lad I loved most in all the
village, a splendid type of what is noblest and manliest in our country
rustics. And the accident has happened precisely as I had expected. The
boy had his station at the edge of the rick where the pressure is keenest
and most dangerous, and at the last it overpowered him. He had called to
them—just one minute too late, and I’m afraid in angry words—to stop the
engine. Another victim to the press and hurry of existence, which counts
a life well lost to save a load of hay. But you and I must see what
comfort we can give to his mother. Thank Heaven, he was a good and
blameless lad, and ‘as the tree falls there it lies,’ which means, I take
it, nothing more than that death has worked no violent change on him, and
that he has started anew with what advantage he had gained from a useful
and unselfish life.”
The cottage for which we were bound stood at the edge of the village,
midway between the Rectory garden and the scene of the accident. And as
we crossed the Rectory bridge, intermittent flashes from the clouds that
had gathered overhead threw into strong relief the half-completed rick,
the engine that still sent upwards a thin thread of smoke, with the gaunt
elevator at its side, out of which the wind flung casual wisps of hay, as
if in futile effort to continue its arrested task.
The shadow of the accident was full upon us, and when the door of the
cottage was opened I expected to see a woman bowed and overwhelmed with
grief for a loss that had left her desolate indeed.
What I saw in reality was a stern hard-visaged woman, who met us with a
clear unflinching gaze, suggesting a spirit that was up in arms against
fate, and with no thought left in her for mourning or for tears.
“I am glad you be come, passon,” she said, “though ’tis little help you
can give me, I allow. Kind and true-hearted you be to us all, and well
enough we knows it. But even you can’t tell us, wi’ all your new-fangled
notions, that the soul which passes to its God wi’ a curse upon its lips
shall be saved in the Day of Judgment.”
It was the first and only time I was to see the Rector angry—angry and
yet ‘sinning not.’
“Woman,” he said, “the wickedness is yours,” and his voice was hard and
stern. “Stay your words before you utter that of which all the life that
is left you will be too little for repentance. Have you no greater faith
in God’s love and mercy than in your own? Nay—less, far less, for even
you would have pardoned him. An angry word, that dropt from him in great
stress of terror and excitement—is that to weigh against the record of a
life that was a model to all of us in brave unselfish effort? And,
remember, he has left his good name in your keeping.”
I confess that I thought him hard and unfeeling, hard almost to cruelty.
But he knew—none better—the requirements of the case, and that it is
worse than useless to treat with salves a wound that needs the knife.
At the door he turned and said, “I will try and do for you what Harry
would have wished, and what he so well began. The lodge at the Manor
House is vacant, and I think I can promise you the post. But never
forget that it is for Harry’s sake I give it you—the lad I loved and
valued most in all the parish.”