"You might have known, if you hadn't been in a dream," muttered Mervyn
Pugh as he sat, his face hidden in his hands. "Nothing can be done
without money, nothing, and it wouldn't have mattered if it had not
been for this cursed meeting--and--and the rector----"
"Don't curse him, Merve," broke in Morris Pugh, who stood, with the
look of one newly awakened, near the window, gazing out vaguely at a
rising star, which lay on the distant hilltop like a visitant from
heaven. Even as he looked, his mind all confused and blurred, the
novel thought came to him that with such high and holy messengers at
His command, the Creator need not have condescended to send such
farthing dips of wandering lights to mark His elect, as some which had
been manifested during the revival.
For a month had passed since Gwen's singing of the hymn had
electrified the little congregation at Dinas, a month during which----
What had happened?
Morris Pugh, looking at his brother, saw that past month as in a
dream, indeed. He, as the preacher, forgetful of everything save his
mission, and those four voices, Gwen's soprano, Alicia Edwards's
contralto, Mervyn's tenor, and Hwfa Morgan's bass, blending into every
message of penitence or peace which emotion could desire. So they had
gone preaching and singing, rousing an almost frenzied response
wherever they went. And all the while----
"I don't understand yet," he said slowly. "Why was all this money
required?"
Mervyn echoed the "all" with half-pathetic scorn. "A hundred pounds
doesn't go far in running a revival," he said savagely. "One must
start the thing. Why, even before we left Dinas, Gwen and Alicia had
to get their clothes, they couldn't go in what they had got, and there
was music wanted. One had to get a chorus, and the men couldn't sit up
all night and work all day. Morgan and I talked it all over, for some
one must look after practical things, you know, and I said I would
finance it till the subscriptions came in. It's no use your looking
like that, Morris. Any fool would tell you money had to be got somehow
for the time, and it would have been all right but for this row with
the rector. That isn't my fault."
Morris Pugh started as if he had been stung. "No! it was mine," he
said. "I am the elder. I ought to have considered."
Mervyn rose quickly, and, going over to his brother, laid a caressing
hand on his shoulder.
"Now don't, Morris," he said, using a common Welsh endearment, "let us
forget ourselves for a while. I suppose it was wrong, but--" here his
lip quivered, "it musn't injure the work. My God! how awful that would
be." He flung himself on the chair again and, stretching his arms out
over the table, positively sobbed. He was a prey to every emotion,
every feeling that in this moment of anxiety and bewilderment swept
over him, for he and his brother had come home but half an hour ago
full of elation from a successful meeting at the other end of the
county, to find that the rector, ousted member of village boards and
councils, had insisted on a scrutiny of the accounts ere making over
office next day.
And Mervyn knew that the balance would be a hundred pounds short; the
hundred pounds which had been paid over by the central fund for
educational purposes, and which should have been deposited in the Post
Office Bank when it had come in a month ago. He had not done so,
however, because, on emergency, he had borrowed the loan of the use of
it for something else.
To do him justice that was all he had meant. Once the revival was
fairly started the monetary question could be allowed to crop up, but
without money in the background to make it possible to pose as having
no regard to money, how could the very committees which would work the
business properly be called into existence? At the time he had thought
of nothing but God's service, and even now he felt little remorse. His
sense of conversion was too strong, and the whole month of incessant
irritation of every possible religious emotion had left him a pulp so
far as actual facts were concerned ... and as a rule the village
accounts went on and on endlessly ...
He lifted up his hand and smote the table impotently. Great heavens!
what was to be done? That hundred pounds must be replaced somehow.
As he thought of how it had been spent, he felt vaguely uncomfortable
over an item which had gone to pay a small bill of his own, contracted
in amusing Myfanwy Jones at Blackborough. He felt ashamed of that, but
he had no shame for other things in the further past. A curious
fanatical exultation filled him as he thought how marvellous were
God's ways, and how men and women, sinners utterly, might stand in all
innocence together and proclaim infinite mercy. Inscrutable mystery!
Almost incredible secret tie of forgiven sin, which made the voices
thrill and blend.
And this must end unless there was money. They had but a few hours,
and even Hwfa Morgan was not there to help with advice. He would not
return till morning, so there was only poor, dreamy Morris, absorbed
in the personal issues.
There was but one issue! That there should be no setback to the
overwhelming success of the revival.
For it had been successful beyond measure, in works as well as words.
In Dinas itself, the cotoneaster-covered inn might have put up its
shutters for all the liquor sold at the once-frequented bar. There was
no swearing or quarrelling from one end of the parish to the other.
Even the snaring of their neighbours' rabbits for Sunday dinner,
ultimate crime of a Welsh quarryman, had ceased. And these were but
the outward and visible signs of a great inward and spiritual grace. A
sense of perfect personal peace had fallen upon the mass of men.
There were no more anxieties, no more fears. Heaven and its golden
harps were within the reach of all, and, looking forward, each
personality could see itself surviving death and going on unchanged
for ever and ever and aye. So the Grave had lost its Victory. Each
trivial soul was safe.
The result in pure morality, not only in Dinas but throughout the
whole countryside, was unquestionable. Even those who disapproved of
such emotional excitement, or who, like the rector, viewed with
disfavour all outpourings of grace except through the appointed
channels, could not deny this, and were driven to darkling hints as to
the staying power of such religious feeling.
Only Martha, going down in state to order the usual gross of matches
at the village shop--the carriage arrangements precluded their
purchase with all other things at the Stores--fell foul of the whole
business, lock and stock and barrel, to Isaac Edwards, whom she found
singing hymns while he did up the pound package of sugar, in which the
paper, heavy blue, was included in the weight. Not that it was his
fault that this was so. It was only one of the usual tricks of a trade
which on a small scale cannot possibly be run straight.
"You'll excuse me," she said with a sniff, "but it strikes me as
you're all a deal too free with the Almighty. But there, once folk
stops making their reverences to the gentry, 'tain't long ere they get
to noddin' at their Creator. An' you don't go to the Bible for your
crowded-up night-watches, Mr. Edwards. King David, an' he oughter
know, says mornin', evenin', an' noon. At night 'e watered 'is bed
with 'is tears an' was still, like a decent gentleman. There wasn't
none of this not-comin'-home--till--mornin' business, and how folks as
'as to work hard for their livin' does it, beats me. I'll set up agin
most, but I'm a pore piece next day, an' wouldn't ask a full wage of
anybody, not I! And as for the young folk; you mark my words, Mr.
Edwards! Gels is gels, an' boys is boys, whether they stands in a kirk
or a mill, as the sayin' is. An' they'll find it out for theirselves,
poor sillies, by an' by, if them as is past 'youth's hayday' don't
harvest-home 'em before lights out. So there! An' you can send up a
gross an' a half o' matches if you think that not bein' o' your way o'
believin' I shall 'ave to 'arden myself to brimstone."
So she had departed; but her warnings had been as chaff before the
wind while the harvest was being gathered in.
The flood-tide of popular opinion lifted even the wildest
extravagances as well as the most sober actuality and carried them
with it. Whither remained to be seen.
And now?
Morris Pugh, standing at the window looking in dull amaze at the star
which had by this time dissociated itself entirely from earth, could
not think what would happen now.
Everything on which he had any grip seemed to have gone. Since that
day, a long month ago, when his voice had failed before Gwen's voice,
he had, like the star, dissociated himself from the material world
altogether. He had given the rein to his emotions, he had lived in the
clouds, never asking or thinking how Alicia and Gwen came to be
dressed so becomingly, never inquiring how the expenses of railway
tickets, hiring, placarding, advertisements, notices in the papers,
all the thousand and one absolute necessities for a successful
meeting, were defrayed. So the truth came upon him with deadly force.
Morally a far stronger man than his brother, he could not for the
moment get beyond the actual fact of fraud.
How could Mervyn have taken the money? How could he?
"Well!" said the latter at last, rising to pace the room impatiently,
nervously. "Can't you suggest something? The money must be replaced
somehow. We daren't risk anything. What can be done? and in the next
few hours.--Oh! it is maddening to think how many would be willing to
lend it if we had only time! To think even of the thousands who have
hundreds and hundreds of pounds to fling away on a fancy, and
this----" he paused, arrested by his brother's face. "What is it,
Morris? what--what makes you look like that?"
For answer Morris sank to his knees and covered his face as if in
prayer. "I thank Thee, O my God!" he murmured, "this hast Thou
prepared aforetime. O ye of little faith--of little faith!"
"What is it, Morris?" repeated Mervyn curiously. The last month had
done its work on him also. He was prepared for all things, all signs,
and wonders. "You might tell me," he added, after a pause.
"No!"
Morris's face came up from his hands full of triumphant,
transcendental exultation. "No! That is a secret between me and my
God. But the hundred pounds is found! It is found, I tell you! Oh!
marvellous, most marvellous! Truly He moves in a mysterious way His
wonders to perform! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
For Mervyn's words had recalled to him in a flash the half-forgotten
memory of Ned Blackborough's hidden money, and his mind attuned to
miracles, super-sensitised to the direct dealings of Providence with
man, leapt to the conclusion that the hundred pounds, so idly, so
carelessly flung away on what appeared a mere fancy, was in truth a
heavenly provision against this urgent need.
The thought explained so much. The devil of greed within him, which
had urged him to take the money for his own use--the gradual
unfolding, through this temptation, of the desire for some outpouring
of the Spirit. Here were more marvels than he had time at present to
consider. The great fact was sufficient, that in the wilderness the
table had been spread.
"It was wrong to take the money, Merve," he said, his face suffused
with a heavenly joy; "we must not forget that--we must weep and pray
over that; but it was for His service, and He has forgiven us--the
money is found!"
"But when--that is the point," began Mervyn anxiously; "it must be by
to-morrow morning, and it is late----"
"You will wake to find it on the Bible by your bedside, my brother,"
interrupted Morris solemnly, "and then we will give thanks unto the
Lord, for He hath done marvellous things. Come to supper now; our
mother will be anxious at our delay. Leave the rest in His hands."
The moon was riding high amid the stars when Morris Pugh, closing the
door of the sleeping cottage behind him with a whispered benediction
on its inmates, started for his climb to the gap where Ned
Blackborough had hidden the hundred pounds. The night air struck
chill, for it was late October, but he was in far too exalted a frame
of mind to consider such earthly things as overcoats or comforters.
His exaltation, indeed, would have seemed incredible even to the
self of six weeks ago; for, despite his enthusiasm, he had been
hard-headed and practical enough. Now, enervated by constant use of
his emotions, it seemed to him--full to the brim as he was by right of
his Cymric birth with imaginative fire, poetry passion--that he was
going up into the mountain alone to meet his Lord and receive a gift
from His hands.
He felt as Moses must have felt on Pisgah, as St. Jerome felt when the
last Sacrament was vouchsafed to him. Those last few weeks had made an
ecstatic out of the enthusiast. He saw nothing but his Lord, he heard
nothing but the call to come.
Marvellous! Most marvellous!
Yes! of a truth! for about him--to him unseen--lay the great marvel of
the Real Presence in the world, above him the marvel of the Real
Presence in the skies and stars. But the stones were to his eager feet
but stumbling-blocks, the glory of the starlight and the moonlight was
but the halo of a concrete heaven.
Still it was very rapture; worth in itself a thousand times the petty
hundred pounds which had called it into being. Put into bald English,
here was a man going to take money which he wot of, in order to save
his brother from disgrace. Translated into the terms of emotional
religion, here was a sinner about to find salvation.
The night was very clear, very cold. The stars sparkled brilliantly,
aloofly. There was a suspicion of frost-crackle in the thick covering
of dew which lay like a filmy gossamer quilt over the grassy uplands.
The startled sheep left a darker track of dew-despoiled herbage behind
their flying footsteps. There was no cloud upon the sky whose velvet
darkness seemed devoid of light save for the unhaloed moon and the
sharp shining stars.
But Morris Pugh saw none of these things. He had found what he
sought--what all Religions seek--the Self that is not yourself. He had
found it through an abstraction of the mind, not through the manifold
face of matter. But the sense of finality, of universal Oneness, comes
in a thousand ways, and he felt it fully. He could have sung in the
gladness of his heart, even while his stumbling feet bruised
themselves over the unheeded stones.
The little rush-fringed pool, by which he had sat with the others
asserting that money was the root of all evil, lay so still, so
shining, so set, that it also might have been frost-bound--like the
heart of man before the Mercy of the Most High had touched it.
The root of all evil!
Morris smiled. He knew better now. There was nothing evil in the
Holiest of Holies. Money was a great gift.
So, as if before an altar, every atom of him, soul and body, thrilling
with high expectation, he knelt before the cleft in the rock to
receive what had been given. His very hands trembled.
"Not unto us, Lord, but unto Thy name," he murmured softly.
Then came a pause. His fingers, feeling the cleft, found it empty.
Empty! Incredible! Impossible! A great amaze took him. He stood up and
stared vacantly at the receding whiteness of the dew-covered, moonlit
steeps.
Empty!
Then what became of----
Of everything!
He had been so buoyed up by certainty. He had been so sure of himself
and of his God. He sat down on the frost-wet grass after a time and
tried to think; but his mind was in a maze. He followed one path of
thought after another, always to be brought up by that barrier of
feeling that he had been fooled; or he had fooled himself. Had it not
been for his previous exaltation, his exultation, he might by degrees
have accepted the situation and considered which of the three other
participants in the secret had been beforehand with him. But there was
no question of being beforehand with him. If what he had felt--nay!
had known--was true, they had been beforehand with God.
How long he sat, he did not know. It came upon him by surprise to hear
the voice of a shepherd calling to his dogs. He looked round, and lo!
it was long past dawn. He must go back and tell Mervyn that he had
made a mistake; or was it Someone else who had been tricked?
When he arrived at the village the first early hour had passed, and
folk were already beginning the day's work. Ah! what would Mervyn say,
and what would he do?
It was terrible to try the latch of the cottage, find it open, and
know that his brother must be waiting for him; waiting so anxiously.
But there was a respite. Mervyn was not in. Hwfa Morgan had arrived
early, the woman who tended the house said, and they had gone out
together just as she came in to light the fire.
Morris sat down beside it vaguely relieved. Hwfa Morgan might think of
something. Meanwhile the warmth of the fire was comforting. He must
have been very chill. His blood seemed to rush and bound through him
like a melting river.
He was startled from a half-doze by Mervyn's entrance, and he stood up
unsteadily.
"I am sorry, brother," he began, "but I--I mean some one has
failed----"
Mervyn interrupted him curtly. "It's lucky I didn't trust to you--but
it is all right--the thing's settled. Hwfa Morgan turned up this
morning, and as you hadn't come back we talked it over, and he
suggested taking Edwards into our confidence. So we went over to him,
and he saw it would be as dangerous to his interests as to ours if
there was any fuss, so he consented to take our security--yours, too,
of course--that he shouldn't be a loser, and gave me a voucher of
deposit all right. It can only be a question of a fortnight or so, for
once a Central Committee takes over the revival regularly our expenses
will be paid----"
"But the voucher?" began Morris.
Mervyn interrupted him impatiently, his naturally high colour
heightening itself considerably.
"Oh! yes! of course. He--he antedated it. Luckily there had been no
other deposits for three weeks, so the numbers on the counterfoils
worked all right. And it doesn't really matter to any one, does it?"
He spoke a trifle defiantly.
"No," replied his brother, with an odd sound between a sob and a
laugh. "I don't suppose it matters to--to any one. I--I think I'll go
to bed, Merve--I must have got a chill on the mountains--I--I don't
feel well."
"But there is the meeting," expostulated Mervyn; "it won't go without
you."
Morris shook his head. "I should be no use, Mervyn--I--I can't even
think." And then, strong man as he was, he broke down into sobbing.