THE REVIVAL
Anna spent the two following afternoons in visiting the houses of her
school-children. She had no talent for such work, which demands the
vocal rather than the meditative temperament, and the apparent futility
of her labours would have disgusted and disheartened her had she not
been sustained and urged forward by the still active influence of
Mynors and the teachers' meeting. There were fifteen names in her
class-book, and she went to each house, except four whose tenants were
impeccable Wesleyan families and would have considered themselves
insulted by a quasi-didactic visit from an upstart like Anna. Of the
eleven, some parents were rude to her; others begged, and she had
nothing to give; others made perfunctory promises; only two seemed to
regard her as anything but a somewhat tiresome impertinence. The fault
was doubtless her own. Nevertheless she found joy in the uncongenial
and ill-performed task--the cold, fierce joy of the nun in her penance.
When it was done she said 'I have done it,' as one who has sworn to do
it come what might, yet without quite expecting to succeed.
On the Friday afternoon, during tea, a boy brought up a large foolscap
packet addressed to Mr. Tellwright. 'From Mr. Mynors,' the boy said.
Tellwright opened it leisurely after the boy had gone, and took out
some sheets covered with figures which he carefully examined. 'Anna,'
he said, as she was clearing away the tea things, 'I understand thou'rt
going to the Revival meeting to-night. I shall have a message as thou
mun give to Mr. Mynors.'
When she went upstairs to dress, she saw the Suttons' landau standing
outside their house on the opposite side of the road. Mrs. Sutton came
down the front steps and got into the carriage, and was followed by a
little restless, nervous, alert man who carried in his hand a black
case of peculiar form. 'The Revivalist!' Anna exclaimed, remembering
that he was to stay with the Suttons during the Revival week. Then
this was the renowned crusader, and the case held his renowned cornet!
The carriage drove off down Trafalgar Road, and Anna could see that the
little man was talking vehemently and incessantly to Mrs. Sutton, who
listened with evident interest; at the same time the man's eyes were
everywhere, absorbing all details of the street and houses with
unquenchable curiosity.
'What is the message for Mr. Mynors, father?' she asked in the parlour,
putting on her cotton gloves.
'Oh!' he said, and then paused. 'Shut th' door, lass.'
She shut it, not knowing what this cautiousness foreshadowed. Agnes
was in the kitchen.
'It's o' this'n,' Tellwright began. 'Young Mynors wants a partner wi'
a couple o' thousand pounds, and he come to me. Ye understand; 'tis
what they call a sleeping partner he's after. He'll give a third share
in his concern for two thousand pound now. I've looked into it and
there's money in it. He's no fool and he's gotten hold of a good
thing. He sent me up his stock-taking and balance sheet to-day, and
I've been o'er the place mysen. I'm telling thee this, lass, because I
have na' two thousand o' my own idle just now, and I thought as thou
might happen like th' investment.'
'But father----'
'Listen. I know as there's only four hundred o' thine in th' Bank now,
but next week 'll see the beginning o' July and dividends coming in.
I've reckoned as ye'll have nigh on fourteen hundred i' dividends and
interests, and I can lend ye a couple o' hundred in case o' necessity.
It's a rare chance; thou's best tak' it.'
'Of course, if you think it's all right, father, that's enough,' she
said without animation.
'Am' na I telling thee I think it's all right?' he remarked sharply.
'You mun tell Mynors as I say it's satisfactory. Tell him that, see?
I say it's satisfactory. I shall want for to see him later on. He
told me he couldna' come up any night next week, so ask him to make it
the week after. There's no hurry. Dunna' forget.'
What surprised Anna most in the affair was that Henry Mynors should
have been able to tempt her father into a speculation. Ephraim
Tellwright the investor was usually as shy as a well-fed trout, and
this capture of him by a youngster only two years established in
business might fairly be regarded as a prodigious feat. It was indeed
the highest distinction of Mynors' commercial career. Henry was so
prominently active in the Wesleyan Society that the members of that
society, especially the women, were apt to ignore the other side of his
individuality. They knew him supreme as a religious worker; they did
not realise the likelihood of his becoming supreme in the staple
manufacture. Left an orphan at seventeen, Mynors belonged to a family
now otherwise extinct in the Five Towns--one of those families which by
virtue of numbers, variety, and personal force seem to permeate a whole
district, to be a calculable item of it, an essential part of its
identity. The elders of the Mynors blood had once occupied the red
house opposite Tellwright's, now used as a school, and had there reared
many children: the school building was still known as 'Mynors's' by
old-fashioned people. Then the parents died in middle age: one
daughter married in the North, another in the South; a third went to
China as a missionary and died of fever; the eldest son died; the
second had vanished into Canada and was reported a scapegrace; the
third was a sea-captain. Henry (the youngest) alone was left, and of
all the family Henry was the only one to be connected with the
earthenware trade. There was no inherited money, and during ten years
he had worked for a large firm in Turnhill, as clerk, as traveller, and
last as manager, living always quietly in lodgings. In the fullness of
time he gave notice to leave, was offered a partnership, and refused
it. Taking a newly erected manufactory in Bursley near the canal, he
started in business for himself, and it became known that, at the age
of twenty-eight, he had saved fifteen hundred pounds. Equally expert
in the labyrinths of manufacture and in the niceties of the markets (he
was reckoned a peerless traveller), Mynors inevitably flourished. His
order-books were filled and flowing over at remunerative prices, and
insufficiency of capital was the sole peril to which he was exposed.
By the raising of a finger he could have had a dozen working and
moneyed partners, but he had no desire for a working partner. What he
wanted was a capitalist who had confidence in him, Mynors. In Ephraim
Tellwright he found the man. Whether it was by instinct, good luck, or
skilful diplomacy that Mynors secured this invaluable prize no one
could positively say, and perhaps even he himself could not have
catalogued all the obscure motives that had guided him to the shrewd
miser of Manor Terrace.
Anna had meant to reach chapel before the commencement of the meeting,
but the interview with her father threw her late. As she entered the
porch an officer told her that the body of the chapel was quite full
and that she should go into the gallery, where a few seats were left
near the choir. She obeyed: pew-holders had no rights at that service.
The scene in the auditorium astonished her, effectually putting an end
to the worldly preoccupation caused by her father's news. The historic
chapel was crowded almost in every part, and the
congregation--impressed, excited, eager--sang the opening hymn with
unprecedented vigour and sincerity; above the rest could be heard the
trained voices of a large choir, and even the choir, usually
perfunctory, seemed to share the general fervour. In the vast mahogany
pulpit the Reverend Reginald Banks, the superintendent minister, a
stout pale-faced man with pendent cheeks and cold grey eyes, stood
impassively regarding the assemblage, and by his side was the
revivalist, a manikin in comparison with his colleague; on the broad
balustrade of the pulpit lay the cornet. The fiery and inquisitive
eyes of the revivalist probed into the furthest corners of the chapel;
apparently no detail of any single face or of the florid decoration
escaped him, and as Anna crept into a small empty pew next to the east
wall she felt that she too had been separately observed. Mr. Banks
gave out the last verse of the hymn, and simultaneously with the
leading chord from the organ the revivalist seized his cornet and
joined the melody. Massive yet exultant, the tones rose clear over the
mighty volume of vocal sound, an incitement to victorious effort. The
effect was instant: an ecstatic tremor seemed to pass through the
congregation, like wind through ripe corn, and at the close of the hymn
it was not until the revivalist had put down his cornet that the people
resumed their seats. Amid the _frou-frou_ of dresses and subdued
clearing of throats, Mr. Banks retired softly to the back of the
pulpit, and the revivalist, mounting a stool, suddenly dominated the
congregation. His glance swept masterfully across the chapel and round
the gallery. He raised one hand with the stilling action of a
mesmerist, and the people, either kneeling or inclined against the
front of the pews, hid their faces from those eyes. It was as though
the man had in a moment measured their iniquities, and had courageously
resolved to intercede for them with God, but was not very sanguine as
to the result. Everyone except the organist, who was searching his
tune-book for the next tune, seemed to feel humbled, bitterly ashamed,
as it were caught in the act of sin. There was a solemn and terrible
pause.
Then the revivalist began:
'Behold us, O dread God, suppliants for Thy mercy--'
His voice was rich and full, but at the same time sharp and decisive.
The burning eyes were shut tight, and Anna, who had a profile view of
his face, saw that every muscle of it was drawn tense. The man
possessed an extraordinary histrionic gift, and he used it with
imagination. He had two audiences, God and the congregation. God was
not more distant from him than the congregation, or less real to him,
or less a heart to be influenced. Declamatory and full of effects
carefully calculated--a work of art, in fact--his appeal showed no
error of discretion in its approach to the Eternal. There was no
minimising of committed sin, nor yet an insincere and grovelling
self-accusation. A tyrant could not have taken offence at its tone,
which seemed to pacify God while rendering the human audience still
more contrite. The conclusion of the catalogue of wickedness and swift
confident turn to Christ's Cross was marvellously impressive. The
congregation burst out into sighs, groans, blessings, and Amens; and
the pillars of distant rural conventicles who had travelled from the
confines of the circuit to its centre in order to partake of this
spiritual excitation began to feel that they would not be disappointed.
'Let the Holy Ghost descend upon us now,' the revivalist pleaded with
restrained passion; and then, opening his eyes and looking at the clock
in front of the gallery, he repeated, 'Now, now, at twenty-one minutes
past seven.' Then his eyes, without shifting, seemed to ignore the
clock, to gaze through it into some unworldly dimension, and he
murmured in a soft dramatic whisper: 'I see the Divine Dove!----'
The doors, closed during prayer, were opened, and more people entered.
A youth came into Anna's pew.
The superintendent minister gave out another hymn, and when this was
finished the revivalist, who had been resting in a chair, came forward
again. 'Friends and fellow-sinners,' he said, 'a lot of you, fools
that you are, have come here to-night to hear me play my cornet. Well,
you have heard me. I have played the cornet, and I will play it again.
I would play it on my head if by so doing I could bring sinners to
Christ. I have been called a mountebank. I am one. I glory in it. I
am God's mountebank, doing God's precious business in my own way. But
God's precious business cannot be carried on, even by a mountebank,
without money, and there will be a collection towards the expenses of
the Revival. During the collection we will sing "Rock of Ages," and
you shall hear my cornet again. If you feel willing to give us your
sixpences, give; but if you resent a collection,' here he adopted a
tone of ferocious sarcasm, 'keep your miserable sixpences and get
sixpenny-worth of miserable enjoyment out of them elsewhere.'
As the meeting proceeded, submitting itself more and more to the
imperious hypnotism of the revivalist, Anna gradually became oppressed
by a vague sensation which was partly sorrow and partly an inexplicable
dull anger--anger at her own penitence. She felt as if everything was
wrong and could never by any possibility be righted. After two
exhortations, from the minister and the revivalist, and another hymn,
the revivalist once more prayed, and as he did so Anna looked
stealthily about in a sick, preoccupied way. The youth at her side
stared glumly in front of him. In the orchestra Henry Mynors was
whispering to the organist. Down in the body of the chapel the
atmosphere was electric, perilous, overcharged with spiritual emotion.
She was glad she was not down there. The voice of the revivalist
ceased, but he kept the attitude of supplication. Sobs were heard in
various quarters, and here and there an elder of the chapel could be
seen talking quietly to some convicted sinner. The revivalist began
softly to sing 'Jesu, lover of my soul,' and most of the congregation,
standing up, joined him; but the sinners stricken of the Spirit
remained abjectly bent, tortured by conscience, pulled this way by
Christ and that by Satan. A few rose and went to the Communion rails,
there to kneel in the sight of all. Mr. Banks descended from the
pulpit and opening the wicket which led to the Communion table spoke to
these over the rails, reassuringly, as a nurse to a child. Other
sinners, desirous of fuller and more intimate guidance, passed down the
aisles and so into the preacher's vestry at the eastern end of the
chapel, and were followed thither by class-leaders and other proved
servants of God: among these last were Titus Price and Mr. Sutton.
'The blood of Christ atones,' said the revivalist solemnly at the end
of the hymn. 'The spirit of Christ is working among us. Let us engage
in private prayer. Let us drive the devil out of this chapel.'
More sighs and groans followed. Then someone cried out in sharp,
shrill tones, 'Praise Him;' and another cried, 'Praise Him;' and an old
woman's quavering voice sang the words, 'I know that my Redeemer
liveth.' Anna was in despair at her own predicament, and the sense of
sin was not more strong than the sense of being confused and publicly
shamed. A man opened the pew-door, and sitting down by the youth's
side began to talk with him. It was Henry Mynors. Anna looked
steadily away, at the wall, fearful lest he should address her too.
Presently the youth got up with a frenzied gesture and walked out of
the gallery, followed by Mynors. In a moment she saw the youth
stepping awkwardly along the aisle beneath, towards the inquiry room,
his head forward, and the lower lip hanging as though he were sulky.
Anna was now in the profoundest misery. The weight of her sins, of her
ingratitude to God, lay on her like a physical and intolerable load,
and she lost all feeling of shame, as a sea-sick voyager loses shame
after an hour of nausea. She knew then that she could no longer go on
living as aforetime. She shuddered at the thought of her tremendous
responsibility to Agnes--Agnes who took her for perfection. She
recollected all her sins individually--lies, sloth, envy, vanity, even
theft in her infancy. She heaped up all the wickedness of a lifetime,
hysterically augmented it, and found a horrid pleasure in the
exaggeration. Her virtuous acts shrank into nothingness.
A man, and then another, emerged from the vestry door with beaming,
happy face. These were saved; they had yielded to Christ's persuasive
invitation. Anna tried to imagine herself converted, or in the process
of being converted. She could not. She could only sit moveless, dull,
and abject. She did not stir, even when the congregation rose for
another hymn. In what did conversion consist? Was it to say the
words, 'I believe'? She repeated to herself softly, 'I believe; I
believe.' But nothing happened. Of course she believed. She had
never doubted, or dreamed of doubting, that Jesus died on the Cross to
save her soul--_her_ soul--from eternal damnation. She was probably
unaware that any person in Christendom had doubted that fact so
fundamental to her. What, then, was lacking? What was belief? What
was faith?
A venerable class-leader came from the vestry, and, slowly climbing the
pulpit stairs, whispered in the ear of the revivalist. The latter
faced the congregation with a cry of joy. 'Lord,' he exclaimed, 'we
bless Thee that seventeen souls have found Thee! Lord, let the full
crop be gathered, for the fields are white unto harvest.' There was an
exuberant chorus of praise to God.
The door of the pew was opened gently, and Anna started to see Mrs.
Sutton at her side. She at once guessed that Mynors had sent to her
this angel of consolation.
'Are you near the light, dear Anna?' Mrs. Sutton began.
Anna searched for an answer. She now sat huddled up in the corner of
the pew, her face partially turned towards Mrs. Sutton, who looked
mildly into her eyes. 'I don't know,' Anna stammered, feeling like a
naughty school-girl. A doubt whether the whole affair was not after
all absurd flashed through her, and was gone.
'But it is quite simple,' said Mrs. Sutton. 'I cannot tell you
anything that you do not know. Cast out pride. Cast out pride--that
is it. Nothing but earthly pride prevents you from realising the
saving power of Christ. You are afraid, Anna, afraid to be humble. Be
brave. It is so simple, so easy. If one will but submit.'
Anna said nothing, had nothing to say, was conscious of nothing save
excessive discomfort.
'Where do you feel your difficulty to be?' asked Mrs. Sutton.
'I don't know,' she answered wearily.
'The happiness that awaits you is unspeakable. I have followed Christ
for nearly fifty years, and my happiness increases daily. Sometimes I
do not know how to contain it all. It surges above all the trials and
disappointments of this world. Oh, Anna, if you will but believe!'
The ageing woman's thin, distinguished face, crowned with abundant grey
hair, glistened with love and compassion, and as Anna's eyes rested
upon it Anna felt that here was something tangible, something to lay
hold on.
'I think I do believe,' she said weakly.
'You "think"? Are you sure? Are you not deceiving yourself? Belief
is not with the lips: it is with the heart.'
There was a pause. Mr. Banks could be heard praying.
'I will go home,' Anna whispered at length, 'and think it out for
myself.'
'Do, my dear girl, and God will help you.'
Mrs. Sutton bent and kissed Anna affectionately, and then hurried away
to offer her ministrations elsewhere. As Anna left the chapel, she
encountered the chapel-keeper pacing regularly to and fro across the
length of the broad steps. In the porch was a notice that cabinet
photographs of the revivalist could be purchased on application, at one
shilling each.