"It was in and about the Mart'mas time
When the green leaves they were falling."
_Old Ballad_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That afternoon, when Captain Orde fell in with David Stephens, the two
men had walked together to within a hundred yards of the Red House.
Here, for it was almost dark, Captain Orde struck into one of the fields
which would take him to Hardlands, and the other, standing for a moment
as if lost in thought, went on through the red mud and the quantities of
fallen leaves which had dropped from the hedge-row elms by his side.
As he passed along the wall enclosing Mr Mannering's garden, a door
opened, and Stokes came out, locking the door after him. David had
stopped, and his peculiar figure probably marked him sufficiently even
in the waning light, for the gardener said in a slow and rather injured
voice,--
"That's you, is it?"
"Yes, it's me."
"And you'm going to see Faith?"
"Yes, I am," said Stephens; and the two men walked on side by side in
silence.
At last Stokes began again heavily, as if he had been reflecting on the
answer,--
"'Twould be a dale better if it warn't you. That's arl I've got to say,
and I've said it a dale better."
There was another silence before David spoke, with a fire of purpose
contrasting strangely with the other man,--
"I don't pretend that I don't know what your words mean, and I don't say
they haven't got something on their side. I suffered myself to be
misguided by my own stubborn heart when I spoke of love to Faith. I
should have known that this is no time for marrying and giving in
marriage, with souls crying out of the darkness. It was a snare of the
enemy to withhold me, and I was weak and feeble, instead of plucking out
the eye, and cutting off though it were the right hand. I thought much
of my own love, and that maybe we were called to work together in the
vineyard, never rightly taking home to myself what was the sacrifice the
Lord had called on me to make--"
David stopped suddenly with a tremor in his strong voice. Stokes was
always slow of speech, and for a few moments there was no sound but that
of the heavy steps trampling through mud and dead leaves.
"I doan't know nowt of what ye're talking up," said the elder man at
last, doggedly. "It's my Faith as I've got to think of. Nowt else."
"You've got your soul, and the souls of others, if you'd only see it,"
said the other. But Stokes shook his head.
"Noa, I ain't," he said, "that's the passon's business. I bain't no
passon, nor yet no pracher, nor I doan't think much o' prachers as comes
and takes t' bread out o' passon's mouth. I ain't nowt to do wi' souls.
I goes to choorch, and a'll be buried up thyur comfor'able, and us
doan't want no prachers to Thorpe."
"That's the teaching of the enemy," said Stephens, vehemently. "Don't
you ever think of the sin and wickedness about you? What of Tom
Andrews, and Nathaniel Wills, and that poor girl at Peters's farm?
Don't you believe that if their hearts have been stirred by a faithful
messenger they might have been saved from their sins?"
"Noa, I doan't," said Stokes, with a persistent force of opposition.
"That thyur Tom Anders has been a bad un ever since he wor a little
chap, and stealed tummerts out o' my basket before my very eyes. I told
his feyther then as he'd be hanged before a'd done with un, and so a
wull. And Nat Wills is another poor lot. Leave 'em aloan, and us'll
soon see th' last of 'em. That's watt I says."
"Ay, what you all say, and the most any of you can do," David said
bitterly. "Parson and people all alike. He sits in his arm-chair and
expects those poor sinners to come up to him, and preaches fine sermons
in church, when there's not one of those as wants the sermons most there
to hear him. I walked twenty mile yesterday, and fetched Nat Wills home
with me, and I've got him at my lodgings now; but if I hadn't gone after
him, do you think he'd have come to me?"
"Then you was a fule," said Stokes, promptly. "He'll never do you no
good. An' now you'll be convertin' him, and setting un up for a saent.
I doan't hold by they thyur doings."
They had come into Thorpe by this time; a bright light streamed out from
the blacksmith's forge at the corner, where three roads met. A man who
was standing there, with his face turned towards the fiery sparks struck
out with every blow upon the anvil, looked round as he heard the
advancing steps.
"Be that you, Tom?" he asked, peering into the darkness.
"What's brought you in from Wesson this time o' day?" said Stokes,
answering one question by another in his slow deliberate way.
"Th' old missess is tooked so bad, master fetched the doctor hisself,
and sent me right off for the passon. I'm to bide hyur for un, and go
back in his trap."
"So th' old woman's come to her end at last, and has sent for the
passon? Hyur's Stephens been tryin' to set down passons and choorch,
and arl the rest o't."
"Ay; he'd like to have it a' under his own thumb, for a' he's so smarl,"
said Stringer, who, like most of the people about, knew David, and had
nodded to him across Stokes. He did not mean to offer any offence by
his words; it was only stating facts when he alluded to the young man's
personal appearance. "That's the way wi' the Methodists. My mawther
wor wan, and she never gived poor feyther no quiet. But wann they'm
took bad, they likes a rale minister. I take it very kindly o' Passon
Brent to turn to at this time o' night."
"Yes, he'll go," said Stephens, gravely, "and flatter with smooth words.
But what has he done for that old woman's life? Hasn't she a name
through the country for her hard, wicked, grasping ways? Has he ever
been to her, and pleaded with her, and been faithful with her sin? Do
you think the Lord's Apostles were content to go and say a prayer over
the poor souls that were dying?"
"Been and pladed with her?" said Stringer, at once. "You'd ha' had a
kettle of boiling water over you, if you'd tried that on wi' the old
missess. Noa, noa,--I doan't say as passons is bound to ran risks wi'
the wommen, such as that. But they've been going on wi' their ways for
a good bit, and it bain't so strange to they as't is to you dissenters,
as think you've found out something new, and must go runnin' arl over
the country a talking about it."
"That's it, Dannel, that's it," said the gardener, moved to a chuckling
delight by his friend's acuteness. "Passon knowed arl about it before
you was born," he added, turning on Stephens.
"It must be a new thing to you and me, though, before it can work on our
hearts," said the young man, almost passionately. "You think it's
enough for another man to know it, and to preach about it, but I tell
you that you must feel its burning power in yourselves, and then it will
give you no peace until you tell it out to others."
At this moment there was a sound of wheels coming along the wet road,
and Mr Brent drove up in his rough dog-cart. He pulled up sharply,--he
did everything sharply,--and called out in the same tone,--
"Come, Stringer, are you there? Get up behind as fast as you can. As
it is, with these roads we shall be a longer time than I can spare
getting to Weston. Is that you, Stokes? The master has been
complaining of Samuel again. The boy's doing no good whatever at
school." And without waiting for an answer, or taking any notice of
Stephens, who was standing in the full light of the forge, Mr Brent
drove quickly off towards the farm.
Burge the blacksmith, who had come out to the door, and stood, lifting
his cap with one hand, and passing the other through his straight black
hair, was the first to make a remark upon the last-comer.
"He bain't such a pleasant-spoken gentleman as old Passon Miles."
"P'raps he bain't," said Stokes, gruffly; divided between injury on
behalf of the culprit Samuel, and a fear of weakening what he looked
upon as his late victory over Stephens and the dissenters. "P'raps you
and me shouldn't be so pleasant nayther if us had to turn out to Wesson,
wann us had done our day's work, to plaze the old missess."
"Day's work!" said the blacksmith, coughing violently, and going back to
his labour. "I'd give something to kep your hours. I sim, sometimes, a
smith ain't got no hours. He's at everybody's call, worse luck to me."
David had not heard the other men's remarks. He was standing at the
door of the smithy where he had first stopped, with his eyes fixed upon
the ground, and the red glow from the forge lighting that side of his
face which was nearest it. These fits of abstraction were not uncommon
with him, and, as something which they did not understand, and set down
as not quite right, added to the disfavour with which he was commonly
regarded by the people of Thorpe. David was quite aware of this
disfavour. He was in the position of a reformer attempting to benefit
society against its will. Each sin of which he heard, and each neglect,
smote on his excitable nature as a crime on the part of those who might
have prevented it. Driven in very much upon himself and his inward
communings,--for the fervour of his opinions found as little favour in
the eyes of his brother Wesleyans as in those of Churchmen, and he
himself shrank in disgust from all that appeared to him to savour of
worldliness and self-advancement,--the one thought that was always in
his mind lost its fair proportions and grew as, alas, the best within us
may grow, out of shape and out of bounds. All that opposed him seemed
to be the especial opposition of the Devil, a conviction leading to its
corollary, that hardly any means could be thought unlawful which tended
to circumvent the evil one. He regarded Anthony Miles as the chief
adversary raised up against him, and the great wrong he had done him he
would not have undone, though it weighed like lead upon his conscience.
When David at length lifted his eyes, and recalled his thoughts from old
Mrs Mortimer's deathbed, where he had concentrated them with a powerful
purpose, and a stern disbelief in the adequacy of the means now on the
way to Weston for her assistance, he found himself alone. The gardener,
who was not unwilling to shake off his companion, had taken advantage of
his abstraction, and departed. He lacked the energy of old Araunah, and
had not attempted to hinder Stephens from seeing Faith by more decided
opposition than lay in surly ungraciousness; but he knew that his wife
and father would expect more from him, and made up his mind to keep
silence as to the meeting and David's intentions. He himself regarded
the latter with a sort of contemptuous dislike, mainly, no doubt,
arising from his deformity, but partly from the new-fangled opinions,
which were both unpleasing to his ears and disturbing from the fact of
their being presented to him when he was unprepared. His own religion
consisted of Sunday services, in hearing an occasional chapter read to
the old man by his wife, and less frequently in listening with
astonished admiration to some glib answers in the catechism repeated by
his youngest "little maed." David's passionate and fervent appeals were
as confusing to his mind as it would have been to have had his meals at
other times than those to which he had been accustomed always from his
childhood. He therefore disliked him, but there was a certain torpidity
in his most acute feelings, and he was not likely to interfere with
Faith in any manner more active than by expressing his own poor opinion
of her lover.
David himself, recalled to his position, went away from the blacksmith's
shed and walked through the village towards Mrs Miles's cottage. It
was now quite dark, and wild gusts of wind were sweeping across the
fields, and up the street where thatched cottages stood back in little
gardens with rows of bright chrysanthemums in flower before them. The
children were safe in bed, the women, many of them, out talking or
buying. Quite a little knot was gathered in the little shop which
provided both groceries and clothing, and from which a cheerful light
gleamed out upon the wet road. The warm brightness beckoned invitingly
to the young man, who, as was not unusual with him, was both tired and
hungry. He stopped for a moment to look with an almost wistful gaze at
the group. The women were laughing at some jest, even the pinched
features were smoothed and brightened. A little bitterness surged up in
his heart as he contrasted himself with these people whom he was
yearning over, spending himself for, and who would have given him,
perhaps, scarcely so much as a kind word. What was he to them? And
what were they to him that he should wrestle for them, ay, even give up
his dearest hopes in life? There was Nat Wills's mother laughing with
the rest, while David was hungry because he had shared his little with
the boy whom he, and he only, had walked those weary miles to reclaim.
There was a thin woman whose husband was a drunkard, there was another
whose daughter had left her,--he knew all the histories of these poor
sin-stained lives, and for the instant a bitter sense of injustice swept
upon him. Was he forever to stay in the darkness and the cold? Must he
always put from himself light and love and pleasantness for the sake of
those who neither cared for nor would hearken to him? Might he not turn
away and leave them to their fate?
Ah, if he, standing thus, could repel the impulse, by the might of the
love which bound him to their souls, do you not think that the Greater
Love which helped him in his struggle would lead him with infinite
tenderness, out of his loneliness and self-deception, into the full
light of the perfect truth?