There is nothing of which men take less heed than the infection of
emotion, a thing as real as that mysterious influence which in some
diseases leaps forth from one to another till all are in the same pain.
With the exception, perhaps, of the infection of fear, which societies
have learnt to dread by tragic experience, man still fondly supposes
that his emotions are his own, that they must rise and fall within
himself, and does not know that they can be taken in full tide from
another and imparted again without decrease of force. May God send a
healthful spirit to us all! for good or evil, we are part of one
another.
There were a good many people who went up the mountain that night to
find the enthusiasts, each with some purpose of interference and
criticism. They went secure in their own sentiments, but with minds
tickled into the belief that they were to see and hear some strange
thing. They saw and heard not much, yet they did not remain wholly their
own masters. Perhaps the idea that Cameron's assembly would be well
worth seeing was gleaned partly from the lingering storm, for an
approaching storm breeds in the mind the expectation of exciting
culmination, but long before the different seekers had found the meeting
place, which was only known to the loyal-hearted, the storm, having
spent itself elsewhere, had passed away.
There was an open space upon a high slope of the hill. Trees stood above
it, below, around--high, black masses of trees. It was here old
Cameron's company had gathered together. No woodland spot, in dark, damp
night, ever looked more wholly natural and of earth than this. Sophia
Rexford and Alec Trenholme, after long wandering, came to the edge of
this opening, and stopped the sound of their own movements that they
might look and listen. They saw the small crowd assembled some way off,
but could not recognise the figures or count them. Listening intently,
they heard the swaying of a myriad leaves, the drip of their moisture,
the trickle of rivulets that the rain had started again in troughs of
summer drought, and, amidst all these, the old man's voice in accents of
prayer.
Even in her feverish eagerness to seek Winifred, which had sustained her
so long, Sophia chose now to skirt the edge of the wood rather than
cross the open. As they went through long grass and bracken, here and
there a fallen log impeded their steps. A frog, disturbed, leaped before
them in the grass; they knew what it was by the sound of its falls.
Soon, in spite of the rustle of their walking, they began to hear the
old man's words.
It seemed that he was repeating such passages of Scripture as ascribe
the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Whether these were strung together in
a prayer, or whether he merely gave them forth to the night air as the
poetry on which he fed his soul, they could not tell. The night was much
lighter now than when the storm hung over. They saw Cameron standing on
a knoll apart from his company, his face upturned to the cloudy sky.
Beyond him, over the lower ranks of trees, the thunder cloud they had
feared was still visible, showing its dark volume in the southern sky by
the frequent fiery shudderings which flashed through its length and
depth; but it had swept away so far that no sound of its thunder touched
their air; and the old man looked, not at it but at the calm,
cloud-wrapped sky above.
"The Son of Man is coming in the clouds of heaven with power, and great
glory."
The words fell upon the silence that was made up of the subdued sounds
of nature; it seemed to breathe again with them; while their minds had
time to be taken captive by the imagery. Then he cried,
"He shall send His angels with a trumpet, and a great voice, and they
shall gather the elect upon the four winds. Two shall be in the fields;
one shall be taken and the other left." He suddenly broke off the
recitation with a heartpiercing cry. "My Lord and my God! Let none of
Thy children here be left. Let none of those loved ones, for whom they
have come here to entreat Thee, be among those who are left. Let it
suffice Thee, Lord, that these have come to meet Thee on Thy way, to ask
Thee that not one of their beloved may be passed over now, when Thou
comest--_Now!_"
The last word was insistent. And then he passed once more into the
prayer that had been the burden of his heart and voice on the night that
Alec had first met him. That seemed to be the one thought of his poor
crazed brain--"Come, Lord Jesus!"
The little band were standing nearer the trees on the upper side of the
open. They seemed to be praying. Sophia came to the end of the
straggling line they formed, and there halted, doubtful. She did not
advance to claim her sister; she was content to single out her childish
figure as one of a nearer group. She tarried, as a worshipper who,
entering church at prayer-time, waits before walking forward. Alec stood
beside his unknown lady, whose servitor he felt himself to be, and
looked about him with no common interest. About thirty people were clad
in white; there were a few others in ordinary clothes; but it was
impossible to tell just how many of these latter were there or with what
intent they had come. A young man in dark clothes, who stood near the
last comers peered at them very curiously: Alec saw another man sitting
under a tree, and gained the impression, from his attitude, that he was
suffering or perplexed. It was all paltry and pitiful outwardly, and
yet, as he looked about, observing this, what he saw had no hold on his
mind, which was occupied with Cameron's words; and under their
influence, the scene, and the meaning of the scene, changed as his mood
changed in sympathy.
A hymn began to rise. One woman's voice first breathed it; other voices
mingled with hers till they were all singing. It was a simple, swaying
melody in glad cadence. The tree boughs rocked with it on the lessening
wind of the summer night, till, with the cumulative force of rising
feeling, it seemed to expand and soar, like incense from a swinging
censer, and, high and sweet, to pass, at length through the cloudy walls
of the world. The music, the words, of this song had no more of art in
them than the rhythmic cry of waves that ring on some long beach, or the
regular pulsations of the blood that throbs audibly, telling our sudden
joys. Yet, natural as it was, it was far more than any other voice of
nature; for in it was the human soul, that can join itself to other
souls in the search for God; and so complete was the lack of form in the
yearning, that this soul came forth, as it were, unclothed, the more
touching because in naked beauty.
"Soon you will see your Saviour coming,
In the air."
So they sang. This, and every line, was repeated many times. It was only
by repetition that the words, with their continuity of meaning, grew in
ignorant ears.
"All the thoughts of your inmost spirit
Will be laid bare,
If you love Him, He will make you
White and fair."
Then the idea of the first line was taken up again, and then again, with
renewed hope and exultation in the strain.
"Hark! you may hear your Saviour coming."
It was a well-known Adventist hymn which had often roused the hearts of
thousands when rung out to the air in the camp meetings of the northern
States; but to those who heard it first to-night it came as the
revelation of a new reality. As the unveiling of some solid marble
figure would transform the thought of one who had taken it, when
swathed, for a ghost or phantom, so did the heart's desire of these
singers stand out now with such intensity as to give it objective
existence to those who heard their song.
Into the cloud-walled heaven they all looked. It is in such moments that
a man knows himself.
Old Cameron, lifting up his strong, voice again, was bewailing the sin
of the world. "We sinners have not loved Thee, O Christ. We have not
trusted Thy love. We have not been zealous for Thy glory. This--this is
our sin. All else Thou would'st have mended in us; but this--this is our
sin. Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!" Long confession came from him
slowly, bit by bit, as if sent forth, in involuntary cries, from a heart
rent by the disappointment of waiting. In strong voice, clear and true,
he made himself one with the vilest in this pleading, and all the vices
with which the soul of man has degraded itself were again summed up by
him in this--"We have not loved Thee. We have not trusted Thy love. We
are proud and vain; we have loved ourselves, not Thee."
How common the night was--just like any other night! The clouds, as one
looked at them, were seen to swing low, showing lighter and darker
spaces. How very short a time can we endure the tensest mood! It is like
a branding iron, which though it leaves its mark forever, cannot be
borne long. The soul relaxes; the senses reclaim their share of us.
Some men came rather rudely out from under the trees, and loitered near.
Perhaps all present, except Cameron, noticed them. Alec did; and felt
concerning them, he knew not why, uneasy suspicion. He noticed other
things now, although a few minutes before he had been insensible to all
about him. He saw that the lady he waited upon had dropped her face into
her hands; he saw that her disdainful and independent mood was melted.
Strangely enough, his mind wandered back again to her first companion,
and he wondered that she had not sent back for him or mourned his
absence. He was amazed now at his own assumption that design, not
accident, had caused such desertion. He could almost have started in
his solicitude, to seek the missing man, such was the rebound of his
mind. Yet to all this he only gave vagrant thoughts, such as we give to
our fellows in church. The temple of the night had become a holy place,
and his heart was heavy--perhaps for his old friend, standing there with
uplifted face, perhaps on account of the words he was uttering, perhaps
in contrition. In a few minutes he would go forward, and take the old
preacher by the arm, and try, as he had once tried before, to lead him
to rest and shelter from so vain an intensity of prayer. But just now he
would wait to hear the words he said. He could not but wait, for so
dull, so silent, did all things remain, that the earnestness of the
expectant band made itself felt as an agony of hope waning to despair.
Absorbed in this, Alec heard what came to him as harsh profane speech;
and yet it was not this; it was the really modest address of a young man
who felt constrained to speak to him.
"I don't know," he said nervously (his accent was American), "who _you_
may be, but I just wish to state that I've a sort of notion one of those
fellows right down there means mischief to one of these poor ladies in
white, who is his wife. I ain't very powerful myself, but, I take it,
you're pretty strong, aren't you?"
Alec gave impatient assent; but the men whom he was asked to watch
approached no nearer to the women but remained behind the preacher.
All this time old Cameron prayed on, and while it might be that hope in
his followers was failing, in his voice there was increasing gladness
and fervour.
The clouds above shifted a little. To those wrapped in true anticipation
their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere
behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper
region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she
did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the
upper edges of cloud were white as snow.
As the well of clear far light was opened to the old man's gaze, his
prayer stopped suddenly, and he stood only looking upwards. They did not
see so much as know from the manner in which his voice had failed, that
for him, at least, there were moments of ecstasy in the assurance of
hope.
"Poor fellow!" muttered Alec under his breath, for he felt the poignant
disappointment of the awakening.
A sweet sound made some of them turn an instant toward the wood, for a
little bird, disturbed in its hiding there, lilted forth a twittering
song of joy.
Its notes had not ceased when Alec heard a gasp of terror from the lady
near him, and saw, as one sees an act there is no time to avert, that
one of the rough fellows who were standing behind the old man had
suddenly struck him down by a savage blow upon the head.
Alec Trenholme ran and sprang upon the man who had struck the blow. Some
other man, he did not see which, wrested the club from the fellow's
hand. In the moments Alec was grappling with him he became conscious
that the old man lying near his feet on the grass was more to him than
revenge, and, with the caprice of a boy who turns from what interests
him less to what interests him more, he contented himself with hurling
the assailant from him, so that he fell heavily down the sloping ground
to where his companions stood. Then Alec pushed others aside and lifted
the wounded man.
Wounded? His hair was wet with warm blood. There was something done--a
good deal done, by many people--to restore him. Alec remembered
afterwards that the young man who had previously spoken to him had been
active, showing a more personal solicitude than was seen in the awed
kindness even of the women. One lives through such scenes with little
real perception of their details. He knew at last for certain that he
put his burden from him, and throwing himself down laid his ear on the
broad, muscular breast. Long as he listened, there was no movement
there. The mad old preacher was dead.