BAALZEBUB'S BANQUET.
The next day there were three cholera cases: the day after there were
thirteen.
He had come at last, Baalzebub, God of flies, and of what flies are bred
from; to visit his self-blinded worshippers, and bestow on them his own
Cross of the Legion of Dishonour. He had come suddenly, capriciously,
sportively, as he sometimes comes; as he had come to Newcastle the
summer before, while yet the rest of England was untouched. He had
wandered all but harmless about the West country that summer; as if his
maw had been full glutted five years before, when he sat for many a week
upon the Dartmoor hills, amid the dull brown haze, and sun-burnt bents,
and dried-up watercourses of white dusty granite, looking far and wide
over the plague-struck land, and listening to the dead-bell booming all
day long in Tavistock churchyard. But he was come at last, with appetite
more fierce than ever, and had darted aside to seize on Aberalva, and
not to let it go till he had sucked his fill.
And all men moved about the streets slowly, fearfully; conscious of some
awful unseen presence, which might spring on them from round every
corner; some dreadful inevitable spell, which lay upon them like a
nightmare weight; and walked to and fro warily, looking anxiously into
each other's faces, not to ask, "How are you?" but "How am I?" "Do I
look as if--?" and glanced up ever and anon restlessly, as if they
expected to see, like the Greeks, in their tainted camp, by Troy, the
pitiless Sun-god shooting his keen arrows down on beast and man.
All night long the curdled cloud lay low upon the hills, wrapping in its
hot blanket the sweltering breathless town; and rolled off sullenly when
the sun rose high, to let him pour down his glare, and quicken into evil
life all evil things. For Baalzebub is a sunny fiend; and loves not
storm and tempest, thunder, and lashing rains; but the broad bright sun,
and broad blue sky, under which he can take his pastime merrily, and
laugh at all the shame and agony below; and, as he did at his great
banquet in New Orleans once, madden all hearts the more by the contrast
between the pure heaven above and the foul hell below.
And up and down the town the foul fiend sported, now here now there;
snapping daintily at unexpected victims, as if to make confusion worse
confounded: to belie Thurnall's theories and prognostics, and harden the
hearts of fools by fresh excuses for believing that he had nothing to do
with drains and water; that he was "only"--such an only!--"the
Visitation of God."
He has taken old Beer's second son; and now he clutches at the old man
himself; then across the street to Gentleman Jan, his eldest: but he is
driven out from both houses by chloride of lime and peat dust, and the
colony of the Beers has peace awhile.
Alas! there are victims enough and to spare beside them, too ready for
the sacrifice, and up the main street he goes unabashed, springing in at
one door and at another, on either side of the street, but fondest of
the western side, where the hill slopes steeply down to the house-backs.
He fleshes his teeth on every kind of prey. The drunken cobbler dies, of
course: but spotless cleanliness and sobriety does not save the mother
of seven children, who has been soaking her brick floor daily with water
from a poisoned well, defiling where she meant to clean. Youth does not
save the buxom lass, who has been filling herself, as girls will do,
with unripe fruit: nor innocence the two fair children who were sailing
their feather-boats yesterday in the quay-pools, as they have sailed
them for three years past, and found no hurt; piety does not save the
bed-ridden old dame, bed-ridden in the lean-to garret, who moans, "It is
the Lord!" and dies. It is "the Lord" to her, though Baalzebub himself
be the angel of release.
And yet all the while sots and fools escape where wise men fall; weakly
women, living amid all wretchedness, nurse, unharmed, strong men who
have breathed fresh air all day. Of one word of Scripture at least
Baalzebub is mindful; for "one is taken and another left."
Still, there is a method in his seeming madness. His eye falls on a
blind alley, running back from the main street, backed at the upper end
by a high wall of rock. There is a God-send for him--a devil's-send,
rather, to speak plain truth: and in he dashes; and never leaves that
court, let brave Tom wrestle with him as he may, till he has taken one
from every house.
That court belonged to Treluddra, the old fish-jowder. He must do
something. Thurnall attacks him; Major Campbell, Headley; the neighbours
join in the cry; for there is no mistaking cause and effect there, and
no one bears a great love to him; besides, terrified and
conscience-stricken men are glad of a scapegoat; and some of those who
were his stoutest backers in the vestry are now, in their terror, the
loudest against him, ready to impute the whole cholera to him. Indeed,
old Beer is ready to declare that it was Treluddra's fish-heaps which
poisoned him and his: so, all but mobbed, the old sinner goes up--to set
the houses to rights? No; to curse the whole lot for a set of pigs, and
order them to clean the place out themselves, or he will turn them into
the street. He is one of those base natures, whom fact only lashes into
greater fury,--a Pharaoh whose heart the Lord himself can only harden;
such men there are, and women, too, grown grey in lies, to reap at last
the fruit of lies. But he carries back with him to his fish-heaps a
little invisible somewhat which he did not bring; and ere nightfall he
is dead hideously; he, his wife, his son:--and now the Beers are down
again, and the whole neighbourhood of Treluddra's house is wild with
disgusting agony.
Now the fiend is hovering round the fish-curing houses: but turns back,
disgusted with the pure scent of the tan-yard, where not hides, but nets
are barked; skips on board of a brig in the quay-pool; and a poor
collier's 'prentice dies, and goes to his own place. What harm has he
done? Is it his sin that, ill-fed and well-beaten daily, he has been
left to sleep on board, just opposite the sewer's mouth, in a berth some
four feet long by two feet high and broad?
Or is it that poor girl's sin who was just now in Heale's shop, talking
to Miss Heale safe and sound, that she is carried back into it, in
half-an-hour's time, fainting, shrieking? One must draw a veil over the
too hideous details.
No, not her fault: but there, at least, the curse has not come without a
cause. For she is Tardrew's daughter.
But whither have we got? How long has the cholera been in Aberalva? Five
days, five minutes, or five years? How many suns have risen and set
since Frank Headley put into his bosom Valencia's pledge!
It would be hard for him to tell; and hard for many more: for all the
days have passed as in a fever dream. To cowards the time has seemed
endless; and every moment, ere their term shall come, an age of terror,
of self-reproach, of superstitious prayers, and cries, which are not
repentance. And to some cowards, too, the days have seemed but as a
moment; for they have been drunk day and night.
Strange and hideous, yet true.
It has now become a mere commonplace, the strange power which great
crises, pestilences, famines, revolutions, invasions, have to call out
in their highest power, for evil and for good alike, the passions and
virtues of man; how, during their stay, the most desperate recklessness,
the most ferocious crime, side by side with the most heroic and
unexpected virtue, are followed generally by a collapse and a moral
death, alike of virtue and of vice. We should explain this now-a-days,
and not ill, by saying that these crises put the human mind into a state
of exaltation: but the truest explanation, after all, lies in the old
Bible belief, that in these times there goes abroad the unquenchable
fire of God, literally kindling up all men's hearts to the highest
activity, and showing, by the light of their own strange deeds, the
inmost recesses of their spirits, till those spirits burn down again,
self-consumed, while the chaff and stubble are left as ashes, not
valueless after all, as manure for some future crop; and the pure gold,
if gold there be, alone remains behind.
Even so it was in Aberalva during that fearful week. The drunkards drank
more; the swearers swore more than ever; the unjust shopkeeper clutched
more greedily than ever at the last few scraps of mean gain which
remained for him this side the grave; the selfish wrapped themselves up
more brutally than ever in selfishness; the shameless woman mingled
desperate debauchery with fits of frantic superstition; and all base
souls cried out together, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!"
But many a brave man and many a weary woman possessed their souls in
patience, and worked on, and found that as their day their strength
should be. And to them the days seemed short indeed; for there was too
much to be done in them for any note of time.
Headley and Campbell, Grace and old Willis, and last, but not least, Tom
Thurnall,--these and three or four brave women, organised themselves
into a right-gallant and well-disciplined band, and commenced at once a
visitation from house to house, saving thereby, doubtless, many a life:
but ere eight-and-forty hours were passed, the house visitation
languished. It was as much as they could do to attend to the acute
cases.
And little Scoutbush? He could not nurse, nor doctor: but what he could,
he did. He bought, and fetched all that money could procure. He galloped
over to the justices, and obtained such summary powers as he could; and
then, like a true Irishman, exceeded them recklessly, breaking into
premises right and left, in an utterly burglarious fashion; he organised
his fatigue-party, as he called them, of scavengers, and paid the
cowardly clods five shillings a day each to work at removing all
removable nuisances; he walked up and down the streets for hours, giving
the sailors cigars from his own case, just to show them that he was not
afraid, and therefore they need not be: and if it was somewhat his fault
that the horse was stolen, he at least did his best after the event to
shut the stable-door. The five real workers toiled on, meanwhile, in
perfect harmony and implicit obedience to the all-knowing Tom, but with
the most different inward feelings. Four of them seemed to forget death
and danger; but each remembered them in his own fashion.
Major Campbell longed to die, and courted death. Frank believed that he
should die, and was ready for death. Grace longed to die, but knew that
she should not die till she had found Tom's belt, and was content to
wait. Willis was of opinion that an "old man must die some day, and
somehow,--as good one way as another;" and all his concern was to run
about after his maid, seeing that she did not tire herself, and obeying
all her orders with sailor-like precision and cleverness.
And Tom? He just thought nothing about death and danger at-all. Always
smiling, always cheerful, always busy, yet never in a hurry, he went up
and down, seemingly ubiquitous. Sleep he got when he could, and food as
often as he could; into the sea he leapt, morning and night, and came
out fresher every time; the only person in the town who seemed to grow
healthier, and actually happier, as the work went on.
"You really must be careful of yourself," said Campbell, at last. "You
carry no charmed life."
"My dear sir, I am the most cautious and selfish man in the town. I am
living by rule; I have got--and what greater pleasure?--a good stand-up
fight with an old enemy; and be sure I shall keep myself in condition
for it. I have written off for help to the Board of Health, and I shall
not be shoved against the ropes till the Government man comes down."
"And then?"
"I shall go to bed and sleep for a month. Never mind me; but mind
yourself: and mind that curate; he's a noble brick;--if all parsons in
England were like him, I'd--What's here now?"
Miss Heale came shrieking down the street.
"Oh, Mr. Thurnall! Miss Tardrew! Miss Tardrew!"
"Screaming will only make you ill, too, Miss. Where is Miss Tardrew?"
"In the surgery,--and my mother!"
"I expected this," said Tom. "The old man will go next."
He went into the surgery. The poor girl was in collapse already. Mrs.
Heale was lying on the sofa, stricken. The old man hanging over her,
brandy bottle in hand.
"Put away that trash!" cried Tom; "you've had too much already."
"Oh, Mr. Thurnall, she's dying, and I shall die too!"
"You! you were all right this morning."
"But I shall die; I know I shall, and go to hell!"
"You'll go where you ought; and if you give way to this miserable
cowardice, you'll go soon enough. Walk out, sir! Make yourself of some
use, and forget your fear! Leave Mrs. Heale to me."
The wretched old man obeyed him, utterly cowed, and went out: but not to
be of use: he had been hopelessly boozy from the first--half to fortify
his body against infection, half to fortify his heart against
conscience. Tom had never reproached him for his share in the public
folly. Indeed, Tom had never reproached a single soul. Poor wretches who
had insulted him had sent for him, with abject shrieks. "Oh, doctor,
doctor, save me! Oh, forgive me! oh, if I'd minded what you said! Oh,
don't think of what I said!" And Tom had answered cheerfully, "Tut-tut;
never mind what might have been; let's feel your pulse."
But though Tom did not reproach Heale, Heale reproached himself. He had
just conscience enough left to feel the whole weight of his abused
responsibility, exaggerated and defiled by superstitious horror; and
maudlin tipsy, he wandered about the street, moaning that he had
murdered his wife, and all the town, and asking pardon of every one he
met; till seeing one of the meeting-houses open, he staggered in, in the
vain hope of comfort which he knew he did not deserve.
In half-an-hour Tom was down the street again to Headley's. "Where is
Miss Harvey?"
"At the Beers'."
"She must go up to Heale's instantly. The mother will die. Those cases
of panic seldom recover. And Miss Heale may very likely follow her. She
has shrieked and sobbed herself into it, poor fool! and Grace must go to
her at once; she may bring her to common sense and courage, and that is
the only chance."
Grace went, and literally talked and prayed Miss Heale into life again.
"You are an angel," said Tom to her that very evening, when he found the
girl past danger.
"Mr. Thurnall!" said Grace, in a tone of sad and most meaning reproof.
"But you are! And these owls are not worthy of you."
"This is no time for such language, sir! After all, what am I doing more
than you?" And Grace went upstairs again, with a cold hard countenance
which belied utterly the heart within.
That was the critical night of all. The disease seemed to have done its
worst in the likeliest spots: but cases of panic increased all the
afternoon; and the gross number was greater than ever.
Tom did not delay inquiring into the cause: and he discovered it.
Headley, coming out the next morning, after two hours' fitful sleep, met
him at the gate: his usual business-like trot was exchanged for a fierce
and hurried stamp. When he saw Frank, he stopped short, and burst out
into a story which was hardly intelligible, so interlarded was it with
oaths.
"For Heaven's sake! Thurnall, calm yourself, and do not swear so
frightfully; it is so unlike you! What can have upset you thus?"
"Why should I not curse and swear in the street," gasped he, "while
every fellow who calls himself a preacher is allowed to do it in the
pulpit with impunity! Fine him five shillings for every curse, as you
might if people had courage and common sense, and then complain of me! I
am a fool, I know, though. But I cannot stand it! To have all my work
undone by a brutal ignorant fanatic!--It is too much! Here, if you will
believe it, are those preaching fellows getting up a revival, or some
such invention, just to make money out of the cholera! They have got
down a great gun from the county town. Twice a-day they are preaching at
them, telling them that it is all God's wrath against their sins; that
it is impious to interfere, and that I am fighting against God, and the
end of the world is coming, and they and the devil only know what. If I
meet one of them, I'll wring his neck, and be hanged for it! Oh, you
parsons! you parsons!" and Tom ground his teeth with rage.
"Is it possible? How did you find this out?"
"Mrs. Heale had been in, listening to their howling, just before she was
taken. Heale went in when I turned him out of doors; came home raving
mad, and is all but blue now. Three cases of women have I had this
morning, all frightened into cholera, by their own confession, by last
night's tomfoolery.--Came home howling, fainted, and were taken before
morning. One is dead, the other two will die. You must stop it, or I
shall have half-a-dozen more to-night. Go into the meeting, and curse the
cur to his face!"
"I cannot," cried Frank, with a gesture of despair, "I cannot!"
"Ah, your cloth forbids you, I suppose, to enter the non-conformist
opposition shop."
"You are unjust, Thurnall! What are such rules at a moment like this?
I'd break them, and the bishop would hold me guiltless. But I cannot
speak to these people. I have no eloquence--no readiness--they do not
trust me--would not believe me--God help me!" and Frank covered his face
with his hands, and burst into tears.
"Not that, for Heaven's sake!" said Tom, "or we shall have you blue
next, my good fellow. I'd go myself, but they'd not hear me, for
certain; I am no Christian, I suppose: at least, I can't talk their
slang:--but I know who can! We'll send Campbell!"
Frank hailed the suggestion with rapture, and away they went: but they
had an hour's good search from sufferer to sufferer before they found
the Major.
He heard them quietly. A severe gloom settled over his face. "I will
go," said he.
At six o'clock that evening, the meeting-house was filling with
terrified women, and half-curious, half-sneering, men; and among them
the tall figure of Major Campbell, in his undress uniform (which he had
put on, wisely, to give a certain dignity to his mission), stalked in,
and took his seat in the back benches.
The sermon was what he expected. There is no need to transcribe it. Such
discourses may be heard often enough in churches as well as chapels. The
preacher's object seemed to be--for some purpose or other which we have
no right to judge--to excite in his hearers the utmost intensity of
selfish fear, by language which certainly, as Tom had said, came under
the law against profane cursing and swearing. He described the next
world in language which seemed a strange jumble of Virgil's Aeneid, the
Koran, the dreams of those rabbis who crucified our Lord, and of those
mediaeval inquisitors who tried to convert sinners (and on their own
ground, neither illogically nor over-harshly) by making this world for a
few hours as like as possible to what, so they held, God was going to
make the world to come for ever.
At last he stopped suddenly, when he saw that the animal excitement was
at the very highest; and called on all who felt "convinced" to come
forward and confess their sins.
In another minute there would have been (as there have been ere now)
four or five young girls raving and tossing upon the floor, in mad
terror and excitement; or, possibly, half the congregation might have
rushed out (as a congregation has rushed out ere now) headed by the
preacher himself, and ran headlong down to the quay-pool, with shrieks
and shouts, declaring that they had cast the devil out of Betsey
Pennington, and were hunting him into the sea: but Campbell saw that the
madness must be stopped at once; and rising, he thundered, in a voice
which brought all to their senses in a moment--
"Stop! I, too, have a sermon to preach to you; I trust I am a Christian
man, and that not of last year's making, or the year before. Follow me
outside, if you be rational beings, and let me tell you the truth--God's
truth! Men!" he said, with an emphasis on the word, "you at least, will
give me a fair hearing, and you too, modest married women! Leave that
fellow with the shameless hussies who like to go into fits at his feet."
The appeal was not in vain. The soberer majority followed him out; the
insane minority soon followed, in the mere hope of fresh excitement;
while the preacher was fain to come also, to guard his flock from the
wolf. Campbell sprang upon a large block of stone, and taking off his
cap, opened his mouth, and spake unto them.
* * * * *
Readers will doubtless desire to hear what Major Campbell said: but they
will be disappointed; and perhaps it is better for them that they should
be. Let each of them, if they think it worth while, write for themselves
a discourse fitting for a Christian man, who loved and honoured his
Bible too much to find in a few scattered texts, all misinterpreted, and
some mistranslated, excuses for denying fact, reason, common justice,
the voice of God in his own moral sense, and the whole remainder of the
Bible from beginning to end.
Whatsoever words he spoke they came home to those wild hearts with
power. And when he paused, and looked intently into the faces of his
auditory, to see what effect he was producing, a murmur of assent and
admiration rose from the crowd, which had now swelled to half the
population of the town. And no wonder; no wonder that, as the men were
enchained by the matter, so were the women by the manner. The grand
head, like a grey granite peak against the clear blue sky; the tall
figure, with all its martial stateliness and ease; the gesture of his
long arm, so graceful, and yet so self-restrained; the tones of his
voice which poured from beneath that proud moustache, now tender as a
girl's, now ringing like a trumpet over roof and sea. There were old men
there, old beyond the years of man, who said they had never seen nor
heard the like: but it must be like what their fathers had told them of,
when John Wesley, on the cliffs of St. Ives, out-thundered the thunder
of the gale. To Grace he seemed one of the old Scotch Covenanters of
whom she had read, risen from the dead to preach there from his rock
beneath the great temple of God's air, a wider and a juster creed than
theirs. Frank drew Thurnall's arm through his, and whispered, "I shall
thank you for this to my dying day:" but Thurnall held down his head. He
seemed deeply moved. At last, half to himself,--
"Humph! I believe that between this man and that girl, you will make a
Christian even of me some day!"
But the lull was only for a moment. For Major Campbell, looking round,
discerned among the crowd the preacher, whispering and scowling amid a
knot of women; and a sudden fit of righteous wrath came over him.
"Stand out there, sir, you preacher, and look me in the face, if you
can!" thundered he. "We are here on common ground as free men, beneath
God's heaven and God's eye. Stand out, sir! and answer me if you can; or
be for ever silent!"
Half in unconscious obedience to the soldier-like word of command, half
in jealous rage, the preacher stepped forward, gasping for breath,--
"Don't listen to him! He is a messenger of Satan, sent to damn you--a
lying prophet! Let the Lord judge between me and him! Stop your ears--a
messenger of Satan--a Jesuit in disguise!"
"You lie, and you know that you lie!" answered Campbell, twirling slowly
his long moustache, as he always did when choking down indignation. "But
you have called on the Lord to judge; so do I. Listen to me, sir! Dare
you, in the presence of God, answer for the words which you have spoken
this day?"
A strange smile came over the preacher's face.
"I read my title clear, sir, to mansions in the skies. Well for you if
you could do the same."
Was it only the setting sun, or was it some inner light from the depths
of that great spirit, which shone out in all his countenance, and filled
his eyes with awful inspiration, as he spoke, in a voice calm and sweet,
sad and regretful, and yet terrible from the slow distinctness of every
vowel and consonant?
"Mansions in the skies? You need not wait till then, sir, for the
presence of God. Now, here, you and I are before God's judgment-seat.
Now, here, I call on you to answer to Him for the innocent lives which
you have endangered and destroyed, for the innocent souls to whom you
have slandered their heavenly Father by your devil's doctrines this day!
You have said it. Let the Lord judge between you and me. He knows best
how to make His judgment manifest."
He bowed his head awhile, as if overcome by the awful words which he had
uttered, almost in spite of himself, and then stepped slowly down from
the stone, and passed through the crowd, which reverently made way for
him; while many voices cried, "Thank you, sir! Thank you!" and old
Captain Willis, stepping forward, held out his hand to him, a quiet
pride in his grey eye.
"You will not refuse an old fighting man's thanks, sir? This has been
like Elijah's day with Baal's priests on Carmel."
Campbell shook his hand in silence: but turned suddenly, for another and
a coarser voice caught his ear. It was Jones, the Lieutenant's.
"And now, my lads, take the Methodist Parson, neck and heels, and heave
him into the quay pool, to think over his summons!"
Campbell went back instantly. "No, my dear sir, let me entreat you for
my sake. What has passed has been too terrible to me already; if it has
done any good, do not let us break it by spoiling the law."
"I believe you're right, sir: but my blood is up, and no wonder. Why,
where is the preacher?"
He had stood quite still for several minutes after Campbell's
adjuration. He had, often perhaps, himself hurled forth such words in
the excitement of preaching; but never before had he heard them
pronounced in spirit and in truth. And as he stood, Thurnall, who had
his doctor's eye on him, saw him turn paler and more pale. Suddenly he
clenched his teeth, and stooped slightly forwards for a moment, drawing
his breath. Thurnall walked quickly and steadily up to him.
Gentleman Jan and two other riotous fellows had already laid hold of
him, more with the intention of frightening, than of really ducking him.
"Don't! don't!" cried he, looking round with eyes wild--but not with
terror.
"Hands off, my good lads," said Tom quietly. "This is my business now,
not yours, I can tell you."
And passing the preacher's arm through his own, with a serious face, Tom
led him off into the house at the back of the chapel.
In two hours more he was blue; in four he was a corpse. The judgment, as
usual, had needed no miracle to enforce it.
Tom went to Campbell that night, and apprised him of the fact. "Those
words of yours went through him, sir, like a Minié bullet. I was afraid
of what would happen when I heard them."
"So was I, the moment after they were spoken. But, sir, I felt a power
upon me,--you may think it a fancy,--that there was no resisting."
"I dare impute no fancies, when I hear such truth and reason as you
spoke upon that stone, sir."
"Then you do not blame me?" asked Campbell, with a subdued, almost
deprecatory voice, such as Thurnall had never heard in him before.
"The man deserved to die, and he died, sir. It is well that there are
some means left on earth of punishing offenders whom the law cannot
touch."
"It is an awful responsibility."
"Not more awful than killing a man in battle, which we both have done,
sir, and yet have felt no sting of conscience."
"An awful responsibility still. Yet what else is life made up of, from
morn to night, but of deeds which may earn heaven or hell?... Well, as
he did to others, so was it done to him. God forgive him! At least, our
cause will be soon tried and judged: there is little fear of my not
meeting him again--soon enough." And Campbell, with a sad smile, lay
back in his chair and was silent.
"My dear sir," said Tom, "allow me to remind you, after this excitement
comes a collapse; and that is not to be trifled with just now. Medicine
I dare not give you. Food I must."
Campbell shook his head.
"You must go now, my dear fellow. It is now half-past ten, and I will be
at Pennington's at one o'clock, to see how he goes on; so you need not
go there. And, meanwhile, I must take a little medicine."
"Major, you are not going to doctor yourself?" cried Tom.
"There is a certain medicine called prayer, Mr. Thurnall--an old
specific for the heart-ache, as you will find one day--which I have been
neglecting much of late, and which I must return to in earnest before
midnight. Good-bye, God bless and keep you!" And the Major retired to
his bed-room, and did not stir off his knees for two full hours. After
which he went to Pennington's, and thence somewhere else; and Tom met
him at four o'clock that morning musing amid unspeakable horrors, quiet,
genial, almost cheerful.
"You are a man," said Tom to himself; "and I fancy at times something
more than a man; more than me at least."
Tom was right in his fear that after excitement would come collapse; but
wrong as to the person to whom it would come. When he arrived at the
surgery door, Headley stood waiting for him.
"Anything fresh? Have you seen the Heales?"
"I have been praying with them. Don't be frightened. I am not likely to
forget the lesson of this afternoon."
"Then go to bed. It is full twelve o'clock."
"Not yet, I fear. I want you to see old Willis. All is not right."
"Ah! I thought the poor dear old man would kill himself. He has been
working too hard, and presuming on his sailor's power of tumbling in and
taking a dog's nap whenever he chose."
"I have warned him again and again: but he was working so magnificently,
that one had hardly heart to stop him. And beside, nothing would part
him from his maid."
"I don't wonder at that:" quoth Tom to himself. "Is she with him?"
"No: he found himself ill; slipped home on some pretence; and will not
hear of our telling her."
"Noble old fellow! Caring for every one but himself to the last." And
they went in.
It was one of those rare cases, fatal, yet merciful withal, in which the
poison seems to seize the very centre of the life, and to preclude the
chance of lingering torture, by one deadening blow.
The old man lay paralysed, cold, pulseless, but quite collected and
cheerful. Tom looked, inquired, shook his head, and called for a hot
bath of salt and water.
"Warmth we must have, somehow. Anything to keep the fire alight."
"Why so, sir?" asked the old man "The fire's been flickering down this
many a year. Why not let it go out quietly, at three-score years and
ten? You're sure my maid don't know?"
They put him into his bath, and he revived a little.
"No; I am not going to get well; so don't you waste your time on me,
sirs! I'm taken while doing my duty, as I hoped to be. And I've lived to
see my maid do hers, as I knew she would, when the Lord called on her. I
have,--but don't tell her, she's well employed, and has sorrows enough
already, some that you'll know of some day--"
"You must not talk," quoth Tom, who guessed his meaning, and wished to
avoid the subject.
"Yes, but I must, sir. I've no time to lose. If you'd but go and see
after those poor Heales, and come again. I'd like to have one word with
Mr. Headley; and my time runs short."
"A hundred, if you will," said Frank.
"And now, sir," when they were alone, "only one thing, if you'll excuse
an old sailor," and Willis tried vainly to make his usual salutation;
but the cramped hand refused to obey,--"and a dying one too."
"What is it?"
"Only don't be hard on the people, sir; the people here. They're
good-hearted souls, with all their sins, if you'll only take them as you
find them, and consider that they've had no chance."
"Willis, Willis, don't talk of that! I shall be a wiser man henceforth,
I trust. At least I shall not trouble Aberalva long."
"Oh, sir, don't talk so; and you just getting a hold of them!"
"I?"
"Yes, you, sir. They've found you out at last, thank God. I always knew
what you were and said it. They've found you out in the last week; and
there's not a man in the town but what would die for you, I believe."
This announcement staggered Frank. Some men it would have only hardened
in their pedantry, and have emboldened them to say: "Ah! then these men
see that a High Churchman can work like any one else, when there is a
practical sacrifice to be made. Now I have a standing ground which no
one can dispute from which to go on, and enforce my idea of what he
ought to be."
But, rightly or wrongly, no such thought crossed Frank's mind. He was
just as good a Churchman as ever--why not? Just as fond of his own ideal
of what a parish and a Church Service ought to be--why not? But the only
thought which did rise in his mind was one of utter self-abasement.
"Oh, how blind I have been! How I have wasted my time in laying down the
law to these people: fancying myself infallible, as if God were not as
near to them as He is to me--certainly nearer than to any book on my
shelves--offending their little prejudices, little superstitions, in my
own cruel self-conceit and self-will! And now, the first time that I
forget my own rules; the first time that I forget almost that I am a
priest, even a Christian at all! that moment they acknowledge me as a
priest, as a Christian. The moment I meet them upon the commonest human
ground, helping them as one heathen would help another, simply because
he was his own flesh and blood, that moment they soften to me and show
me how much I might have done with them twelve months ago, had I had but
common sense!"
He knelt down and prayed by the old man, for him and for himself.
"Would it be troubling you, sir?" said the old man at last. "But I'd
like to take the Sacrament before I go."
"Of course. Whom shall I ask in?"
The old man paused awhile. "I fear it's selfish: but it seems to me I
would not ask it, but that I know I'm going. I should like to take it
with my maid, once more before I die."
"I'll go for her," said Frank, "the moment Thurnall comes back to watch
you."
"What need to go yourself, sir? Old Sarah will go, and willing."
Thurnall came in at that moment.
"I am going to fetch Miss Harvey. Where is she, Captain?"
"At Janey Headon's, along with her two poor children."
"Stay," said Tom, "that's a bad quarter, just at the fish-house back.
Have some brandy before you start?"
"No! no Dutch courage!" and Frank was gone. He had a word to say to
Grace Harvey, and it must be said at once.
He turned down the silent street, and turned up over stone stairs,
through quaint stone galleries and balconies such as are often huddled
together on the cliff sides in fishing towns; into a stifling cottage,
the door of which had been set wide open in the vain hope of fresh air.
A woman met him, and clasped both his hands, with tears of joy.
"They're mending, sir! They're mending, else I'd have sent to tell you.
I never looked for you so late."
There was a gentle voice in the next room. It was Grace's.
"Ah, she's praying by them now. She'm giving them all their medicines
all along! Whatever I should have done without her?--and in and out all
day long, too; till one fancies at whiles the Lord must have changed her
into five or six at once, to be everywhere to the same minute."
Frank went in, and listened to her prayer. Her face was as pale and calm
as the pale, calm faces of the two worn-out babes, whose heads lay on
the pillow close to hers: but her eyes were lit up with an intense
glory, which seemed to fill the room with love and light.
Frank listened: but would not break the spell.
At last she rose, looked round and blushed.
"I beg your pardon, sir, for taking the liberty. If I had known that you
were about, I would have sent: but hearing that you were gone home, I
thought you would not be offended, if I gave thanks for them myself.
They are my own, sir, as it were--"
"Oh, Miss Harvey, do not talk so! While you can pray as you were praying
then, he who would silence you might be silencing unawares the Lord
himself!"
She made no answer, though the change in Frank's tone moved her; and
when he told her his errand, that thought also passed from her mind.
At last, "Happy, happy man!" she said calmly; and putting on her bonnet,
followed Frank out of the house.
"Miss Harvey," said Frank, as they hurried up the street, "I must say
one word to you, before we take that Sacrament together."
"Sir?"
"It is well to confess all sins before the Eucharist, and I will confess
mine. I have been unjust to you. I know that you hate to be praised; so
I will not tell you what has altered my opinion. But Heaven forbid that
I should ever do so base a thing, as to take the school away from one
who is far more fit to rule in it than ever I shall be!"
Grace burst into tears.
"Thank God! And I thank you, sir! Oh, there's never a storm but what
some gleam breaks through it! And now, sir, I would not have told you it
before, lest you should fancy that I changed for the sake of gain--
though, perhaps, that is pride, as too much else has been. But you will
never hear of me inside either of those chapels again."
"What has altered your opinion of them, then?"
"It would take long to tell, sir: but what happened this morning filled
the cup. I begin to think, sir, that their God and mine are not the
same. Though why should I judge them, who worshipped that other God
myself till no such long time since; and never knew, poor fool, that the
Lord's name was Love?"
"I have found out that, too, in these last days. More shame to me than
to you that I did not know it before."
"Well for us both that we do know it now, sir. For if we believed Him
now, sir, to be aught but perfect Love, how could we look round here
to-night, and not go mad?"
"Amen!" said Frank.
And how had the pestilence, of all things on earth, revealed to those
two noble souls that God is Love?
Let the reader, if he have supplied Campbell's sermon, answer the
question for himself.
They went in, and upstairs to Willis.
Grace bent over the old man, tenderly, but with no sign of sorrow.
Dry-eyed, she kissed the old man's forehead; arranged his bed-clothes,
woman-like, before she knelt down; and then the three received the
Sacrament together.
"Don't turn me out," whispered Tom. "It's no concern of mine, of course;
but you are all good creatures, and, somehow, I should like to be with
you."
So Tom stayed; and what thoughts passed through his heart are no concern
of ours.
Frank put the cup to the old man's lips; the lips closed, sipped,--then
opened ... the jaw had fallen.
"Gone," said Grace quietly.
Frank paused, awe-struck.
"Go on, sir," said she, in a low voice. "He hears it all more clearly
than he ever did before." And by the dead man's side Frank finished the
Communion Service.
Grace rose when it was over, kissed the calm forehead, and went out
without a word.
"Tom," said Frank, in a whisper, "come into the next room with me."
Tom hardly heard the tone in which the words were spoken, or he would
perhaps have answered otherwise than he did.
"My father takes the Communion," said he, half to himself. "At least, it
is a beautiful old--"
Howsoever the sentence would have been finished, Tom stopped short--
"Hey?--What does that mean?"
"At last?" gasped Frank, gently enough. "Excuse me!" He was bowed almost
double, crushing Thurnall's arm in the fierce gripe of pain. "Pish!--
Hang it!--Impossible!--There, you are all right now!"
"For the time. I can understand many things now. Curious sensation it
is, though. Can you conceive a sword put in on one side of the waist,
just above the hip-bone, and drawn through, handle and all, till it
passes out at the opposite point?"
"I have felt it twice; and therefore you will be pleased to hold your
tongue and go to bed. Have you had any warnings?"
"Yes,--no,--that is--this morning: but I forgot. Never mind!--What
matter a hundred years hence I There it is again!--God help me!"
"Humph!" growled Thurnall to himself. "I'd sooner have lost a dozen of
these herring-hogs, whom nobody misses, and who are well out of their
life-scrape: but the parson, just as he was making a man!"
There is no use in complaints. In half an hour Frank is screaming like a
woman, though he has bitten his tongue half through to stop his screams.