XVIII

On the evening of the next Sunday Dale was quietly going out of the

house when Mavis offered to accompany him.

"Off for a stroll, Will? If you can wait ten minutes, I'll come with

you."

But he excused himself from waiting, and further confessed that he

preferred to be alone. He said he was in a thoughtful rather than a

talkative mood to-night.

"You understand, old girl?"

"Yes, dear, I understand. You want to put on your considering cap

about something."

"That's just it, Mav. The considering cap. Ta-ta."

Outside in the roadway Mr. Creech, a farmer, hindered him for a few

minutes. Between him and Mr. Creech there were certain business

arrangements now under negotiation, and it was impossible to avoid

speaking of them. Dale, however, cut their chat as short as possible,

and directly he had shaken off Mr. Creech he walked away briskly

toward Rodchurch.

He had intended to arrive at the Baptist Chapel before the evening

service began, but now he was late. The congregation were all on their

knees, and the pastor, standing in his desk or pulpit above a raised

platform, had begun to pray aloud. Dale paused just inside the door,

looking at his strange surroundings, and feeling the awkwardness of a

person who enters a place that he has never seen before, and finds

himself among a lot of people who have their own customs and usages,

all of which are unknown to him. Then he noticed that a man was

smiling at him and beckoning, and he bowed gravely and followed the

hand. He was led up the little building to some empty chairs on a

level with the platform, at right angles to the rows of benches, and

close to a harmonium. Mr. Osborn, the pastor, had stopped praying, and

he did not go on again until Dale was seated. No one else had looked

up or seemed to be aware of the interruption caused by his entrance.

He assumed a duly reverent attitude, not kneeling, but bending his

body forward, and observed everything with great interest. There were

many differences between the arrangements of this chapel and those of

an ordinary church. The absence of an altar struck him as very

remarkable. The large platform, with its balustrade and central perch,

seemed to be altar, pulpit, and lectern all rolled into one--and choir

too, since it was occupied by several men and a dozen girls and young

women, who were all now on their knees while Mr. Osborn, looking very

odd in purely civilian clothes, prayed loudly over their heads.

He glanced at the high bare walls and narrow windows, and observed

that, except for some stenciled texts, there was not the slightest

attempt at decoration. Outside, the light was rapidly waning, and

inside the building the general tone had a grayness and dimness that

obliterated all the bright colors of the girls' dresses and hats. The

circumstance that not a single face was visible produced a curious

impression on one's mind. It made Dale feel for a moment as though he

were improperly prying, behind people's backs, at matters that did not

in the least concern him; and next moment he thought that all the gray

stooping forms were exactly like those of ghosts. Then, in another

moment, noticing with what rigid immobility they held themselves, he

thought of them as being dead and waiting for some tremendous signal

that should bring them to life again.

"Now," said Mr. Osborn, "let us praise God by singing the hundred and

twenty-sixth hymn."

Then all the faces showed. It was like a flash of pallid light running

to and fro along the benches as everybody changed the kneeling to the

sitting posture; and Dale immediately felt that he had been placed in

an uncomfortably conspicuous position. Far from being situated so that

he could pry on the private affairs of others, he was where everybody

could study him. He was alone, opposite to the entire crowd, instead

of being comfortably absorbed in its mass.

"Oh, thank you. Much obliged."

Mr. Osborn, speaking from the pulpit, had said something to one of his

young women, and she was leaning over the balustrade, smilingly

offering Dale an open hymn-book.

"I am afraid," she said, "that it's very small print; but I dare say

you have good eyes."

She spoke in the most friendly natural manner, exactly as one speaks

to a visitor when one is anxious to make him feel welcome and at home.

Dale, startled by this style of address in such a place, made a

dignified bow.

"Give him this," said Mr. Osborn, handing a book out of the pulpit.

"It's a larger character--'long primer,' as I believe the printers

call it. We'll have the lamps directly; but we are all of us rather

partial to blind man's holiday--not to mention that oil is oil, and

that Brother Spiers doesn't give it away. We know he couldn't afford

to do that. But there it is--Take care of the pence."

To Dale's astonishment, he heard a distinct chuckle here and there

among the congregation. Then the same young woman, having found the

correct page, handed him the large-type book. Then the man at the

harmonium struck up, and the whole congregation burst into song.

They sang with a fervent strength that he had never heard equaled. For

a moment the powerful chorus seemed to shake the walls, to fill every

cubic foot of air that the building contained, and then to go straight

up, splitting the ugly roof, and out into the sky. Otherwise this hymn

would have left one no space to breathe in. Dale felt a sudden rush of

blood to the head, as if the pressure of vocal sound were about to

produce suffocation; and at the same time he had the fantastic but

almost irresistible idea that the whole congregation were singing

solely at him, that they and their pastor had together planned to set

him alone in this high place where he must bear the full brunt of the

hymn while they all watched its effect upon him, and that the hymn

itself had been specially and artfully chosen with a view to him and

to nobody else.

"Hail, sov'reign love, that first began

The scheme to rescue fallen man!

Hail, matchless, free, eternal grace,

That gave my soul a hiding-place."

With his face turned as much as possible from the singers, he stood

very stiff and erect, staring at the printed page. Loudly as they had

sung the first verse they seemed to sing the second verse more loudly.

"Against the God that rules the sky,

I fought with hand uplifted high;

Despised His rich abounding grace,

Too proud to seek a hiding-place."

Dale braced himself, squared his shoulders and stood more erect than

ever as they struck into the third verse.

They sang louder than before: it seemed to him that they were

screaming.

"But thus th' eternal counsel ran,

'_Almighty_ love, arrest that man!'"

Dale closed the hymn-book, held it behind his back, and stared at the

cross-beams of the roof until the hymn was over.

After the hymn Mr. Osborn read a couple of chapters from the Bible,

and Dale, seated again, understood how utterly unfounded had been his

recent notion that these people were devoting any particular attention

to him. He looked at them carefully. Obviously they had not a thought

of him. The eyes of those near to him and far from him were alike

fixed upon the pastor's face.

But as soon as they sang again he experienced the same sensations

again, felt a conviction that the hymn was aimed directly at him.

"Lord, when Thy Spirit deigns to show

The badness of our hearts,

Astonished at the amazing view,

The Soul with horror starts.

"Our staggering faith gives way to doubt,

Our courage yields to fear;

Shocked at the sight, we straight cry out,

'Can ever God dwell here?'

"None less than God's Almighty Son

Can move such loads of sin;

The water from his side must run,

To wash this dungeon clean."

"Now, I think," said Mr. Osborn, "it is fairly lighting-up time, and

that no one can accuse us of being extravagant if we call for the

match-boxes. Brother Maghull, please get to work. And, yes, you too,

Brother Hartley, if you will. You're always a dab at regulating them."

Then the lamps were lighted; two or three men going round to do the

work, the congregation generally assisting as much as they were able,

while the pastor, watching all operations, made genial comments.

"Thank you. Now we begin to see who's who, and what's what. I say,

that's on the smoke, isn't it? I seem to smell something, or is it

imagination? If the wicks are as badly trimmed as they were three

Sundays ago, I shall be tempted to copy the procedure of the House of

Commons, and _name_ a member." Then he smiled. "Yes, I shall name a

certain young sister who must have turned clumsy-fingered because she

was thinking of her fal-lals and her chignon, or her new hat, when

she ought to have been thinking of her duty to our lamps."

A ripple of gentle laughter, like a lightly dancing wave on a deep

calm sea, passed from the platform to the outer door; the lamplighters

went back to their seats; and the pastor with a change of voice said

solemnly: "Friends, let us pray."

Dale observed his manner of holding his hand to his forehead as if

seeking inspiration, the almost spasmodic movements of his mouth, the

sort of plaintive groan that started the prayer, and the steadily

accumulating earnestness with which it went on.

"O merciful and divine Father, supreme and omnipotent lord of Thy

created universe, vouchsafe unto this little knot of Thy lowly

creatures ..."

It was a long prayer; and Dale, surmising it to be an extempore

composition, admired Mr. Osborn's flow of language, command of erudite

words, and success in bringing some very intricate sentences to an

appropriate period.

During the sermon Mr. Osborn several times aroused laughter by little

homely jokes coming unexpectedly in the midst of his serious

discourse; but Dale no longer felt surprise. He thought that he had

caught their point of view, got the hang of the main scheme. These

people were genuine believers, and entirely free from any affectation

or pretense. They possessed no church-manner: thus, when they spoke to

one another here, they did so as naturally as when they were speaking

in the fields or on the highroads. Only when they spoke to God, could

you hear the vibration and the thrill, the effort and the strain.

And all at once his own self-consciousness vanished. He felt

comfortable, quite at ease, and extraordinarily glad that he had

dedicated an hour to the purpose of coming here.

The lamplight enormously improved the appearance of the chapel; the

genial yellow glow was surrounded by fine dark shadows that draped the

ugly walls as if with soft curtains; there were golden glittering

bands on the roof beams, and above them all had become black,

impenetrable, mysterious. When one glanced up one might have had the

night sky over one's head, for all one could see of the roof. The

light shone bright on crooked backs, slightly distorted limbs, the

pallor of sickness, the stains of rough weather; on girls meekly

folding hands that daily scrub and scour; on laboring men stooping the

shoulders that habitually carry weights; on spectacled old women with

eyes worn out by incessantly peering at the tiny stitches of their

untiring needles; but one would have looked in vain for any types even

approximately similar to the stalwart well-balanced youths, the

smooth-cheeked game-playing maidens, the prosperously healthful

fathers and mothers of the established faith. Dale did not look for

them, did not miss them, would not have wished them here.

It might be said that there was not a single person of the whole

gathering on whom there was not plainly printed, in one shape or

another, the stamp of toil. That fact perhaps formed the root of the

difference between this and a Church of England congregation. To

Dale's mind, however, there was something else of a saliently

differentiating character. Once again he was struck by the expression

of all the faces. He thought how calm, how trustful, how quietly

joyous these people must be feeling, in order to shine back at the

lamps as steadily and clearly as the lamps were shining on them.

"Friends, let us praise God by singing the hundred and tenth hymn

before we separate."

They all rose and began to sing their final song; and Dale observed

that here and there, as the loud chorus swelled and flowed, singers

would sink down upon their knees as though of a sudden impelled to

silence and prayer.

"There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;

And sinners plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains.

"The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day;

And there may I, as vile as he,

Wash all my sins away."

Dale abruptly sat down, leaned forward, and then knelt upon the

boarded floor, hiding his face in his hands. He did not get up until

the pastor had given the blessing and the people were moving out.