good if aw'd a let thee. Thaa wor awlus fond o' childer', bud
they'd never let thee alone. It wor happen as weel if aw'd a bit
more o' thi spirit i' me, owd lad; but if there wor more fo'k like
thee there'd be less like me.'
And at this Captain wagged his tail with delight, and rubbed his
cold nose under the palm of Moses' hand.
'Aw've gin thee a bad name, owd mon, and they'n tried to hang thee
for't; but thaa'll happen do summat some day as they'll tee a
medal raand thi neck for, and when thaa'rt deead build thee a
moniment.'
And Moses actually laughed at his burst of mirth, which was of
rare occurrence in his taciturn life.
Moses' wit, however, was soon cut short, for he started and stayed
his monologue at the sight of a child sailing paper boats on the
opposite and deeper side of the reservoir,
'Why, yon's that little lad o' Oliver o' Deaf Martha's!' exclaimed
Moses to himself. 'What a foo' (fool) his mother mun be to let him
marlock on th' Lodge banks by hissel. By Guy! he's i' th' watter!'
At that moment Captain sprang up, and would have leapt after the
child, but Moses bade him lie still.
The dog, for the first time in its life, resented the command of
his master, and a low, ominous growl came from a mouth that
displayed a row of threatening teeth. At this Moses, for the first
time in his life too, raised his foot and kicked the brute he had
so lately been apostrophizing, and, seizing it by the collar, held
it to the spot.
'Thaa doesn't know whose bairn it is, Captain, or thaa'd never
trouble to go in after it. It's his whose dog welly worried thee
and me on th' Caanty Court day.'
But the instinct of Captain was nearer the thought of God than was
the moral nature of Moses, and, despite threat and cuff and kick,
the dog so dragged his collar that Moses, weak from his long
illness, felt he must either let go his hold or follow the leading
of the noble creature.
And now commenced a terrible struggle in the soul of Moses. He
turned pale, and great drops of sweat stood upon his brow, as he
felt himself in the grasp of a stronger and better nature than his
own. Looking round to see if his relentless act were watched, he
breathed more freely as he saw along the miles of moorland no sign
of human life. Only his eye, and the eye of Captain--and then he
realized that other Eye that filled all space--the Eye that looked
down from the cloudless light. Fiercely the struggle waged. The
voice of Moses cried out of the deeps of his own black heart, 'My
time has come, as I said it would.' But the words of Mr.
Penrose--heeded not when uttered--rang out clear and telling:
'Vengeance is Mine, _I_ will repay.'
'But is not _this_ God's vengeance?' replied the voice of the
lower man.
And then came the reply:
'Would God punish Oliver through his child as Oliver punished you
through your dog? Am I a man, and not God?'
Moses looked round, as though someone had spoken in his ear, and,
loosing his hold of Captain, muttered:
'Go, if thaa wants.'
A mighty bound, and Captain was in mid-stream, and with a few
strong and rapid strokes he reached the sinking child. But the
flood-gates were open, the reservoir was emptying its overflow
down the steep falls into the Clough fifty yards below, and child
and dog were slowly but unmistakably being carried towards the
gorge.
Again the struggle commenced, and once more Moses was the prey of
the relentless reasoners--Love and Self.
'A man's life is worth more than a dog's,' cried Self.
'And more than a child's?' asked Love.
'But it's Oliver o' Deaf Martha's child, is it not?'
'And your dog is seeking to save it.'
'Shamed by a dog!' All the remains of the nobleness so long
dormant in the nature of Moses--the passion, and valour, and love
which he had allowed to die down long, long ago--awakened into
life. For the first time for thirty years he forgot himself, and
with a great light breaking round him, and sounds of sweetest
music in his heart, he leapt into the Lodge, struck out for the
struggling dog and its fainting burden, and strengthened and
steadied both to land.
Many years before Moses had been immersed in the baptistery at
Rehoboth by the old pastor, Mr. Morell. He stepped into those
waters as Moses Fletcher, and he was Moses Fletcher when he came
up out of them, despite the benediction breathed on his dedicated
soul. But on this autumn afternoon Moses Fletcher--the cruel,
exacting, self-righteous Moses Fletcher--was buried in baptism,
and there stepped out of those moorland waters another man,
bearing in his arms a little child.
III.
THE ATONEMENT OF MOSES FLETCHER.
On the evening of the day following the rescue of Oliver o' Deaf
Martha's child, Moses Fletcher was walking over the moors towards
his own home, a great peace possessing his soul, and a buoyant
step bearing him through a new world. Above him the mellow moon of
September dreamed in blue distances, the immensities of which were
measured by innumerable constellations. Around, the great hills
loomed dark in shadow, and bulked in relief against the far-off
horizon of night. Along the troughs and gullies lay streaks of
white fog, ever shaping themselves into folds and fringes, and,
like wraiths, noiselessly vanishing on the hillside; while over
all rested a great stillness, as though for once the fevered earth
slept in innocence beneath the benediction of that world so vast,
so high, and yet so near. Many a time, amid such surroundings, had
Moses traversed the same path. Never before, however, had he
passed through the same world. To him it was a new heaven and a
new earth, for he carried with him a new soul.
Crossing the stretch of hill on the crest of which lay the
Rehoboth burial-ground, Moses made his way to the stone wall
fencing in that God's acre, and paused to lean his arms on its
rude and irregular coping. There stood the old chapel, square and
gaunt, its dark outline clearly cut against the moonlit sky, each
window coldly gleaming in the pale light, while the scattered
headstones, sheeted in mist, stood out like groups of mourners
mute in their sorrow over the dead. Below lay the village--that
little tragic centre of life and death--half its inhabitants in
sleep, hushed for a few brief hours in their humble moorland
nests. The fall of waters from the weir at the Bridge Factory came
up from the valley in dreamy cadences; a light dimly burned in old
Joseph's window; and a meteor swept with a mighty arc the western
sky. The soul of Moses Fletcher was at peace.
He sprang with a light step over the low wall of boundary, and
crossed the wave-like mounds that heaved as a grassy sea, and
beneath which lay the unlettered dead, the long grasses writhing
and clinging to his feet, as though loath to let him escape the
dust upon which they fed and grew so rank. Heedless of their
greedy embrace, he walked with long stride towards the lower end
of the yard, until he stood before a gray and lichen-covered slab,
on which were letters old and new. There, by the moonlight, he
read the record of a baby boy of two, carrying back the reader
forty years. Above it was the name of a father, dead these ten
years, and between these, all newly cut, were the lines:
JINNY CRAWSHAW,
WIFE OF THE ABOVE, WHO DEPARTED THIS
LIFE,
----- -----
For some moments Moses stood before the stone; then, taking the
hat from his head, he knelt down on the cold grass and, kissing
the newly-cut name, he vowed a vow. If, with the power of his
Master, whom he had only just begun to serve, he could have raised
the sleeper, as Lazarus and the widow's son and the ruler's little
child were raised, then the great grief of his heart would have
disappeared. But he could not--the past, _his_ past, was
irrevocable. But there were the living--Jim Crawshaw, his wife,
his babe--these were still within his reach of recompense. And
again he vowed his vow, and the still night air carried it far
beyond the distant stars to where He sits who knows the thoughts
and tries the reins of men.
* * * * *
'Thaa'rt lat' to-neet, Moses; where hasto bin?'
'Nowhere where thaa couldn't go wi' me, lass,' and so saying,
Moses kissed his wife, an act which he had dexterously and
passionately performed several times since his immersion in the
Green Fold Lodge on the previous day.
'Whatever's come o'er thee, Moses? Thaa fair maks me shamed. It's
thirty year an' more sin' thaa kissed me. Hasto lost thi yed?'
'Yi, lass, but I've fun mi heart,' and he again clasped his
startled wife, and grew young in his caresses.
'I thought thaa kept thi luv for Captain, Moses. But I durnd mind
goin' hawves wi' th' owd dog. I awlus said that a chap as could
luv a dog hed summat good abaat him somewhere--and thaa's luved
Captain sum weel.'
'And others a deal too little, lass. But all that's o'er'--and
Moses burst into tears.
'Nay, lad--forshure thaa'rt takken worse. Well, I never seed thee
cry afore. Mun I ged thee a sooap o' summat hot, thinksto? or mun
I run for th' doctor?' and Mrs. Fletcher looked at her husband
with a scared and troubled face.
'Why, lass, I've been cryin' all th' day--and that's why I've bin
so long away fro' thee--I didn'd want to scare thee. I cornd help
but cry. I tell thee I've fun mi heart.'
And Moses again sobbed like a child.
That night, when his wife was in bed, and Captain slept soundly on
the rug in front of the fire, Moses opened a safe that stood in
the corner of the room, and, taking therefrom a bundle of deeds,
selected one docketed 'Crawshaw Fold.' He then took from a drawer
a number of agreements, and carefully drew forth those which gave
him his hold on the Crawshaws. These he enclosed with the deeds in
a large blue envelope, and in a clerkly hand addressed them, with
a note, to James Crawshaw. After this he knelt down, and, as he
prayed, Captain came and laid his head upon the clasped hands of
his master.
* * * * *
'Good-mornin', Abram. Hasto ought fresh daan i' th' village?'
'Plenty, Enoch; hasto yerd naught?'
'Nowe; I hevn't bin daan fro' th' moors sin' Sundo.'
'Then yo've yerd naught abaat Moses Fletcher?'
'Nowe; nor I durnd want. When yo' cornd yer owt good abaat a mon
yo'd better yer naught at all.'
'But I've summat good to tell thee abaat owd Moses.'
'Nay, lad, I think nod. Th' Etheop cornd change his skin, nor th'
leopard his spots.'
'But Moses hes ged'n aat o' his skin, and changed it for a gradely
good un and o'.'
'And what abaat his spots, Abram?'
'Why, he's weshed 'em all aat in th' Green Fowd Lodge wi' savin'
Oliver o' Deaf Martha's little un.'
Enoch whistled the first bar or two of an old tune, and stood
silent in thought, and then exclaimed:
'Well, aw'v yerd o' th' seven wonders, but if what thaa sez is
true, it mak's th' eighth.'
'Yi, owd mon, but there's a bigger wonder nor that. He's gi'n Jim
Crawshaw th' deeds o' Crawshaw Fowd, and towd him as he can pay
him back when he geds th' brass.'
'Abram, thaa'rt gammin'.'
'Jim Crawshaw towd me this mornin', and I seed th' deeds wi' mi
own een in his hond, and read th' letter Moses bed written.'
At this moment Mr. Penrose came along the field-path, and joined
the two men. He, too, was strangely excited about Moses Fletcher,
and, guessing what was uppermost in the minds and conversation of
the two men, at once heartily joined them.
'God moves in a mysterious way, doesn'd He, Mr. Penrose?' said old
Enoch.
'He does indeed, Enoch. Here I've been trying to convert Moses
with my preaching, and the Almighty sets aside His servant, and
converts the sinner by means of a dog and a little child. After
all, there's something can get at the heart besides theology and
philosophy. The foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of
man.'
'Then yo' think he's convarted, Mr. Penrose?'
'Well, if the New Testament test is a true one, he is, for he is
indeed bringing forth fruits meet for repentance.'
'He is so,' said Enoch, 'it what Abram sez is true. I awlus towd
my missus that whenever Moses gave his furst hawve-craan it 'ud be
his fust stride towards th' kingdom o' grace; but if he's gin Jim
Crawshaw his deeds back he's getten a deal further into th'
kingdom nor some o' us.'
Mr. Penrose attempted to continue the conversation, but in vain,
for a lump rose in his throat, and the landscape was dimmed by the
moisture he could not keep back from his eyes. And as with the
pastor, so with his companions. A great joy filled all their
hearts--a joy too deep for words, but not for tears.
In a little while Mr. Penrose said:
'Moses called to see me last night to ask for re-admission into
the Church. He wants me to baptize him next Sunday afternoon week,
and would like to give his testimony.'
'But he were baptized thirty year sin' by Mr. Morell,' said Abram.
'Why does he want dippin' o'er agen?'
'Because, as he says, he never received his testimony before last
Monday, when he saved Oliver's child from drowning.'
'An' are yo' baan to baptize him?' asked Enoch.
'Why not? If the deacons are willing, I shall be only too glad.'
* * * * *
It was the first Sunday afternoon in October, and along a dozen
winding moorland paths there came in scattered groups the
worshippers to the Rehoboth shrine. Old men and women, weary with
the weight of years, renewed their youth as they drew near to what
had been a veritable sanctuary amid their care and sorrow and sin;
while manhood and womanhood, leading by the hand their little
ones, felt in their hearts that zeal for the house of prayer so
common to the dwellers in rural England. Long before the hour of
service the chapel-yard was thronged, and from within came the
sounds of stringed instruments as they were tuned to pitch by the
musicians, who had already taken their place in the singing-pew
beneath the pulpit, which stood square and high, canopied with its
old-fashioned sounding-board and cornice of plain deal. There was
'owd Joel Boothman,' who had played the double bass for half a
century, resining his bow with a trembling hand; and Joe and
Robert Hargreaves fondly caressing their 'cellos. Dick o'
Tootershill and his two sons were delicately touching the
trembling strings of their violins; and Enoch was polishing,
beneath the glossy sleeve of his 'Sunday best,' 'th' owd flute'
which had been his salvation.
In a few minutes Mr. Penrose ascended the pulpit. Never before was
there such a congregation to greet him; and as the people rose to
join in singing the old tune, Devizes, the worm-eaten galleries
trembled and creaked beneath the mass of worshippers. Then
followed prayer and the lessons, the hymn before the address being
'Come, ye that love the Lord.'
With a great swell of harmony from five hundred voices, whose
training for song had been the moors, the words of Dr. Watts went
up to heaven, and when the second verse was reached--
'Let those refuse to sing,
Who never knew our Lord,'
little Milly, who had hobbled to chapel on her crutch, turned to
Abraham Lord, and said:
'Sithee, owd Moses is singing, faither.'
And it was even so. Poor Moses! for so many years a mute
worshipper, and whose voice had been raised only to harry and
distress, no longer was silent in the service of song.
Mr. Penrose's address was brief. Taking for his text, 'The Son of
Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost,' he said:
'It was the best in man that was longest in being discovered. That
which was lost was not the false man, but the true man--the
heavenly. We were none of us vile in the sight of God, because God
saw Himself in us. It was this God-self in us that was lost to us.
Not knowing it to be the hidden root of our true life, we did not
claim our dignity, nor walk as became the sons of God. A man who
lost the sense of his freedom, though free, would be fettered
still. A man whose sense of beauty was lost would be as in a
desert in the paradise of God. A lost sense of freedom meant a
slavish mind, and a lost sense of beauty meant a prosaic mind, no
matter how free the man, nor how beautiful his environment. So men
had lost the sense of their sonship. They did not know their royal
descent, their kinship with the Father, and therefore they did not
act as became sons. A lost sense of relationship begat in them
disobedience and alienation. They possessed gold, but were content
with brass; and instead of iron they built with clay. The eternal
and abiding was in them, but _lost_ to them, covered with
incrustations of self and buried deep beneath the lesser and the
meaner man. There were times in a man's life when the better
nature gave hints of its existence. The mission of Christ was to
awaken these hints. He came to tell them they were men, that they
were souls, that they were sons and not servants, friends and not
enemies of God. When He stirred these powers in men He stirred the
lost. He set it before the eye of man, and made man see what he
had within him, what he was _really_, and at the _root_ of his
being--a man, a Son of Man, a Child of God. How hard this was only
Christ knew. Spiritually, men put themselves, through spiritual
ignorance, in false relations. This wrong relationship lay at the
root of all disorder. It was the secret of discomfiture, misery
and sin. Men were not lost in badness, not lost in sin, but lost
to that which when discovered to them made their badness
unbearable--in other words, "took away their sin." Lost souls,
damned souls, souls in hell--as the theologians termed them--were
simply souls lost to their right relationship. And the work of
Christ was to find _in_ men, and find out _for_ men, what this
right relationship was. This was what was meant in the text, the
Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. Their
friend Moses Fletcher had found something in himself. He had found
love, and courage, and a sense of goodness. These had been
discovered to him by the One who was always revealing the good in
us if we would but let Him, and if we would but open our eyes to
see. He, Moses Fletcher, had seen the good, and believed in it,
and he was saved because he allowed the good to move and have its
being in him. It was his better self, so long unknown to himself,
so long lost in him, and to him, that awoke and led him to save
Oliver o' Deaf Martha's child. When he plunged into the Green Fold
Lodge he found what had been so long lost to him: he found
himself. Then was fulfilled the saying, "He that loseth his life
shall save it." That was salvation. Moses was now a saved man
because he had found the sane and whole part of his nature. The
Divine in him had been awakened. He was at last true to the law of
his being.'
Then, closing his Bible, he asked Moses Fletcher to give his
'testimony.'
Standing up, and with tremulous tones, which none recognised as
the once harsh voice of Moses, he said:
'Yo' happen willn't let me co yo' friends because I've bin an
enemy to so mony on yo'! But Him as they co'd a friend o'
publicans and sinners hes made me His friend, and He's made me a
friend on yo' all. I know haa yo' all hated me, and I gave yo'
good cause for doin' so. But He's put His love i' me, and naa owd
Moses 'll never trouble ony on yo' ony more. Owd Moses lies i'
Green Fold Lodge yonder, and he'll stop theer; it's time he wor
done wi'. An' if you'll try me as God's baan to try me, aw think
you'll happen larn to love me as I know I'm loved aboon.'
As he sat down many in the large congregation would fain have
risen and grasped him by the hand, but propriety forbade.
In another minute Mr. Penrose came out of the vestry prepared for
the rite of immersion, and Moses was a second time baptized in
Rehoboth.
As he stepped out of the waters a cloud passed from before the
October sun, and a flood of light poured through the open window
above the baptistery, while a white dove from the neighbouring
farm perched for a moment on the wooden sill. Then Milly once more
turned to her father and said:
'Yon's th' brid, faither, but I don't yer th' voice!'
'What voice?' whispered Abraham Lord.
'Why, faither, thaa knows--"This is My beloved Son."'
But Moses heard that voice in his heart.
III.
AMANDA STOTT.
1. HOME.
2. LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.
3. THE COURT OF SOULS.
4. THE OLD PASTOR.
I.
HOME.
She saw from afar the light of her cottage home, and her heart
misgave her. It was not wrath she feared; for had the relentless
anger of a parent awaited her, her step would have been braver,
and her spirit more defiant. But she knew she was forgiven. The
feeble ray emitted from the lamp in the far-off gable was the
beacon of her forgiveness--the proof that love's fire still burned
brightly. This it was that daunted her: she feared the scorch of
its healing flame.
She had travelled far, having crossed the moors from Burnt Gap,
climbing the ridge as the heavens began to kiss the earth with the
peace of sunset. A lingering glory was then haunting the summits
and crests and cairn-crowned hills that shut in the quiet of
Rehoboth and forming an almost impassable rampart to those who,
from the farther side, sought its shelter ere the close of day. As
she then lifted her eyes to these many-coloured fires lighted by
His hand who setteth His glory in the heavens, they had seemed to
burn in wrath; while the great moors, dark in the foreground,
raised themselves like barriers--uplands of desolation, across
which no path of hope stretched its trend for returning feet.
As the girl climbed the Scar Foot the western sky was toning down
to grays, while beyond, and seen through an oval-shaped rift in
their sombre colours, lay a distant streak of amber that, moment
by moment, slowly disappeared under the closing lids of evening
cloud--the eye of weary day wooed to slumber by the hush of
illimitable sweeps of moor. Even so would Amanda fain have closed
her eyes and sunk to rest amid the purple clouds of heather that,
like a great sky, lay for miles around her feet.
Passing through Nockcliffe plantation, a half-mile of woodland
that straggled along the steep sides of a clough, a drop of rain
fell between the branches and coursed down her cheek--a cheek
fevered from want of tears, and flaming with a sense of shame.
Then a low wind blew--a mere sob, but so preludious, so
prophetic!--followed by a silence that discovered, as never
before, the sense of her own loneliness, and in which she heard
the tread of her own light footfall over the moss and herbage of
the path she travelled.
Emerging from the plantation, an angry gust, laden with cold
drops, dashed itself in her face, and she knew from the
weather-lore which she, as a child of the hills, had learned in
past years, that a wild night was between her and the house whose
shelter she sought in her despair.
Phenomenally rapid was the onrush of the storm. At first the rain
fell in short and sudden showers, driven from angry clouds eager
for some atmospheric change whereby to be relieved of their
pent-up burden. Then the wind, as though in answer to the prayer
of the clouds, changed its course and stilled its moaning, and the
sky 'wept its watery vapours to the ground.'
When Amanda stood upon the fringe of the great moss that stretched
for three miles between the Scars and Rehoboth her spirit sank
within her. The season had been dry, and she knew the path by
instinct; but the storm and the darkness seemed like twin enemies
determined to bar her advance. She felt that Nature was her foe,
even as man had been, and as Rehoboth would be when it knew of her
return. Why did the rain hiss, and dash its cold and stinging
showers in her face? Why did it saturate her thin skirts so that
they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly
to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that
strange, weird sound--the sound muttered by miles of herbage when
beaten down by rain--the swish and patter and sigh of the long
grass and of the bracken, as they bent beneath the continuous
fall, and rose in angry protest, to fling off their burden on each
other, or shake it to the ground? Then a mute sympathy sprang up
in her desolate heart as she grew incorporate into this
storm-swept, helpless vegetation, and she felt that she, too, like
it, was the helpless prey of angry forces.