AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.
"And while we suffer, let us set our souls
To suffer perfectly; since this alone,
The suffering, which is this world's special grace,
May here be perfected and left behind."
--MRS. HAMILTON KING.
Far up amid the lonely heights of Craig Aran, on the Sunday evening
which followed the events recorded in the last chapter, wandered the
footsteps of Master Jeremy Taylor. Once again a guest at the house
of his old friend the Earl of Carbery, he had been taking Sunday duty
for an aged friend of the earl's at Wernolen, a wild distant spot in
the mountains, and purposed wending his way ere nightfall to the farm
Glyn Melen, not many miles distant, with the double object of seeking
a night's shelter in that spot of well-known loveliness, and of
trusting still to find there his beloved friend Percival in company
with Lady Bryn Afon and her daughter, and to hear that the wedding
ceremony, in which he had long since promised to take his part, might
now be not very far distant. News of its postponement on account of
the sudden illness of Primrose had been some while since sent to him,
as well as to Lady Rosamond and such other old friends as had been
bidden to the ceremony; but no further details had as yet reached his
ear, and he much longed to hear that all was well, and his friend's
happiness assured. The day at first appointed for the wedding was
but four days hence. He would without further delay seek out his
friends in their mountain retreat, trusting to see the bloom of
health once more restored to the sweet face of the Fair Maid of
Gwynnon, and to learn that the glad day of her union with Percival
might still be near at hand. It was not yet long after six in the
evening, and the sight of a little ivy-covered church tower nestling
beneath the brow of a not far-distant crag attracted Jeremy's feet
thither; and reflecting that he would yet reach Glyn Helen before
nightfall, he resolved to say his evening prayer ere passing onwards,
and profit in so far as he might by the probably rude eloquence of
the unlettered Welsh curate likely to occupy the pulpit in so
benighted a region. The little building was well filled, and it was
only in a far corner at its furthest end that Master Taylor could
find a vacant seat. But whose voice was it from which the barbarous
Welsh words rolled out so musically, and whose tones made him start
from his dark corner and eagerly scan the features of him from whom
they proceeded? Was it Percival Vere or his ghost, who with face of
deadly pallor and brown locks thickly strewn with grey, yet spoke
with Percival's own voice of ringing music, and raised to heaven
those deep, far-searching eyes which could belong to none other than
Sir Galahad? Master Taylor's thoughts wandered beyond his control
during the conclusion of the prayers, for his heart ached miserably
for his friend, whom he saw so terribly changed in countenance, whose
very voice rang with a burning intensity of pain, and who, when he
mounted the pulpit and faced the congregation, looked but like some
pale spectre of his former self, gazing forth upon his flock with
eyes worn and weary with sleeplessness, and dimmed with the troubled,
yearning expression gained through days of agonised searching into
the mysteries of the divine will. Jeremy shrank into his corner,
knowing that his friend was addressing a congregation to whom his
sorrows were unknown, and to whom he was a stranger, and unwilling
himself to be recognised, lest his presence should give pain. He
listened almost breathlessly for the text, and when in clear,
unfaltering tones the young preacher read out the words, "Son of man,
behold I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke,"
he bent his head upon his breast and wept. "Yet neither shalt thou
mourn nor weep," continued the stern, unnaturally-controlled tones of
the chaplain, "neither shall thy tears run down."
"Shanno is dead," murmured Jeremy to himself, and the tears wrung
from his own tender heart coursed unseen down his cheeks, as with
bent head he listened, straining every nerve to lose no word of his
friend's utterance, and thinking of his own loved wife and babe at
home. But though soon, borne along on the torrent of the preacher's
eloquence, the people's hearts failed them for sorrow at his
heartrending description of the prophet's woe, and sobs burst from
them on every hand, yet Percival himself spake on, dry-eyed, with
unfaltering lips, nor ever failed for word to make his lesson of
sublimest resignation strike home to the very inmost heart of his
hearers. Yet though to them he failed not to convey the message he
desired, or to impart his teaching with fullest seeming confidence,
his friend, reading below the surface of his mind and learning the
undercurrents beneath that glow of burning eloquence, perceived the
inward torture which had driven the young preacher in very
self-defence to give forth so bravely to others that hard lesson
beneath which his own soul yet shrank in bitter recoil. To his own
rebellious soul had Percival been preaching in those plain, stern
accents of glowing force, in which only his bosom friend had detected
the lack of his own heart's loving submission, the secret failing of
that spirit of sweetness and loving-kindness which had ever been one
of the most beautiful features of his character, and which now,
eclipsed by the weight of his suffering, gave the unnaturally hard
ring to his voice and the icy composure to his demeanour. But to the
simple mountain-folk, to whom he was an utter stranger, his voice had
been like that of a herald from heaven, and his face as the face of
an angel, and to their ears never had their own tongue resounded more
musically and sweetly within those ancient walls. Subdued and
softened, they passed out of the church, and took their way down the
hillside, talking gently together of the wonderful words of the
unknown preacher, and making vague conjectures as to the sorrows
which had so plainly marked his beautiful countenance.
Meanwhile the young chaplain, exhausted in mind and body, lay
prostrate at the foot of the altar, his face buried in his hands, and
dry, tearless sobs from time to time shaking his otherwise motionless
frame. His friend waited long for him in the porch, till finding
that even the clerk had left the church, and that still Percival
tarried, he turned back into the now fast-darkening building, and
sought for him amid the shadows, till there on the altar-step he
found him, wrestling with his misery, as he thought, alone with God.
He stooped over him, gently touching him on the shoulder, and
Percival rose, startled, to his feet, and turned haggard eyes upon
the friend he had so little expected just then to see.
"You, Jeremy!" he said in a low voice. "How come you here? Have
you--were you here during the service!" "God has sent me to you,"
answered Master Taylor simply. "Yes, I have heard you preach,
Percival, and I know that you have been shooting no bow at a venture,
but speaking to your own troubled soul. Come with me and tell me of
your trouble, the traces of which upon your countenance have sorely
vexed my heart, while from yon dark corner I have, all unknown to
yourself, watched and listened and wondered for this last hour or
more."
"I marvel that I did not see you," said Percival, still looking at
his friend as though he felt himself in a dream; "but truly I saw
nought that was around me. How come you here, Jeremy?"
"It seemed long since I had heard aught of yourself and of her whom I
scarce dare name," answered Master Taylor gently; "and my
ministrations having been needed this morning and also in the
forenoon at your church in the hollow, where an aged friend of my
Lord Carbery's hath fallen ill, I was but now purposing to postpone
my return to Gelli Aur until the morrow, in order that I might
journey this evening towards Glyn Melen, in the hope of yet finding
you within its walls. I but turned aside for an hour, to acquaint
myself with yet another of these remote mountain churches, where I
little thought to hear such a masterly discourse as yours, friend
Percival. But of yourself."
"I have been a wanderer these four days in the mountains," said
Percival wearily, "and had little wish to preach to these poor simple
folk lessons of patience which the least among them could have taught
myself far better. But I chanced like you to note this ivy-covered
tower in my ramblings, and, being seen this morning amid the
congregation by the vicar, was entreated to take for him this evening
service, that he might in his turn relieve a sick brother. Perchance
it has been well, since open speech is wont at times to relieve a
bursting heart. Is it sore hypocrisy, think you, friend Jeremy, to
preach from the pulpit those virtues against which your inmost soul
is meanwhile in fearful rebellion? I trow I am both hypocrite and
blasphemer, for my own soul is dark within me; and while I know that
God is just, I cannot feel that He is good! How many days of
writhing torture, think you, the prophet endured ere he could bless
Him for His dealings? Must not his human will, like some poor bird
dashing with impotent rage against the bars of its cage, have for
many a long hour beaten its wings against that divine will which is
full of hidden mystery, into whose unseen depths I have been gazing
throughout these weary days and nights, till my brain whirls and mine
eyes are weary unto death--yet the light I see not!"
"Shanno is dead?" said Master Taylor gently.
"Dead! nay!" exclaimed the chaplain eagerly, as though the very word
"death" suddenly awoke in him a keen consciousness of the contrast
which after all lay betwixt that total removal of the "light of the
eyes" of the stricken prophet and that tender dealing of Providence
with himself which still left his life gladdened with the hope of a
continual holy friendship, and the blessed near presence of her he
loved. "Dead? No, Jeremy; but," and the sudden light which had
illumined his face died out again, "doomed--doomed to bear the curse
of her miserable forefathers--to expiate in her tender soul and body
the sins of theirs--the sins with which _my_ forefather for ever
cursed hers, and which I would fain bear ten thousand-fold to save
her one pang! Surely it is for me to suffer--not for her the
innocent victim; yet her own load none can bear but herself, though
the share which falls to each of us is a bitter one! Yet that I may
be strong to bury mine own within my bosom, and bear what I may of
hers upon my own shoulders, must I needs watch and fast alone here in
the desert, and I pray you leave me, dear Jeremy! Go below to the
farm, and seek, an you will, to cheer her by your presence, for I see
her no more till we meet on our wedding morning, four days hence, in
the hillside church at Cwmfelin, there to plight an eternal troth of
the soul, and to partake together of that most Holy Sacrament, which
shall surely strengthen us in the putting away of our earthly dreams."
"Nay, I will not leave you, Percival!" cried his friend. "You are
worn and faint, and you shall tarry no longer thus alone in your
watch and fast. I will fast and pray with you! You shall not banish
from your side the friend who loves you more than a brother, and I
will share your lonely vigil--at a distance an you will--but leave
you I will not!" And with boylike impulsiveness he flung his arms
round Percival's neck and kissed him.
The young chaplain clung to him silently for a moment; then the
unnatural tension of his nerves gave way and he burst into tears.
"Percival," said his friend, as he gently led him to a seat on the
mossy turf, "in my own still new-found marriage-joy my heart shrinks
from the thought of your bitter pain, and words of comfort from my
lips, which have not tasted your sorrow, seem to me most cruelly
presumptuous. Yet hear the words of one whose name you greatly love
and honour----"
"Jeremy," interrupted Percival, "the bitterness lies in the very
_goodness_ of the gift that is withdrawn! It is, I doubt not, hard
to give up a cherished sin, but how much harder--ten thousand-fold
harder--is it to give up that which is in itself right, and good, and
desirable! In that lies the very essence of the bitterness! What
could I have offered to God more pure and holy than that life we were
about to offer Him together in our mutual love and service? In
sacrificing to Him a sinful affection I could have seen His justice
but now----"
"Those words I was about to speak, dear friend, are still my best
answer," replied Jeremy, "and what more to say I know not! God's
saint, St. Thomas à Kempis, saith: 'This is a _favour to Thy friend_,
that for love of Thee he may suffer and be afflicted in the world,
how often soever and by whom soever Thou permittest such trials to
befall him!' Perchance He may suffer these words to comfort thy sore
spirit, Percival, since assuredly thou hast verily long since been
accounted His 'friend!'"
A shiver ran through the young chaplain's frame, but he made no
answer. The shades of night gathered about the desolate churchyard,
and the grave-stones began to gleam faintly white in the ghostly
light of the late-rising moon, which, appearing slowly above the
distant crags, warned the friends at last of the lateness of the
hour; and they rose from the turf where they had long been sitting,
first in silence, then in deep converse. A new light of hope and
strength dawned on Percival's worn countenance. "You have come to me
verily as 'an angel strengthening me,' Jeremy," he said with a sad
smile. "Now you have learned all I have to tell, and I do indeed bid
you leave me. Fear not for me--I am yet strong to bear what remains.
Go to Glyn Melen, and spend these three days with my Primrose and her
mother, ere they take their journey to Bryn Afon. Stay--I would fain
spend one last hour with her I love, by the Robbers' Cavern, and
watch with her the outflowing of the river-springs once again--fair
picture of our twin lives! Bid her, an she will, to turn aside on
her journey, and under your escort meet me there on the eve of our
wedding-day, three evenings hence, some while ere sunset, that on
that eve of our day of looked-for bliss, now snatched from our grasp,
we may tarry awhile together in that sweet spot, ere we pursue our
journey to the valley. My Lady Bryn Afon will travel safely with her
attendants, and you with us, dear friend, shall overtake them long
ere they reach home. I will be there, hard by the spot where the
springs burst forth from their caverns, by four of the clock, and
will, with your permission, look to meet her there in your safe
charge. Till then adieu, and prithee look not so sadly at leaving
me! Methinks I feel God nearer than some hours since, and to Him I
would fain yet say much in secret. Like some bird of passage
pursuing its lonely flight across the midnight sky towards an unknown
shore, so must I too face the black night alone, content not yet to
see my goal, yet with faith to believe in the far-off shining of some
distant horizon, where my feet may at length find firm footing." So
with a last embrace the friends parted; and while Master Taylor
pursued his way with aching heart in the dim moonlight towards Glyn
Melen, Percival Vere wandered, he scarce knew whither, into the
solitary places of the mountain heights, where the night winds alone
might breathe to one another in softest whisper the secret communings
of his soul with God.