Jake was so excited at finding himself by a curious accident once more face to face with the man who, as he had happily confessed to his friends, had produced so great an impression upon him as to change the whole course of his life, that he began to talk to him in his usual rapid way, as though Mr. Wesley and himself were the only persons in the room.
The miller remained on his feet. The blacksmith was also on his feet. He had assumed a professional air. After all, he was likely to be the most important person present. The girl in the chair remained with her hands folded on her lap. She had the aspect of a schoolgirl who has broken out of bounds and awaits an interview with the schoolmistress. She had heard during her visit to Bath of this Mr. Wesley and his views—at least such views as were attributed to him by the fashionable folk who assembled to have their gossip and intrigue flavoured by the sulphur of the waters. He was not so easy-going as the clergymen at Bath. She could not doubt that he would esteem it his duty to lecture her on her levity. It was known that he abhorred playgoing. He was naturally abhorred by the players. They had the best of reasons: when he was preaching in any town that had a theatre, the players remained with empty pockets.
The appearance of Mrs. Pendelly announcing that supper was ready was a great relief to her.
She jumped up with alacrity. Jake Pullsford came back to earth. He was breathing hard. The visitor had signified his intention of resuming his journey, if his horse could be shod. Jake was entreating him to pass the night at his house, only a mile up the valley.
The miller was beginning to feel awkward. He was hospitably inclined, but he was not presumptuous. The blacksmith was fast losing his professional bearing; a sniff of the salmon steaks had come through the open door.
It was the visitor whose tact made the situation easy for everyone.
“Sir,” he said to the miller, “I have arrived here so opportunely for myself that I will not even go through the pretence of offering to go to the wayside inn, which our good friend Jake Pullsford tells me is some miles away. I know that I can throw myself on your hospitality and that you would feel affronted if I hurried on. I have no mind to do so—to be more exact, I should say no stomach.”
“Sir, if your reverence will honour my house I can promise you a wholesome victual,” said the miller. “Even if you was not a friend o' my friend Jake here, who might, I think, have named my name in your ear, you would still be welcome.”.
“I know it, sir,” said Wesley, offering the miller his hand. “I thank you on behalf of myself and my good partner whose bridle I hung over your ring-post. A feed of oats will put new spirit in him in spite of the loss of his shoe.”
“The horse shall be seen to, Mr. Wesley. Susan, the stable bell,” said the miller, and his daughter set a bell jangling on the gable wall.
“Again my thanks, good friend,” said Wesley.
“May I beg your leave to be presented to my fellow-guests at your table, sir?”
He shook hands with the farmer, the water-finder and the smith, saying a word to each. Then he turned to where the two young women had been.
They had fled through the open door, Nelly having been the one to judge of the exact moment for flight.
They appeared at the supper table, however, but not taking their seats until they had waited upon all the others of the party. That was the patriarchal custom of the time. Nelly Polwhele only wished that the severe discipline of a side table for the serving girls had been in force at the Mill. Remote from the long oak table on which generations of her family had dined, she might have had a pleasant chat with her friend Susan, and then steal off, evading the lecture which she felt was impending from the strict Mr. Wesley. As it was, the most she could do for herself was to choose an unobtrusive place at the further end from the clergyman.
She hoped that the excellence of the salmon which she had carried through the valley of the Lana would induce him to refrain from asking any questions in regard to the game that was being played at the moment of his entrance.
But Mr. Wesley was vigilant. He espied her before he had finished his salmon, and had expressed his thanks to her for having burdened herself with it. It was his thirst for information of all sorts that had caused him to enquire how it was possible to have for supper a fish that must have been swimming in the sea, or at least in a salmon river, which the Lana was not, a few hours before. Was not Porthawn the nearest fishing village, and it was six miles away? Then it was that Mrs. Pendelly had told him of Nelly's journey on foot bearing her father's gift to his friend the miller.
“I should like to have a word or two with you, my dear,” said Mr. Wesley when he had thanked her. “I wish to learn something of the people of Porthawn. I am on my way thither to preach, and I like to learn as much as is possible of the people who, I hope, will hear what I have to say to them.”
Nelly blushed and tried to say that she was afraid she could tell him nothing that he could not learn from any other source—that was what was on her mind—but somehow her voice failed her. She murmured something; became incoherent, and then ate her salmon at a furious rate.
The miller, although he had felt bound to offer hospitality to the stranger who had appeared at his door, knew that his other guests—with the exception, it might be, of Jake Pullsford—would feel, as he himself did, that the presence of this austere clergyman would interfere with their good fellowship at supper and afterwards. He and his associates knew one another with an intimacy that had been maturing for thirty years, and the sudden coming of a stranger among them could not but cause a certain reserve in the natural freedom of their intercourse.
The miller had a constant fear that this Mr. Wesley would in the course of the evening say something bitter about the parsons who hunted and bred game-cocks and fought them, laying money on their heads—on parsons who lived away from their parishes, allowing indifferent curates to conduct the services of the church—of parsons who boasted of being able to drink the Squires under the table. The miller had no confidence in his power of keeping silent when he felt that the parson with whom he was on the easiest of terms and for whose gamecocks he prepared a special mixture of stiffening grain food was being attacked by a stranger, so he rather regretted that his duty compelled him to invite Mr. Wesley, of whom he, in common with thousands of the people of the West country, had heard a great deal, to supper on this particular evening.
But in the course of the meal he began to think that he would have no reason to put any restraint upon himself. He soon became aware of the fact that this Reverend John Wesley was not altogether the austere controversialist which rumour, becoming more and more exaggerated as it travelled West, made him out to be. Before supper was over he had come to the conclusion that Parson Rodney as a companion could not hold a candle to this Mr. Wesley.
The compliment in respect of the salmon had pleased both the miller and his wife, even though it had made Nell blush; and then a bantering word or two was said to Hal Holmes and his fine taste for salmon, and forthwith Mr. Wesley was giving an animated account of how he had seen the Indians in Georgia spearing for salmon on one of the rivers. This power of bringing a wide scene before one's eyes in a moment by the use of an illuminating word or two was something quite new to the miller and his friends; but it was the special gift of his latest guest. With thin uplifted forefinger—it had the aspect as well as the power of a wizard's wand—he seemed to draw the whole picture in the air before the eyes of all at the table—the roar of the rapids whose name with its Indian inflections was in itself a romance—the steathily moving red men with their tomahawks and arrows and long spears—the enormous backwoods—one of them alone half the size of England and Wales—the strange notes of the bird—whip-poor-will, the settlers called it—moonlight over all—moonlight that was like a thin white sheet let down from heaven to cover the earth; and where this silver wonder showed the white billows of foam churned up by the swirl of the mad river, there was the gleam of torches—from a distance they looked like the fierce red eyes of the wild beasts of the backwood; but coming close one could see deep down at the foot of the rapids the flash of a blood-red scimitar—the quick reflection in the passionate surface of the water of the red flare that waved among the rocks. Then there was a sudden splash and a flash—another scimitar—this time of silver scattering diamonds through the moonlight—another flash like a thin beam of light—the fish was transfixed in mid-air by the Indian spear!
They saw it all. The scene was brought before their eyes. They sat breathless around the supper table. And yet the man who had this magic of voice and eye had never once raised that voice of his—had never once made a gesture except by the uplifting of his finger.
“Fishing—that is fishing!” said Hal Holmes. “I should like——”
The finger was upraised in front of him.
“You must not so much as think of it, my friend! It would be called poaching on our rivers here,” said Mr. Wesley with a smile.
“Then I should like to live in the land where the fish of the rivers, the deer of the forests, the birds of the air are free, as it was intended they should be—free to all men who had skill and craft—I have heard of the trappers,” said Hal. “It seems no sort of life for a wholesome man to live—pulling the string of a bellows, hammering iron into shoes, for plough-horses!—no life whatsoever.” Wesley smiled.
“Ah, if you but knew aught of the terror of the backwoods,” said he. “If you but knew of it—one vast terror—monstrous—incredible. A terror by day and by night. I was used to stand on one of the hills hard by our little settlement, and look out upon the woods whose skirts I could see in the far distance, and think of their immensity and their mystery. Hundreds of miles you might travel through those trackless forests until the hundreds grew into thousands—at last you would come upon-the prairie—hundred and hundreds of miles of savage country—a mighty ocean rolling on to the foot of the Rocky Mountains! Between the backwoods-and the mountains roll the Mississippi River—the Ohio, the Potomac. Would you know what the Mississippi is like? Take the Thames and the Severn and the Wye and the Tyne and the Humber—let them roll their combined volume down the one river bed; the result would be no more than an insignificant tributary of the Mother of Waters—the meaning of the name Mississippi.”
There was more breathlessness. When Hal Holmes broke the silence everyone was startled—everyone stared at him.
“Grand! grand!” he said in a whisper. “And your eyes beheld that wonder of waters, sir?”
Mr. Wesley held up both his hands.
“I—I—behold it?” he cried. “Why, there is no one in England whose eyes have looked upon that great river. Had I set out to find it I should have had to travel for a whole year before reaching it—a year, even if the forests had opened their arms to receive me, and the prairie had offered me a path I spoke with an Indian who had seen it, and I spoke with the widows of two men who had gone in search for it. Four years had passed without tidings of those men, and then one of the Iroquois tribe found a tattered hat that had belonged to one of them, on the borders of the backwoods, not a hundred miles from his starting place. Of the other nothing has yet been forthcoming. I tell you, friends, that I was used to let my eyes wander across the plain until they saw that forest, and they never saw it without forcing me to look upon it as a vast, monstrous thing—but a living creature—one of those fabled dragons that were said to lie in wait to devour poor wretches that drew nigh to it. Nay, when I looked upon it I recalled the very striking lines in John Milton's fine epic of 'Paradise Lost':
'With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood,—”
“One must needs be a dweller among the adventurers in America in order to understand in its fulness how terrible a monster those backwoods are thought to be. There it stretched, that awful mass—that monstrous mother of that venomous brood—the huge snakes that lurk in the undergrowth, the fierce lynx, the terrible panther, the wolf and the wildcat. I have heard, too, of a certain dragon and the vampire—a huge bat that fans a poor wretch asleep by the gentle winnowing of its leather wings only to drain his life's blood. These are but a few of the brood of the backwoods. Who can name them all? The poisonous plants that shoot out seeds with the noise of the discharge of a musket, the swamps made up of the decay of a thousand years—breathing fevers and agues—the spectre of starvation lurks there unless you have weapons and the skill to use them—fire—they told me of the prairie fires—a blast of flame five miles broad—sometimes twenty miles broad—rushing along driving before it beasts and birds until they drop in sheer exhaustion and become cinders in a minute—these are some of the terrors that dwell in the backwoods, but worst of all—most fierce—inexorable, is the Red Indian. Tongue of man cannot tell the story of their treachery—their torturings. Our settlers do not fear to face the beasts of the backwoods—the rattlesnakes—the pestilence of the swamps—the most cruel of these is more merciful than the Indian.”
They listened as children listen to a fairy tale, and they knew that they were hearing the truth. There was not one of them that had not heard something of the story of the founding of the settlement along the coast of the new Continent, from the Bay Colonies and Plymouth Rock in the North to Carolina in the South. The spirit of adventure which had given Drake and Raleigh their crews from the men of the West country gave no signs of dying out among their descendants. They listened and were held in thrall while this man, who had come among them with something of the reputation of a pioneer—a man boldly striking out a new track for himself, told them of the perils faced by their countrymen on the other side of that sea which almost rolled to their very doors. He carried them away with him. They breathed with him the perfume of the backwoods and became imbued with the spirit of mystery pervading them. He carried them away simply because he himself was carried away. He felt all that he spoke about; this was the secret of his power. He could not have made them feel strongly unless by feeling strongly himself.
But his aim was not limited to his desire to arouse their interest in the romance of the backwoods. He spoke of the troubles of the young settlement to which he had gone out, of the bravery of the settlers, men and women—of the steadfast hope which animated them in facing their anxieties—their dangers. What was the power that sustained them? In one word, it was faith.
Without the least suggestion of preaching, he talked to them of Faith. He talked as if it was not merely a sentiment—a cold doctrine to be discussed by the aid of logic—nay, but as a real Power—a Power that could move mountains. Such as had it had the greatest gift that Heaven offered to mankind. It was a gift that was offered freely—all could have it, if they so willed; and this being so, how great would be the condemnation of those who refused to accept it!
And the people who had eagerly drunk in all that he had to say of the mystery of the backwoods were even more interested when he talked of this other mystery. There had been no dividing line in his subject; the Faith of which he was now speaking with all the eloquence of simple language that fell like soft music on their ears, was a natural part—the most actual part of his story of the great half-known West.
They listened to him while he discoursed for that marvellous half-hour, and the prayer that followed seemed also a part—the suitable closing part of that story of trial and trouble and danger rendered impotent by Faith. Surely, when such a gift could be had for the asking, they should ask for it. He prayed that the hearts of all who were kneeling might be opened to receive that saving grace of Faith.
“Hal, my friend,” said the miller, when they stood together at the entrance to the lane, having seen Mr. Wesley drive off with Jake. “Hal, for the first time these sixteen years I have seen thee rise from thy supper without searching about for thy pipe!”
“My pipe? List, old friend, while I tell thee that to pass another such evening I would break my pipe into a hundred pieces and never draw a whiff of 'bacca between my teeth,” said Hal. “Moreover, a word in thy ear: I would not have it made public; I'll smoke no more 'bacca that comes to me by a back way. I believe that why I didn't smoke this evening was by reason of the feeling that was in me that 'twould be a solemn sin for me to let him have even a sniff of 'bacca that had been run.”
The miller laughed.
“Why, Hal, he did not preach to us to give the Preventive men their due,” he said.
“No, no. If he had I might ha' been the less disposed to do the right thing. But now—well, no more smuggled 'bacca for me.”
“Good:—good—but wherefore this honest resolve, Hal Holmes?”
“I know not. Only I seem somehow to look at some things in a new light.”
“And that light will not let your tinder be fired over a pipe o' 'bacca that has paid no duty? That's right enough, but what I need to learn from you is the reason of all this.”
“Ah, there you have me, friend. I can give you no reason for it; only the notion came over me quite sudden like, that for ten year I had been doing what I should ha' turned from, and I made the resolve now to turn now before it was too late. That's all, and so, good-night to you, Mat, and God bless you. I be to get that shoe on before he starts from Jake's house i' the morn, and he said he would start betimes.”
The miller laughed again, but very gently, and held out his hand to the other without a word. It was not until the blacksmith had disappeared down the lane that his friend said in a low voice:
“It beats me clean. There must be a sort of magic in the man's tongue that it works those wonders. All the time that he was telling us his story o' the woods I was making up my mind to be a better man—to have more charity at heart for my fellows—to be easier on such as cannot pay all that they have promised to pay. And now here's Hal that confesses to the same, albeit he has never gone further out of the straight track than to puff a pipe that has paid nothing to King George's purse. And the man gave no preacher's admonition to us, but only talked o' the forest and such-like wild things.... Now, how did he manage to bring Faith into such a simple discourse?... Oh, 'tis his tongue that has the magic in it! Magic, I say; for how did it come that when he spoke I found myself gazing like a child at a picture—a solid, bright picture o' woods and things?... Oh, 'tis true magic, this—true!”
Oh, that a man could speak to men in the language of the Spring!” cried Mr. Wesley, when his horse stopped unbidden and unchidden and looked over the curved green roof of the hedge across the broad green pasturage beyond. “Oh, that my lips could speak that language which every ear can understand and every heart feel! What shall it profit a man to understand if he does not feel—feel—feel? The man who understands is the one who holds in his hand the doctor's prescription. The man who feels is the one who grasps the healing herbs; and 'tis the Spring that yields these for all to gather who will.”
And then, automatically he took his feet out of the stirrups for greater ease, and his eyes gazed across the meadow-land which sloped gently upward to the woods where the sunbeams were snared among the endless network of the boughs, for the season was not advanced far enough to make the foliage dense; the leaves were still thin and transparent—shavings of translucent emerald—a shade without being shadowy.
Everything that he saw was a symbol to him. He looked straight into the face of Nature herself and saw in each of its features something of the Great Message to man with which his own heart was filled to overflowing. He was a poet whose imagination saw beneath the surface of everything. He was a physician who could put his finger upon the pulse of Nature and feel from its faintest flutter the mighty heart which throbbed through the whole creation.
What man was there that failed to understand the message of Nature as he understood it? He could not believe that any should be so dense as to misinterpret it. It was not a book written in a strange tongue; it was a book made up of an infinite number of pictures, full of colour that any child could appreciate, even though it had never learned to read. There was the meadow beyond the hedgerow. It was full of herbs, bitter as well as sweet. Could anyone doubt that these were the symbols of the Truth; herbs for the healing of the nations, and if some of them were bitter to the taste, were their curative properties the less on this account? Nay, everyone knew that the bitterest herbs were oftentimes the most healing. What a symbol of the Truth! It was not the dulcet truths that were purifying to the soul of man, but the harsh and unpalatable.
“God do so to me and more also if ever I should become an unfaithful physician and offer to the poor souls of men only those Truths that taste sweet in their mouths and that smell grateful to their nostrils!” he cried.
And he did not forget himself in the tumult of his thought upon his message. He was not the physician who looked on himself as standing in no need of healing.
“I have tasted of the bitter medicine myself and know what is its power. Oh, may I be given grace to welcome it again should my soul stand in need of it!”
A lark rose from the grass of the sloping meadow and began its ecstatic song as it climbed its ærie ladder upward to the pure blue. He listened to the quivering notes—a bubbling spring of melody babbling and wimpling and gurgling and flitting and fluttering as it fell through the sweet morning air.
“Oh, marvel of liquid melody!” cried the man, letting his eyes soar with the soaring bird. “What is the message that is thine! What is that message which fills thy heart with joy and sends thee soaring out of the sight of man, enraptured to the sky? Is it a message from the sons of men that thou bear-est to the heavens? Is it a message from Heaven that thou sendest down to earth?”
A butterfly fluttered up from beyond the hedge, carrying with it the delicate scent of unseen primroses. It hovered over the moss of the bank for a moment and then allowed itself to be blown like a brown leaf in the breeze in a fantastic course toward the group of harebells that made a faint blue mist over a yard of meadow.
He watched its flight. The butterfly had once been taken as an emblem of the immortality of the soul, he remembered. Was it right that it should be thought such a symbol, he wondered. In latter years it was looked on as an example of all that is fickle and frivolous. Was it possible that the ancients saw more deeply into the heart of things—more deeply into the spirit of these forms of Nature?
“Who can say what wise purpose of the Creator that gaudy insect may fulfil in the course of its brief existence?” said he. “We know that nothing had been made in vain. It may be that it flutters from flower to flower under no impulse of its own, but guided by the Master of Nature, whose great design would not be complete without its existence. That which we in our ignorance regard as an emblem of all that is vain and light may, in truth, be working out one of the gravest purposes of the All Wise.”
He remained under the influence of this train of thought for some time. Then his horse gave a little start that brought back his rider from the realm into which he had been borne by his imagination. He caught up the rein, slipped his feet into his stirrups, and perceived that it was the fluttering dress of a girl, who had apparently sprung from the primrose hollow beyond the hedge, that had startled the animal. It seemed that the girl herself was also startled; she stood a dozen yards away, with her lips parted, and gave signs of flight a moment before he recognised her as one of the girls who had been at the Mill the night before—the girl who had been the central figure in the game which his entrance had interrupted.
“Another butterfly—another butterfly!” he said aloud, raising his hand to salute Nelly Polwhele, who dropped him a curtsey with a faint reply to his “Good-morning.”
He pushed his horse closer to her, saying:
“A fair morning to you, my child! You are not a slug-a-bed. Have you come for the gathering of mushrooms or primroses? Not the latter; the borders of the Mill stream must be strewn with them to-day.”
“I am on my way to my home, sir,” she replied. “I set out on my return to the village an hour ago. I should be back in less than another—'tis scarce four mile onward.”
“I remember that you told me you had come from Porthawn—my destination also. I wished for a chat with you, but somehow we drifted a long way from Porthawn—we drifted across the Atlantic and got lost in the backwoods of America.”
“Ah, no, sir, not lost,” said the girl.
“I was a poor guide,” said he. “I have only had a glimpse of the backwoods, and so could only lead you all a rood or two beyond their fringes of maple. The true guide is one that hath been on every forest track and can tell by the tinges on the tree trunk in what direction his feet tend. What a pity 'tis, my dear, that we cannot be so guided through this great tangled forest of life that we are travers-. ing now on to the place of light that is far beyond—a place where there is no darkness—a shelter but no shadow! There, you see, I begin to preach to the first person whom I overtake. That is the way of the man who feels laid upon him the command to preach.”
“It does not sound like preaching, sir,” said the girl. “I would not tire listening to words like that.”
“That is how you know preaching from—well, from what is not preaching: you tire of the one, not of the other?” said he, smiling down at her.
She hung her head. Somehow in the presence of this man all her readiness of speech—sharpness of reply—seemed to vanish.
“I do not say that you have not made a very honest and a very excellent attempt to convey to me what is the impression of many people,” he resumed. “But there is a form of preaching of which you can never grow weary. I have been listening to it since our good friend Hal Holmes helped me to mount the horse that he had just shod.”
“Preaching, sir?” she said. “There are not many preachers hereabouts. Parson Rodney gives us a good ten minutes on Sunday, but he does not trouble us on week-days.”
“Doth his preaching trouble you on Sunday, child? If so, I think more highly of your parson than I should be disposed to think, seeing that I have heard nothing about him save that he is the best judge of a game-cock in Cornwall. But the sermon that makes a listener feel troubled in spirit is wholesome. Ah, never mind that. I tell you that I have been listening to sermons all this lovely morning—the sermon of that eminent preacher, the sun, to the exhortation of the fields, the homily of the bursting flowers, the psalm of the soaring lark, the parable of the butterfly. I was thinking upon the butterfly when you appeared.”
“You are different from Parson Rodney, if it please you, sir.”
“It does please me, my child; but, indeed, I am sure that there are worse parsons than those who take part in the homely sports of their parish, rude though some of these sports may be. I wonder if your ears are open to the speech—the divine music of such a morn as this.”
“I love the morning, sir—the smell of the flowers and the meadows—the lilt of the birds.”
“You have felt that they bring gladness into our life? I knew that your child's heart would respond to their language—they speak to the heart of such as you. And for myself, my thought when I found myself drinking in of all the sweet things in earth and air and sky—drinking of that overflowing chalice which the morning offered to me—my thought—my yearning was for such a voice as that which I heard come from everything about me on this Spring morning. 'Oh, that a man might speak to men in the language of this morn!' I cried.”
There was a long pause. His eyes were looking far away from her. He seemed to forget that he was addressing anyone.
She, however, had not taken her eyes off his face. She saw the light that came into it while he was speaking, and she was silent. It seemed to her to speak just then would have been as unseemly as to interrupt at one's prayers.
But in another moment he was looking at her.
“You surely are one of the sweet and innocent things of this dewy morn,” said he. “And surely you live as do they to the glory of God. Surely you were meant to join in creation's hymn of glory to the Creator!”
She bent her head and then shook it.
“Nay,” said he, “you will not be the sole creature to remain dumb while the Creator is revealing Himself in the reanimation of His world after the dark days of Winter, when the icy finger which touched everything seemed to be the finger of Death!”
His voice had not the inflection of a preacher's. She did not feel as if he were reading her a homily that needed no answer.
But what answer could she make? She was, indeed, so much a part of the things of Nature that, like them, she could only utter what was in her heart. And what was in her heart except a consciousness of her own unworthiness?
“Ah, sir,” she murmured, “only last night had I for the first time a sense of what I should be.”
His face lit up again when she spoke. His hands clasped, mechanically as it seemed.
“I knew it,” he said in a low voice, turning away his head. “I was assured of it. When my horse cast his shoe I felt that it was no mischance. I heard the voice of a little child calling to me through the night. No doubt crossed my mind. I thank Thee—I thank Thee abundantly, O my Master!”
Then he turned to Nelly, saying:
“Child, my child, we are going the same way. Will you give me permission to walk by your side for the sake of company?”
“Nay, sir, will not you be weary a-walking?” she said. “'Tis a good three mile to the Port, and the road is rough when we leave the valley.”
“Three miles are not much,” said he, dismounting. “The distance will seem as nothing when we begin to talk.”
“Indeed that is so, sir,” said she. “Last night fled on wings while you were telling us the story of the backwoods.”
“It fled so fast that I had no time to fulfil my promise to ask you about your friends at Port-hawn,” said he. “That is why I am glad of the opportunity offered to me this morning. I am anxious to become acquainted with all sorts and conditions of people. Now, if I were to meet one of your neighbours to-day I should start conversation by asking him about you. But is there any reason why you should not tell me about yourself?”
She laughed, as they set out together, Mr. Wesley looping his horse's bridle over his arm.
“There is naught to be told about myself, sir; I am only the daughter of a fisherman at Porthawn. I am the least important person in the world.”
“'Tis not safe, my child, to assign relative degrees of importance to people whom we meet,” said he. “The most seemingly insignificant is very precious in the sight of the Master. Who can say that the humblest of men or women may not be called upon some day to fulfil a great purpose? Have you read history? A very little knowledge of history will be enough to bear out what I say. When the Master calls He does not restrict Himself to the important folk; He says to the humblest, 'Follow Me and do My work—the work for which I have chosen thee.' God forbid that I should look on any of God's creatures as of no account. What is in my thought just now is this: How does it come that you, who are, as you have told me, the daughter of a fisherman in a small village far removed from any large city—how does it come that you speak as a person of education and some refinement? Should I be right to assume that all the folk at your village are as you in speech and bearing?”
The little flush of vanity that came to her face when he had put his question to her lasted but a few seconds.
She shook her head.
“I have had such advantages—I do not know if you would look on them as advantages, sir; but the truth is that the Squire's lady and her daughters, have been kind to me. My father did the Squire a service a long time ago. His son, Master Anthony, was carried out to sea in his pleasure boat and there was a great gale. My father was the only man who ventured forth at the risk of his life to save the young gentleman, and he saved him. They were two days in the channel in an open boat, and my father was well-nigh dead himself through exhaustion. But the young squire was brought back without hurt. The Squire and his lady never forgot that service. My father was given money to carry out the plans that he had long cherished of making the port the foremost one for fishing on our coast, and the ladies had me taught by their own governess, so that I was at the Court well nigh every day. I know not whether or not it was a real kindness.”
“It was no real kindness if you were thereby made discontented with your home and your friends.”
“Yes, Mr. Wesley; that is just what came about. I thought myself a deal better than anyone in the village—nay, than my own father and mother. I had a scorn of those of my neighbours who were ignorant of books and music and the working of embroidery, and other things that I learned with the young ladies. I was unhappy myself, and I knew that I made others unhappy.”
“Ah, such things have happened before. But you seemed on good terms with the miller's family and the others who supped last evening at the Mill. And did not you walk all the way from your village carrying that heavy fish for their entertainment?—our entertainment, I may say, for I was benefited with the others.”
The girl turned her head away; she seemed somewhat disturbed in her mind. She did not reply at once, and it was in a low voice that she said: “A year ago I—I—was brought to see that—that—I cannot tell you exactly how it came about, sir; 'tis enough for me to say that something happened that made me feel I was at heart no different from my own folk, though I had played the organ at church many times when Mr. Havlings was sick and though the young ladies made much of me.”
Mr. Wesley did not smile. He was greatly interested in the story which the girl had told to him. Had she told him only the first part he would have been able to supply the sequel out of his own experience and knowledge of life. Here was this girl, possessing the charms of youth and vivacity, indiscreetly educated, as people would say, “above her station,” and without an opportunity of mingling on equal terms with any except her own people—how should she be otherwise than dissatisfied with her life? How could she fail to make herself disagreeable to the homely, unambitious folk with whom she was forced to associate?
He had too much delicacy to ask her how it was that she had been brought to see the mistake that she had made in thinking slightingly of her own kin who remained in ignorance of the accomplishments which she had acquired? He had no difficulty in supplying the details which she omitted. He could see this poor, unhappy girl being so carried away by a sense of her own superiority to her natural surroundings as to presume upon the good nature of her patrons, the result being humiliation to herself.
“I sympathise with you with all my heart, dear child,” he said. “But the lesson which you have had is the most important in your education—the most important in the strengthening of your character, making you see, I doubt not, that the simple virtues are worthy of being held in far higher esteem than the mere graces of life. Your father would shake his head over a boat that was beautifully painted and gilded from stem to stern. Would he be satisfied, do you think, to go to sea in such a craft on the strength of its gold leaf? Would he not first satisfy himself that the painted timbers were made of stout wood? 'Tis not the paint or the gilding that makes a trustworthy boat, but the timber that is beneath. So it is not education nor graceful accomplishments that are most valuable to a man or woman, but integrity, steadfastness of purpose, content These are the virtues that tend to happiness. Above all, the most highly cultivated man or woman is he or she that has cultivated simplicity. I thank you for telling me your story in answer to my enquiry. And now that you have satisfied my curiosity on this point, it may be that you will go so far as to let me know why it was that you were filling the room in the Mill with shrieks last evening when I entered.”
Nelly Polwhele gave a little jump when Mr. Wesley had spoken. It had come at last. She had done her best to steal away from the explanation which she feared she would have to make to him. But somehow she did not now dread facing it so greatly as she had done in the Mill. She had heard that the Reverend Mr. Wesley was severe, as well as austere. She had heard his Methodism mocked by the fashionable folk at Bath, story after story being told of his daring in rebuking the frivolities of the day. She had believed him to be an unsympathetic curmudgeon of a man, whose mission it was to banish every joy from life.
But now that she had heard his voice, so full of gentleness—now that his eyes had rested upon her in kindliness and sympathy—now that she had heard him not disdain to spend an hour telling her and her friends that romance of the backwoods, thrilling them by his telling of it, her dread of being rebuked by him for her levity was certainly a good deal less than it had been. Still she looked uneasily away from him, and they had taken a good many steps in silence together before she made an attempt to answer him. And even then she did not look at him.
“'Twas a piece of folly, I am afraid, sir,” she said in a low tone. “At least you may esteem it folly, though it did not fail to amuse the good people at the Mill,” she added in an impulse of vanity not to be resisted.
“I had no doubt that it was a domestic game,” said he. “They were all roaring with laughter. Had you heard, as I did, from without, the loud laughter of the men and above it the wild, shrill shrieks, you would, I am sure, have been as amazed as I was.”
She laughed now quite without restraint.
“Bedlam—Bedlam—nothing less than Bedlam it must have seemed to you, Mr. Wesley,” she said.
“I will not contend with you as to the appropriateness of your description,” said he, smiling, still kindly.
“The truth is, sir, that I have just returned from paying my first visit to the Bath,” said she. “'Twas the greatest event in my simple life. I went to act as dresser to the Squire's young ladies, and they were so good as to allow me to see mostly all that there was to be seen, and to hear all that there was to be heard.”
“What—all? That were a perilous permission that your young ladies gave to you.”
“I know not what is meant by all, but I heard much, sir; singers and preachers and players. I was taken to the Cave of Harmony for lovely music, and to the playhouse, where I saw Mistress Woffington in one of her merry parts. I was busy telling of this when you entered the Mill. I was doing my best to shriek like Mistress Woffington.”
She spoke lightly and with a certain assurance, as though she were determined to uphold her claim to go whithersoever she pleased.
She was in a manner disappointed that he did not at once show himself to be shocked. But he heard her and remained silent himself. Some moments passed; but still he did not speak; he waited.
Of course she began to excuse herself; he knew that she would do so. The uneasily confident way in which she had talked of the playhouse had told him that she would soon be accusing herself by her excuses without the need for him to open his lips.
“You will understand, sir, I doubt not, that I was but in the position of a servant, though my ladies treated me graciously; I could not but obey them in all matters,” she said.
“Does your saying that mean that you had some reluctance in going to the playhouse?” he asked her.
“I was not quite—quite—sure,” she replied slowly. “I had heard that the playhouse was a wicked place.”
“And therefore you were interested in it—is that so?”
“But I asked myself, 'Would my young ladies go to the playhouse—would the Squire, who surely knows a good deal about wickedness, having lived for so many years in London—would the Squire and his lady allow them to go to the playhouse if there was anything evil in it?'”
“And so you went and you were delighted with the painted faces on both sides of the stage, and you have remained unsettled ever since, so that you must needs do your best to imitate an actress whose shamelessness of living is in everybody's mouth? I know that you imitated this Woffington woman to your young ladies when you returned warm and excited from the playhouse, and they laughed hugely at your skill.”
Nelly stood still, so startled was she at the divination of her companion.
“How came you to hear that?” she cried.
“Were we not alone in the bedroom? Who could have told you so much?”
“And when you returned to your home you were not many hours under its roof before you were strutting about feeling yourself to be decked out in the fine clothes which you had seen that woman wear in the playhouse?”
“You have been talking to someone—was it Jake Pullsford? But how could he have known? Oh, sir; you seem to have in yourself a power equal to that of the water-finder's wand, only surer by a good measure.”
“And you saw no evil in the playhouse?” he said gently.
“I do not want to go again, Mr. Wesley,” she said. “But indeed I dare not say that I saw any of the wickedness that I have heard of, in the theatre.”
“What, are you not in yourself an example of the evil?” said he.
“What—I, sir? Surely not, Mr. Wesley. Whatever you may have heard you could hear nothing against me,” she cried, somewhat indignantly.
Her indignation lent her boldness and she turned to him, saying:
“I affirm, sir, and I am not ashamed to do so, that I saw nothing of evil in the playhouse, and I made up my mind that instead of spending my days hidden away in a lonely village far from all the pleasures of life, I would try my fortune as an actress. I believe that I have some gift of mimicry—my ladies told me so. Why, sir, you allowed that my shrieks frightened you outside the Mill.”
“Child, your feet are on a path perilous,” said he. “You were indignant when I said that you were in yourself an example of the evil of going to the playhouse. Every word that you have spoken since has gone to prove the truth of my assertion. Do you say that the unsettling of your mind is no evil due to your visits to the playhouse—the unsettling of your mind, the discontent at your homely and virtuous surroundings, the arousing of a foolish vanity in your heart and the determination to take a step that would mean inevitable ruin to such as you—ruin and the breaking of your father's heart?”
He spoke calmly, and in his voice there was more than a suggestion of sorrow.
She had become pale; she made an attempt to face him and repel his accusations, but there was something in his face that took all the strength out of her. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed bitterly. He watched her for some moments, and then he put a soothing hand upon her arm.
“Nay, dear child, be not overcome,” said he. “Have you not said to me that you have no wish ever to enter the playhouse again? Let that be enough. Be assured that I will not upbraid you for your possession of that innocence which saved you from seeing aught that was wrong in the play or the players. Unto the pure all things are pure. Unto the innocent all things are harmless. You were born for the glory of God. If you let that be your thought day and night your feet will be kept in the narrow way.”
She caught his hand and held it in both her own hands.
“I give you my promise,” she cried, her eyes upon his face; they were shining all the more brightly through her tears.
“Nay, there is no need for you to give me any promise,” he said. “I will have confidence in your fidelity without any promise.”
“You will have to reckon with me first, you robber!”