0008
They both started at the sound of the voice. It came from a scowling man who, unperceived by them, had come through a small plantation of poplars on the slope at one side of the road, and now leaped from the bank, high though it was, and stood confronting them.
The girl faced him.
“What do you here, John Bennet?” she cried. “Have you been playing the spy as usual?”
“You are one of them that needs to be watched, my girl,” said he. “You know that I speak the truth and that is why you feel it the more bitterly. But rest sure that I shall watch you and watch you and watch you while I have eyes in my head.”
He was a lank man, who wore his own red hair tied in a queue. He had eyes that certainly would make anyone feel that the threat which he had uttered to the girl was one that he was well qualified to carry out; they were small and fierce—the eyes of a fox when its vigilance is overstrained.
He kept these eyes fixed upon her for some moments, and then turned them with the quickness of a flash of light upon Wesley.
“I heard what she said and I heard what you said, my gentleman,” said he. “You will have faith in her fidelity—the fidelity of Nelly Polwhele. I know not who you are that wears a parson's bands; but parson or no parson I make bold to tell you that you are a fool—the biggest fool on earth if you have faith in any promise made by that young woman.”
“Sir,” said Wesley, “you called me a thief just now. My knowledge of the falsehood of that accusation enables me to disregard any slander that you may utter against this innocent girl.”
“I called you a thief once and I shall call you so a second time,” cried the man. “You have stolen the love of this girl from me—nay, 'tis no use for you to raise your hand like that. I know you are ready to swear that you said nothing except what a good pastor would say to one of his flock—swear it, swear it and perjure yourself, as usual—all of your cloth do it when the Bishop lays his hands upon their wigs, and they swear to devote their lives to the souls of their parishes and then hasten to their rectories to get on their hunting boots—their hunting boots that are never off their legs save when they are playing bowls or kneeling—kneeling—ay, in the cock-pit.”
“Silence, sir!” cried Wesley. “Pass on your way and allow us to proceed on ours.”
“I have told your reverence some home truths; and as for yonder girl, who has doubtless tricked you as she did me——”
“Silence, sir, this instant! You were coward enough to insult a man who you knew could not chastise you, and now you would slander a girl! There is your way, sir; ours is in the other direction.”
He had his eyes fixed on the man's eyes, and as he faced him he pointed with his riding whip down the road. The man stared at him, and then Nelly saw all the fierceness go out of his eyes. He retreated slowly from Mr. Wesley, as though he were under the influence of a force upon which he had not previously reckoned. Once he put his hands quickly up to his face, as if to brush aside something that was oppressing him. His jaw fell, and although he was plainly trying to speak, no words came from his parted lips. With a slow indrawing of his breath he followed with his eyes the direction indicated by the other's riding whip. A horseman was trotting toward them, but in the distance.
Then it was that the man recovered his power of speech.
“You saw him coming—that emboldened you!” he said. “Don't fancy that because I was a bit dazed that 'twas you who got the better of me. I'll have speech with you anon, and if you still have faith in that girl——”
The sound of the clattering hoofs down the road became more distinct. The man took another quick glance in the direction of the sound, and then with an oath turned and leapt up to the green bank beside him. He scrambled up to the top and at once disappeared among the trees.
Wesley and the girl stood watching him, and when he had disappeared their eyes took the direction that the man's had taken. A gentleman, splendidly mounted on a roan, with half a dozen dogs—a couple of sleek spaniels, a rough sheep dog and three terriers—at his heels, trotted up. Seeing the girl, he pulled up.
“Hillo, Nelly girl!” he cried cheerily, when she had dropped him a curtsey. “Hillo! Who was he that slunk away among the trees?”
“'Twas only John Bennet, if you please, parson,” said she.
“It doth not please me,” said he. “The fellow is only fit for a madhouse or the county gaol. He looked, so far as I could see, as if he was threatening you or—I ask your pardon, sir; your horse hid you.”
When he had pulled up Mr. Wesley had been on the off side of his horse and half a dozen yards apart from the girl; so that the stranger had no chance of seeing the bands that showed him to be a clergyman.
“You arrived opportunely, sir,” he said. “I fear if the man had not perceived you coming in the distance, we might have found ourselves in trouble.”
“What, did the fellow threaten you? Shall I set the dogs upon his track? Say the word and I'll wager youKing Georgeagainst your sorry skewbald that he'll find himself in trouble before many minutes are over,” cried the stranger.
“Nay, sir; the man hath gone and we are unharmed,” said Wesley.
“The scoundrel! Let me but get him within reach of my whip!” said the other. “But the truth is, Nelly, that the fellow is more than half demented through his love for you. And i' faith, I don't blame him. Ah, a sad puss you are, Nelly. There will not be a whole heart in the Port if you do not marry some of your admirers.”
Then he turned to Wesley, saying:
“You are a brother parson, sir, I perceive, though I do not call your face to mind. Are you on your way to take some duty—maybe 'tis for Josh Hilliard; I heard that he had a touch of his old enemy. But now that I think on't 'twould not be like Josh to provide a substitute.”
“I have come hither without having a church to preach in, sir; my name is Wesley, John Wesley.”
“What, the head of the men we christened Methodists at Oxford?”
“The same, sir. I believe that the name hath acquired a very honourable significance since those days. I hope that we are all good churchmen, at any rate.”
“I don't doubt it, Mr. Wesley; but you will not preach in my church, sir, of that you may rest assured.”
“You are frank, sir; but pray remember that I have not yet asked your permission to do so.”
The other laughed, and spoke a word or two to his horse, who was becoming impatient and was only controlled with difficulty.
“A fair retort, Mr. Wesley—a fair retort, sir,” he said. “I like your spirit; and by my word, I have a sort of covert admiration for you. I hear that none can resist your preaching—not even a Bishop. You have my hearty sympathy and good will, sir, but I will not go to hear you preach. The truth is that you are too persuasive, Mr. Wesley, and I cannot afford to be persuaded to follow your example. I find the Church a very snug nest for a younger son with simple country tastes and a rare knowledge of whist; I am a practical man, sir, and my advice upon occasion has healed many a feud between neighbours. I know a good horse and I ride straight to hounds. In the cockpit my umpiring is as good law as the Attorney General could construe for a fee of a thousand guineas. Ask anyone in this county what is his opinion of Parson Rodney and you will hear the truth as I have told it to you. I wish you luck, Mr. Wesley, but I will not countenance your preaching in my church; nor will I hear you, lest I should be led by you to reform my ways, as I suppose you would say; I am a younger son, and a younger son cannot afford to have doubts on the existing state of things, when the living that he inherits is of the net value of eight hundred pounds per annum. So fare you well, sir, and I beg of you not to make my flock too discontented with my ten-minute sermons. They should not be so, seeing that my sermons are not mine; but for the most part Doctor Tillotson's—an excellent divine, sir—sound—sound and not above the heads of our gaffers. Fare thee well, Nelly; break as few hearts as thy vanity can do with.”
And Parson Rodney, smiling gallantly, and waving his whip gracefully, whistled to his dogs, and put his roan to the trot for which he was eager.
“An excellent type,” murmured Wesley. “Alas! but too good a type. Plain, honest, a gentleman; but no zeal, no sense of his responsibility for the welfare of the souls entrusted to his keeping.”
He stood for some time watching the man on the thoroughbred. Then he turned to Nelly Polwhele, saying:
“We were interrupted in our pleasant chat; but we have still three miles to go. Tell me what the people think of Parson Rodney.”
“They do not think aught about him, Mr. Wesley; they all like him: he never preaches longer than ten minutes.”
“A right good reason for their liking of him—as good a reason as he had for liking the Church; it doth not exact overmuch from him, and it saves him from sponging on his friends. The Church of England has ever been an indulgent mother.”
Such a sight had never been seen in Cornwall before: on this Sunday morning an hour after sunrise every road leading to the village of Porthawn had its procession of men, women, and children, going to hear the preacher. The roads became dusty, as dry roads do when an army of soldiers passes over them; and here was an army of soldiers along, with its horse and foot and baggage-waggons—such an army as had never been in the West since the days of Monmouth's Rebellion; and this great march was the beginning of another rebellion, not destined to fail as the other had failed. Without banners, without arms, with no noise, with no shoutings of the captains, this great force marched to fight—to take part in an encounter that proved more lasting in its effects than any recorded in the history of England since the days of the Norman Invasion.
The Cornish crowds did not know that they were making history. The people had heard rumours of the preacher who had awakened the people of Somersetshire from their sleep of years, and who, on being excluded from the churches which had become Sabbath dormitories, had gone to the fields where all was wakefulness, and had here spoken to the hearts of tens of thousands.
The reports that spread abroad by the employment of no apparent agency must have contained some element that appealed with overwhelming power to the people of the West. The impulse that drove quiet folk from their homes and induced them to march many miles along dusty roads upon the morning of the only day of the week that gave them respite from toil was surely stronger than mere curiosity. They did not go into the wilderness to see a reed shaken by the wind. There was a seriousness of purpose and a sincerity about these people which must have been the result of a strong feeling among them that the existing order of things was lacking in some essentials—that the Church should become a stimulating force to them who were ready to perish, and not remain the apathetic force that it was when at its best, the atrophying influence that it was when at its worst.
That the ground was ready for the sowing was the opinion of Wesley, though few signs had been given to him to induce this conclusion, but that he had not misinterpreted the story of the Valley of Dry Bones was proved by the sight of the multitudes upon the roads—upon the moorland sheep-tracks—upon the narrow lanes where the traffic was carried on by pack-horses. There they streamed in their thousands. Farmers with their wives and children seated on chairs in their heavy waggons, men astride of everything that was equine—horses and mules and asses—some with their wives or sisters on the pillion behind them, but still more riding double with a friend.
On the wayside were some who were resting, having walked seven or eight or ten miles, and had seen the sun rise over the hills on that scented Spring morning. Some were having their breakfast among the primroses under the hedges, some were smoking their pipes before setting forth to complete their journey. Mothers, were nursing their infants beneath the pink and white coral of the hawthorns.
“'Tis a fair,” said Hal Holmes to his friend, Dick Pritchard, who was seated by his side in a small pony cart made by himself during the winter.
“Salvation Fair,” hazarded the water-finder. “Salvation Fair I would call it if only I was bold enough.”
The smith shook his head.
“That is how it will be styled by many, I doubt not,” he said. “And being as it must be, a strange mixture of the two—a church-going and a fairgoing—I have my fears that 'twill fall 'twixt the two. If the thing was more of a failure 'twould be a huge success. You take me, Dick?”
“Only vague, Hal—only vague, man,” replied the water-finder, after a long cogitating pause. “When you spake the words there came a flash upon me like the glim from the lanthorn when 'tis opened sudden. I saw the meaning clear enough like as 'twere a stretch of valley on an uneven night of moonlight and cloud. Seemed as if there was a rift in your discourse and the moon poured through. But then the clouds fled across and I walk in the dark. Say 't again, Hal, and it may be that 'twill be plain. I have oft thought that your speech lit up marvellous well.”
The blacksmith grinned.
“Maybe that is by reason of my work with the forge,” he said. “The furnace is black enough until I give it a blast with the bellows and then 'tis a very ruby stone struck wi' lightning.”
“Maybe—ay, very likely,” said the little man doubtfully.
The smith grinned again.
“You don't altogether see it with my eyes, friend,” he said. “How could you, Dick, our trades being natural enemies the one to t'other? My best friend is fire, yours is water. But what was on my mind this moment was the likelihood that the light-hearted may be fain to treat this great serious field gathering as though it were no more than a fair. Now, I say still that if 'twas no more than a gathering together of two or three parishes none would think of it in light of a fair, but being as 'tis—a marvel of moving men and women—why, then, there may be levity and who knows what worse.”
“Ay, it looks as if the carcase of the hills was alive and moving with crawling maggots,” remarked Dick. The summit of the hill on the road had been reached, and thus a view was given him and his companion of the hollow in the valley beyond, which was black with the slow-moving procession.
And there were many who, while anxious for the success of the meeting, shared Hal Holmes's fears and doubts as to its result. What impression could one man make upon so vast an assembly in the open air, they asked of each other. They shook their heads.
These were the sober-minded people who sympathised with the aims of the preacher—God-fearing men and women to whom his hopes had been communicated. They knew that hundreds in that procession on the march to the meeting-place were no more serious than they would be had they been going to a fair. They were going to meet their friends, and they were impelled by no higher motives than those which were the result of the instinct of the gregarious animals. Many of them lived far away from a town or even a village, in the wilder parts of the Duchy, and they laid hold on an opportunity that promised to bring them in contact with a greater crowd than they had ever joined before. The joy of being one of the crowd was enough for them; the preaching was only an insignificant incident in the day's proceedings. The sober-minded, knowing this, were afraid that in these people the spirit of levity might be aroused, especially if they could not hear the words of the preacher, and the consequences would be disastrous.
And doubtless there were hundreds of the dwellers along the coast who would have been pleased if grief came to an enterprise that threatened their employment as smugglers or the agents of smugglers. Smuggling and wrecking were along the coast, and pretty far inland as well, regarded as a legitimate calling. Almost everyone participated in the profits of the contraband, and the majority of the clergy would have been very much less convivial if they had had to pay the full price for their potations. Preaching against such traffic would have been impolitic as well as hypocritical, and the clergy were neither. The parson who denounced his congregation for forsaking the service on the news of a wreck reaching the church was, probably, a fair type of his order. His plea was for fair play. “Let us all start fair for the shore, my brethren.”
Such men had a feeling that the man who had come to preach to the multitude would be pretty sure to denounce their fraud; or if he did not actually denounce it he might have such an influence upon their customers as would certainly be prejudicial to the trade. This being so, how could it be expected that they should not look forward to the failure of the mission?
And there was but a solitary man to contend against this mixed multitude! There was but one voice to cry in that wilderness—one voice to awaken those who slept. The voice spoke, and its sound echoed round the wide world.
He stood with bared head, with a rock for his pulpit, on a small plateau overlooking a long stretch of valley. On each side there was an uneven, sloping ground—rocks overgrown with lichen, and high tufts of coarse herbage between, with countless blue wild flowers and hardy climbing plants. The huge basin formed by the converging of the slopes made a natural amphitheatre, where ten thousand people might be seated. Behind were the cliffs, and all through the day the sound of the sea beating around their bases mingled with the sound of many voices. A hundred feet to the west there hung poised in its groove the enormous rocking stone of Red Tor.
Perhaps amongst the most distant of his hearers there was one who might never again have an opportunity of having the word that awakens spoken in his hearing. There might be one whose heart was as the ground in Summer—waiting for the seed to be sown that should bring forth fruit, sixtyfold or an hundredfold. That was what the man thought as he looked over the vast multitude. He felt for a moment overwhelmed by a sense of his responsibility. He felt that by no will of his own he had been thrust forward to perform a miracle, and he understood clearly that the responsibility of its performance rested with him.
For a moment the cry of the overwhelmed was in his heart.
“It is too much that is laid upon me.”
For a moment he experienced that sense of rebellion which in a supreme moment of their lives—the moment preceding a great achievement for the benefit of the world—takes possession of so many of the world's greatest, and which has its origin in a feeling of humility. It lasted but for a moment. Then he found that every thought of his mind—every sense of his soul—was absorbed by another and greater force. He had a consciousness of being possessed by a Power that dominated every sensation of his existence. That Power had thrust him out from himself as it were, and he felt that he was standing by wondering while a voice that he did not know to be his own went forth, and he knew that it reached the most remote of the people before him. It was like his own voice heard in a dream. For days there had been before his eyes the vision that had come to the prophet—the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. He had seemed to stand by the side of the man to whom it had been revealed. He had always felt that the scene was one of the most striking that had ever been depicted; but during the week it was not merely its mysticism that had possessed him. He felt that it was a real occurrence taking place before his very eyes.
And now he was standing on his rock looking all through that long valley, and he saw—not the thousands of people who looked up to him, but ranks upon ranks and range upon range of dead men's bones, bleaching in the sunshine—filling up all the hollows of the valley forsaken of life, overhung by that dread legend of a battle fought so long ago that its details had vanished. There they stretched, hillocks of white bones—ridges of white bones—heaps upon heaps. The winds of a thousand years had wailed and shrieked and whistled, sweeping through the valley, the rains of a thousand years had been down upon them—hail and snow had flung their pall of white over the whiteness of the things that lay there, the lightnings had made lurid the hollow places in the rocks, and had rent in sunder the overhanging cliffs—there was the sign of such a storm—the tumbled tons of black basalt that lay athwart one of the white hillocks—and on nights of fierce tempest the white foam from the distant sea had been borne through the air and flung in quivering flakes over cliffs and into chasm—upon coarse herbage and the blue rock flowers. But some nights were still. The valley was canopied with stars. And there were nights of vast moonlight, and the white moonlight spread itself like a great translucent lake over the white deadness of that dreary place....
The man saw scene after scene in that valley as in a dream. And then there came a long silence, and out of that silence he heard the voice that said: “Can these dead bones live?”
There was another silence before the awful voice spoke the command:
“Let these bones live!”
Through the moments of silence that followed, the sound of the sea was borne by a fitful breeze over the cliff face and swept purring through the valley.
Then came the moment of marvel. There was a quivering here and there—something like the long indrawing of breath of a sleeper who has slept for long but now awakens—a slow heaving as of a giant refreshed, and then in mysterious, dread silence, with no rattling of hollow skeleton limbs, there came the great moving among the dry bones, and they rose up, an exceeding great army.
Life had come triumphant out of the midst of
Death. That was what the voice said. The whole valley, which had been silent an hour before, was now vibrating, pulsating with life—the tumult of life which flows through a great army—every man alert, at his post in his rank—waiting for whatever might come—the advance of the enemy, the carrying out of the strategy of the commander.
Life had come triumphant out of the midst of death, and who would dare now to say that the deepest spiritual life might not lie hidden from sight among the bleaching heaps of dead bones that strewed the valley from cliffy to cliffs—hidden but only waiting for the voice to cry aloud:
“Let these bones live!”
“Oh, that that Dread Voice would speak through me!” cried the preacher.
That was the first time he became conscious of the sound of his own voice, and he was startled. He had heard that other voice speaking, carrying him away upon the wings of its words down through the depths of that mystic valley, but now all was silent and he was standing with trembling hands and quivering lips, gazing out over no valley of mystery alive with a moving host, but over a Cornish vale of crags; and yet there beneath his eyes were thousands of faces, and they looked like the faces of such as had been newly awakened after a long sleep—dazed—wondering—waiting....
He saw it. The great awakening had come to these people, and now they were waiting—for what?
He knew what he had to offer them. He knew what was the message with which he had been entrusted—the good news which they had never heard before.
And he told it with all simplicity, in all humility, in all sincerity—the evangel of boundless love—of illimitable salvation, not from the wrath to come—he had no need to speak of the Day of Wrath—his theme wras the Day of Grace—salvation from the distrust of God's mercy—salvation from the doubts, from the cares of the world, from the lethargy that fetters the souls of men, from the gross darkness and from the complacency of walking in that darkness.
He let light in upon their darkness and he forced them to see the dangers of the dark, and, seeing, they were overwhelmed. For the first time these people had brought before their eyes the reality of sin—the reality of salvation. They had had doctrines brought before them in the past, but the tale of doctrines had left them unmoved. They had never felt that doctrines were otherwise than cold, impassioned utterances. Doctrines might have been the graceful fabrics that clothed living truths, but the truth had been so wrapped up in them that it had remained hidden so far as they were concerned. They had never caught a glimpse of the living reality beneath.
But here was the light that showed them the living thing for which they had waited, and the wonder of the sight overwhelmed them.
The voice of the preacher spoke to them individually. That was the sole mystery of the preaching—the sole magnetism (as it has been called) of the preacher.
And that was the sole mystery of the manifestation that followed. Faces were streaming with tears, knees were bowed in prayer; but there were other temperaments that were forced to give expression to their varied feelings—of wonder, of humiliation, of exultation. These were not to be controlled. There were wild sobbings, passionate cries, a shout or two of thanksgiving, an outburst of penitence—all the result of the feelings too strong to be controlled, and all tokens of the new life that had begun to pulsate in that multitude—all tokens that the Valley which had been strewn with dry bones had heard the voice that said:
“Let these dry bones live.”
There was a great moving among the dry bones, and they stood up, an exceeding great army.
His preaching had ceased, but the note that he had struck continued to vibrate through the valley. He had spoken with none of the formality of the priest who aims at keeping up a certain aloofness from the people. This Mr. Wesley had spoken as brother to brother, and every phrase that he uttered meant the breaking down of another of the barriers which centuries had built up between the pulpit and the people.
They proved that they felt this to be so when he came among them. Warm hands were stretched out to meet his own—words of blessing were ejaculated by such as were able to speak; but infinitely more eloquent were the mute expressions of the feeling of the multitude. Some there were who could not be restrained from throwing themselves upon his shoulders, clasping him as if he had indeed been their brother from whom they had been separated for long; others caught his hands and kissed them. Tears were still on many faces, and many were lighted up with an expression of rapture that transfigured their features.
He made no attempt to restrain any of the extravagances to which that hour had given birth. He knew better than to do so. He had read of the extravagant welcome given by the people of a town long besieged to the envoys who brought the first news of the approach of the relieving force, and he knew that he was there as an envoy to tell the people about him of their release. He had himself witnessed the reception given to the King's Posts that brought the tidings of the last peace, and he knew that he himself was a King's Messenger, bearing to these people the tidings of Peace and Goodwill.
He had a word of kindness and comfort and advice to all. He was an elder brother, talking to the members of his own family on equal terms. But soon he left the side of these new-found brethren, for his eyes had not failed to see some who were sitting apart among the low crags—some in silent dejection, bearing the expression of prisoners for whom no order of release has come, though they had seen it come for others. But all were not silent: many were moaning aloud with ejaculations of despair. In the joy that had been brought to their friends they had no share. Nay, the message that had brought peace to others had brought despair to them. They had been happy enough before, knowing nothing of or caring nothing for, the dangers that surrounded them in the darkness, and the letting in of the light upon them had appalled them.
He was beside them in a moment, questioning them, soothing their fears, removing their doubts, whispering a word or two of prayer in their ears. Jake, the carrier, had been right: the preacher had balm for the wounds of those who suffered. He went about among them for hours, not leaving the side of any who doubted until their doubts had been removed and they shared the happiness that the Great Message brought with it. But the evangel had arisen upon that valley as the Daystar, with healing in its wings.
When the multitude dispersed, the church bells were making melody over the hills and through the dales. The Reverend Mr. Wesley was a good churchman, and he took care that his preaching did not interfere with the usual services. His object was to fill the churches with devout men, and not merely the body of the churches, but the pulpits as well.
For himself, he withdrew from his friends and walked slowly up one of the tracks leading to the summit of the cliffs a few miles beyond the village of Porthawn. He wished to be alone, for amid all his feelings of thankfulness for the good which he knew had been done through his preaching, there came to him a doubt. Had he been faithful in his delivery of the Message? Had he yielded up everything of self to the service of the Master? Had he said a word that might possibly become a stone of stumbling to the feet that had just set out upon the narrow way?
That was the fear which was ever present with him—the possibility that the Message had failed in its power by reason of his frailty in delivering it—the possibility that he might attribute to himself some of the merit of the Message.
The hours which he passed in loneliness almost every day of his life, the solitary rides covering thousands of miles, his long walks without a companion, were devoted to self renunciation. He was more afraid of himself than of any enemy from without. He sometimes found himself in such a frame of mind as caused him to admire the spirit that led the priests of the heathen beliefs in the East to torture and mutilate themselves in the attainment of what appeared to them to be holiness. He knew that their way was not the right way, and the object which they strove to achieve was not a worthy one; but he could not deny the self-sacrifice and its value.
Yes, but was it not possible that self-sacrifice might, if performed ostentatiously, become only another form of self-glorification?
It was only now that this thought flashed upon him. He had walked along the cliff path for a mile or two, and soon became aware of the pangs of hunger. It was nothing for him to set out to preach without having more than a bite or two of bread, and to go fasting until the afternoon. He had never regarded this as an act of self-sacrifice. But how had he felt when some of his friends had made much of these facts, entreating him to be more mindful of his health? Had he not felt a certain pride in thinking that his health was regarded as important?
And now, when he should return to the house where he was a guest—it was the house of a Mr. Hartwell, the owner of a mine in the tin district some distance from Porthawn—would not his hours of fasting preceding and following the exertion of preaching to so great a multitude in the open air make him appear akin to a martyr in the eyes of the people with whom he might come in contact?
Nay, could he deny that he felt some vanity in the reflection that here again he would be seriously remonstrated with for his disregard of himself?
Even his orderly mind was unable to differentiate between the degrees of self-sacrifice and self-satisfaction involved in this simple question of fasting and eating, and he was troubled that his attempts to do so were not wholly successful. It was like the man that, in his hours of exhaustion, he should be dissatisfied with what was really the result of his exhaustion. This trivial self-examination was, though he did not know it, only the result of his neglect of the wants of his body. Yes, but this fact did not make it the less worrying to him.
He had been led by the charm of the day to walk farther than he had intended, and he was so exhausted that he found it necessary to rest in a dip of the cliffs above the little bay. On each side of him stretched the broken shore, a short crescent patch of sand at every dip in that long, uneven wall, and marking the outline of its curve was the white floss of the lazy ripples. Behind him was the coarse sand-herbage of the broken shore, and in front of him stretched the sea. A white bird or two hovered between the waters and the cliff summit, and far away a revenue cutter showed its white sails. Sunlight was over all. The warm air seemed imbued with the presence of God, which all might breathe and become at peace with all the world.
It came over the face of the waters, upon the face of the man who reclined upon a cushion of springy herbage that quite hid the shape of the rock at whose base it found root. The feathery touch upon his brow soothed him as a mother's hand soothes her child and banishes its distrust. He lay there and every doubt that had oppressed him vanished. He was weary and hungry, but he felt that the grace of heaven was giving him food in the strength of which he might wander in the wilderness for forty days.
He closed his eyes and with the faint hum of the little bees that droned among the blue cliff-flowers,—with the faint wash of the ripples upon the unnumbered pebbles of the beach—a sweet sleep crept over him.
When he awoke it was not with a start, but as gently as he had fallen asleep. For a moment he had a fear that he had overslept himself. He turned to look at the sun and saw standing only half a dozen yards away the girl by whose side he had walked a few mornings before to the village.
The picture that she made to his eyes was in keeping with the soothing sights and sounds of this placid day. She wore a white kirtle and cap, but the latter had failed to restrain the abundant hair which showed itself in little curls upon her forehead, and in long strands of sunshine over her ears and behind them. She was pleasant to look at—as pleasant as was everything else of nature on this day; and he looked at her with pleased eyes for some time before speaking.
As for Nelly, she was not watching him; but he could see that she had seen him; she had only turned away lest he should have a man's distaste to be caught sleeping in the daytime. He perceived this the moment that he spoke and she turned to him. The little start that she gave was artificial. It made him smile.
“I am at your mercy; but you will not betray my weakness to anyone,” he said, smiling at her.
“Oh, sir!” she cried, raising her hands.
“You saw me sleeping. I hope that 'twas not for long,” he said.
“I did not come hither more than five minutes agone, sir,” she replied. “You cannot have slept more than half an hour. I came to seek you after the preaching.”
“You have not been at your church, girl?” he said.
“I was at your church, Mr. Wesley. I like Parson Rodney. I did not go to his church.”
He shook his head.
“I like not such an answer, child.'Twould grieve me to learn that there were many of my hearers who would frame the same excuse.”
She hung her head.
“I am sorry, sir,” she said. “It was my intent to go to Parson Rodney's church, if only to see how vast a difference there was 'twixt—that is—I mean, Mr. Wesley, that—that my intention was to be in church, only when I saw that you had wended your way alone through the valley, not going in the direction of Mr. Hartwell's house, but far away from it—what could one do, sir, who knew that you could not have had a bite to eat since early morning—and after such a preaching and an after-meeting that filled up another fasting hour? 'He has no one to look after him,' said my mother in my ear. 'He is a forlorn man who thinks that he is doing God's service by forgetting that his body must be nourished if his soul is to remain sound.'”
“That is what your mother said—'tis shrewd enough. And what did you reply? Mind that the answer hath a bearing upon your staying away from church, Nelly.”
“I said naught, Mr. Wesley; but what I did was to hurry to our home and pack you a basket of humble victuals and—here it is.”
She picked up a reed basket from the grass and brought it beside him. Kneeling then on a stone she raised the lid and showed him a dish of cooked pilchards, some cakes of wheat bread and a piece of cream cheese laid on a pale green lettuce.
She had spread the coarsest and whitest napkin he had ever seen on the face of the crag at his elbow, and with the air of a bustling housewife laid a plate and knife and fork for him, talking all the time—reproving him quite gravely and even severely for his inattention to his stomach—there was no picking and choosing of words in Cornwall or elsewhere during that robust century. She gave him no chance of defending himself, but rattled on upbraiding him as if he had been a negligent schoolboy, until she had laid out his picnic for him, and had spread the butter on one of the home-made cakes, saying:
“There, now, you must not get upon your feet until you have put down all that is before you. If you was to make the attempt to do so your long fast would make you so faint that you would run a chance of tottering over the cliff.”
He saw that there was no need for him to say a word. What could he say in the face of such attention to his needs as the girl was showing?
“I submit with a good grace, my dear,” he said when her work was done and she paused for breath. “Why should not I submit? I am, as you said, weak by reason of hunger, and lo, a table is spread for me with such delicacies as would tickle the appetite of a man who has just partaken of a heavy meal, and I am not that man. Happier than the prophet, I am fed not by ravens, but by a white dove.”
“Oh, sir,” she said, her face shining with pleasure. “Oh, sir, I protest that even in the genteelest society at the Bath, I never had so pretty a compliment paid to me.”
He had paid his compliment to her in a delicate spirit of bantering, so as to make no appeal to her vanity, and he saw that her pleasure was not the result of gratified vanity.
“But concerning yourself, my dear,” he cried when he had his fork in his hand, but had as yet touched nothing. “If I was fasting you must be also.”
“What, sir, did I omit to say that I returned to my home after your preaching?” she said. “Oh, yes; I got the basket there and the pilchards. My father despises pilchards, but I hope that you——”
“I ama practical man, Nelly, and I know, without the need to make a calculation on paper, that you could not be more than a few minutes in your cottage, and that all that time was spent by you over my basket. I know such as you—a hasty mouthful of cake and a spoonful of milk and you say, 'I have dined.' Now I doubt much if you had so much as a spoonful of milk, and therefore I say that unless you face me at this table of stone, I will eat nothing of your store; and I know that that would be the greatest punishment I could inflict upon you. Take your place, madam, at the head of the table.”
She protested.
“Nay, sir, I brought not enough for two—barely enough to sustain one that is a small feeder until he has the opportunity of sitting down to a regular meal.”
“I have spoken,” he said. “I need but a bite! Oh, the long fasting journeys that I have had within the year!”
She still hesitated, but when, at last, she seated herself, she did not cause him to think that he had made her feel ill at ease; she adapted herself to the position into which he had forced her, from the moment she sat opposite to him. She forgot for the time that he was the preacher on whom thousands of men and women had hung a couple of hours before, and that she, if she had not been with him, would have been eating in a fisherman's cottage.
She had acquired, through her association with the Squire's young ladies, something of their manners. Her gift of quick observation was allied to a capacity to copy what she observed, and being, womanlike, well aware of this fact, she had no reason to feel otherwise than at ease while she ate her share of the pilchards, and made him feel all the time that she was partaking of his hospitality.
As for the preacher, he felt the girl's thoughtfulness very deeply. It seemed that she was the only one of the thousands who had stood before him that had thought for his needs. Her tact and the graceful way in which she displayed it, even down to her readiness to sit with him lest he should feel that she was remaining hungry, pleased him; and her chat, abounding with shrewdness, was gracefully frank. He felt refreshed beyond measure by her freshness, and he rose to walk to the house where he was a guest, feeling that it was, indeed, good for him to have changed the loneliness of his stroll for the companionship which she offered him.