The Village by the River Part 16

The words Sally recognized as an exclamation rather than a prayer, but they brought the rector to her remembrance. If any man could help another in his last agony surely it would be he.

"Mr. Allison," she said, laying her soft hand on the grimy one that moved up and down so restlessly upon the counterpane, "I heard you wanted to see me. Let me do something. Is there no one else you would like to see? Shall I fetch Mr. Curzon?"

Allison's eyes unclosed, dimmed already by the gathering haze of death.

"Bless you, missy; this ain't no place for you, though it's good of you to come. Good-bye. G.o.d bless you! You get home again; it will hurt you to see me suffer."

Once more that half-blind appeal to the Higher Power of which Mr.

Curzon had spoken, and he spoke with no uncertain sound. He seemed to know about it.

"Won't the rector come?" asked Sally again.

But Allison shook his head.

"No, no; we'd words to-day. I can't mind what about; but it don't matter much. I told 'un not to come."

But as he spoke a step fell on the stair, and the next moment Mr.

Curzon pushed open the door with an expression on his face so pitiful, so strong, that in the tension of her feeling, Sally could only sob, and, withdrawing her hand, slip quietly away to the window.

The rector knelt down, bringing his face to a level with the dying man's.

"Allison, dear fellow, I only heard this minute what had happened; and I came. Will you let me stay?"

"You can please yourself," said Allison; "but you can't want to be here. We quarrelled, you and I."

"Not I," said the rector, gently.

"I'm mortal bad! I'm dying!" gasped the blacksmith. "It can't do no good to watch me."

"You'll let me say a psalm or read a prayer."

"No. Where's the use? I wouldn't say 'em living and I can't listen now I'm dying. I ain't no worse than others, and I'm better than some; and what's to see on the other side, I'll learn soon enough for myself.

I'm nearly there."

"But G.o.d is here! close to you, Allison," pleaded the rector; "asking you even now to turn to Him, to look Him in the Face!"

Sally's breath came in fitful gasps; she looked round the room half expecting the visible s.h.i.+ning of that Presence. Instead, the wind sobbed in the chimney and the rain dashed against the window-pane.

Death was here, and darkness; but no G.o.d, thought Sally.

The rector's hands covered his face, and through his fingers Sally saw that great tears forced themselves in the agony of his wrestling for that soul with G.o.d.

"You can please yourself," said Allison, opening his eyes again. "It will do no good, but it won't do harm." And the rector, catching at the feeble flicker of a dawning faith, said the twenty-third Psalm slowly on his knees: "'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me----'"

A movement from the dying man made him pause and look up.

"I can't see nothing; give me a grip of your hand. Hold tight; I'm mortal cold."

He did not speak again. Neighbours came and went, moistening the dying lips with brandy; but the eyes had no gleam of recognition in them.

For an hour or more the rector sat with the great hand clasped tightly between his own, repeating gently prayer or hymn, no word of which, he feared, could reach the numbed brain, but certain that the Great G.o.d in Heaven was looking down upon the sheep that had wandered so far from Him, but whom He still claimed as His own. And Sally waited, too, until the rector rising, bent and softly closed the eyes. Then she knew that Allison was dead, and, slipping from the room, made her way swiftly home, unconscious of the rain that beat upon her head, filled only with the remembrance of the scene she had just witnessed.

"He's dead," she said, when Paul let her in; "he's dead--whatever that may mean. It does not mean going out like a candle--I'm certain it does not mean that,--it means going somewhere else; and, if any one can teach me, I must find out where. I could not die like that, Paul; it's despairing, it's quite hopeless! I'm thankful that I'm young; that I have time to learn. If there's no hope, no light, the mere thought of dying would be enough to drive one mad."

"My poor child! I did wrong to let you see anything so painful," Paul said, gathering her into his arms. "I am afraid there is no one who can tell you about these things. n.o.body knows; that is the sad part of it."

"Mr. Curzon can," said Sally, lifting her head from Paul's shoulder.

"He has got hold of something that you and I have missed. There is positive conviction written on his face of the living G.o.d whom Allison in dying was vaguely feeling after."

"Oh, he's a fine fellow in his way, I don't deny it, and has the courage of his opinions; but he can't know. n.o.body does," said Paul, doggedly. "And now, dear, we'll have supper. You will take a less hysterical view of life and death in the morning."

CHAPTER IX.

A CRISIS IN A LIFE.

A year had pa.s.sed since poor Allison's sun set so stormily. It was curious that his death marked the beginning of a new life for Sally; but so it was. It had changed her att.i.tude of mind towards things eternal, from one of placid indifference to active inquiry. Paul's a.s.sertion that "n.o.body knew" satisfied no longer, and she turned from him to Mr. Curzon.

"Death can't be the end of it all," she said abruptly to the rector, when she met him a few days after Allison had pa.s.sed away.

"Oh no," he answered, following her lead with quick sympathy. "Our Lord's death and resurrection teach us that it is but the beginning."

"I wish I could believe it. Can you help me? can any one help me?"

Sally said.

"I may be the signpost to show you the road, and I will tell you of the things which have helped me on the road; but G.o.d is even now drawing you to Himself by His Holy Spirit," said Mr. Curzon, earnestly.

Thus, under Mr. Curzon's guidance, Sally began the course of study which ended, before many months had pa.s.sed away, in the pa.s.sionate conviction that in Christ alone could be found the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Paul guessed at the fact that his sister was pa.s.sing through some new phase of thought, by the books he found left about the room, and by a newly developed earnestness which underlay her natural gaiety of manner.

"Poor child! Allison's death frightened her. And it is as well that she should study both sides of the question," he thought. He did not doubt that eventually she would accept his decision as final.

It was November, and Paul came into lunch one day with an unusual air of depression. His farming venture was proving a grievous failure, as far as money was concerned. On every side he found himself hampered by poverty. The summer had been a wet one, and, in common humanity, he had had to make a considerable reduction in his farm rents; improvements in his cottage property had led to an outlay for which he well knew he could receive no adequate interest, and, as he had tramped over the sodden land this morning, he had been occupied with the anxious consideration how best to make both ends meet.

The longer he lived at Rudham the less he liked it. He was deprived of the society of men of his own way of thinking; and with the rector, who in theory he cordially respected and liked, he found himself nearly always in tacit opposition. Paul's friends.h.i.+p with Kitty was the only connecting link between him and the rector; otherwise they would have drifted hopelessly apart before now. Then, on this particular morning, as he returned home he heard a rumour that May Webster was going to be married to a baronet who had haunted the Court pretty frequently during the last few months; and the hint had filled Paul with unreasoning irritation. Not that it mattered to him whom she married, he a.s.sured himself; but the Court had become the one bright spot to him in all the place.

Paul, having promised his friends.h.i.+p, had given it unstintingly, and had been proud to discover that in many of the subjects which interested him the most deeply, he had found May Webster a ready pupil; and when she differed from him she held her own with such merry defiance, that it gave her an added charm in his eyes. And now this mindless, fox-hunting squire was to carry her off, and life at Rudham would sink into one dead level of dulness. Thus it happened that he came home in a captious mood.

"What's the excitement, Sally? A wedding, I suppose, for the bells are making row enough to wake the dead."

"No, it's the Bishop," said Sally, flus.h.i.+ng a little. "There is a Confirmation here to-day."

Paul's eyes travelled from Sally's crimsoning face to the white dress she wore.

"I can't see why the Bishop is to be welcomed like a bride, and you are to dress like one of his bridesmaids," he said. "What a singularly inappropriate garment for this dreary November day."

"I am going to be confirmed, Paul."