A Sovereign Remedy Part 20

"You might have known, if you hadn't been in a dream," muttered Mervyn Pugh as he sat, his face hidden in his hands. "Nothing can be done without money, nothing, and it wouldn't have mattered if it had not been for this cursed meeting--and--and the rector----"

"Don't curse him, Merve," broke in Morris Pugh, who stood, with the look of one newly awakened, near the window, gazing out vaguely at a rising star, which lay on the distant hilltop like a visitant from heaven. Even as he looked, his mind all confused and blurred, the novel thought came to him that with such high and holy messengers at His command, the Creator need not have condescended to send such farthing dips of wandering lights to mark His elect, as some which had been manifested during the revival.

For a month had pa.s.sed since Gwen's singing of the hymn had electrified the little congregation at Dinas, a month during which----

What had happened?

Morris Pugh, looking at his brother, saw that past month as in a dream, indeed. He, as the preacher, forgetful of everything save his mission, and those four voices, Gwen's soprano, Alicia Edwards's contralto, Mervyn's tenor, and Hwfa Morgan's ba.s.s, blending into every message of penitence or peace which emotion could desire. So they had gone preaching and singing, rousing an almost frenzied response wherever they went. And all the while----

"I don't understand yet," he said slowly. "Why was all this money required?"

Mervyn echoed the "all" with half-pathetic scorn. "A hundred pounds doesn't go far in running a revival," he said savagely. "One must start the thing. Why, even before we left Dinas, Gwen and Alicia had to get their clothes, they couldn't go in what they had got, and there was music wanted. One had to get a chorus, and the men couldn't sit up all night and work all day. Morgan and I talked it all over, for some one must look after practical things, you know, and I said I would finance it till the subscriptions came in. It's no use your looking like that, Morris. Any fool would tell you money had to be got somehow for the time, and it would have been all right but for this row with the rector. That isn't my fault."

Morris Pugh started as if he had been stung. "No! it was mine," he said. "I am the elder. I ought to have considered."

Mervyn rose quickly, and, going over to his brother, laid a caressing hand on his shoulder.

"Now don't, Morris," he said, using a common Welsh endearment, "let us forget ourselves for a while. I suppose it was wrong, but--" here his lip quivered, "it musn't injure the work. My G.o.d! how awful that would be." He flung himself on the chair again and, stretching his arms out over the table, positively sobbed. He was a prey to every emotion, every feeling that in this moment of anxiety and bewilderment swept over him, for he and his brother had come home but half an hour ago full of elation from a successful meeting at the other end of the county, to find that the rector, ousted member of village boards and councils, had insisted on a scrutiny of the accounts ere making over office next day.

And Mervyn knew that the balance would be a hundred pounds short; the hundred pounds which had been paid over by the central fund for educational purposes, and which should have been deposited in the Post Office Bank when it had come in a month ago. He had not done so, however, because, on emergency, he had borrowed the loan of the use of it for something else.

To do him justice that was all he had meant. Once the revival was fairly started the monetary question could be allowed to crop up, but without money in the background to make it possible to pose as having no regard to money, how could the very committees which would work the business properly be called into existence? At the time he had thought of nothing but G.o.d's service, and even now he felt little remorse. His sense of conversion was too strong, and the whole month of incessant irritation of every possible religious emotion had left him a pulp so far as actual facts were concerned ... and as a rule the village accounts went on and on endlessly ...

He lifted up his hand and smote the table impotently. Great heavens!

what was to be done? That hundred pounds must be replaced somehow.

As he thought of how it had been spent, he felt vaguely uncomfortable over an item which had gone to pay a small bill of his own, contracted in amusing Myfanwy Jones at Blackborough. He felt ashamed of that, but he had no shame for other things in the further past. A curious fanatical exultation filled him as he thought how marvellous were G.o.d's ways, and how men and women, sinners utterly, might stand in all innocence together and proclaim infinite mercy. Inscrutable mystery!

Almost incredible secret tie of forgiven sin, which made the voices thrill and blend.

And this must end unless there was money. They had but a few hours, and even Hwfa Morgan was not there to help with advice. He would not return till morning, so there was only poor, dreamy Morris, absorbed in the personal issues.

There was but one issue! That there should be no setback to the overwhelming success of the revival.

For it had been successful beyond measure, in works as well as words.

In Dinas itself, the cotoneaster-covered inn might have put up its shutters for all the liquor sold at the once-frequented bar. There was no swearing or quarrelling from one end of the parish to the other.

Even the snaring of their neighbours' rabbits for Sunday dinner, ultimate crime of a Welsh quarryman, had ceased. And these were but the outward and visible signs of a great inward and spiritual grace. A sense of perfect personal peace had fallen upon the ma.s.s of men.

There were no more anxieties, no more fears. Heaven and its golden harps were within the reach of all, and, looking forward, each personality could see itself surviving death and going on unchanged for ever and ever and aye. So the Grave had lost its Victory. Each trivial soul was safe.

The result in pure morality, not only in Dinas but throughout the whole countryside, was unquestionable. Even those who disapproved of such emotional excitement, or who, like the rector, viewed with disfavour all outpourings of grace except through the appointed channels, could not deny this, and were driven to darkling hints as to the staying power of such religious feeling.

Only Martha, going down in state to order the usual gross of matches at the village shop--the carriage arrangements precluded their purchase with all other things at the Stores--fell foul of the whole business, lock and stock and barrel, to Isaac Edwards, whom she found singing hymns while he did up the pound package of sugar, in which the paper, heavy blue, was included in the weight. Not that it was his fault that this was so. It was only one of the usual tricks of a trade which on a small scale cannot possibly be run straight.

"You'll excuse me," she said with a sniff, "but it strikes me as you're all a deal too free with the Almighty. But there, once folk stops making their reverences to the gentry, 'tain't long ere they get to noddin' at their Creator. An' you don't go to the Bible for your crowded-up night-watches, Mr. Edwards. King David, an' he oughter know, says mornin', evenin', an' noon. At night 'e watered 'is bed with 'is tears an' was still, like a decent gentleman. There wasn't none of this not-comin'-home--till--mornin' business, and how folks as 'as to work hard for their livin' does it, beats me. I'll set up agin most, but I'm a pore piece next day, an' wouldn't ask a full wage of anybody, not I! And as for the young folk; you mark my words, Mr.

Edwards! Gels is gels, an' boys is boys, whether they stands in a kirk or a mill, as the sayin' is. An' they'll find it out for theirselves, poor sillies, by an' by, if them as is past 'youth's hayday' don't harvest-home 'em before lights out. So there! An' you can send up a gross an' a half o' matches if you think that not bein' o' your way o'

believin' I shall 'ave to 'arden myself to brimstone."

So she had departed; but her warnings had been as chaff before the wind while the harvest was being gathered in.

The flood-tide of popular opinion lifted even the wildest extravagances as well as the most sober actuality and carried them with it. Whither remained to be seen.

And now?

Morris Pugh, standing at the window looking in dull amaze at the star which had by this time dissociated itself entirely from earth, could not think what would happen now.

Everything on which he had any grip seemed to have gone. Since that day, a long month ago, when his voice had failed before Gwen's voice, he had, like the star, dissociated himself from the material world altogether. He had given the rein to his emotions, he had lived in the clouds, never asking or thinking how Alicia and Gwen came to be dressed so becomingly, never inquiring how the expenses of railway tickets, hiring, placarding, advertis.e.m.e.nts, notices in the papers, all the thousand and one absolute necessities for a successful meeting, were defrayed. So the truth came upon him with deadly force.

Morally a far stronger man than his brother, he could not for the moment get beyond the actual fact of fraud.

How could Mervyn have taken the money? How could he?

"Well!" said the latter at last, rising to pace the room impatiently, nervously. "Can't you suggest something? The money must be replaced somehow. We daren't risk anything. What can be done? and in the next few hours.--Oh! it is maddening to think how many would be willing to lend it if we had only time! To think even of the thousands who have hundreds and hundreds of pounds to fling away on a fancy, and this----" he paused, arrested by his brother's face. "What is it, Morris? what--what makes you look like that?"

For answer Morris sank to his knees and covered his face as if in prayer. "I thank Thee, O my G.o.d!" he murmured, "this hast Thou prepared aforetime. O ye of little faith--of little faith!"

"What is it, Morris?" repeated Mervyn curiously. The last month had done its work on him also. He was prepared for all things, all signs, and wonders. "You might tell me," he added, after a pause.

"No!"

Morris's face came up from his hands full of triumphant, transcendental exultation. "No! That is a secret between me and my G.o.d. But the hundred pounds is found! It is found, I tell you! Oh!

marvellous, most marvellous! Truly He moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"

For Mervyn's words had recalled to him in a flash the half-forgotten memory of Ned Blackborough's hidden money, and his mind attuned to miracles, super-sensitised to the direct dealings of Providence with man, leapt to the conclusion that the hundred pounds, so idly, so carelessly flung away on what appeared a mere fancy, was in truth a heavenly provision against this urgent need.

The thought explained so much. The devil of greed within him, which had urged him to take the money for his own use--the gradual unfolding, through this temptation, of the desire for some outpouring of the Spirit. Here were more marvels than he had time at present to consider. The great fact was sufficient, that in the wilderness the table had been spread.

"It was wrong to take the money, Merve," he said, his face suffused with a heavenly joy; "we must not forget that--we must weep and pray over that; but it was for His service, and He has forgiven us--the money is found!"

"But when--that is the point," began Mervyn anxiously; "it must be by to-morrow morning, and it is late----"

"You will wake to find it on the Bible by your bedside, my brother,"

interrupted Morris solemnly, "and then we will give thanks unto the Lord, for He hath done marvellous things. Come to supper now; our mother will be anxious at our delay. Leave the rest in His hands."

The moon was riding high amid the stars when Morris Pugh, closing the door of the sleeping cottage behind him with a whispered benediction on its inmates, started for his climb to the gap where Ned Blackborough had hidden the hundred pounds. The night air struck chill, for it was late October, but he was in far too exalted a frame of mind to consider such earthly things as overcoats or comforters.

His exaltation, indeed, would have seemed incredible even to the self of six weeks ago; for, despite his enthusiasm, he had been hard-headed and practical enough. Now, enervated by constant use of his emotions, it seemed to him--full to the brim as he was by right of his Cymric birth with imaginative fire, poetry pa.s.sion--that he was going up into the mountain alone to meet his Lord and receive a gift from His hands.

He felt as Moses must have felt on Pisgah, as St. Jerome felt when the last Sacrament was vouchsafed to him. Those last few weeks had made an ecstatic out of the enthusiast. He saw nothing but his Lord, he heard nothing but the call to come.

Marvellous! Most marvellous!

Yes! of a truth! for about him--to him unseen--lay the great marvel of the Real Presence in the world, above him the marvel of the Real Presence in the skies and stars. But the stones were to his eager feet but stumbling-blocks, the glory of the starlight and the moonlight was but the halo of a concrete heaven.

Still it was very rapture; worth in itself a thousand times the petty hundred pounds which had called it into being. Put into bald English, here was a man going to take money which he wot of, in order to save his brother from disgrace. Translated into the terms of emotional religion, here was a sinner about to find salvation.

The night was very clear, very cold. The stars sparkled brilliantly, aloofly. There was a suspicion of frost-crackle in the thick covering of dew which lay like a filmy gossamer quilt over the gra.s.sy uplands.

The startled sheep left a darker track of dew-despoiled herbage behind their flying footsteps. There was no cloud upon the sky whose velvet darkness seemed devoid of light save for the unhaloed moon and the sharp s.h.i.+ning stars.