CHAPTER VIII

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.