CHAPTER XVIII

There could be no doubt about the depth of the impression which the strange figure and his unusual garb produced upon the people.

There he stood on the high ground above the houses, the man who had prophesied the end of the world, while beneath them tumbled the waves of a sea where they had never seen sea water before! The occurrence, being so far outside their experience, had about it the elements of the supernatural—the aspect of a miracle. Was this the beginning of the end of all? they asked themselves. To these people the daily ebb and flow of the tide, ever going on before their eyes, was the type of a regularity that nothing could change; and never once had the water been forced, even under the influence of the strongest gale from the southwest, beyond the summit of the shingle-heap—never until this day.

It was an awful thing that had come to pass before their eyes, and while their brains were reeling beneath its contemplation there rang out that voice of warning. The man who had predicted an event that was not more supernatural in their eyes than the one which had come to their very feet, was there bidding them repent.

But strange to say, there was not one among the-people assembled there who made a motion—who cried out in conviction of the need for repentance, as hundreds had done upon every occasion of John. Wesley's preaching, although it had contained no element that, in the judgment of an ordinary person, would appeal with such force to the emotions of the villagers as did the scene in which Pritchard now played a part.

They remained unmoved—outwardly, however shrinking with terror some of them may have been. Perhaps it was they felt that the man had, in a way, threatened them physically, and they had a feeling that it would show cowardice on their part to betray their fear, or it may have been that, as was nearly always the case when a prophet came to a people, they attributed to the bearer of the messages of the ill the responsibility for the ills which he foretold—however it may have been, the people only glanced up at the weird figure, and made no move.

But the appearance of the man at that moment had the effect of making them forget the scene which had immediately preceded the sound of his voice. No one looked to see whether or not John Bennet had scrambled back to the beach or had gone under the waters.

“It is coming—it is coming: I hear the sound of the hoofs of the pale Horse—yonder is the red Horse spoken of by the prophet at Patmos, but the White Horse is champing his bit. I hear the clink of the steel, and Death is his rider. He cometh with fire and brimstone. Repent—repent—repent!”

“I have a mind to make the fellow repent of his impudence,” said Parson Rodney. “The effrontery of the man trying to make me play a part in his quackery. I wonder how this water-finder would find the water if I were to give him the ducking I gave to the other?”

“You would do wrong, sir,” said Wesley. “But I feel that I have no need to tell you so: your own good judgment tells you that yonder man is to be pitied rather than punished.”

“Oh, if that is the view you take of the matter, you may be sure that I'll not interfere,” cried the other. “The fellow may quack or croak or crow for aught I care.'Twas for you I was having thought. But I've no intention of constituting my humble self your champion. I wish you well; and I know that if the world gets over the strain of Monday, we shall never see you in our neighbourhood again.”

“The elements shall melt with fervent heat. You feel it—you feel it on your faces to-day: I foretold it, and I was sent to cry unto all that have ears to hear, 'Repent—repent—repent'!”

“The fellow has got no better manner than a real prophet,” laughed Parson Rodney; but there was not much merriment in his laughter. “I have a mind to have him brought before me as an incorrigible rogue and vagabond,” he continued. “An hour or twain in the stocks would make him think more civilly of the world. If he becomes bold enough to be offensive to you, Mr. Wesley, give me a hint of it, and I'll promise you that I'll make him see more fire and brimstone than he ever did in one of his ecstatic moods; and so good-day to you, sir.”

He put his horse to a trot, and returned the salutes of the men who were standing idly watching Pritchard in his very real sackcloth.

But he had scarcely ridden past them when he turned his horse and called out:

“Wherefore are you idle, good men? Do you mean to forsake the remainder of your smacks?”

A few of the fishermen looked at one another; they shook their heads; one of them wiped his forehead.

“'Twill be all the same after Monday, Parson,” said that man.

“You parboiled lobster-grabber!” cried the Parson. “Do you mean to say that you have the effrontery to believe that addle-pate up there rather than a clergyman of the Church of England? Look at him. He's not a man.'Tis a poor cut torn from, a child's picture Bible that he is! Do you believe that the world would come to an end without your properly ordained clergyman giving you a hint of it? Go on with your work, if you are men. Repent? Ay, you'll all repent when 'tis too late, if you fail to haul up your boats so that their backs get not broken on that ridge. If you feel that you must repent, do it hauling. And when you've done your work, come up to the Rectory and cool your throats with a jug of cider, cool from the cellar, mind.”

“There shall be no more sea,” came the voice of the man on the mound; it was growing appreciably hoarser.

“No more sea?” shouted the parson. “That's an unlucky shot of yours, my addle-pated prophet; 'tis too much sea that we be suffering from just here.”

Wesley had not reseated himself. He put his hand upon Mr. Hartwell's arm. The latter understood what he meant. They walked away together.

“I have seen nothing sadder for years,” said Wesley. “I have been asking myself if I am to blame. Should not I have been more careful in regard to that unhappy man?”

“If blame is to be attached to any it is to be attached to those who recommended the man to you, and I was among them,” said Hartwell. “I recall how you were not disposed to accept him into our fellowship by reason of his work with the divining rod; but we persuaded you against your judgment. I, for one, shall never forgive myself.”

“Was ever aught so saddening as that travesty of the most solemn event?” said Wesley. “And then the spectacle of that well-meaning but ill-balanced man! A clergyman of our Church—you saw him turn to mock the wretch? He made a jest upon the line that has never failed to send a thrill through me: 'No more sea.' Shocking—shocking!... Friend, I came hither with the full intention of administering a rebuke to Pritchard—of openly letting it be understood that we discountenanced him. But I did not do so to-day, and I am glad of it. However vain the man may be—however injuriously he may affect our aims among the people—I am still glad that I was turned away from saying a word against him.”

Mr. Hartwell was too practical a man to look at the matter in the same light. But he said nothing further about Pritchard. When he spoke, which he did after a time, it was about Bennet. He asked Wesley if he could guess why the man had spoken to him so bitterly. Why should the man bear him a grudge?

Wesley mentioned that Bennet had come upon him when he was walking with Polwhele's daughter from the Mill.

“Ah, that is the form of his madness—he becomes insanely jealous of anyone whom he sees near that girl. But one might have thought that you at least—oh, absurdity could go no further! But a jealous man is a madman; he is incapable of looking at even the most ordinary incident except through green glasses. You are opposed to clergymen marrying, are you not, Mr. Wesley? I have heard of your book——-”

“I wrote as I was persuaded at that time,” replied Wesley. “But more recently—I am not confident that I did not make a mistake in my conclusions. I am not sure that it is good for a man to be alone; and a clergyman, of all men, needs the sympathy—the sweet and humane companionship of a woman.”

“True, sir; but if a clergymen makes a mistake in his choice of a wife, there can be no question that his influence declines; and so many men of your cloth wreck themselves on the quicksand of matrimony. I daresay that 'tis your own experience of this that keeps you single, though you may have modified your original views on the subject. Strange, is't not, that we should find ourselves discussing such a point at this time? But this seems to be the season of strange things, and 'twould be the greatest marvel of all if we ourselves were not affected. Is it the terrible heat, think you, that has touched the heads of those two men?”

“I scarce know what I should think,” said Wesley. “The case of Pritchard is the more remarkable. Only now it occurred to me that there may be a strange affinity between the abnormal in nature and the mind of such a man as he.'Twould be idle to contend that he has not been able as a rule to say where water is to be found on sinking a shaft; I have heard several persons testify to his skill in this particular—if it may be called skill. Does not his possession of this power then suggest that he may be so constituted that his senses may be susceptible of certain vague suggestions which emanate from the earth, just as some people catch ague—I have known of such in Georgia—when in the neighbourhood of a swamp, while others remain quite unaffected in health?”

“That is going too far for me, sir,” said Hartwell. “I do not need to resort to anything more difficult to understand than vanity to enable me to understand how Pritchard has changed. The fellow's head has been turned—that's all.”

“That explanation doth not wholly satisfy me,” said Wesley. “I think that we have at least some proof that he was sensible of something abnormal in Nature, and this sensibility acting upon his brain disposed him to take a distorted view of the thing. His instinct in this matter may have been accurate; but his head was weak. He receives an impression of something strange, and forthwith he begins to talk of the Day of Judgment, and his foolish vanity induces him to think of himself as a prophet. The Preventive officer thinks that there hath been an earthquake. Now there can, I think, be no doubt that Pritchard was sensible of its coming; Pol-whele told you yesterday that he had predicted an earthquake in the sea, although it seemed that his illiteracy was accountable for this: and now there comes this remarkable tide—the highest tide that the memory of man has known.”

“You have plainly been giving the case of Pritchard much of your attention,” said Hartwell; “but I pray you to recall his account of the vision which he said came to him when he fell into that trance. 'Twas just the opposite to a high tide—'twas such an ebbing of the water as left bare the carcase of the East Indiaman that went ashore on the Dog's Teeth reef forty years ago.”

“True; but to my way of thinking it matters not whether 'twas a prodigious ebb or a prodigious flow that he talked of so long as he was feeling the impression of the unusual—of the extraordinary. Mind you, I am only throwing out a hint of a matter that may become, if approached in a proper spirit, a worthy subject for sober philosophical thought. God forbid that I should take it upon me to say at this moment that the power shown by that man is from the Enemy of mankind, albeit I have at times found myself thinking that it could come from no other source.”

“You are too lenient, I fear, Mr. Wesley. For myself, I believe simply that the man's head has been turned. Is't not certain that a devil enters into such men as are mad, and have we not proof that witches and warlocks have sometimes the perverted gift of prophecy, through the power of their master, the Old Devil?”

“I cannot gainsay it, my brother, and it is because of this you say, that I am greatly perplexed.”

They had been walking very slowly, for the heat of the day seemed to have increased, and they were both greatly exhausted. Before entering Mr. Hartwell's house they stood for a short time looking seaward. There, as before, the waves danced under the rays of the sun, although not a breath of air stirred between the sea and the sky. The canopy of the heaven was blue, but it suggested the blue of hard steel rather than that of the transparent sapphire or that of the soft mass of a bed of forget-me-nots, or of the canopy of clematis which clambered over the porch.

The sun that glared down from the supreme height was like to no other sun they had ever seen. The haze on its disc, to which the Preventive officer had drawn their attention an hour earlier, had been slowly growing in the meantime, until now it was equal to four diameters of the orb itself, and it was so permeated with the rays that it seemed part of the sun itself. There that mighty furnace seethed with intolerable fire, and so singular was the haze that one, glancing for a moment upward with hand on forehead, seemed to see the huge tongues of flame that burst forth now and again as they do beneath a copper cauldron on the furnace of the artificer.

But this was not all, for at a considerable distance from the molten mass, which had the sun for its core, there was a wide ring apparently of fire. Though dull as copper for the most part, yet at times there was a glow as of living and not merely reflected flame, at parts of the brazen circle, and flashes seemed to go from the sun to this cincture, conveying the impression of an enormous shield, having the sun as the central boss of shining brass, on which fiery darts were striking, flying off again to the brass binding of the targe.

“Another marvel!” said Wesley; “but I have seen the dike more than once before. Once 'twas on the Atlantic, and the master of our ship, who was a mariner of experience, told me that that outer circle was due to the sun shining through particles of moisture. Hold up a candle in the mist and you have the same thing.”

“I myself have seen it more than once; 'tis not a marvel, though it has appeared on a day of marvels,” said Hartwell; and forthwith they entered the house.

They were both greatly exhausted, the fact being that before setting out for the preaching in the early morning they had taken no more than a glass of milk and a piece of bread, and during the seven hours that had elapsed they had tasted nothing, though the day had been a most exhausting one.

In a very few minutes the cold dinner, with the salad, which had been in readiness for their return, found them grateful; and after partaking of it Wesley retired to his room.

He threw himself upon a couch that stood under the window; a group of trees, though birch and not very bosky, grew so close to the window that they had made something of a shade to the room since morning, so that it was the coolest in the house. It was probably this sense of coolness that refreshed him so far as to place him within the power of sleep. He had thought it impossible when he entered the house that he should be able to find such a relief, exhausted as he had been. But now he had scarcely put his head on the pillow before he was asleep.

Several hours had passed before he opened his eyes again. He was conscious that a great change of some sort, that he could not at once define, had taken place. The room was in shadow where before it had been lighted by flecks of sunshine, but this was not the change which appealed to him with striking force; nor was it the sense of being refreshed, of which he was now aware. There was a curious silence in the world—the change had something to do with the silence. He felt as he had done in the parlour of Ruthallion Mill when he had been talking to the miller and the machinery had suddenly stopped for the breakfast hour. That was his half-awakened thought.

The next moment he was fully awake, and he knew what had happened: when he had fallen asleep the sound of the waves had been in his ears without cessation, and now the sea was silent.

He thought that he had never before been in such a silence. It seemed strange, mysterious, full of awful suggestions. It seemed to his vivid imagination that the world, which a short time before had been full of life, had suddenly swooned away. The hush was the hush of death. The silence was the silence of the tomb. “'Tis thus,” he thought, “that a man awakens after death—in a place of awful silences.”

And then he felt as if all the men in the world had been cut off in a moment, leaving him the only man alive.

It continued unbroken while he lay there. It became a nightmare silence—an awful palpable thing like a Sphinx—a blank dumbness—a benumbing of all Nature—a sealing up of all the world as in the hard bondage of an everlasting Winter.

He sprang from his couch unable to endure the silence any longer. He went to the window and looked out, expecting to see the flat unruffled surface of the channel, where the numberless waves had lately been, sparkling with intolerable, brilliance, and every wave sending its voice into the air to join the myriad-voiced chorus that the sea made.

He looked out and started back; then he drew up the blind and stared out in amazement, for where the sea had been there was now no sea.

He threw open the window and looked out. Far away in the utter distance he saw what seemed like a band of glittering crimson on the horizon. Looking further round and to the west he saw that the sun was more than halfway down the slope of the heavens in that quarter and it was of the darkest crimson in colour—large, but no longer fiery.

Then there came a murmur to his ears—the murmur of a multitude of people; and above this sound came a hoarse, monotonous voice, crying:

“I heard one say to me: 'There shall be no sea—there shall be no more sea'; and the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible Day of the Lord. Repent—repent—repent!”

Far away he could see the figure of the man. He stood on the summit of the cliff beyond the path, and, facing the sinking sun, he was crimson from head to foot. Seen at such a distance and in that light he looked an imposing figure—a figure that appealed to the imagination, and not lacking in those elements which for ages have been associated with the appearance of a fearless prophet uplifting a lean right arm and crying “Thus saith the Lord.” Wesley listened and heard his cry:

“There shall be no more sea! Repent—repent—repent!”