Demsey and his little daughter are not the only representatives of Rehoboth at St. Simeon's for the last service conducted by the curate. Could they see her there, they would scarcely believe the witness of their eyes, but at the back of the church, almost hidden by a pillar and close to the great stone font, is Gildas Haven.
She returned to Meadthorpe yesterday, and started this evening as usual for Rehoboth, but an unspeakable longing drew her to his church, to hear his voice, and look on his face, and breathe the prayers that he is breathing, ere for evermore he passes from her life. Her soul trembles upward with his as he leads the congregation in the solemn petition for help in time of peril:
"O God, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright; grant to us such strength and protection as may support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations. Through Jesus Christ our Lord."
His sermon flies home like a bird to her heart. She does not realise it, but he is conscious of her presence there, close to the garland of white lilies wreathing the pillar. The infinite tenderness of his message -- "The Lord give you peace" -- is for her, and she has never felt so near to him in spirit as now that he breathes of the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sustaining Christ, who healeth the broken in heart, and whose farewell word to His Church shall never through time or eternity be spoken.
And all her life long, Gildas remembers the low, sweet tones of the music following his sermon, and how in that closing hymn her soul parts itself from his, and she puts away for ever and ever the "might have been" that their consciences forbid.
Chapter 5
Miss Bell's Praise Meeting
AS Gildas goes home in the starlight, she overhears two little children who have evidently been to Saint Simeon's, talking together concerning the farewell service.
"My mother cried," says one. "He sat up all one whole night with my brother, George Richard, when he had spasms in his inside, and mother can't a-bear to think he's a-going away. She cried all the time he was talking, and so did my big sister Matilda."
"My Granny cried worse," says the other, in a tone of pride. "She never once put her handkerchief in her pocket from the time we went in church, so there!"
"Jane Mason's Aunt Emma were a-sobbing right out loud up in the gallery," is the triumphant reply. "Jane told me so just now. Everybody were a-looking at her, she cried so."
"My, I would like to have seen her!" says the other child, appreciatively. "Did she have to be led out like the woman that had the fit one Sunday? I see'd her. They took her right past where I was -- so there, Emily Ann!"
Gildas, as in a dream, hears the little voices, and half smiles even amid the heart-aching as they boast one against another of their tragic experiences. She knows there are many in Meadthorpe who "can't a-bear to think" they will see Bernard Pendrill's face no more. For herself, tonight her one thought is of that long eternity when the day will dawn and the mists will rise, and they will be heart to heart.
She rather dreads meeting some of the Rehoboth friends, who have doubtless pictured her as staying at home tonight with her father, and will be profuse in enquiries and in converse, for which just now she is wholly disinclined. Turning a corner she comes upon Jasper Ruthven and the old deacon, Mr. Channing-Surtees, who leans on Jasper's arm. They are going in her direction, and she resolves to say frankly, if questioned, that she has been to Saint Simeon's. But no enquiry is made.
Jasper, near whom she sits in the Rehoboth choir, has been conscious all through the service of her absence, and his troubled heart has rightly guessed its reason. He only remarks to her now that Mr. Channing-Surtees is giving an account of some of the earlier members of Rehoboth and their families.
Gildas says, "How interesting!" and listens to the old gentleman's discursive biographical conversation, which lasts until they stand outside the gate of the Manse. Even then, being in the middle of an account of Mr. Mundey's father when he led the congregation in singing, he decides to come inside and finish it. Mr. Haven keeps him to supper, and then he conducts prayers, and Gildas is thankful she has no more time for lonely meditations -- at least, until the Sabbath hours are well nigh over, and Meadthorpe is wrapped in the quietude of rest.
Gildas remembers her father once saying that "God changes the workers, but the work goes on." When some earnest, tireless life is removed from the sphere where it has laboured so well, Mr. Haven said folk are apt to think none can fill that place; but it is a glorious fact, or saddening -- perhaps both -- that very soon the worker seems but little missed, and things go on just the same, with someone else stepping forward at the right time.
Her father had smiled as he recalled that there was commonsense in the listener who, hearing the preacher of a funeral discourse declare the light was quite extinguished that had been upheld so brightly in the vanished hand, rose up, crying emphatically, "Glory be to God! That's a lie!"
* * *
"Oh dear, we can't never spare the curate from Meadthorpe. No one can do what he does in the place," many of the poor people sighed, hearing they were to lose the helper they had learnt to love, but they soon find there are not neglected. The mantle of Pendrill's energy has fallen on Miss Rowena Bertram and her fellow labourers, who keep the various agencies of the parish going with energetic fervour.
The new curate, Mr. Barton-Cox, is a mild young man, chiefly noted for being the son of a great man of the neighbourhood, who has bought him an influential living. His family have greatly desired meanwhile to have "dear Horace" in their midst, and Mr. Bertram is interested in him, having once been tutor to his brothers.
Young Barton-Cox is invaluable at tennis and readings and parochial tableaux. No bazaar can be considered complete without him, and he is in request for miles around when they are getting up a charity concert. He is a most amiable, inoffensive young man, not at all uplifted by reason of family greatness, and overcoming by ready good humour the disadvantages naturally experienced by one who follows an especially powerful predecessor.
But the one who seems most roused to outside service is the Rector himself. Pendrill's selfless devotion has stirred up the old gentleman to consider his parish before his unfinished book on Nineveh of old. The throat specialist, Sir Henry Marsh, has so greatly benefited him that he knows he can plunge anew into the arena of writing. But perhaps no heart in Meadthorpe guesses the sacrifice it means to the good old man to put his Chaldean history aside, and trot out here and there to respond to the many needs appealing to the Rectory.
Jasper Ruthven is certainly the only one aware of the mental depression through which Gildas is struggling. Others notice she looks poorly, but Rehoboth is wholly ignorant of the reason.
"You don't eat enough for a bird, Miss Gildas," Emery tells her. "You know there's nothing like a steak to begin the day on, as in my first place well do I remember the doctor made the master breakfast on hot rump steak, and it soon brought back his appetite."
"His appetite could not have been in a very bad state to manage the remedy, Emery," says Gildas, who dislikes meat. "Fancy coming down a lovely morning like this and eating steak!"
"Well, but, miss, folks must eat something, and you're always coaxing the master to take this and that. I'm sure it's a wonder how well he's keeping just now, and writing to the papers to get more subscribers for the Friends of the Jews Society, and leading the debate last night on the prospects of Palestine and the final restoration of Israel. Mrs. Joplin, from Shiloh, was there, and when I told her master's age, she said nobody wouldn't never have thought it to look at him last night and hear him talk. But I'm not near so satisfied about you, Miss Gildas. You've got too much on your hands, and that's a fact.
"You're always thinking about your classes, or working your brains about something, and with no food to speak of inside of you. Mark my words, Miss Gildas, the time will come when you'll be laid on a bed of sickness if you don't force yourself to eat. I'm sure you're l
osing flesh. Mr. Ruthven were a-noticing to me only the other day how poorly you're looking, and I'm thinking it will be a similar case to Mary Jane Parsons that sang seconds at Rehoboth when I were a girl, and that sudden went off in a galloping consumption. At least, so the doctor said, and she were prayed for as departing; but her young man wrote for her to come out to California, not knowing she were so critical, and seeing he'd sent the money, she made up her mind to take the voyage. Maybe she'd only been fretting, after all, believing he were keeping company elsewhere. Anyway, she sent two pound only last year to Mr. Chatten for the incidentals, and her now the mother of six!"
"Emery," says Gildas, who has heard very little of this semi-soliloquy, "I do hope you won't talk to people about my health, and spread the notion that I'm at all unwell. Meadthorpe people magnify things so much, and I would soon be reported as in the cemetery, beneath a suitable epitaph. You know I have long tried to get Father away to the sea. I'll persuade him to come to Beachlands soon, and then I'll get plump and hungry enough to satisfy even you. At this time of the year Meadthorpe air is always rather tiring -- that is all."
* * *
In the end, the plan Gildas proposed long ago is carried out. She and her father accompany Chidgey with the little Ruthvens to Beachlands, for Jasper has sold a series of critical essays on the poets of the time of good Queen Bess, and the sceptre of editorial favour has been held out to him of late, with a touch substantial enough to assure him all things come round to those who will but wait and work.
Old Mr. Haven is as happy as the children, giving them all sorts of information concerning jellyfish, starfish, sea urchins, and crabs. Gildas teaches the children swimming, and spends quiet hours reading to her father on the shining beach, while the little ones are in and out of the water. Jemmie is inclined to argue with Milly that in Heaven there must be little places cracked on purpose in the sea of glass, so that baby Noel and the other children there can paddle where it's broken.
It is a golden day when Jasper takes a holiday and joins the party for a few hours. Gildas rather dreads his insight, as specially observant, and exerts herself to be the liveliest of the number, bidding him tell Emery how rosy and sunburnt she has grown. But when he has gone back, and the children are sleeping, and old Mr. Haven nods over a pamphlet explaining the history of the lost tribes, Gildas goes out alone to the seashore that is lying white in the moonlight, lulled by the splashing of the gentle, slowly-moving waves.
Gildas cannot tell why she is sad and restless now. Her inmost heart accepts as right and wise the decision that separates her from Bernard Pendrill, and she is fully conscious she would be as wretched as himself were she, with her deeply rooted Nonconformist views, transplanted to an atmosphere such as he finds natural and helpful.
Nor has she for one moment regretted that he spoke to her so plainly and candidly of his feelings on the subject. That interview is the saddest, most precious memory of her soul, and it is only by a resolute effort she prevents herself from recalling his every word and look at that time, again and again.
No other decision could possibly be reached than they have mutually made. Time will doubtless dull the yearning and heal the pain -- it must, it will, she tells herself. Yet the foam breaking on the rocks and shingle brings to her thoughts and dreams almost more than she can bear, and she would gladly ask that quiet, solemn voice of the summer sea to be dumb, that her heart might rest.
* * *
Meadthorpe, on her return, somehow looks to her weary, dull, and matter-of-fact. Gildas is in that state of mind and health when even loved work is a burden, and one day she steals into the shop of her special helper and confidante, Miss Bell, and comes almost in despair to tell her how dark it has become within her soul.
Miss Bell is the Meadthorpe dyer and cleaner, and beyond taking the infant class in Rehoboth Sunday school, she has never occupied any sort of prominent position in the chapel or town.
Many people think it is rather good natured and charitable of Gildas to see so much of Miss Bell, who has very little to say for herself, and leads a quiet, uneventful sort of life. Several of the Rehoboth friends, the younger ones especially, are inclined to be brilliant; and brilliance is the attribute they demand in their chosen associates. But the elderly spinster is just retiring and dull enough to provide untold rest to Gildas, whose own mind is so active, that too often it experiences the reaction of weary depression. Then comes the longing for some mother heart on which to lean, some peaceful, loving friend, whose own brain is not working with fatiguing energy, to be comfort and support, and to strengthen her life anew by calm and tender quietude.
Miss Bell knew and loved the mother whom Gildas cannot remember, and there has always been a strong bond of affection and sympathy between these two. The humble maiden lady overflowed with joy and pride in every success Gildas achieved at school and college. She sat by her side with a shining face when in her early girlhood Gildas was received into Rehoboth Chapel as a member, and in her heart considers Mr. Haven's daughter the embodiment of all that is clever and attractive.
She it was to whom at eighteen years old Gildas brought the confession, with head resting against her comfortable shoulder, that she would "like to be wicked for a year or two; to go to dances and theatres and fancy balls and such places, and see the world, and have a good time of it."
Such words from a young member would have driven some Rehoboth friends to despair on the girl's account, but only to Miss Bell would she outpour the stragglings of her active young nature, and Miss Bell treated the confession with no more seriousness than it was worth.
She reminded Gildas tenderly that the happiest of all are those who serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and brighten the lives of others. She did not press home so much the necessity of surrendering delights, as the blessedness of enjoying life by the Saviour's side, and beneath His tender smile, which must result in the blessedness overflowing to one's neighbours too. Seeing that "to be wicked for a year or two," in the heart of Gildas only meant a fund of superfluous energy, it was a quiet suggestion from Miss Bell that set the Junior Dorcas afloat soon after.
Gildas thus began her ever-widening round of helpful labours in connection with the chapel; labours for which she had been deemed a little too young and inexperienced by brethren and sisters averse to changes in the place. Working her fit of discontent with her surroundings into gusset and seam on behalf of the poor and needy, the girl was soon cured of what many would have condemned in her as backsliding and worldliness.
Now in her womanhood Gildas goes again to Miss Bell, with a heavier burden lying on her heart. Miss Bell looks up with a smile at her entrance. She is cleaning straw hats, and is too busy to stop, but she sees the shadow on the girl's fair brow, and asks her to help, as there is so much to be done. Miss Bell believes in doing rather than talking. Gildas gets involved in the work, and begins to chat away like her old self long before the hats are put on one side.
Then Miss Bell makes tea, which she always takes at four o'clock. The cups are set on the table in the little kitchen, and Gildas prepares a plate of toast. The old tabby cat blinks at the fire as she reposes in Miss Bell's lap, and Gildas kneels before the fender, leaning against her friend, rested, as always, by her simple homeliness, her absence of pretension, and her quiet heart-goodness and sincerity.
By-and-by the darkness of Gildas' spirit is made known. She pours out to Miss Bell her awareness that she has grown cold in her Christian work, filled with fears of the future, less prayerful than she used to be, further off from God. What is she to do to be helped and restored, to regain faith and brightness, and lose this heaviness which is hanging over her even at the time of prayer?
"Gildas," Miss Bell tells her tenderly, "many a year ago, quoting from one of the Puritans, your father made use of words that often since have reminded me that our thoughts must not dwell so much on what we are, as what our Father is. Mr. Haven spoke of the Lord as 'our Hospital-God.' Let me pass that sweet name on to you, my li
ttle one. Whatever your need and your weakness may be, your Lord, in all His knowledge and help and healing, is the one Hospital for your heart."
"I don't know how it is," says Gildas, "but you always give me just the message I want. 'Our Hospital-God.' I shall find rest in that thought. I believe He always tells you, dear, dear Miss Bell, what to say to me," and the tears run from her tired eye as she bends and kisses the spinster's work-worn hand.
Gildas has had many a restless, sleep-forsaken night of late, when every effort to put thought aside and reach the slumber land has only seemed to make her more reflective and wide awake. Miss Bell believes her physical weariness has a good deal to do with her spiritual depression, and bids Gildas have a nap there and then, which she does, sitting on the rug and resting her curly head on her friend's lap.
Miss Bell goes on quickly with her sewing, only stopping now and then to smooth the wavy locks, and to adjust round Gildas the shawl she has thrown over her.
When Gildas wakes, it is past seven, too late for her to reach Rehoboth in time for the weekly prayer meeting. Her friend, Miss Bell, had also meant to go, but shrank from waking Gildas, and now she says with a smile, "We can have a praise meeting here together instead."
She begins, in a voice pleasant still, though breaking in the upper notes, "Let us with a gladsome mind," and Gildas joins in clearly and sweetly as a bird. Then they have, "When all Thy mercies, O my God," and "I my Ebenezer raise," and the mental shadows are lifted as the night mists disperse for the cheery dawn, by the time these two -- looking backward to goodness and grace, and forward in simple trust in the Father of Mercies, "the Hospital-God," the Fountain of Love -- unite in the closing hymn of thanksgiving:
"Sing, ye redeemed of the Lord,
Your great Deliverer sing!
Pilgrims for Zion's city bound,
Be joyful in your King!"
Chapter 16
How the Call Comes to Gildas
THE DAYS seem a long bare stretch of sameness to Gildas, a wilderness way; but the Lord's comforts make the desert to blossom as the rose, and He gently leads the bewildered heart into the fulfilment of those kindly, helpful duties and ministries which heal the secret wound and brighten the outlook so blank and dreary.