Chapter 6

Mr. Penrose had often heard of Amanda Stott, and of that face of hers which had been both her glory and her shame. Now, as he looked upon it for the first time, he saw, as in a glass, the reflection of a character and a life. There was the gold and the clay. The brow and eyes were finely shaped and lustrous, giving to the upper half of the face grandeur and repose, but the mouth and chin fell off into a coarser mould, and told of a spirit other than that so nobly framed under the rich masses of her dark hair. It was a face with a fascination--not the fascination of evil, but of struggle--a face betraying battle between forces pretty evenly balanced in the soul. But there was victory on it. Mr. Penrose saw it, read it, understood it. There were still traces of the scorching fire; these, however, were yielding to the verdure of a new life; the garden, which had been turned into a wilderness, was again blossoming as the rose.

'Amanda, here's Mr. Penrose to see thee. I've bin tellin' him it's all dark to thee. It is, isn't it?'

But Amanda turned her head towards the wall, and answered not.

'Amanda!' said the mother, in tones that only once or twice, and that in the great crises of maternity, fall from woman's lips--'Amanda, speyk. Tell him what's botherin' thee.'

But the girl was silent.

Mr. Penrose was silent also, and nothing was heard in the room save the tremulous beat of an old watch that hung over the chimney-shelf--one of the memorials of a husband and father long since taken, and now almost forgotten.

At last Amanda, without turning her face towards the pastor, said:

'Sir, I'm a sinner--a lost sinner.'

'No, you are not,' replied Mr. Penrose.

And overawed and astonished with the boldness of his statement, he relapsed into silence.

Amanda turned and looked at him clearly and unflinchingly, and cried:

'How dare yo' say that?'

'Because you've repented,' was the quiet reply.

'Haa do yo' know I've repented?'

'Because repentance is to come home; and you've come home, have you not?'

'Repentance is to come wom'?' slowly repeated the girl, as though some ray of light was penetrating the darkness. 'Repentance is to come wom', sen yo'?'

'Yes.'

And then Mr. Penrose repeated the words: 'And he arose and came to his home; and when he was a great way off his father saw him and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him.'

'Aw dare say; that's what mi mother did to me on th' neet I come wom'. But mi mother's noan God, is hoo?'

'No; but if you had had no God, you could not have had a mother. You tell me your mother kissed you. Did you not feel God's kiss in that which your mother gave you?'

The girl shook her head; the pastor needed to make his message more plain.

'It's in this way, you know,' continued Mr. Penrose. 'If there were no rain in the heavens there would be no springs in the valleys, would there? The well is filled because the clouds send down their showers; and so it is with love. Your mother's heart is full of love because God, who Himself is love, fills it. Your mother stands to you for God, and she is most like God when she is doing most for you; and when she kissed you and took you back again home, she was only doing what God made her do, and what God did Himself to you through her.'

'But theer's summat else beside forgiveness, Mr. Penrose. I feel I've lost summat as I con never ged agen. I know I've getten back wom', but I haven't getten back what awv' lost.'

'You may have it back, though, if it's worth having back. There was One who came to seek that which was lost. You are like the woman who lost one of her pieces of silver; but she found it again, and what you have lost Jesus will find and restore to you.'

'But theer's th' past, Mr. Penrose, as well as th' lost. It's all theer afore me. Aw see it as plain as aw see yon moors through th' window, only it's noan green and breet wi' sunshine--it's dark.'

'If God forgets the past, Amanda, why should you recall it? Look out through that window again. There's a cloud just dying away on the horizon yonder. Do you see it? It is changing its colour and losing its shape, and in a moment it will be gone. Watch it! It is almost gone. See! now it _is_ gone--gone where? Gone into the light of that sun which is making the moors so green and bright. Now that is what God is doing with your past--with what you call your sins--blotting them out like a cloud. It is God's mercy that stands like the everlasting hills, and it is our sinfulness and our past that pass away like clouds. As you look at those hills you must think of His mercy, and as you watch those vanishing clouds you must think of your past.'

Once more there was silence in the sick-chamber, and the little watch ran its race with the beating, flickering pulse of Amanda. The girl turned her face towards the window that overlooked the moors, and begged her mother to open it so that she might again feel the cool airs that swept across their heathery wastes.

Mrs. Stott at once unhasped the casement, and a tide of life came stealing in, noiselessly lifting the curtains, and cooling the hectic flame that glowed on Amanda's wasted cheeks, and bearing, too, on its waves fragrances that recalled a long-lost paradise, and sounds--the echo of days when no discordant note marred the music of her life. These moorland breezes--how redolent, how murmurous of what had been! In a few moments Amanda closed her eyes, the wind caressing her into peacefulness and singing her to slumber.

* * * * *

It was the hour before dawn--the dark hour when minutes walk with leaden feet and the departing vapours of night lay chilliest finger on the sick and dying, and on those who watch at their side. From the mantelshelf the lamp emitted its feeble rays, dimly lighting the lonely chamber, and holding, as with uncertain hand, the shadows which crowded and cowered in the distant corners and recesses of the room, and throwing into Rembrandtesque the pallid face of the wakeful mother, and the flushed and fevered face of the slumbering child. The little watch beat bravely to the march of time, eager to keep pace with that never-flagging runner; while the quick and feeble breathing of the girl told how she was fast losing in the race with the all-omnipotent hours. On a small table stood two phials, in which were imprisoned dull-coloured liquids, powerless, despite their supposed potency, to stay the hunger of the disease so rapidly consuming the patient; and by their side was a plate of shrivelled fruit, the departing lusciousness of which had failed to tempt an appetite in her whose mouth was baked with the fever that fed on its own flame. There, gathered into a few cubic feet of space, met the great triune mystery of night, of suffering, of sin--the unfathomable problems of the universe; there God, the soul, and destiny, together and in silence, played out their terribly real parts.

As Mrs. Stott looked at her daughter tossing in restless sleep, the natal hour came back to her, and in memory she again travailed in birth. She recalled the joy of the advent of that life now so fast departing, and tried to say, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' The words died on her lips. Had it been a blessed thing on the part of God to give to her a child who brought disgrace on her family name? And now that her child was restored, with a possibility of redeeming the past, was it a blessed thing of God to take her? As these hideous thoughts chased one another through her over-wrought mind, they seemed to embody themselves in the terrible shadows that leapt and fought like demons on the wall, mere mockeries of her helplessness and despair.

Her eye, however, fell on the Bible, and taking it up and opening it at random, she read, 'Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.' Hurriedly turning over the leaves, her eyes again fell upon words that went like goads into her heart: 'Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day, because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb.'

'What!' cried she, the old Calvinist life reasserting itself in her soul--'what! have the curses o' God getten howd o' me?'

* * * * *

'Mother!'

It was the voice of Amanda, and its sound called back the ebbing tides of maternity as the clear notes of a bugle rally the dispirited and flying forces on an undecided field.

'Mother, will yo' draw that blind?'

'What doesto want th' blind drawin' for, Amanda?'

'I want to see th' morn break.'

'Whatever for, lass?' asked Mrs. Stott, as she drew the cord with tremulous hand.

For a few minutes the girl looked out at the distant horizon with a breaking light in her own eyes. Then, taking her mother's hand, she said:

'Dun yo' see that rim o' gowd (gold) on the hills yonder?'

'Yi, lass; forsure I do. What abaat it?'

'Watch it, mother! See yo', it geds broder--more like a ribbin--a brode, yollow ribbin, like that aw wore i' mi hat when I were a little lass. Yo' remember, durnd yo'?--I wore it one charity sarmons.'

'Aw remember, Amanda,' said the parent, choking with the reminiscences of the past which the old hat and its yellow ribbon aroused.

'Naa see, mother,' continued the girl, her eye fixed on the opening sky; 'it's like a great sea--a sea o' buttercups, same as used to grow in owd Whittam's field when yo' couldn't see grass for flaars.'

'Yi, lass, I see,' sobbed Mrs. Stott.

'And thoose claads, mother! See yo' haa they're goin'. And th' hills and moors? Why I con see them plainer and plainer! Haa grond they are! They're awlus theer. Them, Mr. Penrose said, stood for God's love, didn't he, mother?--and them claads as are lifting for my sins.'

'Yi, lass; he did, forsure.'

The dawn advanced, and before its majestic march there fled the shadows of night that for such long hours had made earth desolate. In the light of this dawn were seen those infinite lines of strength which rose from broad and massive bases, and, sweeping upwards, told of illimitable tracts beyond--mighty waves on the surface of the world's great inland seas, on whose crests sat the green and purple foam of herbage, and in whose hollows lay the still life of home and pasture. Silent, changeless, secure, perpetual sublimity rested on their summits, and unbroken repose lay along their graceful sweeps. They were the joy-bearers to the poor child of sorrow, who with eager eye looked out on their morning revelations. To her the mountains had brought peace.

That day was a new day to Amanda--a birthday--a day in which she realized the all-embracing strength and sufficiency of a Divine love. As the hours advanced the clouds gathered and showers fell, only, however, to be swept away by the wind, or dissolved into the light of the sun. These ever-changing, ever-dissolving, many-coloured vapours were watched by Amanda, who now saw in them the fleeting and perishable sins of her past life, and again and again, as one followed the other into oblivion, she would breathe a sigh of relief, and then allow her eyes to rest on the great hills that changed not, and which seemed to build her in with their strength.

From that day forward a great trust came upon her. She ceased to fret, and never again recalled what had been. Just as the chill of winter is forgotten in the glory of the springtide, and just as the child in the posied meadow sports in unconsciousness of the nipping frost that a few weeks before forced the tears to his eyes, so Amanda, playful, gladsome, and full of wonder in the new world in which she found herself, knew no more her old self, nor remembered any more her old life. The day had broken and the shadows flown, and God's child was like a young hart on the mountains of Bether.

* * * * *

'Mother, dun yo' think they'd put my name on th' Church register agen at Rehoboth?'

'I cornd say, mi Jass, I'm sure. But why doesto ax me?'

'Becose I should like to dee a member of th' owd place. Yo' know I were a member once. Sin' I've been lyin' here I've had some strange thoughts. Dun yo' know, I never belonged to God then as I do naa, for all I were baptized and a communicant. It's queer, isn't it?'

'Ey, lass; thaa'd better tell that to Mr. Penrose. I know naught abaat what yo're talkin' on. Bud it does seem, as thaa ses, quare that thaa belongs more to God naa nor thaa did when thaa went away.'

'Nay, mother, it's noan exactly as yo' put it. I durnd mean as God's changed; it's me as has changed, durnd yo' see? I never knew or loved Him afore, and I know and love Him naa.'

That afternoon, when Mr. Penrose called, Amanda's mother told him all her daughter had said, and made known to him as the pastor of the Church the request for readmission and the administration of the sacrament.

Mr. Penrose, however, shook his head. As far as he was concerned, no one would have been more willing. But the deacons ruled his Church, and many of them were hard and exacting men--men with the eye and heart of Simon of old, who, while they would welcome Christ to meat, would put the ban upon 'the woman who was a sinner.' Nor dared Mr. Penrose administer the sacrament to one whose membership was not assured, for he ministered to those of a close sect, and a close sect of the straitest order. As the mother pleaded for her child, he saw rising before him a difficulty of which he had often dreamed, but never before faced--a difficulty of ministering to a Church fenced in by deeds, the letter of which he could not in his inner conscience accept.

The mother was importunate, however, and eventually the pastor promised to bring the matter before his deacons.

What the decision of these deacons was will be told in another Idyll of Rehoboth.

III.

THE COURT OF SOULS.

'I'm noan for bringin' th' lass back into th' Church. Hoo's noan o'er modest, or hoo would never ax us to tak' her back.'

'Same here, Amos! What does hoo want amang dacent Christian fo'k?' And so saying, Elias Bradshaw opened a large pocket-knife and closed it again with a sharp click, and then toyed with it in his hand.

'It wur bad enugh for th' owd woman to tak' her back wom', but if we tak' her back into th' Church we's be a thaasand times wur,' continued Amos.

'But surely,' pleaded Mr. Penrose, 'if the angels welcome a returning sinner, might we not venture to do the same?'

'We're noan angels yet, Mr. Penrose,' replied Amos. 'It'll be time enugh to do as th' angels do when we live as th' angels live; an' I raither think as yo'd clam if yo' were put o' angels' meat. Ony road, ye con try it if yo' like; it'll save us summat i' th' offertory if yo' do.'

'Come, Amos, thaa's goin' a bit too fur,' interrupted Abraham Lord. 'If yo're baan to insult th' parson, yo've no need to insult them as is up aboon--"ministerin' sperits," as th' apostle cos em.'

'We know thaa'rt no angel, Amos, baat thi tellin' us,' said Malachi o' th' Mount. 'And it ever they shap thee into one thaa'll tak' some tentin!' (minding).

'I durnd know as I want to be one afore mi time, Malachi: an' I'm noan baan to do as they do till I ged amang 'em. I'd as soon pool a warp ony day as play a harp; but when th' Almeety skifts me fro' th' Brig Factory to heaven, mebbe I'll shap as weel at a bit o' music as ony on yo'.'

'Wilto play thi music o'er sich as Amanda, thinksto?' asked old Malachi.

'Thee mind thi business, Malachi. When th' Almeety maks me an angel, I'll do as th' angels do. But noan afore, noather for yo', nor Amanda Stott, nor Mr. Penrose, nor onybody else, so naa thaa knows.'

'Spokken like a mon,' assented Elias Bradshaw. 'Stick to thi text, Amos.'

'And yet, after all,' said Dr. Hale, 'I think we ought to receive Amanda back again into our communion. The only One who ever forgave sins drew no line as to their number, nor shade as to their degree.'

'But durnd yo' think, doctor, that if we do as yo' want us we's be turnin' th' Church into a shoddy hoile?' asked Elias Bradshaw.

'There are no shoddy souls,' said the doctor.

'No,' continued Mr. Penrose; 'it was not shoddy that Christ came to seek and save.'

'Who wur it said th' gate were strait and th' road narro'?' cried out an old man who was always known by the name of 'Clogs.'

'That's no reason why yo' should want to turn th' gate into a steele-hoile (stile), is it?' retorted Malachi.

'Gate or steele-hoile, it's narro'; and that's enugh for me, an' it were noan us ut made it narro'; it wur th' Almeety Hissel',' replied Clogs.

'At any rate, He made it wide enough for Amanda,' said Dr. Hale, 'and that is the matter we are now considering.'

'I'm noan so sure o' that, doctor. There's a good bit o' Scripter agen yo' if yo' come to texes.'

'Then so much the worse for Scripture,' was the unguarded, yet honest, retort of Mr. Penrose; and Dr. Hale laid a kind hand on the young minister's shoulder to restrain his haste.

'It seems to me,' said Elias Bradshaw, 'as Mr. Penrose spends a deal too mich time in poolin' up the stumps and makin' th' strait gate into a gap as ony rubbige con go thro'. I could like to yer him preych fro' the fifteenth verse o' th' last chapter i' Revelation. I once yerd a grond sarmon fro' that text i' th' pulpit up aboon here; and when it were oer, Dickey o' Sams o' the Heights went aat o' th' chapel, and tried to draan hissel' i' Green Fold Lodge. Naa, that's what I co powerful preychin'!'

'Pardon me, Mr. Bradshaw. We are not here to discuss the merits of preaching. We are here to consider the request of Amanda Stott--'

'An' axin' yor pardon, Mr. Penrose, that's whod I wur comin' to. I'm noan a fancy talker like yo'. Aw never larned to be, and I'm noan paid to be. Whod I wur baan to say, if you'll nobbud let me, wur this: As Jesus Christ wur a deal more particular who He leet in than who He kept aat. That's all.'

'But who did He keep out?' asked Dr. Hale.

'Haa mony, thinksto, did He leet in, doctor? I could welly caant um o' on both mi hands.'

'It seems to me yo' want to mak' saints as scarce as white crows,' said Abraham Lord.

'Nay, Abram; we want to keep th' black 'uns aat o' th' nests.'

'Then yo' mud as weel fell th' rookery,' was Abraham's sharp retort, which called forth a hearty laugh.

'If I read th' Bible reet,' said Amos Entwistle, returning to the fray, 'if I read th' Bible reet, a felley once coome to Jesus Christ an' axed Him if mony or few wur saved; and all he geet for an answer wur, "Thee mind and geet saved thisel'; it'll tak' thee all thy time wi'out botherin' abaat others." An' I think it'll tak' us all aar time baat botherin' abaat Amanda Stott. I move as we tak' no more notice on her axin' to come back amang us. It's geddin' lat, an' my porritch is waitin' for me at wom'.'

This was more than Mr. Penrose could bear, and rising to his feet, he asked, in suppressed tones, that the matter under discussion might receive the care and wisdom and mercy that a soul demanded from those who held in their hands the shaping of its earthly destiny; and then, in a voice stifled with emotion, he ventured to draw the contrast between the last speaker, who would fain hurry, for the sake of an evening meal, decisions that had to deal with the peace of a repentant girl, and He who, in the moments of bodily hunger, putting aside the refreshment brought by His disciples, said, 'I have meat to eat that ye know not of.'

Nor did Mr. Penrose plead in vain. Those who listened to him were moved by his words, and Amos Entwistle sat down, to utter no further word against Amanda.

From this time the tone of the discussion changed. Not that Mr. Penrose devoutly listened; indeed, he was listless, only recovering himself, now and again, as some striking sentence, or scrap of rude philosophy, fell on his indifferent ear. Leaning back in his chair, his eye rested on the hard features of the men sitting on either side of the deacons' table. They were men of grit, men of the hills, men whose religious ancestry was right royal. Their fathers had fayed out well the foundations on which the old chapel stood, and hewn the stones, and reared the walls, and all for love--and after the close of hard days of toil. They were men who knew nothing of moral half-lights--there were no gradations in their sense of right and wrong. Sin was sin, and righteousness was righteousness--the one night and the other day. They drew a line, narrow and inflexible, and knew no debatable zone where those who lingered were neither sinners nor saints. And so with the doctrines they held. Severity characterized them. Justice became cruelty, and faith superstition. They knew nothing of progressive revelations. The old Sinaitic God still ruled; the mountain was still terrible, and dark with the clouds of wrath. Fatherhood in the Deity was an unknown attribute, and tenderness a note never sounded in the creed they held. They had been bred on meat, and they were strong men. They knew nothing of the tender tones of Him whose feet became the throne of the outcast. Their God was a consuming fire.

As Mr. Penrose looked into their faces, many bitter thoughts poisoned the waters of his soul. He thought of Simon the Pharisee; he thought, too, of St. Dominic; and of Calvin with the cry for green wood, so that Servetus might slowly burn. He thought, too, of the curse of spiritual pride--pride that enthroned men as judges over the destiny of their fellows, and damned souls as freely and as coolly as a commander marched his forlorn hope into the yawning breach. And then, realizing that among such his lot was thrown--realizing also the dead hand that rested on his teaching and preaching--his heart went down into a sea of hopelessness, and he felt the chill of despair.

The gong of the chapel clock announced the hour of nine, in thin, metallic beats, and looking up, he noted the swealing tapers in the candelabra over his head. In his over-wrought, nervous condition, he imagined he saw in one of the flickering, far-spent lights the waning life of Amanda Stott, and the horrible thought of eternal extinction at death laid its cold hand on the larger hope which he was struggling to keep aflame in his darkening soul. Turning his glances towards the pulpit that rose gaunt and square above the deacons' pew, and over which hung the old sounding-board, as though to mock the voices, now for ever silent, that from time to time had been wont to reverberate from its panels, he began to wonder whether the message the Church called revelation was not, after all, as vain as 'laughter over wine'; and as he looked on the frowning galleries and the distant corners of the chapel, gloomy and fearsome--the high-backed pews, peopled with shadows thrown from the waning lights--he felt the force of the words of one of his masters: 'What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.'

Suddenly he was recalled to his position as the pastor of the church by the voice of old Enoch, mellow as the tones of the flute on which he so often tuned his soul in moods of sorrow and sin. How long Enoch had been talking Mr. Penrose knew not; but what he heard in the rude yet kindly vernacular of the moors was: