Chapter 16

Dale observed his manner of holding his hand to his forehead as if seeking inspiration, the almost spasmodic movements of his mouth, the sort of plaintive groan that started the prayer, and the steadily accumulating earnestness with which it went on.

"O merciful and divine Father, supreme and omnipotent lord of Thy created universe, vouchsafe unto this little knot of Thy lowly creatures ..."

It was a long prayer; and Dale, surmising it to be an extempore composition, admired Mr. Osborn's flow of language, command of erudite words, and success in bringing some very intricate sentences to an appropriate period.

During the sermon Mr. Osborn several times aroused laughter by little homely jokes coming unexpectedly in the midst of his serious discourse; but Dale no longer felt surprise. He thought that he had caught their point of view, got the hang of the main scheme. These people were genuine believers, and entirely free from any affectation or pretense. They possessed no church-manner: thus, when they spoke to one another here, they did so as naturally as when they were speaking in the fields or on the highroads. Only when they spoke to God, could you hear the vibration and the thrill, the effort and the strain.

And all at once his own self-consciousness vanished. He felt comfortable, quite at ease, and extraordinarily glad that he had dedicated an hour to the purpose of coming here.

The lamplight enormously improved the appearance of the chapel; the genial yellow glow was surrounded by fine dark shadows that draped the ugly walls as if with soft curtains; there were golden glittering bands on the roof beams, and above them all had become black, impenetrable, mysterious. When one glanced up one might have had the night sky over one's head, for all one could see of the roof. The light shone bright on crooked backs, slightly distorted limbs, the pallor of sickness, the stains of rough weather; on girls meekly folding hands that daily scrub and scour; on laboring men stooping the shoulders that habitually carry weights; on spectacled old women with eyes worn out by incessantly peering at the tiny stitches of their untiring needles; but one would have looked in vain for any types even approximately similar to the stalwart well-balanced youths, the smooth-cheeked game-playing maidens, the prosperously healthful fathers and mothers of the established faith. Dale did not look for them, did not miss them, would not have wished them here.

It might be said that there was not a single person of the whole gathering on whom there was not plainly printed, in one shape or another, the stamp of toil. That fact perhaps formed the root of the difference between this and a Church of England congregation. To Dale's mind, however, there was something else of a saliently differentiating character. Once again he was struck by the expression of all the faces. He thought how calm, how trustful, how quietly joyous these people must be feeling, in order to shine back at the lamps as steadily and clearly as the lamps were shining on them.

"Friends, let us praise God by singing the hundred and tenth hymn before we separate."

They all rose and began to sing their final song; and Dale observed that here and there, as the loud chorus swelled and flowed, singers would sink down upon their knees as though of a sudden impelled to silence and prayer.

"There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Emmanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

"The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day; And there may I, as vile as he, Wash all my sins away."

Dale abruptly sat down, leaned forward, and then knelt upon the boarded floor, hiding his face in his hands. He did not get up until the pastor had given the blessing and the people were moving out.

XIX

As so often happens toward the latter part of April, there had come a spell of unseasonably warm weather; thunder had been threatening for the last week, and now at the end of an oppressive day you could almost smell the electricity in the air.

Mavis warned Dale that he would get a sousing, when he told her that he was obliged to go as far as Rodchurch.

"Won't it do to-morrow, Will?"

"No, I shan't have time to-morrow. Remember I'm not made of barley-sugar. I shouldn't melt, you know, even if I hadn't got my mack."

Norah fetched him his foul weather hat, and ran for his umbrella.

"No," he said, "I don't want that, my dear;" and he smiled at her very kindly. "Besides, if we're going to have a storm, an umbrella is just the article to bring the lightning down on my head."

Norah pulled away the umbrella hastily, as though she would now have fought to the death rather than let him have it.

"Don't wait supper, Mav. I may be latish."

He walked fast, and his mackintosh made him uncomfortably warm. The rain held off, although now and then a few heavy drops fell ominously. It was quite dark--a premature darkness caused by the clouds that hung right across the sky. There seemed to be nobody on the move but himself; the street at Rodchurch was absolutely empty, the tobacconist's shop at the corner being alone awake and feebly busy, the oil lamps flickering in the puffs of a warm spring wind.

He took one glance toward the post office, and then went right down the street and out upon the common. The house that he was seeking stood a little way off the road, and a broad beam of light from an open window proved of assistance as he crossed the broken and uneven ground. While he groped for the bell handle inside the dark porch he could hear, close at hand, a purring and whirring sound of wheels that he recognized as the unmistakable noise made by a carpenter's lathe. As soon as he rang the bell the lathe stopped working, and next moment the Baptist pastor came to the door.

"Mr. Dale--is it not?

"Yes--good evening, Mr. Osborn."

"Pray come in."

"Thank you. Could you spare time for a chat?"

"Surely. I was expecting you."

Dale drew back, and spoke coldly, almost rudely.

"Indeed? I am not aware of any reason for your doing so."

"I ought to have said, _hoping_ to see you."

"Oh. May I ask why?"

Mr. Osborn laughed contentedly. "Since I saw you at our service, you know. Please come into my room."

It was not an attractive or nicely furnished room. All one side of it was occupied by the lathe, bench, and tools; and on this side the boards of the floor, with a carpet rolled back, were covered with wood shavings.

"There, take off your wraps and be seated, Mr. Dale. I'll sort my rubbish. Stuffy night, isn't it?"

Dale noticed that there was no bookcase, and he could not detect more than six books anywhere lying about. Perhaps there were some in the chiffonier. He would have expected to find quite a little library at a house tenanted by this sort of man.

"What do you think of that?" And Mr. Osborn handed him the small round box which he had been turning. "I amuse myself so. It's my hobby."

"You don't feel the want to read of an evening?"

"No, I'm not a book-worm. But one has to do something; so I took up this. If folk chaff me"--and Mr. Osborn smiled and nodded his head--"well, I tell them that infinitely better people than I have done carpentering in their time. Of course they don't always follow the allusion."

Dale himself did not follow it. He understood that this was light and airy conversation provided by Mr. Osborn for the amiable purpose of putting him at his ease. He had taken off the slouch hat and loose coat that had made him look like some rough shepherd or herdsman; and now, as he sat stiffly on a chair, showing his jacket, breeches, and gaiters, he looked like a farmer who had come to buy or to sell stock. His manner was altogether businesslike when, after clearing his throat, he explained the actual reason of the visit. If it would not be troubling Mr. Osborn too much, he desired to obtain information about Baptist tenets, adult baptism, total immersion, and so on. Mr. Osborn, declaring that it was no trouble, and in an equally businesslike manner, gave him the information.

"Is there anything else I can tell you?"

"I am afraid of putting you out."

"Not in the least."

"Well, then, if you're sure I don't trespass--Mr. Osborn, the kind way you're receiving me makes me venturesome. I see an ash-tray over there, proving you sometimes favor the weed. Would you mind if I took a whiff of tobacco--a pipe?"

"Why, surely not."

"You won't join me?"

"No, thanks. But I'll tell you what I will do;" and Mr. Osborn emitted a chuckle. "I'll go on with my boxes, if you'll allow me."

"I should greatly prefer it."

"You know, I can listen just as well, while I'm fiddling away at my nonsense."

"I find," said Dale, as he filled his pipe, "that I rely on smoking more and more. Seems with me to steady the nerves and clear the brain. I know there are others that it just fuddles."

"Exactly."

Mr. Osborn had gone back to the lathe, and the pleasantly soothing whir of the wheels was heard again, while a fountain of the finest possible shavings began to spin in the air. For a few moments Dale watched him at his work. His gray hair flopped about queerly; he made rapid precise movements; and he talked as though he still had his eyes on one, although his back was turned.

"There are matches at your elbow, Mr. Dale--on that shelf--beside the flower-pot."

"Thanks, Mr. Osborn."

He wore a loose blue flannel coat, and Dale wondered if this was a garment that he had bought years ago to play cricket in. Perhaps he had belonged to a University. It was quite clear that he must have had an extremely lib'ral education to start with. And Dale thought again what he had thought just now in the porch--that one ought to be precious careful in dealing with a man of such natural and acquired powers.

However, the fact that Mr. Osborn was continuing his work, and yet, as he had promised, at the same time listening properly, made the interview easier and Dale more comfortable. He recovered his self-confidence, and after puffing out a sufficient cloud of smoke, talked weightily and didactically.

"I am desirous not to exaggerate; but I would like to state that I was well impressed by my experience of your ritual--if that is the correct term. I seemed to find what I had not found elsewhere. If I may speak quite openly, I would say it appeared to me there wasn't an ounce of humbug in your service."

"Oh, I hope not."

"Now, in the event of a person wishing to become a member--in short, to embrace the Baptist faith entirely, there are one or two points that I'd like to have cleared up."

Then Dale asked a lot of questions; and the pastor, seeming to go on with the work, answered over his shoulder, or looking round for an instant only.

Dale wished to learn all about the method of receiving adults; he asked also if anything in the nature of confession or absolute submission to the priest would be required. And the pastor said, "No, nothing of the sort." Such a person must of course bring a cleansed and purified heart to the ceremony, or it would be the very worst kind of humbug for him to present himself at all. But that was a matter which concerned him and God, who reads all hearts and knows all secrets. Mr. Osborn said it had never been the practise of Baptist ministers to insinuate themselves into the private secrets of their flocks. They left that to the Roman Catholics.

Dale heartily commended the Baptist custom. He said that much of his objection to religion had been caused by what he read of the Roman Catholic faith. As a responsible man he could never bring himself to that abject submission to another man, however you sanctified and tricked out the other man; besides, no one of mature age cares to make a complete confession of his past life. There must always be things that he could not force himself to disclose--follies, indiscretions, perhaps the grievous mistakes which he himself wants to forget, knowing that improvement lies in determination for better conduct, and not in brooding on past failure.

Mr. Osborn looked round, and used a gentle deprecating tone.

"You speak of your objection to religion; but, Mr. Dale, you are a singularly religious man. You are, really."

"I will postpone that part of it, if you please"--and Dale became rather stiff again--"but with the intention of adverting to it later. What I wish first to lay at rest is something in regard to the hymns employed on the occasion of my attendance. The numbers were one hundred and twenty-six, six hundred and fifty-nine, and one hundred and ten. Now I ask you as man to man, feeling sure you'll give me a straight answer: Were those hymns specially selected for the reason that I had chanced to drop in?"

Mr. Osborn stopped work, looked round quickly, and his face was all bright and eager.

"No. But did you feel there was a special message to you in them?"

"I wouldn't put it quite like that," said Dale guardedly.

"Because it so often happens. It has happened again and again--to my own knowledge."

"You'll understand, Mr. Osborn, that I didn't take them as any way personal to myself--certainly not any way offensive; but it occurred to me that it might perhaps be the habit whenever a stranger dropped in to pick out hymns of strength, with a view to shaking him and warming him up, as it were."

The pastor resumed his work. "Those hymns were given out the day before--Saturday. Sister Eldridge had asked for one hundred and twenty-six; number six hundred and fifty-nine was, as far as I remember, also bespoken; and I chose number one hundred and ten myself--because it is a great favorite of mine. So you see, Mr. Dale, at the time we settled on those hymns, we did not know that you were coming--and perhaps you did not know it yourself."

"I did not know it," said Dale.

"Tell me," said Mr. Osborn, "how doubt has assailed you."

"Ah, there you put me a puzzling one;" and Dale puffed at his pipe laboriously.

"You oughtn't to doubt, you know. You have what men prize--wife, children, and home. You thrive, and the world smiles on you."

"Yes, I'm more than solvent. I hope to leave Mrs. Dale and the babes secure."

"But you don't feel secure yourself?"

"I banked a matter of seven hundred last year."

"You know I didn't mean that." Mr. Osborn worked briskly, and sent the shavings almost to the ceiling. "But still--lots of men have told me that material prosperity renders faith easy and doubt difficult. That's the awful danger of trouble--the danger of thinking that God has deserted us. It's easiest to recognize His hand when all's going well with us. That's our poor human nature. And then when our sorrows come, it's the devil's innings, and he'll whisper: 'Where's God now? He isn't treating you very kindly, is He, in return for all your praying and kneeling and believing?'"

"Yes, that just hits the nail on the head. It was what I said--at a period when trouble fell upon me. It was how the doubt came in and the belief went out. And nowadays, when, as you mention, things run smooth and I know I've much to be thankful for, the doubt holds firm. For one thing prob'bly, I read a great deal; I've crammed my head with science; can't ever have enough of it. But, of course, I'm but an ignorant man compared with you."

"Oh, no."

"Yes. I bow down to education--whenever I meet it. I needn't apologize--because I hadn't many advantages. I try to make up by application. I read, and I'm always thinking--and having mastered the rudiments of science, I can look with some comprehension at the whole scheme of nature. With the result that, viewing my own affairs in the same spirit that I view the whole bag of tricks, I ask myself that same old question of _Q. I. Bono._"

"What's that?"

"That's Latin," said Dale. "_Q. I. Bono._"

"Oh, yes--exactly."

"Where's the good? Whatever one has, it isn't enough if this life is all we've got to look to and there's nothing beyond it."

Mr. Osborn had let the wheels run down. He came and sat opposite to Dale, and spoke very quietly.

"There is everything beyond it."

"And supposing that's so, one's difficulty begins bigger than before. It's the life-risk a million times larger all over again--success or failure, punishment or peace."

"That's better than what happened to the match you threw into the fender--extinction."

"I want to believe. Mr. Osborne, I wish to speak with honesty. I feel the need to believe. If you can make me believe, you'll do me a great service."

"The service will be done, but it won't be I who does it."

"I want to be saved. I want the day when you can tell me I have gained everlasting salvation."

"The day will come; but it will not be my voice that tells you."

Mr. Osborn got up to fetch one of the six shabby volumes, and when he had returned to his chair he went on talking.

"What you should do is to take things quietly. You are a fine specimen, Mr. Dale, muscularly; but your nerves aren't quite so grand as your muscles." He said this just as doctors talk to patients, and as if Dale had been speaking of his bodily health. "Don't worry--and don't hurry. And I'd like to read you a passage here, to set your thoughts on the right line.... Well, well, I fancied I'd put a paper-mark. I shall only garble it if I try to quote from memory. It was Doctor Clifford, speaking about Jesus at our last Autumn Assembly. He says Jesus never put God forward as a severe judge, or hard taskmaster, but as His Father.... Ah, here we are. May I read it?"

"Yes, I wish to hear it."

"'God is Father; He is our Father. To Him'--speaking of Jesus--'and to us God is Father, and that means that we are in a deep and real sense His children, and, being children, then brothers to each other; for if God must be interpreted in terms of fatherhood, then man will never be interpreted accurately until he is interpreted in the terms of brotherhood.'" Mr. Osborn closed the book and laid his hand on Dale's knee. "How does that strike you, Brother Dale?"

"It strikes me as beautifully worded--Brother Osborn."

"That's how I want you to think of Him. A Father's love. Nothing strange nor new about it. Just what you used to be thinking as a boy, coming home to Father."

"I can't remember my father," said Dale simply. "He died when I was a baby, and mother married again. I only knew a stepfather."

"Then you'll know the real thing now, if you join us." Mr. Osborn beamed cheerfully. "Understand, I don't press you. Why should I? The pressure behind you is not of this earth; and if it's there, as I think it is, you'll no more resist it than the iron bolt resists the steam-ram. But what's steam and _horse_-power?" And he beamed all over his face. "This is ten thousand _angel_-power to the square inch."

The rain began as Dale walked up the village street, in which no light except that of the public lamps was now showing. It fell sharply as he emerged into the open country, and then abruptly ceased. The odor of dust that has been partially moistened rose from the roadway; some dead leaves scurried in the ditch with a sound of small animals running for shelter; and he felt a heavy, tepid air upon his face, as if some large invisible person was breathing on him.

Then the heavens opened, and a flood of light came pouring down. The thunder seemed simultaneous with the flash. It was a crashing roar that literally shook the ground. It was as if, without prelude or warning, every house in England had fallen, every gun fired, and every powder-magazine blown up. Dale stood still, trying to steady himself after the shock, and ascertaining that his eyes had not been blinded nor the drums of his ears broken.

Then he walked on slowly, watching the storm. The lightning flooded and forked, the thunder boomed and banged; and it seemed to Dale that the whole world had been turned upside down. When one looked up at the illuminated sky, one seemed to be looking down at a mountainous landscape. The clouds, rent apart, torn, and shattered, were like masses of high hills, inky black on the summits, with copper-colored precipices and glistening purple slopes; and in remote depths of the valleys, where there should have been lakes of water, there were lakes of fire. In the intervals between the flashes, when suddenly the sky became dark, one had a sensation that the earth had swung right again, and that it was now under one's feet as usual instead of being over one's head.

Dale plodding along thought of all he had read about thunder-storms. It was quite true, what he said to Norah. Lightning strikes the highest object. That was why trees had got such a bad name for themselves; although, as a fact, you were often a jolly sight safer under a tree than out in the open. Salisbury Plain, he had read, was the most dangerous place in England; for the reason that, because of its bareness, it made a six-foot man as conspicuous, upstanding an object as a church tower or a factory chimney would be elsewhere. And he thought that if any cattle had been left out in those wide flat fields near the Baptist Chapel, they were now in great peril. Mav's cows were all safe under cover.

Then, stimulated by a new thought, he began to walk faster. He hurried on until he came to the middle of the flats; then, gropingly through the darkness, and swiftly through the light, he made his way to a gate that he had just seen standing high and solid between the low field banks. He climbed the gate, a leg on each side, to the top bar but one; and there, easily balancing himself, he stood high above every other object.

And he thought: "If I am to be killed, I shall be killed now. I stand here at God's pleasure, to take me or leave me."

He carefully observed the lightning. It fell like a live shot, a discharge of artillery aimed at a fixed point, and then bursting seemed to go out in all directions till it faded with a widespread glare. During this final glare after each discharge the land to its farthest horizon leaped into view. Thus he saw all at once the Baptist Chapel several hundred yards away, but seeming to be close ahead of him, much bigger than it actually was, looking familiar and yet strange--looking like the ark waiting to be floated as soon as the deluge should begin. At the same moment he saw the stones in the road, blades of grass at the side of the ditch, and nails on the gate-post near his foot.

He stood calmly surveying the tremendous pageant, and thought in each roar and crash: "This must be the climax."

That last flash had crimson streamers, and it swamped the road with violet waves. The fury and the splendor of the thing was overwhelming. Was it brought about by Nature's forces or God's machinery? Titanic--like a struggle between the divine and the evil power--some fresh rebellion of Satan just reported up there, and God, rightly indignant, giving the devil what for--or God angry with _man_! Very magnificent, whatever way you regarded it.

The worst was over, and gradually the storm began to roll away. Holding his hands high above his head, he felt the rain-drops beat upon them, saw the lightning soften and grow pale, heard the thunder booming more gently, grumbling, whispering--as if it had been the voice of the Maker of heaven and earth, murmuring in sleep.

Such a storm had naturally disturbed everything. Mavis and Norah were trembling on the lamplit threshold; horses rattled their head-stalls and stamped in the stables; even the bees were frightened in their hives. And a cock, thinking that so much light and noise must mean morning, had begun to crow hours before the proper time.

Dale, listening to the cock's crow while he told Mavis he was safe and sound, thought of Peter, the well-meaning man who wanted to believe but could not always do so.

XX