by the humble; and Dale, out here, remained an unknown quantity.
Anything of his fame as postmaster that had traveled along these two
miles from Rodchurch did not help him. He was not liked. He felt it in
the air, a dull inactive hostility, when talking to gentlefolks'
coachmen or giving orders to his own servants. The coachmen could take
no pleasure in patronizing him, nor the men in working for him. Mr.
Bates advised him once or twice to cultivate a gentler and more
ingratiating method of dealing with the people in his employ.

"Perhaps, William, I'm to blame for having spoilt 'em a bit;--but it'd
be good policy for you to take them as you find them, and get them
bound to you before you begin drilling 'em. A soft word now and then,
William--you don't know how far it goes sometimes."

"What I complain of is this," said Dale; "they don't show any spirit.
Every stroke o' bad luck I've had--every chance where they might step
in with common sense, or extra care, or a spark of invention to save a
situation for me--it's just as if they were a row o' turnips."

And the strokes of bad luck were so many and so heavy. The elements
seemed to be making war against him--such wet days as made it
impossible to deliver hay without damage to it, and an accusation from
somebody's stables that the last lot was poisoned; then frost, and two
horses seriously injured on the ice-clothed roads; then February
gales, wrecking the barn roofs, entailing costly repairs; then floods;
and last of all _rats_. The unusual amount of land water had driven
them to new haunts, and Dale's granaries were suddenly invaded. "Oh,
William," said Mr. Bates, horror-stricken, "beware of rats. They are
the worst foe. _One_ rat will mess up a mountain of grain."

About the time of the vernal equinox there came a tempest in
comparison with which all previous wind and rain were but a whispering
and a sprinkling. Every door was being rattled as if by giant hands,
the glass sang in the latticed windows, and the whole house seemed
swaying, when Mary told her mistress that something had gone wrong
with the big straw stack and that the master was attempting to climb
to the top of it on the long ladder.

Mavis instantly pulled up her skirt in true country fashion to make a
cloak, and told Mary to help her open the kitchen door.

"You bide where you be, Mrs. Dale," said the old charwoman. "You ben't
goin' to be no use of any kind out there, and you may bring yourself
to a misfortune."

But Mavis insisted on struggling through the doorway, into the rude
embrace of the weather. Great branches of the walnut tree were waving
wildly, while little twigs and buds flew from apple trees like dust;
the rain, not in drops but as it seemed in solid packets, struck her
face and shoulders with such force that she could scarcely stand
against it; a shallow wooden tub came bounding to her along the
flagged path and passed like a sheet of brown paper; and just as she
got to the corner of the buildings from which she could obtain a view
of the rick-yard, thirty feet of pale fencing lay down upon the
beehives and the rhubarb bed without a sound that was even faintly
audible above the racket of the storm.

But she had no eyes for anything except her husband, and no other
thought than of the horrible peril in which he was placing himself.
Four men clung to the bottom of the ladder, and yet, with Dale's
weight half-way up to help them, could not for a moment keep it
steady. On top of the rick one of the tarpaulin sheets had broken
loose; the cruel wind was tearing beneath it, wrenching out pegs and
cordage, snatching at thatch-hackle, and making the stout ropes that
should have held the sheet hiss and dart like serpents.

It seemed to her that the rick was as high as Mont Blanc, and that
even on a placid summer day no one but a lunatic would want to scale
it. Then she screamed, and went rushing forward.

Dale, in the act of clambering from the top rung of the ladder, had
been blown off, and was hanging to a rope over the edge of the stack.
With extreme difficulty the men moved the ladder, and he succeeded in
getting on it again.

"Gi't up, sir. 'Tis mortally impossible." As well as Mavis, every one
of them shouted an entreaty that he would come down.

Probably he did not hear them, and certainly he did not obey them. He
went up, not down. Then for half an hour he fought like a madman with
the flapping sheet, and finally conquered it.

Mavis, as she stared upward, saw the gray clouds driving so fast over
the crest of the stack that they made it seem as if the whole yard was
drifting away in the opposite direction; while her man, a poor little
black insect painfully crawling here and there, desperately writhed as
new billows surged up beneath him, labored at the rope, seemed to use
feet, hands, and teeth in his frantic efforts against the overwhelming
power that was opposed to him. She felt dazed and giddy, sick with
fear, and yet glowing with admiration in the midst of her agonized
anxiety.

To the men it was a wonderful and exciting sight that had altogether
stirred them from their usual turnip-like lethargy. When the master
came down, all shaking and bleeding, they bellowed hearty compliments
in his ear.

"Now," said the old charwoman, when Mr. and Mrs. Dale returned to the
kitchen, "you've a 'aad a nice skimmle-skammle of it, sir, an' you
best back me up to send the missis to her bed, and bide there warm,
and never budge. I means it," she added, with authority. "You ben't to
put yourself in a caddle, Mrs. Dale, an' I know what I be talkin' of."

After this the men appeared to work better for Dale; perhaps still
somewhat sulkily whenever he pressed them, continuing to be more or
less afraid of him, but not so keenly regretting the loss of their
white-haired old master.

The storm had brought back the floods, and they were now worse than
anything that anybody remembered having ever seen. The feeding sources
of the Rod River had broken all bounds; the lower parts of Hadleigh
Wood had become a quagmire; and the volume of water passing under the
road bridge was so great that many people thought this ancient
structure to be in danger of collapsing. Over at Otterford Mill, the
stream swept like a torrent through a chain of wide lakes; Mr. Bates'
cottage was cut off from the highroad, and the meadows behind the
neighboring Foxhound Kennels were deep under water.

In these days Dale took to riding as the easiest means of getting
about; and one afternoon when he had gone splashing across to see Mr.
Bates, thence to pay a visit of polite canvass at the Kennels, and was
now returning homeward by the lanes, he heard a dismal chorus of cries
in the Mill meads.

Forcing his clumsy horse through a gap in the hedge, he galloped along
the sodden field tracks to the shifting scene of commotion. Three or
four idle louts, a couple of children, and a farm-laborer were running
by the swollen margin of the mill-stream, yelling forlornly, pointing
at an object that showed itself now and again in the swirling center
of the current. Plainly, somebody had chosen this most unpropitious
season for an accidental bath, and his companions were sympathetically
watching him drown, while not daring, not dreaming of, any foolhardy
attempt at a rescue.

"'Tis Veale, sir. A'bram Veale, sir. Theer!" And all the cries came
loud and hearty. "Theer he goes ag'in. I see 'un come up and go under.
Oo, oo! Ain't 'un trav'lin'!"

"Catch th' 'orse!" shouted Dale; and next moment it was a double
entertainment that offered itself to hurrying spectators.

The water, charged with sediment from all the rich earth it had
scoured over, was thick as soup; its brown wavelets broke in slimy
froth, and its deepest swiftest course had a color of darkly shining
lead beneath the pale gleams of March sunshine. In this leaden glitter
the two men were swept away, seeming to be locked in each other's
arms, their heads very rarely out of the water, their backs visible
frequently; until at a boundary fence they vanished from the sight of
attentive pursuers who could pursue no further; and seemed in the
final glimpse as small and black as two otters fiercely fighting.

"Laard's sake," said one of the louts, "I'd 'a' liked to 'a' seen 'em
go over the weir and into the wheel--for 'tis to be, and there's
nought can stop it now."

The event, however, proved otherwise. Before the submerged weir was
reached a kindly branch among the willows, stretching gnarled hands
just above the flood level, gave the ready aid that no louts could
offer. Here Dale contrived to hang until people came from the mill and
fished him and his now unconscious burden out of their hazardous
predicament.

This little incident so stimulated Dale's servants that they began to
work for him quite enthusiastically. It occurred to them that he was
not only a good plucked 'un, but that, however hard his manner, his
heart must possess a big soft spot in it, or he could never have so
"put himself about for a rammucky pot-swilling feller like Abe Veale."

Veale was truly a feckless, good-for-little creature. By trade a
hurdle-maker, he lived in one of the few remaining mud cottages on the
skirts of Hadleigh Upper Wood, and in his hovel he had bred an immense
family. His wife had long since died; her mother, a toothless old
crone, kept house for him and was supposed to look after the younger
children; but generally the Veales and their domestic arrangements
were considered as a survival of a barbaric state of society and a
disgrace in these highly polished modern times. People said that Veale
was half a gipsy, that his boys were growing up as hardy young
poachers, and that every time he got drunk at the Barradine Arms he
would himself produce wire nooses from his pocket, and offer to go out
and snare a pheasant before the morning if anybody would pay for it in
advance by another quart of ale.

Drunk or sober now, he widely advertised a sincere sense of obligation
to his preserver. He bothered Dale with too profuse acknowledgments;
he came to the Vine-Pits kitchen door at all hours; and he would even
stop the red-coated young gentlemen as they rode home from hunting, in
order to supply them with unimpeachable details of all that had
happened. He told the tale with the greatest gusto, and invariably
began and ended in the same manner.

"You sin it in th' paper, I make no doubt, but yer can 'aave it from
me to its proper purpus. Mr. Dale he plunged without so much as
tekking off of his getters and spurs." And then he described how,
stupefied by his mortal danger, he treated Dale more like an enemy
than a savior. "I gripped 'un, sir, tighter than a lad in his senses
'd clip his sweetheart;" and he would pause and laugh. "Yes, I'd 'a'
drowned 'un as well as myself if he'd 'a' let me. I fair tried to
scrag 'un. But Mr. Dale he druv at me wi' 's fist, and kep' a bunching
me off wi' 's knees, and then when all the wind and the wickedness was
gone out o' me, he tuk me behind th' scruff a' the neck and just
paddled me along like a dummy."

At this point Veale would pause to laugh, before continuing. "Nor that
wasn't all, nether. So soon as Mr. Dale catched his own breath he give
me th' artificial respreation--saved my life second time when they'd
lugged us on the bank. I was gone for a ghost; but I do hear--as
they'll tell 'ee at th' mill--Mr. Dale he knelt acrost me a
pump-handling my arms, pulling of my tongue, and bellows-blowing my
ribs for a clock hour;" and Veale would laugh again, spit on the
ground, and conclude his story. "Quaarts an' quaarts of waater they
squeedged out of me afore the wind got back in--an' I don't seem's if
I'd ever get free o' the taste o' that waater. Nothing won't settle
it, no matter how 'ard I do try."

The gentry who smilingly listened, knowing Veale for a queer rustic
character of poor repute, gave him sixpences to assist in his efforts
to quench an abnormal thirst. Talking together, they decided that the
hero of the tale had done rather a fine thing in a very unostentatious
way, and it occurred to several of them that pluck ought to be
rewarded. If the chance came they would encourage Dale. The M.F.H. in
fact made up his mind to reconsider matters, and see if he could not
before long let Dale have an inning at the Kennels.

Throughout this period and well into the hot weather of June Mavis was
stanchly toiling, both as clerical assistant in the office and
general servant in the house. It was she who did most of the cooking,
no light task since meals had to be supplied for the carter and two of
the other men. Mary always worked with a will; but old Mrs. Goudie,
who came for charring twice a week, used to say that, in spite of
being handicapped by the state of her health, the mistress worked
harder than the maid.

A swept hearth, a trimmed lamp, and the savory odor of well-cooked
food, were what Dale might be sure of finding at the evening hour; and
Mavis tried to give him something more. He must have peace at the end
of the day, and thus be able to forget the day's disappointments, no
matter how cruel they had been. She would not let him talk about the
business at night. She said he must just eat, rest, and then sleep;
but she allowed him to read, provided that he read real books and
magazines, not his ledgers or those horrid trade journals.

So after their supper they used to sit in the pleasant lamplight very
quietly, near together and yet scarcely speaking to each other,
feeling the restful joy of a companionship that had passed into that
deeper zone where silence can be more eloquent than words. He was
reading political economy for the purpose of opening his mind,
"extending the scope of one's int'lect," as he said himself, and she
watched him as he frowned at the page or puckered up his lips with a
characteristic doggedly questioning doubtfulness. Certainly no words
were needed then to enable her to interpret his thought. "Look here,
my lad"--that was how he was mentally addressing a famous author--"I'm
ready to go with you a fair distance; but I don't allow you to take
me an inch further than my reasoning faculty tells me you are on the
right road." When he frowned like this, she smiled and felt much
tenderness. He would always be the same obstinate old dear: ready to
set himself against the whole weight of immemorial authority, whether
in literature or everyday life.

She did not read, but with a large work-basket on a chair by her knees
continued busily sewing until bedtime. And the tenderness that she
felt as she stitched and stitched was overwhelmingly more than she
could feel even for Will. When her work itself made her smile, all the
intellectual expression seemed to go out of her face, and it really
expressed nothing but a blankly unthinking ecstasy, whereas her smile
at her husband just now had shown shrewd understanding, as well as
immense kindness. In fact, at such moments, only the outer case of
Mavis Dale remained in the snug little room, while the inward best
part of her had gone on a very long journey. She could not now see the
man with his book, or the walls of the room; the lamp had begun to
shine with ineffable radiance; and she was temporarily a sewing-woman
in paradise, stitching the ornamental flounces for dreams of glory.

Her baby, a girl, was born at the end of June, exactly three-quarters
of a year from the beginning of their new existence. The mother had
what is called a bad time, and was slow to recover strength.
Nevertheless, she was able to suckle the infant, who did well from its
birth and throve rapidly.

It was during the convalescent stage, one evening when he had come up
to sit by her bedside, that Dale told her they had at last turned the
corner.

"Yes," he said, "orders are dropping in nicely. We're getting back all
the good customers that slipped away from me, and some bettermost
ones--such as the Hunt stables--that Mr. Bates himself had lost. You
may take it as something to rely on that we're fairly round the corner
of our long lane."

Then, holding her hand and softly patting it, he praised her for the
way in which she had helped him. "You've been better than your word,
Mav; you've supported me something grand."

And he added that henceforth he should insist on her doing less work,
at any rate less household work. "There's more valuable things than
burning your face over the kitchen fire, and roughing your arms with
hot water. I'm going to be done with that messing of the men; I'm
arranging their meals on another basis; I mean to keep house and yard
as two distinct regions. And as to you, old lady, I intend to turn
your dairy knowledge to account. Don't see why we shouldn't keep a cow
or two--and poultry--and cultivate the bees a bit. Kitchen garden too.
And, look here, I've engaged Mrs. Goudie to come every day instead of
twice a week--and we shall want a nurse."

But Mavis flatly refused to have any hired person coming between her
and the transcendent joy of her life. She had waited long enough for a
baby, and she proposed to keep the baby to herself.

"However successful you come to be," she said to her husband,
earnestly, "I shouldn't like you to make a fine lady of me. I want to
go on feeling I'm useful to you. That's my pleasure--and if good luck
took it from me, I'd almost wish the bad luck back again."

"Hush," he said, gravely. "Don't speak of such a wish, even in joke."

"I only meant I'd wish for the time since we came here. I wasn't
thinking of anything before then."

"All right;" and he stooped over her, and kissed her. "You've bin
talking more'n enough, I dare say. Take care of yourself, and get well
as fast as may be. For I can't do without you."

"That's what I wanted to hear."

"You don't take it for granted yet?"

"No. I want you to say it every time I see you."

"Good night--an' happy dreams."

"Will!" Mavis' voice was full of reproach. "Are you going without
kissing the baby?"

Then Dale came back from the doorway, stooped again, and making his
lips as light as a butterfly's wings, kissed his first-born.

Before September was over Mavis had not only recovered her ordinary
health, but had entered into such stores of new energy that nothing
could hinder her from getting back into harness. She herself was
astonished by her physical sensations. Languors that had seemed an
essential part of her temperament ever since girlhood were now only
memories; she felt more alive when passive now than during extreme
excitement in the past; her whole body, from the surface to the bones,
appeared to be larger and yet more compact. Even the muscles of her
back and legs, which ought to have been relaxed and feeble after weeks
of bed, had the tone and hardness that only exercise is supposed to
induce; so that when standing or walking she experienced a curiously
stimulating sense of solidity and power, as if her hold upon the
ground was heavier and firmer than it had ever been, although she
could move about from place to place with incredibly more lightness
and ease.

These new sensations were strong in her one morning when, Dale having
risen at dawn, she determined to take a ramble or tour of inspection
before the day's work began; and with the mere bodily well-being there
was a mental vigorousness that made the notion of all future effort,
whether casual or persistent, seem equally pleasurable.

She came out through the front garden, and pausing a moment thought of
all the things that ought to be done at the very first opportunity.
This neglected garden was a mere tangle of untrimmed shrub and
luxuriant weed, with just a few dahlias and hollyhocks fighting
through the ruin of what had been pretty flower borders; and she
thought how nice it would all look again when sufficient work had been
put into it. Some of the broken flagstones of the path wanted
replacing by sound ones; the orchard trees were full of dead wood; and
the door and casements of the house sadly needed painting. Her
thoughts flew about more strenuously than the belated bees that were
searching high and low for non-existent pollen. This front of their
house would look lovely with its casements and deep eaves painted
white instead of gray; and if bright green shutters could at some time
or other be added to the windows, one might expect artists to stop and
make sketches of the most attractive homestead in Hampshire.

She kissed the tips of her fingers to that rearward portion of the
building where Mary guarded the cradle, and then went through the gate
and along the highroad.

It was a misty morning--almost a fog--the sun making at first but
feeble attempts to pierce through the white veil. There would come a
faint glow, a widening circle of yellow light; then almost immediately
the circle contracted, changed from gold to silver, and for a moment
one saw the sun itself looking like a bright new sixpence, and then it
was altogether gone again. Out of the mist on her right hand floated
the song of birds in a field. No rain having fallen during this month
of September, the ground was dry and hard as iron, but the roadway lay
deep in dust, and a continuous rolling cloud followed her firm
footsteps. The air was sweet and fresh, although not light to breathe
as it is in spring. One felt something of ripeness, maturity,
completion--those harvest perfumes that one gets so strong in
Switzerland and Northern Italy, together with the heavier touch of
sun-dried earth, decaying fruit, turning fern. When the birds fell
silent Mavis took up their song, walked faster; and all things on the
earth and in the heaven over the earth seemed to be adding themselves
together to increase the sum of her happiness.

She loved, and was loved; she lived, and had given life--bud, blossom,
and fruit, all nature and she were now in harmony.

Presently the wood that stretched so dark and so grand on her left
tempted her from the highroad. This was her first real walk, and she
decided to make it a good one. She would aim for the Hadleigh rides,
and, going on beyond Kibworth Rocks to the higher ground, get a view
of the new buildings. Will had gone across to the far side of
Rodchurch and could not be back to breakfast. It would not therefore
matter if she were a little late.

She passed rapidly through open glades, to which the great oaks and
beeches still made solid walls. The foliage of the beech trees was
merely touched with yellow here and there, while the oaks showed no
sign of fading color, and beneath all the lower branches there were
splendid deep shadows wherever the undergrowth of holly did not fill
up the green wall. This was the true wild woodland, remnant of the
ancient forest, the place of virgin timber, dense thickets, and
natural openings, that tourists always praised beyond anything else.
The stream ran babbling through it, with pretty little pools,
cascades, and fords, all owning names that spoke of bygone times--such
as White Doe's Leap, Knight's Well, and Monk's Crossing. Locally it
was not, of course, so highly esteemed. Cottagers said it was "a
lonesome, fearsome bit o'country," and, whether because of the ugly
memories that hung about it, or in view of extremely modern stories of
disagreements between Chase guardians and poachers, considered it an
undesirable short cut after dark from anywhere to anywhere.

To-day it seemed to Mavis friendly and pleasant as well as beautiful.
The mist slowly rising was now high overhead, so that one could see to
a considerable distance. Some fern-cutters in shirt-sleeves and slouch
hats were already at work, cutting with rhythmic precision, calling to
one another, and whistling tunefully.

One or two of them greeted her as she passed.

By the time she reached the straight rides and the fir trees the sun
came bursting forth bravely, the shadows just danced before vanishing,
the mist broke into rainbow streamers, and then there was nothing more
between one's head and the milky blue sky. She walked within a
stone's-throw of Kibworth Rocks, and did not feel a tremor, scarcely
even a recollection. People nowadays came here from Rodchurch and
Manninglea on Sunday afternoons, making it the goal for wagonette
drives, wandering up and down, and gaping at a scene rendered
interesting to them merely because it had once been the background of
tragedy; and Mavis was thinking more of these Sunday visitors than of
the dead man, as she hurried through the sunlight so near the spot
where he had lain staring with glassy eyes throughout the darkness of
a July night.

She thought of him a little later, when she stood on the higher ground
looking at what live men were constructing in fulfilment of his wish,
and her mind did not hold the least tinge of bitterness. At present
the Barradine Orphanage was simply an eye-sore to miles and miles of
the country-side, but no doubt, as she thought, it would be all very
fine when finished. The bad weather of the winter had caused progress
to be rather slow; the red brickwork was only about ten feet out of
the ground, but a shell of scaffolding enabled one to trace the
general plan. It would be a central block with two long, low
dependencies, apparently, and, as it seemed, there were to be terraces
and leveled lawns all about it; a great deal of clearing work as well
as building work would, however, be necessary before the whole thing
could take shape and explain itself properly. She stood outside one of
its new ugly fences, and wondered if Mr. Barradine's trustees had,
after all, chosen the site wisely. Poor old gentleman, it would be
unkind if his last fancies received scant attention. It was rather
nice of him to have this idea of doing good after his death, to plot
it all, and put it down on paper with such painstaking care.

Truly she was thinking of him now as though he had been a total
stranger, some important person that she had known well by name but
never chanced to meet. She listened to the faint clinking of
bricklayers' trowels, watched men with hods going slowly up and down
ladders, men carrying poles, men unloading half a dozen carts; thought
what a quantity of money was being expended, and how grateful in the
future the little desolate children would be when their costly home
was ready for them; and only as it were by accident did she remember
that she too had cost the estate money, and perhaps also ought to be
grateful. But she had long since ceased to think about the legacy.
What the yokels would call her "small basket fortune" had served a
purpose handsomely, and there was an end of it. The man from whom it
came had gone as completely as the morning mist went when the sun
began to shine.

The harm he had done her was nothing. If she purposely dragged out its
memory, it seemed much less strong and actual than half one's dreams.
Incredible that little more than a year ago she had been in such dire
and dreadful trouble.

She struck the highroad again a little way short of the Abbey Cross
Roads, and came swinging homeward with long strides, feeling healthy,
hungry, happy. And the nearer she drew to home, the deeper grew the
happiness. "Oh, what a lucky woman I am," she said to herself.

And with a quite unconscious selfishness that is an essential
attribute of joy, and that makes all very successful and contented
people think themselves singled out, watched over, and especially
guided by fate, she blessed and applauded the beneficently omniscient
Providence which had given just enough worry in her youth to enable
her to appreciate comfort in mature years, which had delayed
motherhood until she could best bear a hearty child, which had wiped
out Mr. Barradine and restored her husband's love, which, last of all,
had removed Aunt Petherick from North Ride and sent her to live at the
seaside.

A small thing, this, perhaps; and yet a Providential boon, a filling
of one's lap with bounties. There would have been great awkwardness in
having Aunt so near, but forbidden to darken one's door. Will was very
firm there: Auntie was not to be admitted at Vine-Pits on any pretext
whatever. But it had all worked out so neatly, without the least
friction. The new owner of the Abbey wanted North Ride. He had,
however, been very kind about the lease or the absence of a lease, and
had paid the tenant for life, as she described herself, to surrender
possession. Auntie, one might therefore say, was not at all badly
treated.

As the master was away and no kind of state necessary, she breakfasted
in the kitchen with Mary and Mrs. Goudie. Her baby was asleep in its
cradle, which she gently swung with her foot while eating; and the
three women all spoke whisperingly. The pots and pans were shining,
the hearthstone was white as snow, and through the open doorway one
had a pretty little picture of the back pathway, the end of the barn,
and a drooping branch of the walnut trees. From the yard beyond came
sounds of industrious activity--the rumble of a wagon being pulled
from the pent-house, the thump of sacks being let down on the pulleys,
and the intermittent buzz of a chaff-cutting machine.

Presently somebody appeared on the pathway, and came slowly and shyly
toward the door.

"Oh, bother," said Mary. "If it isn't Mr. Druitt again."

"Good mornin', mum," said the visitor, diffidently. "Would you be
doing with an egg or so?"

Mr. Druitt had been introduced by Mrs. Goudie as the higgler, or
itinerant poulterer and greengrocer, who served the house in Mr.
Bates' time. He was a thin middle-aged man, with light watery eyes, a
straggling beard, and an astoundingly dilatory manner. He used to pull
his pony and cart into the hedge or bank by the roadside, and leave
them there an unconscionable time, while he pottered about the back
doors of his customers, offering the articles that he had brought with
him, or trying to obtain orders for other articles that he would bring
next week; and although apparently so shy himself, no bruskness in
others ever seemed to rebuff him. His arrival now broke up the
breakfast party, and was accepted as a signal that the day's labors
must really be attacked. Mrs. Goudie and Mary pushed back their chairs
with a horrid scrooping noise, Mavis got up briskly, the baby awoke
and began to cry.

"No, thank you, Mr. Druitt. Nothing this morning."

"I've some sweet-hearted cabbages outside."

"No, thank you."

"It's wonderful late to get 'em with any heart to 'em. I'll fetch
'em."

Thus, as was usual, the higgler went backward and forward between the
door and his cart; and Mavis, with the baby on her arm, at intervals
inspected various commodities. Eventually she purchased a capon for
the Sunday dinner, paid for it, and bade Mr. Druitt good-by.

"Good-by, mum--and much obliged."

But then, quite ten minutes afterward, his shadow once more fell
across the kitchen floor. He had not really gone yet. Here he was back
again at the kitchen door, staring reflectively at his grubby little
pocketbook.

"Beg pardon--but did I mention the side o' bacon I've been promised
for Tuesday. It's good bacon."

Mavis Dale with courteous finality dismissed him; but Mary, whose
ordinarily red cheeks had become a fiery crimson, spoke hotly and
angrily.

"Drat the man. I've no patience with him. He ought to know better,
going on so."

"But what harm does he do, poor fellow," said Mavis, indulgently,
"except muddling away his own time?"

"He's up to no good," said Mary; and she flounced across to the door,
and looked out at the now empty path. "Hanging about like that! Why
can't he keep away? I don't want him."

Mrs. Goudie, at the sink, screwed up her wrinkled nut-cracker face,
and chuckled.

"No, mum, she don't want un. But he wants she."

And, astonishing as it might seem, this was truly the case. The
higgler had fallen in love with Mary; and she, apparently without a
single explicit word, had understood the nature of the emotion that
stirred his breast. He had somehow surrounded her with an atmosphere
of admiration--anyhow he had made her understand.

Mavis laughed gaily, and chaffed Mary about her conquest; and
henceforth she more or less obliterated herself when this visitor
called, and allowed the servant to conduct all transactions with him.

Mary was always very stern, disparaging his goods, and beating down
his prices; while he stood sheepishly grinning, and in no wise
protesting against her harshness. He now of course stayed longer than
ever, indeed only withdrew when Mary indignantly drove him away.

"Be off, can't you?" cried Mary. "I'm ashamed of you."

"Haw, haw," chuckled Mrs. Goudie. "Don't she peck at un fierce."

"Yes, Mary," and Mrs. Dale laughed, much amused. "I do think you're
rather cruel to him."

"'Twill be t'other way roundabout one day, Mary, preaps."

Then Mary tossed her head and bustled at her work. "I ain't afeard o'
that day, Mrs. Goudie. He isn't going the right way to win me, I can
tell him. I hate his sly ways."

Mavis and the old charwoman thought that Mr. Druitt would win the
prize in the end, and with a natural tendency toward match-making
tacitly aided and abetted his queer courtship. Except for the
disparity of years it seemed a desirable match. It was known that he
had a tidy place, almost a farm, eight miles away on the edge of the
down; and Mrs. Goudie, who confessed that she had merely encountered
him higgling, said the tale ran that he was quite a warm man.

And thus Mary's little romance, announcing itself so abruptly and
developing itself so slowly, brought still another new interest to
Vine-Pits kitchen. It was something vivid and bright and even
fantastic in the midst of solidly useful facts, like the strange
flower that blooms on a roadside merely because some high-flying
strong-winged bird has carelessly happened to drop a seed.

"What," thought Mavis, "can any of us do without love? And where
should we be without the odd chances that bring love to us?"

XIV

Fat easy years came now after the hard and lean ones; and the Dales in
the dual regions of home and trade were doing really well. Dale had a
powerful decently-bred cob to ride; on Wednesdays, when he went into
Old Manninglea for the Corn Market, he often wore a silk top-hat and
always a black coat; and at all times he looked exactly what he was,
an alert, industrious, straight-dealing personage who has risen
considerably and who intends to rise still higher in the social scale.

As to Mavis, she had another baby--a boy this time--and she was an
infinitely proud mother as well as a very busy woman. She kept cows,
poultry and bees; could and did distil a remarkably choice sloe gin,
had achieved some reputation for her early peas and late lettuces, and
had made the quadrangle in front of the house a sight that even
tourists from London talked about. It blazed with color from May to
November, and there was one of the Rodhaven drivers who on several
occasions stopped his char-à-bancs to let the passengers have a long
look at it. Wandering artists, too, fascinated by the stone walls, the
flowers, the white paint, and the green shutters, would sometimes ring
the bell and ask if Mrs. Dale let lodgings.

Mrs. Dale was rather crushing to masculine intruders of this sort,
especially when they adopted an off-handedly gallant air.

In answering their questions she drawled slightly, and smiled in a
manner that, although not contemptuous, might permit them to guess
that they had made a tactless mistake.

"Oh, no, we do not let lodgings."

"Don't you really? I think you _ought_ to, you know."

"Possibly," said Mavis, drawling and smiling. "But Mr. Dale and I do
not think so. Of course if we did, we should put up a board, or
notice--and you may observe that there isn't one."

She was, however, always gentle and forbearing with wanderers of her
own sex. To two ladies who expressed disappointment at finding no
apartments and asked if she did not at least provide afternoon tea,
she said at once, "Oh, certainly, I shall be delighted to give you
some tea."

They were tired, dusty, not young; and she showed them into the grand
front parlor that contained her piano, pictures, well-bound books, and
there laid the table and brought the tea with her own hands. Such a
tea--the best china, thick cream, three sorts of jam, cakes, and jolly
round home-made bannocks! The ladies were so pleased, until they
became embarrassed. For of course when they wished to pay, Mavis could
not accept payment.

"Oh, indeed no. You're very welcome. I hope that you'll stop and rest
as long as you like;" and faintly blushing she shied away from the
open purse and hurried out of the room.

"What on earth are we to do?" said one of the ladies.

"I saw a child in the passage," said the other lady. "Let us offer the
child a present."

"Ah. That solves the difficulty. But how much? I suppose it must be
half-a-crown."

"_Nonsense!_" said the other lady, tartly. "That is more than the
price of the whole meal if she had let us pay for it. A present of a
shilling at the _outside_. No, a shilling is absurd. Sixpence."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yes, sixpence wrapped up in a bit of paper."

"Then _you_ must offer it."

And the other lady did. "Is that your little girl? Oh, what brown
eyes--and mamma's pretty complexion. Good afternoon! We are so much
obliged. And this is for _you_, dear--to buy sweeties."

Mavis was not disposed to allow her small princess to take a tip from
a stranger's hand; but natural good-breeding forced her to acquiesce.

The ladies looked back at her, waved their hands by the garden gate,
and went away talking.

"The child never said 'Thank you.' Badly reared."

"But the mother thanked you. I liked her face. She must have been
distinctly good-looking."

The artists thought her distinctly good-looking even now, and perhaps,
after being repulsed in their quest for bed and board, drifted off
into an idle dream of how they might have met her a few years ago when
they were less famous but more magnetically attractive. What a sitter
she would have been for them, if she wouldn't be anything else! They
admired the extreme delicacy of her nose that seemed so narrow in the
well-rounded face, the loose brown hair that showed such a red flash
in it beneath her sunbonnet, the perfect modeling of full forearms,
firm neck, and ample bosom, the whole poise of her graciously solid
figure, at once so reposeful and so free. But it was the eyes
principally that set them dreaming of vanished youth, abandoned hopes,
and lost opportunities. Nowadays Mavis could meet the unduly
interested regard of male investigators with a candid unvacillating
outlook; there came no hint of feebleness in resistance, too ready
submission, or temperamental proneness to surrender; but her eyes,
whether she wished it or not, still served as messengers between all
that was feminine in her and all that was masculine outside her; and,
with no reason not to tell the truth, they told it boldly, seeming to
say, "Yes, once I had much to give, and I gave every single bit of it
to one man. I have nothing left now for cadgers, sneak-thieves, and
other outsiders."

She was a woman steadily completing her cycle. In fact, with her added
weight, broadened contours and settled mental equilibrium, she had so
changed from the slim, pallid, childish Mrs. Dale of the post office
that any old Rodchurch friends might be forgiven for saying that they
could scarcely recognize her.

"Really shouldn't have known you," said one of them frankly. "You have
furnished like a colt brought in from grass to corn."

This outspoken old friend was Mr. Allen the saddler, who turned up one
winter day when Vine-Pits had been thrown into a great state of
excitement and confusion by the passage of the hunt right across the
meadows behind the orchard. Just after dinner everybody had heard the
horn sounding in the woods, with distant holloas and deep music of
hounds, and then the pack came streaming out in full cry, and next
moment all the horsemen were galloping over the fields and leaping the
hedges. The women ran forth from the back of the house; the men
abandoned their work. "Oo, oo! Look an' look." There were shouts of
rapture each time the horses jumped. "Oo! Crimany! That _were_ a
beauty!"

Then in another minute Dale himself came galloping to the empty yard,
rode his horse along the flags into the garden, and yelled to Mavis
that she was to fetch trays of bread and cheese and bannocks as quick
as life.

"An' bring the white bob full of beer--an' whisky, an' water--an' some
o' the sloe gin; an' devel knows how many glasses."

Mrs. Dale and Mary, before one could look round, carried out into the
yard all these light refreshments, and with them Dale regaled the
large concourse of unexpected visitors that was pouring through the
opened gates. His guests were grooms, second-horsemen, one or two
farmers, and several dealers--the people who are rarely in a hurry
when out hunting; and after them came pedestrians, a sturdy fellow in
a red coat with a terrier in his pocket and a terrier under his arm, a
keeper, a wood-cutter, Abraham Veale the hurdle-maker, and just
riffraff--the very tail of the hunt, and, as the tail of the tail,
that stupid trade-neglecting Mr. Allen. For a while the yard was full
of animation, the horses pawing and snorting, Dale bustling
hospitably, his wife filling the glasses and handing the food, and
everybody talking who was not eating or drinking.

Mr. Allen was exhausted, tottering on his skinny legs, but
nevertheless burning with ardor for the chase.

"They've changed foxes," he cried breathlessly. "They've lost the
hunted fox, and they've only themselves to thank for it. I told them,
and they wouldn't listen. I knew."

"Ah, but you always know," said a second-horseman, grinning.

"If Mr. Maltby," said Allen, "had cast back instead of forward last
time I holloa'd, he'd have had the mask on his saddle rings by now."

Then he sank down upon one of the upping-stocks, snatched a hunk of
bread, munched hastily.

"Mr. Allen, you've no cheese. Here, let me fill your glass again.
How's Rodchurch?" Every time that Mavis passed, she asked a question.
"Mr. Allen, how's Miss Waddy's sister?"

"Dead," said Allen, with his mouth full.

"Dead. Oh, that's sad!" Then next time it was: "How's Miss Yorke? Not
married yet?"

"No, nor likely to be."

The horse-people soon began to move off again--"Thank you, Mr. Dale.
Good night, Mr. Dale.... You've done us proper, sir.... Just what I
wanted.... Good night, ma'am;"--but the foot-people lingered. The
red-coated earth-digger, Veale, and one or two others, had got around
Mr. Allen and were chaffing him irreverently.

"There, that'll do," said Dale, joining the group and speaking with
firmness. Then he politely offered to have a nag put into the gig and
to send Mr. Allen home on wheels.

"Thank you kindly," said Allen. "I'm not going home; but if your man
can rattle me a mile or so up towards Beacon Hill, it's a hundred to
one I shall drop in with them again. With the wind where it is, hounds
are bound to push anything that's in front of them up to the high
ground."

As soon as Dale went to order his gig the clumsy facetiousness was
renewed.

"'Tes a pity you ben't a hound yersel, Mr. Allen."

"Ah," said Veale, "if the wood pucks cud transform him on to all
fours, what a farder he'd mek to th' next litter o' pops at the
Kennels."

"By gum," said the earth-digger, slapping his leg, "they pups would
have noses. They wuddent never be at fault, would 'em?"

Old Mrs. Goudie, who had a simple taste in raillery, was so convulsed
by this jesting that she put down her tray in order to laugh at ease;
and chiefly because she was laughing, Mary laughed also.

"An' you know most o' the tricks o' foxes too, don't you, Mr. Allen?"

"Now then," said Dale, returning, "that's enough, my lads. I dropped
you the hint by now. You're welcome to as much more of my beer as you
can carry, but you won't sauce my friends inside my gates--nor
outside, either, if I chance to be there."

"Aw right, sir."

"Take no heed of them," said Allen. "It is only their ignorance;" and
he staggered to his feet.

Dale escorted the honored guest to the gig, then wiped his perspiring
face, lighted a pipe; and then reproved Mary and Mrs. Goudie for
unseemly mirth.

They still had Mary with them, and, although they did not know it,
were to enjoy her faithful service for some time to come. Now that
Mrs. Dale grew her own vegetables, purchases from Mr. Druitt, the
higgler, had become rare; only an occasional bit of bacon, or once in
a way a couple of rabbits, a hare, a doubtfully obtained pheasant,
could ever be required from him; so that the greater part of his
frequent visits were admittedly paid to the servant and not to the
mistress. But he proved an unconscionably slow courtier. Mary, for her
part, when she was teased about him and asked if he did not yet show
anxiety to reach the happy day, always tossed her head and said that
she was in no hurry, that she doubted if she could ever tear herself
away from Vine-Pits, and so on.

Then, at last, a shocking discovery was made. Mary, after an afternoon
out, came home with her face all red and blubbered, sat in the kitchen
sobbing and rocking herself, and told Mavis how she had heard on
unimpeachable authority that the higgler was a married man. He had
always been married--and poor Mary confessed that she was very fond of
him, although so angry with him for his disgraceful treatment of her.

On the next visit of the higgler Dale was lying in wait for him.

"Come inside, please. I'd like a few words with you, Mr. Druitt;" and
the higgler was led through the kitchen, and up the three steps into
the adjacent room.

Here, as soon as the door had been shut, Mr. and Mrs. Dale both
tackled him. Dale was very fine, like a magistrate, so dignified as
well as so severe, accusing the culprit of playing fast and loose with
a young woman, of arousing feelings in her bosom which he was not in
a position to satisfy.

"A girl," said Mavis, "that we consider under our charge, as much as
if she was our daughter."

"Who looks to us," said Dale, "for guardianship and protection."

Mr. Druitt, sitting on the edge of his chair, smiling foolishly,
nodded his head in the direction of the kitchen door, and gave a queer
sort of wink.

"Meaning _her?_"

"Yes, who else should we mean?"

"I've never said a word of love to her in my life."

"Oh, how," cried Mavis, "can you make such a pretense?"

"Because it's the truth."

"But," said Mavis, indignantly, "you've made her fond of you. You've
courted her."

The higgler distinctly preened himself, and smiled archly. "Ah,
there's a language of the eyes, which speaks perhaps when the lips are
sealed."

Mavis was angry and disgusted. "You, a married man!"

Dale, outraged too, spoke with increasing sternness. "You don't deny
you've got a wife?"

The higgler answered very gravely. "Mr. Dale, that's my misfortune,
not my fault. But my wife isn't going to last forever, and the day
she's gone--that is, the day after I've buried her decently--I shall
come here to Mary Parsons and say 'Mary'--mind you, I've never called
her Mary yet--I shall say, 'Mary, my lips are unsealed, and I ask you
to be my true and lawful second wife.'"

They could make nothing of the higgler.

"It's seven years," he went on, "since Doctor Hollin said to me, 'I
have to warn you Mrs. Druitt isn't going to make old bones.' However,
we find it a long job. There's a proverb, isn't there? Creaking
doors!"

Mavis was inexpressibly shocked. "How can you talk of your wife so?
Have you no feelings for her?"

"Mrs. Dale," said the higgler, solemnly, "I married my first wife for
money, and I've been punished for my mistake. That's why I made up my
mind I'd marry next time for love--in choosing a wholesome maiden and
not asking what she'd got sewed in her petticoat or harbored in the
bank;" and, nodding, he again gave his curious self-satisfied wink.
"Mr. Dale, you tell her to wait patiently. I'll be true to her, if
she'll be true to me." Then he rose, and smiling sheepishly, once more
addressed Mrs. Dale. "The purpose of my call this morning was to say I
shall have some _good_ bacon next week."

Mavis refused the bacon, and Dale said a few words of stern rebuke.

"I can tell you, Mr. Druitt, I take a very poor opinion of your
manhood and proper feeling."

Then Mavis interposed to check her husband. The fact was, she felt
baffled by the situation and utterly at a loss as to what would be the
best way of dealing with it. Whatever one might think of Mr. Druitt
one's self, there was Mary to be considered. What would ultimately be
best for her? The man was warm; and Mary, who was not growing younger,
said she liked him.

"I'll wish you good morning," said the higgler.

Then, when they thought he had been long gone and Mavis was talking
to Mary, he put in his head at the kitchen doorway.

"Will this make any difference?" he asked shyly. "Should I call
again--or do you forbid me the house?"

The three women, Mavis, Mary and Mrs. Goudie, all looked at one
another, quite perplexed.

"Er--no," said Mavis, after a pause. "You can call. I may, just
possibly, be wanting bacon next week."

"It's a real beautiful side;" and, without a glance at Mary, he
disappeared.

Then Mary instantaneously decided that she would wait for him, and not
break with him; and she asked Mrs. Dale to run out and tell him that
she would wait.

But that Mavis could not do. It would be too undignified. Mary must
restrain her emotions till next week, and tell him herself.

XV

The little girl Rachel at the age of six was able to take interest in
everything that happened, and to be a real companion who loved to help
her mother at any important task. Thus one winter evening between tea
and supper, when Mavis was most importantly engaged, she sat up late
by special license and gave her company and aid in the little room
behind the kitchen.

"Now, see if you can find the blotting-paper over there on daddy's
desk. Quietly, my darling. Very quietly--because we mustn't wake
Billy."

Billy, the little boy, was asleep in his cradle, near, but not too
near, the cheerful fire; a bluish flicker that reminded one of the
frost out of doors showed intermittently among the yellow and red
flames; the wick of the lamp on the round table burned clearly; and in
the mingling lamplight and firelight the whole room looked
delightfully cozy and homelike. Mavis, with a body just pleasantly
tired and a mind still comfortably active, paused before starting her
labor in order luxuriously to feel the peaceful charm that was being
shed forth by all her surroundings.

More and more the very heart of their home life seemed to locate
itself in this room, and so every day additional memories and
associations wove themselves about the objects it contained. Rachel,
young as she was, showed a marked predilection for it, loving it
better than all other rooms. From the dawn of intelligence she had
been fascinated by the two guns and the brass powder-flasks that hung
high over the chimney-place; her first climbings and tumblings had
been performed on the three steps that led to the kitchen; and she had
addled her tender brains, as well as inflamed the natural greed which
is so pardonable in infants, by what was to her a sort of differential
calculus before she learned to discriminate nicely among the various
jams kept by Mummy in the big cupboard.

Nearly all the furniture, as well as the two guns, had belonged to Mr.
Bates. It was solid, and very old--a tall-boy with a drawer that,
opening out, made a writing-desk; a bureau with a latticed glass
front; three chairs of the Chippendale farmhouse order; and one vast
chair, covered with leather and adorned with nails, that had probably
been dozed in by the hall-porter of some great mansion more than a
century ago. Here and there Mavis had of course dabbed her small
prettinesses--blue china and a clock on the mantel-shelf, colored
cushions, photographs of the children, views of Rodchurch High Street,
the Chase, Rodhaven Pier; and the old and the new, the useful and the
ornamental, alike whispered to her of fulfilled desires, gratified
fancies, and William Dale.

It was her husband's room. Perhaps that formed the real source of all
its charms, the essence or base of attraction that lay deep beneath
visual presentations of chairs and fire-gleamings, or associations of
ideas, or memories of past happiness. Those were his books, behind the
latticed glass--the _Elocution Manual_, the _Elements of Rhetoric_,
the ten-volumed _People's Encyclopedia_, that he had read, and still
read so assiduously. It was here that he ate, drank, and mused. Here
he did all of his work that wasn't real office work. Here he received
such visitors as head coachmen, stud-grooms, and the huntsmen.

In the cupboard with the jam-pots, there were two or three boxes of
cigars, the famous sloe gin, and other liqueurs, for the entertainment
of such highly esteemed visitors; and so long as one of them occupied
the colossal armchair, her husband was quite a different Dale. He was
then such a much better listener than usual, so quick to see a joke
and so easy to be tickled by it, so debonair that he would swallow
almost insulting criticism of his favorite politicians. As she thought
of these things her eyelids fluttered and her lips parted mirthfully.
She never asked any questions as to Dale's more secret methods of
dealing with customers' servants. Obviously he got on well with them;
and one might be quite certain that he did not offer any material
compliments that were either traditionally illegitimate or open in the
smallest degree to a suspicion of corrupt purpose.

And she thought admiringly that her man was really a very wonderful
man. Though so candid and straight, he could be grandly silent; he
told his womankind all that he considered it good for them to know,
and the rest he kept to himself; he had that quality of rulership
without which manhood always seems deficient.

"Mummy," said Rachel, "I do believe Mary is reading aloud."

"Is she, darling? Yes, I think she is."

Through the kitchen door one could hear a monotonous murmur.

"D'you think she's reading fairy tales?"

"Perhaps. Would you like to listen to her?"

"Oh, no. I'd sooner stay and help you, Mummy."

"Then so you shall, my angel; and I thank you for preferring my
company."

Mavis, with the little girl at her knee, got to work. She had
purchased a large scrap-album, and was now to begin putting in her
scraps. For a long time she had collected interesting extracts from
the newspapers, more especially portions of old numbers of the
_Rodhaven Courier_ which contained her husband's name.

"Here, Rachel, we'll commence with this;" and she started the book
with a long account of the ceremonial opening of the Barradine
Orphanage. The report of a speech by "Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits Farm" at a
political meeting was the second item, and other gems followed fast.

Rachel assisted from time to time, by twice upsetting the paste pot,
tearing a good many cuttings, and finally by tilting the heavy album
off Mummy's lap to the floor.

But Mavis thought all these actions rather spirited and charming than
maladroit and annoying. They proved that Rachel was trying hard to be
of use, and her too rapid and abrupt gestures were a pleasing evidence
that the little creature possessed a vivacious and not a sluggish
disposition. However, the crash of the album on the floor had awakened
Billy, who was now crying lustily; and Rachel's license having long
since expired, Mavis decided to send both her treasures to bed.
Rachel resisted the edict, and, presently conducted up-stairs by Mary,
bellowed more loudly than her brother; indeed for a little while the
house was filled with the harsh sound of squalling. Yet this noise,
though distressing, was as musical as harps and lutes to the mother's
ears; and while old Mrs. Goudie in the kitchen was saying: "They
children want a smart popping to learn them on'y to squawk when
there's reason for squawking," Mavis was thinking: "Poor darlings, I'd
go up and kiss them again, if Mary didn't always quiet them down
quicker than I can."

Alone with her newspaper snippets, Mavis did more reading than
pasting. "Heroic Rescue at Otterford Mill"--that was the description
of how Will saved good-for-nothing Abraham Veale. She knew it almost
by heart, but she had to read it again. "Brave Deed at Manninglea
Cross Station"--that was something that made her feel faint every time
she thought of it, and she trembled now as she read in the snippet of
how there had been a frightened dog on the line between the platforms,
and how Will had jumped down in front of the approaching train and
whisked the dog out of danger just in time.

She folded her hands, puckered her forehead, and passed into a reverie
about him. Combining with her intense admiration, there was a great
horror of all this reckless courage. He would not have been so
foolhardy years ago. It was against the principles that he had once
laid down as limiting the risks that a brave man may run. It indicated
a change in him, a change that she had never pondered on till now. She
thought of him fighting the wind on top of their rick, and of several
other incidents unchronicled by the press--of his going with the
police at Old Manninglea when there was the bad riot, of his joining
the Crown keepers when they went out to catch the poachers, of his
wild performance when Mr. Creech's bull got loose. Goring bulls,
bludgeoning men, tempest and flood--wherever and whatever the danger,
he went straight to it. But it was not fair to her and the babes. His
thrice precious life! And she grew cold as she thought that an
accident--like a curtain descending when a stage play is over--might
some day end all her joy.

Then she thought once more of that dark period of their dual
existence; and it was the last time that she was ever capable of
thinking of it seriously and with any real concentration. Had that
trouble left any permanent mark on him? Her own suffering had left no
mark on her. It was gone so entirely that, as well as seeming
incredible, it seemed badly invented, silly, preposterous. All that
remained to her was just this one firm memory, that, strange or not,
there had truly once been a time when his arms were not her shelter,
and she dared not look into his face.

But he was different from her; with a vastly more capacious brain, in
which there was such ample room that perhaps the present did not even
impinge upon the past, much less drive it out altogether. She who in
the beginning had tacitly agreed with those who considered her the
obvious superior now felt humbly pleased in recognizing that he was of
grander, finer, and more delicate stuff than herself. And for the
first and last time she was assailed by a disturbing doubt. Was he
completely happy even now? He loved her, he loved his children, he
loved his successful industry; yet sometimes when she found him alone
his face was almost as somber as it had ever been.

And those bad dreams of his still continued. At first, when things
were all in jeopardy, it had seemed not unnatural that the troubles of
the day should break his rest at night; but why should he dream now,
when he was prosperous and without a single anxiety to distress him?
Did he in sleep go back to that old storm of anger, jealousy, and
grief about which he never thought during his waking hours?

And again Mavis was actuated all unconsciously by the elemental
selfishness that mingles with our joy. When we are happy we want
others to be happy too, we can not brook their not being so; even
transient darkness in those we love seems inimical to the light that
is burning so cheerfully in ourselves. Mavis ceased to trouble herself
with questions, and forgot that they remained unanswered.

When Dale came in she was, however, more than ordinarily sweet to him,
waiting on him, bringing the supper dishes, not sitting down until he
was served, and watching him while he ate. She told him that she had
been reading about the dog on the railway line, and that he was not to
do such things. If he ever again felt such a wild impulse, he was to
stifle it immediately by remembering his wife and bairns.

"D'you understand, Will? We won't have it--and we all three think you
ought to be ashamed of yourself for not knowing better. You're not a
boy."

"No," he said, "I shall be forty-two next year. Look here," and he
pointed to his temples. "Look at my gray hair."

"I can't see it."

"But it's there, my dear, all the same. I am beginning to turn toward
the sear and yellow leaf, as Shakespeare puts it."

She admired the easy way in which he quoted Shakespeare, as if it was
the most natural thing in the world to do. Indeed, all through supper
she was admiring him. She thought how beautifully he spoke, expressing
himself so elegantly, and with tones in his voice that every day
seemed to sound a little more cultivated. At first after their arrival
at Vine-Pits, being plunged again into the midst of purely rustic
talk, he had fallen back in regard to his diction. Instinctively he
reverted to the dialect that had been his own, and that was being used
by everybody about him; but now one might say that he really had two
languages--his rough patter for the yard and the fields, and his
carefully-measured phrasing for the home, office, and upper circles.
She understood that his constant reading and his unflagging desire for
self-improvement were telling rapidly; and with a touch of sadness she
wondered if, passing on always, he would finally leave her quite
behind.

No, while life lasted, he would hold to her. He would never shake her
off now. Even if she were old and ugly, useless to him, a dead-weight
upon his ascending progress, he would be true to her now. Even if his
love died, the memory of it would keep him still hers. And she thought
of the pity in him, as well as the strength. The man who could not
resist the appeal of a poor little stray dog would not break faith
with the mother of his children; and she thought, "Yes, whatever I say
to him, I know really and truly that it was a nobler, better thing to
risk all than to allow even a dog to perish. And I love him for not
having hesitated then, even when I pray him not to do it again."

Looking at him, she saw the gray hair that she had just now denied;
and to her eyes these gray feathers at each side of the forehead not
only increased his dignity, but gave him a fresh charm. The gray hair
made him somehow more romantic. In her eyes his face was always
growing more beautiful, always refining itself, always losing
something that had been rather coarsely massive and gaining something
that was new, spiritualized, and subtle.

"What are you examining me like that for, Mav? A penny for your
thoughts."

"Shall I tell you truly?" and she laughed. "I was thinking if your
looks continue to improve at this rate all the girls will get falling
in love with you."

"Go along with you."

XVI

In this manner the full and happy years began to glide past them.
Their prosperity was now firmly established; the business grew; and
money came in so nicely that Mrs. Dale's mortgage had been paid off
and her two thousand pounds invested in gilt-edged securities, while
Dale hoped very shortly to discharge the remainder of his obligation
to Mr. Bates. They were, however, as economical as ever in their own
way of life, although they permitted themselves some license in the
generosity they had begun to practise with regard to their less
fortunate neighbors. But they found, as so many have found before
them, that in personal charity a little money goes a long way, and
that the claims of the very poor, although sometimes noisy, are rarely
excessive. Naturally they had to be careful for the sake of their
children, the security of whose future must be the first
consideration. Dale had promised the baby boy in his cradle "the
advantages of a lib'ral education," and he intended to act up to this
promise largely.

"It is my wish," he said, "that the two of them shall enjoy all that I
was myself deprived of."

New scraps were continually being pasted into the album, and it seemed
to Mavis that she ought to have bought a bigger one, if indeed any
albums were made of a size sufficiently big to contain all the
evidences of her husband's gratified ambition. Scarce a _Courier_ was
published without "a bit" in it that referred to Mr. Dale of Vine-Pits
Farm. He was really becoming quite a public character. He had been
called to the District Council, on its foundation, as a personage who
could not be left out. When the Otterford branch of the Fire Brigade
was instituted all agreed in inviting Mr. Dale to be its captain; and
four of the once sluggish yard-servants had immediately decided that
they must follow their master wherever he led, and had enrolled
themselves forthwith under his captaincy. He was a prominent figure at
the Old Manninglea corn market, known by sight in its streets, and had
recently been chosen as a member of its very select tradesmen's club.
This was an affair truly different from that vulgar boozing circle at
the Gauntlet Inn which he had denounced so contemptuously in old days.
The Manninglea Club was solid and respectable, a pleasant
meeting-place where he could take his midday meal after market
business in company with men of substance and repute. He was on
friendly terms with most of the farmers between the down country and
Rodhaven Harbor; and last, but not least, the gentry all passed the
time of day when they met him, and many would stop him on the
high-roads for a chat in the most polite and jolly fashion.

He confessed to Mavis that the sweetest thing in his success was the
feeling of being no longer disliked.

"Oh, Will, you never were disliked."

"But that's just what I was. And I begin to get a glimmer of the
reason why. I was reading an article in _Answers_ last week, and it
seemed as if it had been written specially to enlighten me. It was
about sympathy. The author, who didn't sign his name, but was
ev'dently a man of powerful int'lect, said that without understanding
you can't sympathize; and he went on to show that without sympathy the
whole world would come to a standstill."

"Ah," said Mavis, "that's the sort of difficult reading that you like.
It's too deep for me."

"It's plain as the nose on one's face, come to think of it. Sympathy
is the key-note. It enables you to look at things from both sides--to
put yourself in another man's place, and ask yourself the question,
What should I be thinking and doing, if I was him?--I should say if I
was he. In the old days I was very deficient in that. A fool just made
me angry. Now I try to put myself in his place." He paused, and
smiled. "Perhaps you'll say I'm there already--a fool myself."

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that;" and Mavis smiled too. "Not
_quite_ a fool, Will."

He went on analyzing his characteristics, talking with great interest
in the subject, and after a didactic style, but not with the heavy
egoistic method that he had often employed years ago.

"No, I never remarked that."

"You know," he said presently, "in spite of all my bounce, I was a
_shy_ man.

"It's the fact, Mav. And my shyness came between me and others. I
couldn't take them sufficiently free. I wanted all the overtures to
come from them, and I was too ready to draw in my horns if they didn't
seem to accept me straight at what I judged my own value. For a long
while now it has been my endeavor to sink what was once described to
me as my pers'nal equation. I don't think of myself at all, if I can
help it; and the consequence is the shyness gets pushed into the
background, my manner becomes more free and open, and people begin to
treat me in a more friendly spirit."

And he wound up his discourse by returning to the original cause of
satisfaction.

"Yes, I do think there are some now that like me for myself--not many,
but just one or two, besides dear old Mr. Bates."

"Everybody does. Why, look at that child, Norah. Only been here a
month, and worships the ground you tread on."

"Poor little mite. That's her notion of being grateful for what I did
for her father. Does she eat just the same?"

"Ravenous."

"Don't stint her," said Dale, impressively. "Feed her _ad lib_. Give
her all she'll swallow. It's the leeway she's got to make up;" and he
turned his eyes toward the kitchen door. "Is she out there?"

"Yes."

"I spoke loud. You don't think she heard what I said?"

"Oh, no. She's busy with Mrs. Goudie."

"I wouldn't like for her to hear us discussing her victuals as though
she was an animal."

"You might have thought she was verily an animal," said Mavis, "if
you'd seen her at the first meals we set before her. And even now it
brings a lump into my throat to watch her."

"Just so."

"When I told her to undress that night to wash herself, she was a
sight to break one's heart. Her poor little ribs were almost sticking
through the skin; and, Will, I thought of one of ours ever being
treated so."

Dale got up from the table, his face glowing redly, his brows
frowning; and he stretched his arms to their full length.

"By Jupiter!" he said thickly, "if only Mrs. Neath had been a man, I'd
'a' given him--well, at the least, I'd 'a' given him a piece of my
mind. I'd have told him what I thought of him."

"I promise you," said Mavis, "that I told Mrs. Neath what I thought of
_her_."

"An' I'm right glad you did."

This new inmate under their roof was Norah Veale, a twelve-year-old
daughter of the Hadleigh Wood hurdle-maker. Mavis, taking a present of
tea and sugar to one of the Cross Roads cottages, had found her
digging in the garden, and, struck by her pitiful aspect, had
questioned her and elicited her history. It was a common enough one in
those parts. Not being wanted at home, she had been "lent" to Mrs.
Neath, the cottage woman, in exchange for her keep, and was
mercilessly used by the borrower. She rose at dawn, worked as the
regular household drudge till within an hour of school-time, then
walked into Rodchurch for the day's schooling with a piece of dry
bread in her pocket as dinner; and on her return from school worked
again till late at night. She admitted that she felt always hungry,
always tired, always miserable; that she suffered from cold at night
in her wretched little bed; and that Mrs. Neath often beat her. She
was a bright, intelligent child, black-haired, olive-complexioned,
with lively blue eyes which expressed at once the natural
trustfulness of youth, a certain boldness and wildness derived from
gipsy ancestors, and a questioning wonder that this pleasant-looking
world should be systematically ill-treating her.

The horrid, lying, carneying old woman of the cottage received home
truths instead of tea and sugar from Mavis Dale, who, with all her
maternal feelings aroused, rushed off straightway to hunt for the
neglectful father. She found him at the Barradine Arms, and demanded
his permission to take away the child. Veale, although sadly bemused,
at once said that he could refuse nothing to the wife of his
preserver.

"Oh, lor-a-mussy, yes, mum, you may 'aave my little Norrer an' do what
you like wi' her. Bless her heart, I look on Norrer and her brothers
to be the comfort o' my old age, but I wunt stan' in their light to
interfere wi' what's best for any of 'em."

Mavis then took Norah straight home with her to Vine-Pits, bathed her,
fed her, clothed her, and made much of her. And Norah proved grateful,
docile, amenable, doing all that Mrs. Dale told her to do; and from
the first exhibiting an almost superstitious worship of Mr. Dale. For
truly, as he himself had surmised, her little starved breast was
overflowing with gratitude to the man who had saved her father. It
mattered nothing to the children of the mud hovel that their father
was not an exemplary character; they did not want him to be drowned;
and Norah, hearing in extreme youth of the hero who had interposed
between him and such a cruel death, had mentally built a pedestal for
the hero and kept him on top of it ever since.

It happened that about the time when Dale was preparing to pay off
the last instalment of his debt, Mr. Bates unexpectedly applied for
the money. He had never before shown the least anxiety for repayment;
it had always been "Take your time, William. I know I'm in safe
hands," and so forth; but now he said, "If you can make it convenient
to you, William, it would be convenient to me."

"Oh, certainly, Mr. Bates. You shall have it before the end of the
week--and I hope you're going to act on the advice I ventured to offer
last time; that is, put it in one of these Canadian Government
guaranteed stocks."

"I'm sure it was good advice, William--even if I didn't act on it."

"Of course my orig'nal advice was what you ought to have acted on, Mr.
Bates. That is to say, bought an annuity with your entire capital."

"Ah, William, I really couldn't do that;" and Mr. Bates turned away
his eyes, as if unable to support Dale's friendly regard. "Apart from
these annuities for old folk being rather a dog-in-the-manger trick,
I--well, one has one's private difficulties, William. One is not
always a free agent."

The demand for repayment, and with something of evasiveness or
reticence in the old fellow's manner, greatly troubled Dale. Not at
all from selfish motives; but because it confirmed a suspicion that he
had long entertained. Although invisible locally, disgraced and hiding
somewhere at a distance, that blackguardly son was probably still
draining the good old man's resources.

So many things pointed to the correctness of this supposition. On the
interest of the money that Mavis and Dale had together paid him for
the business, he should have been able to live very comfortably;
whereas, in fact, his way of life was mean and sorry. His cottage was
quite a decent dwelling, separated from the road by a nice long strip
of garden, and with a miniature apple orchard behind it; but it showed
all those signs of neglect that had been evident at Vine-Pits when the
Dales first came there. He had no proper servant, but just pigged it
anyhow with the occasional assistance of a woman and her husband. His
clothes, though neatly brushed, were too shabby and overworn for a
person of his position. And he was not a miser; he was a proud
self-respecting man, who naturally would desire to maintain
conventionally adequate state, were he able to do so.

These thoughts worried Dale. He really loved Mr. Bates, thoroughly
appreciated the great dignity and sweetness of his nature, and felt it
to be a monstrous and intolerable thing that the dear old chap at the
age of seventy-three, instead of being allowed to end his days in a
happy, seemly style, should be as if were bled to death by a
conscienceless reprobate. But what could one do? It was like the
cruelties of the woods that one regrets, but can not prevent--the
rabbits chased by the weasels, the pheasants killed by the foxes, the
thrushes destroyed by the hawks.

Any doubt that remained in the mind of Dale was soon dissipated. He
told Mavis how he had seen Bates junior--a seedy, wicked-looking
wretch now--lurking at dusk in the cottage porch, and how next morning
he had ridden over to talk to Mr. Bates about this ill-omened visitor.
Mr. Bates said it was true that his son had been there for two or
three days, but he was now gone; and he declined to discuss the
matter any further. "I can't speak of it, William. I thank you for
meaning kindness, but it's a thing I can't speak of."

Dale also told Mrs. Goudie that Richard Bates had shown himself in the
neighborhood, and asked her if the fact was generally known. He was
aware that Mrs. Goudie had almost as much regard for the old man as he
had himself.

"No, sir," said Mrs. Goudie, "I hadn't 'a' heard of it."

"Then that proves how close he kept. No doubt he came and went as
surreptitiously as he could. Let it be between ourselves, Mrs. Goudie.
Don't spread the tale an inch beyond us three."

"I will not, sir. But, oh, well-a-day, it's a bad bit o' news, sir. I
did hope Mr. Bates was cured o' that runnin' sore."

She had been summoned from the kitchen just before leaving for the
night; and with her shawl over her head, her wrinkled face working,
and her bony hands clasped she stood near the table and waited for Mr.
Dale to give the signal for her to withdraw.

"If you should see him, at any time, let me know, Mrs. Goudie."

"I will, sir."

"I might perhaps do good, if I could get hold of him on the quiet and
address a few words to him."

"I wish you'd break his neck for him, yes, I do, indeed I do. I could
tell you things as 'd make any one say hanging was too good for him."

And, encouraged to talk freely, Mrs. Goudie told Mavis and Dale, what
indeed she had often told them before, of the shocking badness of
Richard Bates and the ugly scenes that had taken place in this very
house; of how he bullied his father to give him money, storming and
raving like a lunatic when resisted; and of how the old fellow alone
by himself had groaned and wept and prayed. Mrs. Goudie had heard him,
after a most dreadful quarrel, praying out loud in his room up-stairs.

"An' believe me, sir, he was a praying for his son all the
time--imploring of the Lord to soften his heart like, and save him
from the hell-fire that his conduct asked for. You know, sir, he's a
very God-fearing man, Mr. Bates."

XVII

The action of the Dales in regard to Norah Veale did not pass
unnoticed. "They do tell me," said humble folk quite far afield, "that
Mr. Dale up to Vine-Pits hev adapted little Norrer Veale same as if
'twas his own darter; and I sin her myself ridin' to her schoolin' in
Mr. Dale's wagon. I allus held that Abe Veale was born a lucky one,
fer nobody ever comes adapting my childer; an' how hey he kep' out o'
jail all his days, if 'tisn't the luck?"

Nearer home, so striking an instance of kindness encouraged the
cottagers to do more freely what already they were doing with
considerable freedom: that is, to regard Vine-Pits Farm, and
especially the parts of it presided over by Mrs. Dale, as the proper
place to go in all moments of embarrassment or tribulation. Thus the
flagged path by the walnut tree, the wooden bench beneath the window,
and the open kitchen door, tended to become a sort of court where
Mavis had to listen to an ever-increasing number of applicants.

It used to be: "Muvver hey sent me to tell you at once, Mum, she isn't
no better but a good deal worse, and the doctor hev ordered her some
strong soup for to nourish her stren'th;" or "Mr. Scull's compliments,
and might he hev the loan of some butter agin;" or "Mrs. Craddock
wishes you, Mum, to read this letter which she hey written out of her
sickbed, and every word of it is no more than the truth, as I can
vouch for. Mr. Craddock in his cups last night punished her pore face
somethin' frightful. She can't go to her work, and there's not so much
as a bite of bread or a sip of milk in the house."

Mrs. Goudie declared that Mavis was often imposed upon; and, although
Mavis herself wished to give wisely rather than blindly, endeavoring
to govern warm impulse with cold reason, certainly very few people
went away from the Vine-Pits back door empty-handed.

The gentry, in their turn, learned the commonly accepted fact that Mr.
and Mrs. Dale were charitably-minded as well as prosperous, and
thought all the better of them, asked for subscriptions, and invited
cooperation in various good works. So that their fame was always
shining with a steadier brightness, and one might say that nowadays
there appeared to be only a single objection occasionally hinted
against this fortunate couple. Certain very old-fashioned people
refrained from patronizing Dale's business or praising his private
life, because of the regrettable and notorious circumstance that he
never went to church.

It could not be denied. During a good many years he had been to one
funeral and two christenings; and, except for these rare occasions,
had entirely abstained from attending any religious ceremonies. And
Mavis too had gradually become slack in the performance of her
spiritual duties. On Sunday mornings there was the dinner to think
about. She still liked to cook the great weekly feast herself.
Moreover, after six days of genuine labor, Sunday's fundamental
purport as a day of rest is apt to overshadow its symbolic aspects as
a day set apart for communion with things impalpable. The Abbey Church
was too far off, even if it had not been out of the question for other
reasons. It required a walk of two fat miles to get to Rodchurch, and
one had to start early if one did not want to arrive there hot and
flustered; again there was the risk of rain overtaking one in one's
best dress. Every fine Sunday she used to talk at breakfast of
intending to go to the morning service; and at dinner of intending to
go to the evening service.

If she carried either the first or the second intention into effect,
it was Dale's custom to go along the road and meet her returning. And
this he now prepared to do, on a warm dry April morning, when
obviously there could be no fear of rain and she had set out in her
best directly after breakfast.

Dale loved the quiet and the freedom from interruption of these Sunday
mornings; he enjoyed the luxury of being able to smoke in the office
while he made up his books, and reveled in the lolling ease of the old
porter's chair as he read Saturday's _Courier_ and the last number of
_Answers_. To-day he was peculiarly conscious of the soothing Sunday
hush that had fallen widely on the land. All the doors and windows
stood open, so that the soft air flowed like water through and through
the house, making it an undivided part of the one great generous
flooding atmosphere, and giving sensations of vast space and free
activities as well as those produced by guarded comfort and motionless
repose. The only sounds that reached him were the droning of bees in a
border of spring flowers, the pawing of a horse in the stables, the
pipe of young voices in the orchard; and all three sounds were
pleasant to his ear. How could they be otherwise; since they spoke of
three such pleasant things as awakening life, rewarded toil, and
contented fatherhood?

When presently he went up-stairs to change his coat, he stood by a
window and looked down at the peaceful little realm that fate had
given to him. The sunlight was glittering on the red tiles of the
clustered roofs, the brown thatch of the ricks, and the white
cobblestones of a corner of the yard; and the blossom of pears and
apples was pink and white, as if a light shower of colored snow had
just fallen on the still leafless trees. Beneath the orchard branches
he could see his children and Norah playing among the daffodils that
grew wild in the grass; the light all about them was faintly blue and
unceasingly tremulous and he stood watching, listening, smiling,
thinking.

He observed the gracefulness and slimness of his daughter's stockinged
legs, and thought what a real little man his son seemed already, so
sturdy on his pins. In his blue overalls he looked like a miniature
ploughman in a smock-frock. Dale laughed when Billy scampered away
resolutely, and Norah had to run to catch him.

"Le' me go," roared Bill.

"Na, na," said Norah, "you mustn't go brevetin' about so far. Bide wi'
sister and me, an' chain the daffies."

And Dale noticed the musical note in Norah's voice, almost like a wild
bird singing. It was a pleasure to him to see the little maid making
herself so useful; and it corroborated what Mavis had told him about
her being splendid in taking care of the chicks, as well as keeping
them happy and amused.

He put on his black coat, fetched out a pair of brown dogskin gloves,
and then, failing to find the silk hat, came to the top of the
staircase and shouted for Mary.

"My hat, Mary. Where in the name of reason is my hat?"

His shouts broke the Sunday silence, filled the house with noise, went
rolling through the open windows in swift vibrations. Norah Veale
under the blossoming apple tree caught up the cry as though she had
been an echo, and ran with the children after her.

"Mary, the master's hat. Mary, Mary! Master wants his hat."

Then she appeared at the foot of the stairs, with an anxious excited
face and speaking breathlessly.

"Mary can't leave th' Yorkshire pudden, sir; but she says she saw Mrs.
Dale with th' hat in her hand after you wore it on Wednesday to
Manninglea."

"Yes, but where is it _now_, Norah?"

"I do think Mrs. Dale must have put it in the cupboard under the
stairs to get it safe out of Billy's way."

And sure enough there the hat was. Both children pressed beside Norah
to peep in with her when she opened the cupboard door. This hall
cupboard was the most sacred and awe-inspiring receptacle in the whole
house, because here were kept Dale's fireman's outfit always ready and
handy to be snatched out at a moment's notice. Rachel gazed
delightedly at the blue coat hanging extended, with the webbed steel
on the shoulder-straps, at the helmet above, the great boots beneath,
and the shining ax that dangled near an empty sleeve; but the sight
was almost too tremendous for Billy. His lively young imagination
could too readily inflate this shell of apparel with ogreish flesh and
bone waiting to pounce on small intruders, and he clung rather
timorously to Norah's skirt.

"Daddy," said Rachel, "I wis' you'd wear your helmet to-day."

"Oh, no, lassie, that wouldn't be seemly. This is more the thing for
Sunday. Thank you, Norah." And having taken the silk hat, he laid his
hand lightly on Norah's wavy black hair, and spoke to her very kindly.
"Nothing like thought, Norah. I believe you've got a good little
thinking-box under all this pretty hair, and you can't use it too
much, my dear--specially so long as you're thinking about others."

Norah, with her blue eyes fixed on the venerated master's face, seemed
to tremble joyously under the caress and the compliment. She and the
children came out into the front garden and stood at the gate to watch
Dale march away down the white road. He looked grandly stiff, black
and large, in his ceremonious costume--a daddy and a master to be
proud of.

He went only half-way to Rodchurch, and then sitting on a gate
opposite the Baptist chapel indulged himself with another pipe. He
made his halt here because several times when he had gone farther he
had found Mavis accompanied by old Rodchurch acquaintances who had
volunteered to escort her for a portion of the homeward journey, and
he felt no inclination for this sort of chance society.

Not a human being, not even the smallest sign of a man's habitation,
was in sight; not a movement of bird or beast could be perceived in
the stretching expanse of flat fields, across which huge cloud shadows
passed slowly; the broad white road on either hand seemed to lead from
nowhere to nowhere, and Dale, meditatively puffing out his tobacco
smoke and watching it rise and vanish, had that sense of deep and
almost solemn restfulness which comes whenever we realize that for any
reason we are cut off from the possibility of communication with our
kind. For a few moments he felt as a man feels all alone at the summit
of a mountain, in the depths of an untrodden forest, on the limitless
surface of a calm ocean. Yet, as he knew, there were men quite near to
him. Across the road, not fifty yards away, the brick walls of the
Baptist Chapel were hiding many men and women. Perhaps it was the
complete isolation of this ugly building, the house of prayer pushed
away into the desert far from all houses of laughter and talk, that
had induced the idea of isolation in himself.

If he listened, he could hear sounds made by men. Through the chapel
windows there came a continuous murmur, like the buzzing of a monster
bee under the dome of a glass hive--the voice of the pastor preaching
his sermon. Then all at once came loud music, shuffling of seats,
scraping of chairs; and a voluminous song poured out and upward in the
silent air. Dale idly thought of this chorus as resembling the smoke
from the pipe--something that went up a little way and faded long
before it reached the sky.

The music ceased. The congregation were leaving the chapel. Dale got
off the gate, put his pipe in his pocket, and watched the humble
worshipers as they came toward him. He knew them nearly all, and
gravely returned their grave salutations as they passed by. They were
maid-servants and men-servants from Rodchurch, old people and quite
young people, a few laborers and cottage-women; and they all walked
slowly, not at first talking to one another, but smiling with
introspective vagueness. Dale observed their decent costume, their
sober deportment, and leisurely gait, observed also a striking
similarity in the expression of all the faces. They were like people
who unwillingly awake and struggle to recall every detail of the dream
they are being forced to relinquish. Observing them thus, one could
not fail to understand that, at this moment at least, they all firmly
believed that their just-finished song had been heard a very, very
long way up.

The road was empty again when the pastor came out and locked the
chapel door behind him. He spoke to Dale with a gentle cheerfulness.

"Good day, friend Dale."

Dale, not too well pleased with this easy and familiar mode of
address, replied stiffly.

"I wish you good day, Mr. Osborn."

"Good day. God's day. That's what it meant in the beginning, Mr.
Dale."

And Dale, resuming his seat on the gate, watched Mr. Osborn go
plodding away toward Vine-Pits and the Cross Roads. This pastor, who
had succeeded old Melling a few years ago, was a short, bearded man of
sixty, and he lived in lodgings on the outskirts of Rodchurch.
Evidently he was not going home to dinner. Perhaps he had some sick
person to visit, and he might get a snack at the Barradine Arms or
one of the cottages. It was said that his father had been a rich
linen-draper in some North of England town; and that he himself would
have inherited this flourishing business and its accumulated wealth,
if he had not insisted on joining the ministry. But he threw up all to
preach the Gospel. Dale thought of the nature of the faith that would
make a man go and do a thing like that. It must be unquestioning,
undoubting; a conviction that amounted to certainty.

He did not see Mavis approaching. She called to him from a distance,
and he sprang off the gate and hurried to meet her. Instinctively, as
he drew near, he looked into her face, searching for the expression
that he had noticed just now in those other faces. It was not there.
She was hot and red after her walk; her eyes were full of life and
gaiety; she seemed a fine, broad-blown, well-dressed dame who might
have been returning from market instead of from church, and her first
words spoke of practical affairs.

"Holly Lodge is let again, Will, and Mr. Allen says the new gentleman
keeps horses--because he's having the stables painted. You ought to
send a circular at once, and make a call without delay."

Dale took his pipe out of his pocket, and spoke in an absent tone.

"I've been thinking what a rum world it is, Mav."

"Yes, but a very nice world, Will;" and she slipped her arm in his, as
they walked on together. "No, not another pipe. Don't take the edge
off your appetite with any more smoking. There's good roast beef and
Yorkshire pudding waiting for you. That is, if Mary hasn't made a mess
of everything."

XVIII

On the evening of the next Sunday Dale was quietly going out of the
house when Mavis offered to accompany him.

"Off for a stroll, Will? If you can wait ten minutes, I'll come with
you."

But he excused himself from waiting, and further confessed that he
preferred to be alone. He said he was in a thoughtful rather than a
talkative mood to-night.

"You understand, old girl?"

"Yes, dear, I understand. You want to put on your considering cap
about something."

"That's just it, Mav. The considering cap. Ta-ta."

Outside in the roadway Mr. Creech, a farmer, hindered him for a few
minutes. Between him and Mr. Creech there were certain business
arrangements now under negotiation, and it was impossible to avoid
speaking of them. Dale, however, cut their chat as short as possible,
and directly he had shaken off Mr. Creech he walked away briskly
toward Rodchurch.

He had intended to arrive at the Baptist Chapel before the evening
service began, but now he was late. The congregation were all on their
knees, and the pastor, standing in his desk or pulpit above a raised
platform, had begun to pray aloud. Dale paused just inside the door,
looking at his strange surroundings, and feeling the awkwardness of a
person who enters a place that he has never seen before, and finds
himself among a lot of people who have their own customs and usages,
all of which are unknown to him. Then he noticed that a man was
smiling at him and beckoning, and he bowed gravely and followed the
hand. He was led up the little building to some empty chairs on a
level with the platform, at right angles to the rows of benches, and
close to a harmonium. Mr. Osborn, the pastor, had stopped praying, and
he did not go on again until Dale was seated. No one else had looked
up or seemed to be aware of the interruption caused by his entrance.

He assumed a duly reverent attitude, not kneeling, but bending his
body forward, and observed everything with great interest. There were
many differences between the arrangements of this chapel and those of
an ordinary church. The absence of an altar struck him as very
remarkable. The large platform, with its balustrade and central perch,
seemed to be altar, pulpit, and lectern all rolled into one--and choir
too, since it was occupied by several men and a dozen girls and young
women, who were all now on their knees while Mr. Osborn, looking very
odd in purely civilian clothes, prayed loudly over their heads.

He glanced at the high bare walls and narrow windows, and observed
that, except for some stenciled texts, there was not the slightest
attempt at decoration. Outside, the light was rapidly waning, and
inside the building the general tone had a grayness and dimness that
obliterated all the bright colors of the girls' dresses and hats. The
circumstance that not a single face was visible produced a curious
impression on one's mind. It made Dale feel for a moment as though he
were improperly prying, behind people's backs, at matters that did not
in the least concern him; and next moment he thought that all the gray
stooping forms were exactly like those of ghosts. Then, in another
moment, noticing with what rigid immobility they held themselves, he
thought of them as being dead and waiting for some tremendous signal
that should bring them to life again.

"Now," said Mr. Osborn, "let us praise God by singing the hundred and
twenty-sixth hymn."

Then all the faces showed. It was like a flash of pallid light running
to and fro along the benches as everybody changed the kneeling to the
sitting posture; and Dale immediately felt that he had been placed in
an uncomfortably conspicuous position. Far from being situated so that
he could pry on the private affairs of others, he was where everybody
could study him. He was alone, opposite to the entire crowd, instead
of being comfortably absorbed in its mass.

"Oh, thank you. Much obliged."

Mr. Osborn, speaking from the pulpit, had said something to one of his
young women, and she was leaning over the balustrade, smilingly
offering Dale an open hymn-book.

"I am afraid," she said, "that it's very small print; but I dare say
you have good eyes."

She spoke in the most friendly natural manner, exactly as one speaks
to a visitor when one is anxious to make him feel welcome and at home.
Dale, startled by this style of address in such a place, made a
dignified bow.

"Give him this," said Mr. Osborn, handing a book out of the pulpit.
"It's a larger character--'long primer,' as I believe the printers
call it. We'll have the lamps directly; but we are all of us rather
partial to blind man's holiday--not to mention that oil is oil, and
that Brother Spiers doesn't give it away. We know he couldn't afford
to do that. But there it is--Take care of the pence."

To Dale's astonishment, he heard a distinct chuckle here and there
among the congregation. Then the same young woman, having found the
correct page, handed him the large-type book. Then the man at the
harmonium struck up, and the whole congregation burst into song.

They sang with a fervent strength that he had never heard equaled. For
a moment the powerful chorus seemed to shake the walls, to fill every
cubic foot of air that the building contained, and then to go straight
up, splitting the ugly roof, and out into the sky. Otherwise this hymn
would have left one no space to breathe in. Dale felt a sudden rush of
blood to the head, as if the pressure of vocal sound were about to
produce suffocation; and at the same time he had the fantastic but
almost irresistible idea that the whole congregation were singing
solely at him, that they and their pastor had together planned to set
him alone in this high place where he must bear the full brunt of the
hymn while they all watched its effect upon him, and that the hymn
itself had been specially and artfully chosen with a view to him and
to nobody else.

      "Hail, sov'reign love, that first began
      The scheme to rescue fallen man!
      Hail, matchless, free, eternal grace,
      That gave my soul a hiding-place."

With his face turned as much as possible from the singers, he stood
very stiff and erect, staring at the printed page. Loudly as they had
sung the first verse they seemed to sing the second verse more loudly.

      "Against the God that rules the sky,
      I fought with hand uplifted high;
      Despised His rich abounding grace,
      Too proud to seek a hiding-place."

Dale braced himself, squared his shoulders and stood more erect than
ever as they struck into the third verse.

They sang louder than before: it seemed to him that they were
screaming.

      "But thus th' eternal counsel ran,
      '_Almighty_ love, arrest that man!'"

Dale closed the hymn-book, held it behind his back, and stared at the
cross-beams of the roof until the hymn was over.

After the hymn Mr. Osborn read a couple of chapters from the Bible,
and Dale, seated again, understood how utterly unfounded had been his
recent notion that these people were devoting any particular attention
to him. He looked at them carefully. Obviously they had not a thought
of him. The eyes of those near to him and far from him were alike
fixed upon the pastor's face.

But as soon as they sang again he experienced the same sensations
again, felt a conviction that the hymn was aimed directly at him.

      "Lord, when Thy Spirit deigns to show
          The badness of our hearts,
      Astonished at the amazing view,
          The Soul with horror starts.

      "Our staggering faith gives way to doubt,
          Our courage yields to fear;
      Shocked at the sight, we straight cry out,
          'Can ever God dwell here?'

      "None less than God's Almighty Son
          Can move such loads of sin;
      The water from his side must run,
          To wash this dungeon clean."

"Now, I think," said Mr. Osborn, "it is fairly lighting-up time, and
that no one can accuse us of being extravagant if we call for the
match-boxes. Brother Maghull, please get to work. And, yes, you too,
Brother Hartley, if you will. You're always a dab at regulating them."

Then the lamps were lighted; two or three men going round to do the
work, the congregation generally assisting as much as they were able,
while the pastor, watching all operations, made genial comments.

"Thank you. Now we begin to see who's who, and what's what. I say,
that's on the smoke, isn't it? I seem to smell something, or is it
imagination? If the wicks are as badly trimmed as they were three
Sundays ago, I shall be tempted to copy the procedure of the House of
Commons, and _name_ a member." Then he smiled. "Yes, I shall name a
certain young sister who must have turned clumsy-fingered because she
was thinking of her fal-lals and her chignon, or her new hat, when
she ought to have been thinking of her duty to our lamps."

A ripple of gentle laughter, like a lightly dancing wave on a deep
calm sea, passed from the platform to the outer door; the lamplighters
went back to their seats; and the pastor with a change of voice said
solemnly: "Friends, let us pray."

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

When the time came for Dale to be baptized Mr. Osborn offered to
perform the ceremony at dawn in the stream that runs through Hadleigh
Wood; but Dale refused the offer. He said he would much prefer to have
it done within four walls, in the evening, at what he supposed to be
the usual place, the chapel. He added an expression of the hope that
there would not be many people there.

"There would only be a few of ourselves, true-hearted ones, in either
event," said Mr. Osborn; "and out of doors is not unusual. I did it
that way for George Hitching a year ago. We took him down to Kib Pool,
and waited till the sun rose. Then in he went."

And without urging Dale to change his mind, Mr. Osborn in a few words
touched off the beauty of this baptismal scene. He described how the
dew was like diamonds on the grass, and they stood all among the
shadows, and the rising sun seemed to touch George Hitching's head
before it touched anything else. "Then we and the birds began to sing
together. I promise you it was uncommonly pretty, as well as very
moving."

Nevertheless, Dale remained quite firm. That idea of Hadleigh Wood at
dawn held no attraction for him.

So far he had said nothing of all this to Mavis, but now one night
after supper he broached the subject. He had laid down his knife and
fork, and she had brought him the tobacco jar. He sat filling his pipe
slowly, and then instead of lighting it he put it meditatively aside.

"Mavis, something has happened which will probably surprise you. I
have found religion again."

"Oh, Will, I am glad."

Mavis was delighted; but when he told her that he was about to join
the Baptists she did not feel so well pleased. She scarcely knew what
to say. Why should he want to take the creed of dissenters, of quite
common people? It was all very well for farm-laborers, sempstresses,
and servants; but it did not seem good enough for her Will. Socially
it was without doubt a retrograde step; and nowadays, when he got on
capitally with the best of the gentlefolk, when they were all jolly
and nice to him, it did seem a pity to go and mix himself up with a
pack of ignorant underlings. The gentry, who of course all belonged to
the Church of England, would not like it any better than she herself.

Moreover, that notion of total immersion was extremely repugnant to
her. A grown-up person, an important person, a member of the District
Council, splashing about in a tank! She asked him many questions
concerning the baptism itself, and he told her all that he knew about
it. He did not tell her, however, of Mr. Osborn's proposal that the
immersion should occur in the wood-stream.

"What took your fancy, Will dear, with Mr. Osborn's teaching more than
anybody else's?"

Then he told her all that Mr. Osborn had said of the fatherly
attributes of God, of the fact that men were veritably His children,
and that for communion with God one must be as a child approaching a
father.

"Yes, dear, I'm sure that's true. But Mr. Norton would say just the
same."

"He never _has_ said it, Mav. That is, I never heard him say it."

"Perhaps in those days you didn't note his words. I'm not arguing,
dear. You must do whatever you judge right, and it will be right for
me--if once you've done it. Only I do assure you what you repeated is
altogether Church of England; and I feel certain Mr. Norton must have
said it times and often."

"Then perhaps he hasn't said it quite in the same way."