"My daughter, let us humble ourselves before G.o.d, and pray that He may reveal the path of duty. Come."
The superior rose, took her crozier in her hand, and walked out of the room. The sister followed her. They pa.s.sed through the sacristy into the empty church.
It was evening. The glow of a wintery sunset came through the windows to the west, and fell in warm gules on the altar. There was the hush of the world"s awe here as day swooned into night. Without these walls were turmoil and strife. Within was the balm of rest--the rest that lies in the heart of the cyclone.
And the good mother and the sister went down on their knees together, and prayed for light and guidance. The mother rose, but the sister knelt on; darkness fell, and she was still kneeling, and when the east was dabbled with the dawn, the gray light fell on her bowed head and uplifted hands.
_BOOK IV._
THE WATERS OF MARAH ARE BITTER.
CHAPTER I.
IN THE YEAR 1877.
The dale lay green in the morning sunlight; the river that ran through its lowest bed sparkled with purple and amber; the leaves prattled low in the light breeze that souched through the rushes and the long gra.s.s; the hills rose sheer and white to the smooth blue lake of the sky, where only one fleecy cloud floated languidly across from peak to peak. Out of unseen places came the bleating of sheep and the rumble of distant cataracts, and above the dull thud of tumbling waters far away was the thin caroling of birds overhead.
But the air was alive with yet sweeter sounds. On the breast of the fell that lies over against Cat Bells a procession of children walked, and sung, and chattered, and laughed. It was St. Peter"s Day, and they were rush-bearing: little ones of all ages, from the comely girl of fourteen, just ripening into maidenhood, who walked last, to the sweet boy of four in the pinafore braided with epaulets, who strode along gallantly in front. Most of the little hands carried rushes, but some were filled with ferns, and mosses, and flowers. They had a.s.sembled at the school-house, and now, on their way to the church, they were making the circuit of the dale.
They pa.s.sed over the road that crosses the river at the head of Newlands, and turned down into the path that follows the bed of the valley. At that angle there stands a little group of cottages deliciously cool in their white-wash, nestling together under the heavy purple crag from which the waters of a ghyll fall into a deep basin that reaches to their walls. The last of the group is a cottage with its end to the road, and its open porch facing a garden shaped like a wedge. As the children pa.s.sed this house an old man, gray and thin and much bent, stood by the gate, leaning on a staff. A colly, with the sheep-dog"s wooden bar suspended from its s.h.a.ggy neck, lay at his feet. The hum of voices brought a young woman into the porch. She was bareheaded and wore a light print gown. Her face was pale and marked with lines. She walked cautiously, stretching one hand before her with an uncertain motion, and grasping a trailing tendril of honeysuckle that swept downward from the roof. Her eyes, which were partly inclined upward and partly turned toward the procession, had a vague light in their bleached pupils. She was blind. At her side, and tugging at her other hand, was a child of a year and a half--a chubby, sunny little fellow with ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, and fair curly hair.
Prattling, laughing, singing s.n.a.t.c.hes, and waving their rushes and ferns above their happy, thoughtless heads, the children rattled past. When they were gone the air was empty, as it is when the lark stops in its song.
The church of Newlands stands in the heart of the valley, half hidden by a clump of trees. By the lych-gate Parson Christian stood that morning, aged a little, the snow a thought thicker on his bushy hair, the face mellower, the liquid eyes full of the sunlight behind which lies the shower. Greta stood beside him; quieter of manner than in the old days, a deeper thoughtfulness in her face, her blue eyes more grave and less restless, her fair hair no longer falling in waves behind her, but gathered up into a demure knot under her hat.
"Here they come, bless their innocent hearts!" said Parson Christian, and at that moment the children turned an angle of the road.
The pink and white of their frocks and pinafores were all but hidden by the little forest of green that they carried before and above them.
""Till Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane," muttered Greta, smiling.
When the rush-bearers came up to the front of the church, the lych-gate was thrown open and they filed through.
"How tired he looks, the brave little boy!" said Greta, picking up the foremost of the company, the tiny man in the epaulets, now covered with the dust of the roads.
"The little ones first, and you great girls afterward," said the parson.
"Those with flowers go up to the communion and lay them on the form, and those with mosses put them on the font, and those with rushes and ferns begin under the pulpit and come down the aisle to the porch."
The stalwart little tramp in Greta"s arms wriggled his way to the ground. He had mosses in his hands and must go first. Then the children trooped into the church, and in an instant the rude old place was alive with the buzz of prattling tongues.
The floor covered many a tomb. Graven on the plain slabs that formed the pathway down the middle of the church were the names of the men and women who had lived and died in the dale generations gone by. In their own day they were children themselves; and now other children--their own children"s children"s children--with never a thought about what lay beneath, with only love in their eyes, and laughter on their lips, and life in their limbs--were strewing rushes down the path above them.
In ten minutes there was not an inch of the flagged aisle visible. All was green from the communion to the porch. Here and there an adventurous lad, turning to account the skill at climbing acquired at birds"-nesting, had clambered over the pews to the rude cross-trees, and hung great bunches of rushes from the roof.
"Now, children, let us sing," said the parson, and taking up the accordion, he started a hymn.
The leaded windows of the old church stood open, and the sweet young voices floated away, and far away, over the uplands and the dale. And the birds still sung in the blue sky, and the ghylls still rumbled in the distance, and the light wind still souched through the long gra.s.s, and the morning sunlight shone over all.
There was a cloud of dust on the road, and presently there came trooping down from the village a company of men, surrounded by a whole circuit of dogs. Snarls, and yaps, and yelps, and squawks, and guffaws, and sometimes the cachinnation and crow of c.o.c.ks, broke upon the clear air.
The roystering set would be as many as a dozen, and all were more or less drunk. First came John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, in his shirt-sleeves, with his leathern ap.r.o.n wrapped in a knot about his waist, and a silver and black game-c.o.c.k imprisoned under his arm. Lang Geordie Moore, his young helper, carried another fowl. d.i.c.k o" the Syke, the miller, in a brown coat whitened with flour, walked abreast of Geordie and tickled the gills of the fowl with a straw. Job Sheepshanks, the letter-cutter, carried a pot of pitch and a brush, and little Tom o"
Dint hobbled along with a handful of iron files. Behind these came the landlord of the Flying Horse, with a basket over one arm, from which peeped the corks of many bottles, and Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, carried a wicker cage, in which sat a red bantam-c.o.c.k with spurs that glittered in the light.
There was one other man who walked with the company, and he was the soul of the noisy crew; his voice was the loudest, his laugh the longest, and half of all that was said was addressed to him. He was a l.u.s.ty man with a florid face; he wore a suit of tweeds plaided in wide stripes of buff and black.
It was Paul Drayton.
"Burn my body, and what"s on now?" he said, as the gang reached the church.
"Rush-bearing, I reckon," answered Tom o" Dint.
"And what"s rush-bearing?"
"You know, Mister Paul," said the postman, "rush-bearing--the barns rush-bearing--St. Peter"s Day, you know."
"Oh, ay, I know--rush-bearing. Let me see, ain"t it once a year?"
"What, man, but you mind the days when you were a bit boy and went a-rushing yersel"?" said the blacksmith.
"Coorse, coorse, oh, ay, I ain"t forgotten them days. Let me see, it"s a kind of a harvest-home, ain"t it?"
"Nowt o" the sort," said d.i.c.k, the miller, testily. "Your memory"s failing fast, Mister Ritson."
"And that"s true, old fence. I"ll never be the same man again after that brain fever I had up in London--not in the head-piece, you know."
The group of men and dogs had drawn up in front of the church just as Brother Peter crossed the church-yard to the porch, carrying a red paper in his hand.
"Who"s that--the Methodee man?"
"It"s the Methodee, for sure," said the blacksmith.
"Ey, it"s the parson"s Peter," added the postman, "and yon paper is a telegraph--it"s like he"s takin" it to somebody."
"Hold hard, my boys," said Drayton; and, leaving his cronies he strode through the lych-gate and down the path, the dogs yapping around him.
Brother Peter had drawn up at the door of the porch; the children were still singing.
"If that telegram is for my wife, you may hand it over to me," said Drayton, and reached out his hand to take it.
Brother Peter drew back.
"It"ll be all right, old fellow--I"ll see she gets it."