Then, even her anger failed before the knowledge that Morris Pugh stood at the door listening.
With a m.u.f.fled cry Mervyn turned and flung himself down on the sofa, his face crushed into the hard horsehair cushions; vaguely he felt their hardness to be a shelter.
Myfanwy, looking as if she could have killed Alicia, moved to him and laid her hand softly, protectingly on his shoulder.
"Do not fret, Mervyn," she said coldly, "it will soon be over."
So for a s.p.a.ce there was silence. Then Morris Pugh braced himself to the task which was his, as pastor of these wandering sheep.
"As you stand before your Maker, Alicia Edwards," he said, bringing his hand down on the table to grip it with clenched nervous force, "is this accusation true?"
Her answer was a sudden burst of tears, "Don"t--don"t ask me," she sobbed.
"Is it true?"
His voice insistent, almost cold in its very insistence, would take no denial.
"Yes!" The a.s.sent could scarcely be heard for the sobs.
Morris Pugh gave a sigh. It was almost as if all that was human in him left his body with that long, laboured breath, for an instant afterwards he was the accuser, the judge.
"And you--Mervyn Pugh--G.o.d forgive you for bearing my father"s honoured name--have done this wrong without repentance. You have stood by your child"s grave and said never a word--never a word even to me, your spiritual guide, although I asked you, remember that! I asked you; and you have stood before the Lord all these long months, eating at His Table, drinking of His Blood, with this sin lying unconfessed in your heart! And you and the partner of your sin have stood together before the Great White Throne, your voices mingling in G.o.d"s praise while your bodies----"
Mervyn started to his feet.
"Morris! Morris! before Heaven, that is not true--no! I am not so bad as that!"
Checked in the full flow of his superhuman blame, the minister paused, and something of the man came back to him.
"I will say nothing of myself," he went on, "of--of the shame. But have you any excuse? Can you show just cause why I should not deal with you, alas!--a thousand times alas!--my brother--as a minister of G.o.d must deal with the unrepentant sinner, with the hypocrite, with the man who has defiled the innermost sanctuary of G.o.d"s temple?"
There was silence. Only round Myfanwy"s full lips showed a certain impatience, a weariness for this necessary fuss to subside, and leave room for common sense.
"So you have no excuse. Then prepare for the condemnation of the congregation. Prepare to be humbled to the dust before the Lord."
Myfanwy shifted impatiently. "What good will that do? It will only humble the congregation," came her clear, full voice; "It will only be a paragraph in the papers."
Morris Pugh winced. "I thought of that before," he muttered. "G.o.d forgive me, I thought of it before--too much, perhaps. No!" he added firmly, "the shame must be faced! Yes, Mervyn, it must be faced, even if our mother----"
And then, with a cry, Morris Pugh himself was on his knees by the table, his hands clutching at its rim, his head between them sinking to the very dust.
"Oh, G.o.d forgive him! Oh G.o.d, for my sake, for her sake, forgive him!--for the sake of her many prayers and tears, forgive him!"
Mervyn stood pale as death. Alicia, her little part long since played, sobbed softly in a corner; only Myfanwy looked at them all three almost with distaste.
"Mervyn is very sorry, I am sure of that--it could not have been worth all this--this fuss," she said hardly; "but why should shame be faced when--when every one is dead and buried? Mervyn can go away."
"The living and the dead are one, woman, in the sight of the Lord!"
replied Morris, his righteous wrath re-aroused by her words. "Mervyn may go if he likes, but I, his brother, will denounce him before the congregation."
His lips, his hands, were trembling, but his voice was firm.
Mervyn sat down on the sofa again and covered his handsome face with his hands. His mind was in a whirl, its chief thought being abject remorse for his brother"s sake--for his mother"s.
"It is best so, Myfanwy," he muttered hoa.r.s.ely; "Go--it--it is all I can do for--for them now."
She took up her cloak and hat without a word. There was no use in trying to persuade people when they were so exalted.
"Yes, I will go," she said, "but you are very silly, Mervyn. Come, Alicia! You have done enough mischief for one day, I am sure."
Alicia followed her meekly, feeling not in the least ashamed of the role she had played; for these violent emotions were to her part of the religious stock-in-trade. By and by they would quiet down, Mervyn would make a n.o.ble confession, and eventually he would rise superior to all these troubles; above all, rise superior to Myfanwy.
The girls did not say one word to each other as they went back to the village together. Any one meeting them might have judged them the best of friends; only as Myfanwy branched off to the smith"s cottage she paused a moment to say with a smile--
"Some day I will pay you out for this, Alicia Edwards--so, mark my words, you will pay!"
"May you be forgiven, Myfanwy Jones," retorted Alicia with spirit; "I have but done my duty."
Left alone by themselves the brothers reverted of necessity to more humble, more homely relations. The righteous wrath gave place to real grief, the blank, hopeless remorse to real regret.
By the time that the housekeeper came in to clear away the almost untouched tea, they had both accepted the position in so far as it could be accepted. There was nothing for it but to face this public confession, and by so doing make what reparation could be thus tardily made. Mervyn, indeed, was by far the more cheerful when the time came to say good-night. He had barely had time to think; the relief of having touched bottom, as it were, was great; he felt, in fact, as a repentant criminal might do on his last night on earth, as if the morrow which was to bring expiation must also bring pardon and peace.
They had spent the evening together on the highest possible plane of religious exaltation, and it was Mervyn who gripped his brother"s hand and said "Courage!" out of the fulness of his emotion. His face looked almost saintly as he said it.
An hour later, indeed, when Morris--who had lingered near the dying fire, beset, now he was alone, by almost unbearable grief--looked in to see if his brother were asleep, he found him lying like a child, smiling in his dreams.
Morris gave a faint sob, and Mervyn stirred in his sleep. "Mother," he said hurriedly, softly--"Mother, dear, dear mother--I must."
Instinctively Morris blew out the light he held, lest it might wake the dreamer from his dream; so in the moonlight he stood, torn asunder by love and grief, watching the dim peaceful form upon the bed.
Suddenly he turned and, closing the door silently behind him, went downstairs once more. Outside the narrow walls of the house, the moonlight slumbered peacefully upon the everlasting hills. Surely somewhere beyond the narrow walls of this world"s judgment slept eternal Peace.
An instant afterwards the front door closed softly, and Morris Pugh, leaving his brother asleep, had gone to find wisdom where he had often sought it of late in the temple not made with hands.
It must have been an hour later that Mervyn woke, roused by a pebble at his window. He sat up with blurred consciousness, wondering vaguely what it was, until another pebble struck the pane, and a voice cried in a soft whisper, "Mervyn!"
Myfanwy! by all that was strange! Then in a second the whole memory of what had happened came back to him; but it came back to find him, as it were, a giant refreshed with sleep. None of us are really the same for two consecutive hours, and many a man will brave that in the morning, from which he would shrink at night. And there, as he peered through the curtain, was Myfanwy, sure enough, beckoning to him to come down. A sight sufficient to bring combativeness to any young blood, even without those two hours of blessed rest in sleep.
"Mervyn," she said, when five minutes after, their lips met in a long kiss; "I have come for you. See how I love you, to do this thing which might ruin any poor girl"s reputation. You have done wrong, my poor boy, very wrong; but so have many of the others who are so saintly.
And why should you stay to be prayed over by them--by Alicia Edwards too! I will not have it! There will be no more _me_ if you stop, Mervyn. Come now with me to Blackborough, the waggonette is waiting up the road at the bridge; we can catch the three o"clock mail at Llanilo. If you come, Mervyn, I will marry you in three days at the registrar"s office."
"But," he gasped, half-drunk with her kisses, half-stunned by his remembrances.
She stamped her foot. "You must decide. I cannot stop here all night, some one may come. Oh! Mervyn! Mervyn! do you not feel that you were not made for this narrow life? You--you are no worse than others, and you have brains. You can make money if you will in the world, but not here."
Those two hours of blessed sleep! How they had obliterated that stress of over-wrought emotion, and how his young blood leapt up in a.s.sent.
But Morris----