A Charming Fellow Volume Ii Part 17

"Oh, I thought my mother mentioned that you were a good deal at the Bodkins."

"Yes; I go to see Miss Minnie sometimes. They are all very good to me."

"And my mother says, too, that you are growing quite a blue-stocking!

You have lessons in French, and music, and I don't know what besides."

"Father can afford to have me taught now, and so I have begun to learn a few of the things that girls are taught when they are little children, if they happen to be the children of gentlefolks," answered Rhoda, with considerable spirit.

"I'm sure there is no reason why you should not learn them."

"I hope not. But, of course, I am clumsy, and shall never succeed so well as if I had begun earlier. I am getting very old, you know!"

"Oh, very old, indeed! Your birthday, I remember, falls----" he checked himself with a sudden recollection of the last birthday he had spent with Rhoda, and of the bunch of late roses he had been at the pains to procure for her on that occasion from the gardener at Pudcombe Hall.

And, on the whole, he felt positively relieved when Slater came to announce, with her chronic air of resentful gentility, that "Miss Maxfield's young woman was waiting for her in the hall."

"And are you off too, mother?" he asked.

"Yes, my dear Algernon. I am going to drive home with Rhoda."

"Drive! Oh, so you are indulging in the extravagance of a fly, madam! I am glad of it, though you did give me a lecture on the subject of economy only last week!"

"You know that I always do, and always did, disapprove of extravagance, Algernon. A genteel economy is compatible with the highest breeding.

But--the fact is, that Rhoda has a coach to go home in, and I'm about to take advantage of it."

There was something in the situation which Algernon felt to be embarra.s.sing, as he gave his arm to his mother to lead her to the carriage. But Mrs. Errington had at least one quality of a great lady--she was not easily disconcerted. She marched majestically down the garden path, entered the vehicle which old Max's money was to pay for, with an air of proprietorship, and invited Rhoda to take her place beside her with a most condescending wave of the hand.

"You must come again soon," Castalia had said to her new acquaintance when they bade each other "Good night."

But Algernon did not support his wife's invitation by a single word, though he smiled very persistently as he stood bare-headed in the moonlight, watching his mother and Rhoda drive away.

CHAPTER XIII.

The accounts which had reached Whitford from Wales, of the wonderful effects produced by David Powell's preaching there, sufficed to cause a good deal of excitement among the lower cla.s.ses in the little town, when it was reported that Powell would revisit it, and would preach on Whit Meadow, and also in the room used by the "Ranters," in Lady Lane.

The Wesleyan Methodists in Whitford now felt themselves at liberty to allow their smouldering animosity against Powell to break forth openly, for he had seceded from the Society. Some said he had been expelled from it, but this was not true, although there was little doubt that, at the next Conference, his conduct and doctrine would have been severely reprehended; and, probably, he would have been required publicly to recant them on pain of expulsion. Should this be the case, those who knew David Powell had little difficulty in prophesying the issue.

However, all speculations as to his probable behaviour under the reproof of Conference were rendered vain by the preacher's voluntarily withdrawing himself from the "bonds of the Society," as he phrased it.

Then broke forth the hostile sentiments of the Whitford Wesleyans against this rash and innovating preacher. Unfavourable opinions of him, which had been concealed, or only dimly expressed, were now declared openly. He was an Antinomian; he had fallen away from the doctrines of a.s.surance and Christian Perfection; he had brought scandal on large bodies of sober, serious persons, by encouraging wild and extravagant manifestations among his hearers; his exhortations were calculated to do harm, inasmuch as he preached a doctrine of asceticism and self-renunciation, which, if followed, would have the most inconvenient consequences. That some of these accusations--as, for example, that of Antinomianism, and that of too extreme self-mortification--were somewhat incompatible with each other, was no impediment to their being heaped simultaneously on David Powell. The strongest disapprobation of his sayings and doings was expressed by that select body of citizens who attended at the little Wesleyan chapel. And yet there was, perhaps, less bitterness in this open opposition to him than had been felt towards him during the last days of his ministration in Whitford. So long as David Powell was their preacher, approved--or, at least, not disapproved--by Conference, a struggle went on in some minds to reconcile his teaching with their practice, which was an irritating and unsatisfactory state of things, since the struggle in most cases was not so much to modify their practice, in order to bring it into harmony with his precepts, as ingeniously to interpret his precepts so that they should not too flagrantly accuse their practice. But now that it was competent to the stanchest Methodist to reject Powell's authority altogether, these unprofitable efforts ceased, and with them a good deal of resentment.

The chorus of openly-expressed hostility to the preacher, which, I have said, made itself heard in Whitford, arose, in a great measure, from the common delight in declaring, where some circ.u.mstances unforeseen by the world in general comes to pa.s.s, that we perceived all along how matters would go, and knew our neighbour to be a very different fellow from what you took him to be.

Here old Max was triumphant; and, it must be owned, with more reason than many of his acquaintances. He had openly quarrelled with this fanatical Welshman, long before the main body of the Whitford Wesleyans had ventured to repudiate him.

One humble friend was faithful to the preacher. The widow Thimbleby maintained, in the teeth of all opposition, that, though Mr. Powell might be a little mistaken here and there on points of doctrine--she was an ignorant woman, and couldn't judge of these things--yet his practice came very near perfection; and that the only human being to whom he ever showed severity, intolerance, and lack of love was himself. Mrs.

Thimbleby was not strong in controversy. It was not difficult to push her to her last resort--namely, crying silently behind her ap.r.o.n. But there was some tough fibre of loyalty in the meek creature which made it impossible for her to belie her conscience by deserting David Powell.

The cold attic at the top of her little house was prepared for his reception as soon as it was known that he was about to revisit Whitford; and Mrs. Thimbleby went to the loft over the corn-dealer's store-house in Lady Lane one Sunday evening to beg that Nick Green would let Mr.

Powell know, whenever he should arrive, that his old quarters were waiting for him, and that she would take it as a personal unkindness if he did not consent to occupy them. She could not help talking of the preacher to her grand lodger Mrs. Errington, of whom she was considerably in awe. The poor woman's heart was full at the thought of seeing him again. And not even Mrs. Errington's lofty severity regarding all dissenters and "ignorant persons who flew in the face of Providence and attempted to teach their betters," could entirely stifle her expressions of anxiety as to Mr. Powell's health, her hopes that he took a little more care of himself than he formerly did, and her anecdotes of his angelic charity and goodness towards the poor, and needy, and suffering.

"I should advise you on no account to go and hear this man preach," said Mrs. Errington to her landlady. "Terrible scenes have taken place in Wales; and very likely something of the kind may happen here. You are very weak, my poor soul. You have no force of character. You would be sure to catch any excitement that was going. And how should you like, pray, to be brought home from Lady Lane on a stretcher?"

But even this alarming suggestion did not deter Mrs. Thimbleby from haunting the "Ranters'" meeting-room, and leaving message after message with Nick Green to be sure and tell Mr. Powell to come up to her house, the very minute he arrived. Nick Green knew no more than the widow the day and hour of the preacher's arrival. All he could say was, that Powell had applied to him and to his co-religionists for leave to preach in the room--little more than a loft--which they rented of the corn-dealer in Lady Lane. Powell had been refused permission to speak in the Wesleyan chapel to which his eloquence had formerly attracted such crowds of listeners. Whit Meadow would, indeed, be probably open to him; but the year was drawing on apace, autumn would soon give place to winter, and, at all events in the evening, it would be vain to hope for a large number of listeners in the open air.

"Open air!" echoed Mrs. Thimbleby, raising her hands and eyes; "why, Mr.

Green, he ought never to think of preaching in the open air at this season, and him so delicate!"

"Nay, sister Thimbleby," responded Nick Green, a powerful, black-muzzled fellow with a pair of lungs like a blacksmith's bellows, "we may not put our hand to the plough and turn back. We are all of us called upon to give ourselves body and soul in the Lord's service. And many's the night, after my day's work was over, that I've exhorted here in this very room and poured out the Word for two and three hours at a stretch, until the sweat ran down my face like water, and the brethren were fairly worn out. But yet I have been marvellously strengthened. I doubt not that Brother Powell will be so too, especially now that he has given up dead words, and the errors of the Society, and thrown off the yoke of the law."

"Dear, I hope so," answered Mrs. Thimbleby, tremulously; "but I do wish he would try a hot posset of a night, just before going to bed."

The good woman was beginning to walk away up Lady Lane, somewhat disconsolately, for she reflected that if Nick Green measured Mr.

Powell's strength by his own, he would surely not spare it, and that the preacher needed rather a curb than a spur to his self-forgetting exertions, when she almost ran against a man who was coming in the opposite direction. They were not twenty paces from the door of the corn-dealer's store-house, and a lamp that burnt above it shed sufficient light for her to recognise the face of the very person who was in her thoughts.

"Mr. Powell!" she exclaimed in a joyful tone. "Thanks be to the Lord that I have met you! Was you going to look for Mr. Green? He is just putting the lights out and coming away. I left a message with him for you, sir; but now I can give it you myself. You will come up with me to my house, now, won't you? Everything is ready, and has been these three days. You wouldn't think of going anywhere else in Whitford but to my house, would you, Mr. Powell?"

She ran on thus eagerly, because she saw, or fancied she saw, symptoms of opposition to her plan in Powell's face. He hesitated. "My good friend," said he, "your Christian kindness is very precious to me, but I am not clear that I should do right in becoming an inmate of your house."

"Oh, but I am, Mr. Powell, quite clear! Why it would be a real unkindness to refuse me."

"It is not a matter to be settled thus lightly," answered Powell, although at the same time he turned and walked a few paces by the widow's side. "I had thought that I might sleep for to-night at least in our friends' meeting-room."

"What! in the loft there? Lord ha' mercy, Mr. Powell! 'Tis cold and draughty, and there's nothing in it but a few wooden benches, and the rats run about as bold as can be, directly the lights is put out. Why 't would be a tempting of Providence, Mr. Powell."

"I am not dainty about my accommodation, as you know; and I could sleep there without payment."

"Without payment! Why, you might pay pretty dear for it in health, if not in money. And, for that matter, I shouldn't think of asking a penny of rent for my attic, as long as ever you choose to stay in it." Then, with an instinctive knowledge of the sort of plea that might be likely to prevail with him, she added, "As for being dainty about your accommodation, why I know you never were so, and I hope you haven't altered, for, indeed, the attic is sadly uncomfortable. I think there's worse draughts from the window than ever. And it would be a benefit to me to get the room aired and occkypied; for only last week I had a most respectable young man, a journeyman painter, to look at it, and he say, 'Mrs. Thimbleby, we shan't disagree about the rent,' he say; 'but I do wish the room had been slept in latterly; for I've a fear as it's damp,'

he say, 'and that that's the reason you don't use it yourself, nor haven't let it.' But I tell him the only reason why I didn't use the room was as you might be expected back any day, and I couldn't let you find your place taken. And he say if he could be satisfied of that, he may take it after next month, when you would likely be gone again. So you see as you would be doing me a service, Mr. Powell, not to say a pleasure."

Whether David Powell implicitly believed the good creature's argument to be derived from fact, may be doubtful; but he suffered himself to be persuaded to accompany her to his old lodgings; and they begged Nick Green, who presently overtook them, to send one of his lads to the coach-office, to bring to Mrs. Thimbleby's the small battered valise which const.i.tuted all Powell's luggage.

"I would have gone to fetch it myself," said the preacher, apologetically, "but, in truth, I am so exceedingly weary, that I doubt whether my strength would avail to carry even that slender burden the distance from the coach-office to your house."

When he was seated beside Mrs. Thimbleby's clean kitchen hearth, on which burned a fire of unwontedly generous proportions--the widow declared that, as she grew older, she found it necessary to her health to have a glow of warmth in her kitchen these chilly autumn nights--when the preacher was thus seated, I say, and when the red and yellow firelight illuminated his face fully, it was very evident that he was indeed "exceeding weary;" weary, and worn, and wan, with hollow temples, eyes that blazed feverishly, and a hue of startling pallor overspreading his whole countenance. For a few minutes, whilst his good hostess moved about hither and thither in the little kitchen, preparing some tea, and slicing some bacon, to be presently fried for his refection, Powell sat looking straight before him, with a curious expression in his widely-opened eyes, something like that of a sleep-walker. They were evidently seeing nothing of the physical realities around them, and yet they unmistakably expressed the attentive recognition by the mind of some image painted on their wondrous spheres. The true round mirror of the wizard is that magic ball of sight; for on its sensitive surface live and move a thousand airy phantoms, besides the reflection of all that peoples this tangible earth we dwell on. Powell's lips began to move rapidly, although no sound came from them. He seemed to be addressing a creature visible to him alone, on which his straining gaze was fixed. But suddenly his face changed, and was troubled as a still pool is troubled by a ripple that breaks its clearly glazed reflection into fantastic fragments. In another moment he pa.s.sed his thin hand several times with a strong pressure over his brows, shut and opened his eyes like a dreamer awakened, drew his pocket Bible from his breast, and began to read with an air of resolute attention.

"Will you ask a blessing, Mr. Powell?" said the widow timidly.

He looked up. A comfortable meal was spread on the white deal table before him. Mrs. Thimbleby sat opposite to him in her old chair with the patch-work cushions; the fire shone; the household cat purred drowsily; the old clock clicked off the moments as they flowed past--tick tack, tick tack. Then there came a jar, a burr of wheels and springs, and the tinkle of silver-toned metal striking nine. In a few moments the ancient belfry of St. Chad's began to send forth its mellow chimes. Far and wide they sounded--over the town and the flat-meadow country--through the darkness. Powell sat still and silent, listening to the bells until they had done chiming.

"How well I know those voices!" he said. "I used to lie awake and listen to them here, in the old attic, when my soul was wrestling with a mighty temptation; when my heart was smitten and withered like gra.s.s, so that I forgot to eat my bread. The sound of them is sweet to the fleshly ears of the body; but to the ears of the spirit they can say marvellous things. They have been the instruments to bring me many a message of counsel as they came singing and buzzing in my brain."

The widow Thimbleby sat looking at the preacher, as he spoke, with an expression of puzzled admiration, blended with anxiety.

"Oh, for certain the Lord has set a sign on you!" she exclaimed. "He would have us to know that you are a chosen vessel, and He has given you the gifts of the spirit in marvellous abundance. But, dear Mr. Powell, I doubt He does not mean you to neglect the fleshly tabernacle neither; for, as I say to myself, He could ha' made us all soul and no body, if such had been His blessed will."

"We thank Thee, O Father, most merciful. Amen!" said Powell, bending over the table.