Into the Highways and Hedges Part 3

"He is a looney straight from Bedlam!" said one of the men.

"I am not mad," said the stranger simply; and across Meg's mind flashed St. Paul's answer, "I am not mad, most n.o.ble Festus!"

This man reminded her of an apostle, but not of St. Paul--rather, perhaps, of St. Peter.

There was an unmistakably "out-of-door" look about him, and he walked with an even springy tread, like one to whom exercise is a joy.

He was about thirty years of age, burnt with sun and air. His deep set blue eyes had an intent expression in them, his mouth was partly hidden by his curly fair beard.

He clasped his hands, holding them straight in front of him, the sinews of his wrists standing out like cord. A few idlers lounged within hearing, ready for any free entertainment, religious or otherwise.

Margaret stood still and listened. He spoke at first jerkily, with long pauses between each sentence, and with an anxious strained look in his eyes as if he were waiting for inspiration.

"The Lord has sent me to speak to you. His hand leads me--from one place to another--to call the souls He died for to Him. I am unworthy, I cannot speak as I would--my words halt."

"Cheer up, old man," called out a dissipated youth irreverently; and the crowd giggled. Meg, standing on the outskirts, felt a pang of pity; she had a painful sympathy with any one who was laughed at, but apparently the touch of mockery inspired rather than depressed him. He fixed his blue eyes suddenly on the youth, who reddened and slunk back. "Ay, ay--it's to you the Lord is calling," he cried. "Speak, Lord! Speak through my lips that this soul may hear! He is crying aloud--turn--turn from the path of destruction. He stands in the way to stop you! His arms are spread out wide--His feet are bleeding. The pain of the nails crushing through them was sweeter to Him than the smoothness of the Courts of Heaven. Among His many mansions His soul is still in pain for the children created of His Father. He rests not day or night till He has drawn them to Him. Behold the hunger for souls is upon me--even upon me--and what I feel is His Spirit moving in me. Come--ye who are weary.

He had not where to lay His head. Come--ye who weep--for the Man of Sorrows has tasted the cup of bitterness and He only can comfort.

Come--ye who have sinned. He fought wi' that devil, and conquered him.

Lord, Thou art standing by my side now, as Thou didst stand on the sh.o.r.es of Galilee; but this people's eyes are holden that they cannot see Thee. Yet let us kneel before Thee, for Thou art here!"

He flung himself on his knees as he spoke, and looked up as if his eyes indeed beheld the "Son of Man" in their midst.

"Kneel! Kneel!" he cried imperatively; and swayed by his intense belief, his strong personal magnetism, his hearers knelt.

In the dead silence that followed, Meg's heart was beating wildly, she alone did not kneel; perhaps her education made any display of religious emotion more repugnant to her than to the rest of his audience; but her knees were shaking under her, and she turned white with the intensity of the awe with which she realised the presence of G.o.d.

"Lord, we kneel to Thee. We acknowledge Thee our G.o.d. We will follow Thee in all things, counting riches as nought, and throwing aside the pleasures of this world. Thou who wast poor among men, and travel-stained and weary, shall be from henceforth our King and Pattern," he cried, still looking up as if making a vow to One whom his bodily eyes beheld. Then suddenly his glance fell on Meg.

"There is one here who does not kneel to Thee yet," he cried. "Oh, my G.o.d, touch her, melt her! The daughters of Jerusalem followed Thee weeping. Mary wept at Thy cross. Wilt Thou not draw her too? this woman, who longs to come to Thee, but fears----" Then, with a ring of triumph in his tone, as if an answer had been vouchsafed to him:--

"He calls you!" he cried. "You have chosen for Him! Kneel!--kneel! Pour out your soul in thanksgiving!" And Meg, sobbing, fell on her knees.

She heard little of the oration which followed; she did not know that a man behind her was groaning over his sins; that two girls had been persuaded to take the pledge; that one tipsy old woman was proclaiming, somewhat pharisaically, that "she'd been converted fourteen years ago, and 'adn't no call to be 'saved' fresh now."

The preacher's voice and the splash of the waves on the shingle sounded far away and indistinct.

Always she had longed for a personal revelation of the Christ; and now it came to her.

As she had never realised before she realised now the "travel-stained"

Son of the Father, whose mighty love had made the joys of Heaven pain till the lost were found. Ah, well! Since the day of Pentecost, and before, it is through man's voice that that revelation has come, and through men who have been baptised with a fiery baptism.

Presently they began to sing; and some one officiously touched her shoulder, and said, "Ain't you a-goin' to join, miss?" And she stood up, feeling as if dazed by a sudden fall.

Her overwrought nerves were jarred.

The claptrappy tune, the overdone emphasis, the vulgar intonation distressed her; she was ashamed of the feeling, but could not help it; she turned to walk away. The preacher paused in the middle of a line.

"You have put your hand to the plough; you will not turn back!" he cried pleadingly. The public appeal annoyed her for a second, but when she met his eyes, bright with an earnest desire to "save her soul," her anger died.

"I hope not," she said gently; and walked away with his fervent "G.o.d help you!" ringing in her ears.

CHAPTER III.

The world is very odd, we see; We do not comprehend it.

But in one fact we all agree,-- G.o.d won't and we can't mend it.

Being common-sense it can't be sin To take it as I find it: The pleasure--to take pleasure in; The pain--try not to mind it.

--_A. H. Clough._

Dover was unusually gay in the year when Barnabas Thorpe held his revival meetings there. Mr. Deane gave a large ball at Ravenshill, all the county magnates attended, and the guests danced in the old picture gallery.

It was a remarkably pretty entertainment, and the host and his three daughters were worthy descendants of the ruffled and powdered Deanes who looked down on them from the walls.

They were a stately family. Mrs. Russelthorpe herself was a most dignified woman, and Kate and Margaret had inherited her grace of bearing.

Margaret in her gold and white dress, with pearls on her white neck, was a good deal admired, but her attention kept wandering from her partners to her father, who was talking and laughing merrily, but who coughed every now and then rather ominously. Consumption, that scourge of so many English families, was terribly familiar in this one.

Meg had been immensely excited about the ball before-hand, and had taken intense interest in all the preparations for it, including her own new dress; but, at the last, something had occurred to change the current of her thoughts, she might be arrayed in sackcloth now for all she cared.

"Margaret's character comes out even in small things," Mrs. Russelthorpe observed cuttingly. "She is unstable as water. One can never depend on her in the least. Where do you think I found her this afternoon? Just emerging from a vulgar crowd on Dover sands, where she had been staring at a singing minstrel or a play-actor or a buffoon of some kind! She came in with her head full of nothing else, and wanted to tease her father into going back with her to listen too."

"Ah! I heard that fellow on the beach; his buffoonery takes the form of preaching," said the lawyer to whom she had made the remark, and who was rather a favourite with Mrs. Russelthorpe. He glanced at Margaret, who was standing a little way off, but was quite unconscious of his observation.

"It is a curious question whether that sort of canter is most knave or fool," he said. "I incline to the former hypothesis; Deane, to the latter. Miss Deane sees him as a sort of inspired prophet, I suppose. A good deal depends on the colour of one's own gla.s.ses, you know. After all, hers are the prettiest!"

Mrs. Russelthorpe shrugged her shoulders with a short laugh as she turned away.

"I did not know you had such an innocent taste for bread and b.u.t.ter,"

she said.

Mr. Sauls looked after her with some amus.e.m.e.nt; it was not the first time that he had noticed that there was no love lost between Mr. Deane's favourite daughter and her aunt, and he had occasionally felt sorry for the girl, as evidently the weaker of the two.

"If it isn't possible to serve two masters, two mistresses must be a degree more hopeless," he remarked to himself. "I really don't know that I can do without Mrs. Russelthorpe yet--but I'll risk it!" And he walked across the room, and asked Miss Deane to dance.

Meg stared with uncomplimentary surprise; she had always considered that Mr. Sauls "flattered Aunt Russelthorpe," and had despised him accordingly with sweeping girlish severity. She would have refused to dance if she had had sufficient presence of mind, but he (who was never wanting in that quality) took her momentary hesitation for acceptance, and she found herself engaged to him, she hardly knew how.

She could not have discovered a partner more entirely unlike herself if she had ransacked England for her opposite; and her father laughed, but with a little sense of chagrin, when he saw Mr. Sauls offer her his arm.

The Saulses usually came to Dover for a few months in the year. The county people had turned their aristocratic backs on them, till Mr.

Deane, in a moment of generous enthusiasm, had ridden full tilt against "pernicious prejudices," and had introduced young Sauls as his dear friend right and left.

This had occurred some time before. County exclusiveness was no longer the subject on which Mr. Deane was hottest, and, to tell the truth, George Sauls was no longer his dear friend; but the young man amused Mrs. Russelthorpe, and had kept his footing in the house.

Nature had not been kind to Mr. Sauls in the matter of looks, but had made it up in brains; he knew his own worth in that respect, and meant to get full market value for his capabilities. He had an a.s.sured belief in himself, of which time proved him justified.