The Angel Part 44

From that time onwards, the vista of happenings was more detailed, more definitely clear. He realized that he owed, not only his present material felicity--the fact that all his hopes and desires were to be consummated in the little village church before the sun had reached his midday height--but also all the new spiritual awakening, the certainty of another life, the hope of eternal blessedness, to one cause, to one personality.

It was at this moment to Joseph that his thoughts went, to that strange force and power--more force and power, indeed, than that of mere human man--which, or who, had changed his life from a dull and hopeless routine--how he realized that now!--to this beat.i.tude of morning light, of love to the world, and thankfulness to G.o.d.

Joseph was somewhere in the neighborhood, that he knew. Where exactly the Teacher was he could not say. Mary was staying at the little cottage which he could see as he sent his eyes roving round the semicircle of white houses which fringed the bay, with her aunt, Lady Susan Wells.

Hampson was to be "best man." Bridesmaids there were none. It was to be the simplest of all ceremonies.

This prince of modern London was to be married to one of the greatest heiresses in England, and a member of one of the oldest families in the United Kingdom, as Colin might marry Audrey--happily, quietly, and far from the view of the world.

Whether Joseph himself would be present at the ceremony even Ducaine himself was not quite certain. That after the wedding-feast--the simple wedding-feast--they were all to meet Joseph upon the mountain-top, he was well aware. It had been arranged, and he thrilled with antic.i.p.ation of some further and more wonderful revelation of the designs of the Almighty than had ever been vouchsafed to him before. But at the church--he hoped the Teacher would be present in the little village church when he and Mary were made one.

He turned to walk back to the cottage, when down the granite pier he saw that a little flaxen-haired girl was walking. In all the sleeping semicircle of the village Thomas and the little girl seemed alone to be awake.

The blue wood-smoke was rising from the chimneys of the cottages, but as yet no one was stirring in the outside air.

The little girl came tripping and laughing along the granite isthmus between the waters, and in her hand she held a folded piece of paper.

With the confiding innocence of childhood, she came straight up to the tall young man, and stretching out her tiny arm, looked into his face.

"You are Thomas, aren't you?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, "I am Thomas."

"Then this is for you, Thomas," she replied. "This letter an' all. Dadda was up in the mountain this morning, and William Rees, whateffer, met dadda, and gave him this letter, which Mr. Joseph had given him. The Teacher is staying up in the little house in the mountain-top where Lluellyn Lys used to live, and he gave this to William Rees, and William Rees gave it to dadda, and dadda told me to find you and give it to you, Thomas."

Ducaine opened the letter. These were the words

"I shall not be with you in body when you and Mary are made one. But I shall be with you in the spirit, my dear friend. When you have made your communion and kept the feast come up with the Brethren to the mountain-top. There I will bless you. And now, farewell!"

"Therefore, if any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."

"... I p.r.o.nounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.... G.o.d the Father, G.o.d the Son, G.o.d the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and keep you; the Lord mercifully look upon you, and so fill you with all spiritual benediction and grace, that ye may so live together in this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting."

Arm in arm they went out from the little church, joined together, man and wife, for ever and a day--the goodly young man and the girl with the face of an angel.

The fiddlers who were waiting set up a merry tune, as, surrounded by their humble friends, they walked to the t.i.the-barn in which the marriage feast was to be.

As they all stood waiting till the signal to fall-to should be given, Thomas Ducaine took his wife's hand in his, bowed over it, and kissed it in gracious chivalry.

Then he drew her to him and kissed her on the lips.

The music broke out once more as all the company sat down. It was a short and merry feast, yet not untainted with the Celtic sadness which all the Welsh folk feel at happy moments.

One and all, from bride and bridegroom down to the humblest worker there, knew that there were more stirring and awful things to come; that a trumpet was sounding on the mountain summit; that they were to climb as if into the presence of the Almighty.

Old David Owen, Joseph's trusted lieutenant, lifted on high a great goblet of the pure mountain water, in which he pledged the newly married pair.

"I pledge you," he said, "Mary and Thomas, brother and sister in the Lord, followers of our dear Teacher--I pledge you and call upon all that are present here to join me in the toast. May your life together be one long song of happiness! May you, with all the opportunities that G.o.d has given you, always remain true to the trust reposed in you, and follow the banner of Jesus, and once more plunge into the battle for the winning over of Babylon to the Lord!"

Then the old man paused, and, setting down his gla.s.s, placed his hands upon the table, and leaning forward, spoke very earnestly and quietly, rather to the a.s.sembled company than to the married pair.

"The Master," he said, "is not with us now; but we are going to meet him, and I doubt not we are all to receive another signal proof of the Lord's favor. To some of us it has been a grief that Joseph was not in the church when the marriage was made of the two we love. But Joseph's ways are not our ways, and he is led as we are not led. But I would say this to you, dear brethren and sisters. I see around me those who a long time ago--it seems a very long time ago--accompanied the Master from these hills to the great Modern Babylon of our time. There is no one here who does not remember the saint of the mountain, Lluellyn Lys.

There is no one here who has not known the circ.u.mstances under which our dear Teacher first came down to these parts. I mind well that I was one of those who carried him up to the mountain, ill and crippled as he was.

And it was through that strange fellowship of Joseph and Lluellyn that the things have come to pa.s.s. We all a.s.sembled on the mountain-top, where we are going soon, to bury Lluellyn, and we all heard our Master as he took on the mantle of Elijah and called us to rally round the standard of Jesus with him as leader. And now we are all going once more to that sacred spot on the top of Pendrydos, and G.o.d grant that we may hear inspiring and edifying things there. I have just pledged Thomas and Mary as our brother and our sister in the fight we are waging, and have still to wage, against the sins of the great city so far away from here.

I pledge them in the name of you all, and as our brother and our sister.

But it would ill become me not to say a word upon another part of the question. We must remember that Thomas, our brother, is also Sir Thomas Ducaine, a man of great fortune and of high lineage. We must also remember that Mary, our sister, was Miss Mary Lys, the sister of Lluellyn Lys, and the descendant of the old kings of Wales who ruled these parts. Just as they are leaders of our band in Christ, so also are they leaders in the great things of this world, and we owe them a double loyalty."

He stopped for a moment, and the old face worked as he thought deeply.

Then with a wild, free Celtic gesture, he threw out one hand.

"I can say no more," he said; "but you all know what they are, and who they are. G.o.d bless them for our natural leaders and our friends in the Lord! And now, what think you, shall we not climb the mountain?"

It is a steep road from the little village through the pine plantations, until one comes out upon the mountain-side itself. At that point a green gorge stretches up between two spurs of the hill above, a green gorge covered with soft, pneumatic turf cropped like a lawn by the innumerable sheep which range over those high pastures. And then on and up, through the pleasant, slanting valley, until the heather-covered plateau is reached.

There one surveys a vast expanse of wild and lonely moor, all purple, green, and brown. At huge distances great peaks rise up--the peaks of the Snowdon range--and on clear moments the white and glistening cap of the emperor mountain of Wales shines in its distant majesty.

So they went out into the sunshine, and wound their way through the lower slopes of the pines quietly and gravely, without many words, but with the quickening sense of hope and antic.i.p.ation strong in each rugged and faithful heart.

Upon the great green gorge they made their way, a skein of black figures. Before them all Sir Thomas and Lady Ducaine walked together.

The bridegroom was dressed in a simple suit of tweed, and with a soft grey hat upon his head. The bride wore an ordinary coat and skirt, like any mountaineering lady who has essayed the heights upon a brilliant day.

As they went together, a little in advance of the main company, they spoke hardly a word to each other. But their faces were eloquent. In the man's eyes there was a thankfulness so supreme and perfect that the girl's filled with tears when she looked at that serene and radiant face. With no word said, they knew that they were now each other's for ever and ever. All toil, all trouble, all heart-burnings, heart-searchings and sorrow were over. Nothing could ever alter the great central fact: they were married, they were one, one spirit, one body, one for ever in the sight of earth and Heaven, one in the high endeavor of good which was to be the purpose and completion of their lives.

"Are you happy, dear?" he said to her once, turning his radiant face upon her.

She looked at him for a moment without speaking, and he knew that he had never seen her more beautiful, and perhaps never would see her more beautiful again, than she was at that moment.

"Oh, my life and my love," she answered, "I did not know that G.o.d could give such happiness in this world!"

And as she finished, fifty yards below them upon the mountain-side they heard that the Brethren who accompanied them were bursting into sudden song, into spontaneous chords of music, a wedding anthem for them.

"O Lord of life and love, Come Thou again to-day; And bring a blessing from above That ne'er shall pa.s.s away.

O bless, as erst of old, The bridegroom and the bride; Bless with the holier stream that flow'd Forth from Thy pierced side.

Before Thine altar-throne This mercy we implore; As Thou dost knit them, Lord, in one, So bless them evermore."

As the crashing, rolling chords ceased and echoed far away among the purple mountains, they found that they had come into the higher lands and were upon the last mountain moorland, from which before them the granite peak of their final endeavor rose stark and awful, its head still hidden by the clouds.

And then, as they moved towards the steep path among the boulders and the slate terraces, a change came over the spirits of all of them. It was not a chill of depression, but rather a sense of awe and the imminence of awful things. The immediate occasion was forgotten. Out of the minds of all of them, save only those of the man and maid who had been made one upon that happy morning, the remembrance of the marriage feast pa.s.sed and dissolved.

They were going up the last part of their journey to meet the Teacher who was up there in the clouds by the tomb of Lluellyn Lys, waiting for them with a message from G.o.d.

Silently, and almost without effort, they wound up the huge, steep rock.