The Old Helmet Volume I Part 52

"This _sulphurea_ I think is dead," remarked Mrs. Caxton. "I must have another. Eleanor--what is the matter?"

"Ma'am?"

"You are drawing a very long breath, my dear. Where did it come from?"

The reserve which Eleanor had all her life practised before other people, had almost from the first given way before her aunt.

"From a thought of home, aunt Caxton. I shall not be so happy when I get back there."

"The happiness that will not bear transportation, Eleanor, is a very poor article. But they will not want you at home."

"I am afraid of it."

"Without reason. You will not go home this spring, my dear; trust me.

You are mine for a good long time yet."

Mrs. Caxton was wiser than Eleanor; as was soon proved. Mrs. Powle wrote, desiring her daughter, whatever she did, not to come home then; nor soon. People would think she was come home for her wedding; and questions innumerable would be asked, the mortification of which would be unbearable. Whereas, if Eleanor kept away, the dismal certainty would by degrees become public, that there was to be no match at all between Rythdale and the Lodge. "Stay away till it all blown over, Eleanor," wrote her mother; "it is the least you can do for your family." And the squire even sent a word of a letter, more kind, but to the same effect. He wanted his bright daughter at home, he said; he missed her; but in the circ.u.mstances, perhaps it would be best, if her aunt would be so good as to keep her.

Eleanor carried these letters to Mrs. Caxton, with a tear in her eye, and an humbled, pained face.

"I told you so," said her aunt. "How could people expect that Mr.

Carlisle's marriage would take place three months after the death of his mother? that is what I do not understand."

"They arranged it so, and it was given out, I suppose. Everything gets known. He was going abroad in the spring, or immediately after; and meant not to go without me."

"Now you are my child, my dear, and shall help me with my roses," said her aunt kissing her, and taking Eleanor in her arms. "Eleanor, is that second question settled yet?"

"No, aunt Caxton."

"You have not chosen yet which master you will serve,--the world or the Lord?"

"O yes, ma'am--I have decided that. I know which I want to be."

"But not which you will be."

"I mean that, ma'am."

"You are not a servant of the Lord now, Eleanor?"

"No, aunt Caxton--I don't see how. I am dark."

"Christ says, 'He that is not with me is against me.' A question that is undecided, decides itself. Eleanor, decide this question to-night."

"To-night, ma'am?"

"Yes. I am going to send you to church."

"To church! There is no service to-night, aunt Caxton."

"Not at the church where you have been--in the village. There is a little church in the valley beyond Mrs. Pynce's cottage. You are going there."

"I do not remember any. Why, aunt Caxton, the valley is too narrow there for anything but the road and the brook; the mountains leave no room--hardly room for her house."

"You have never been any further. Do you not remember a sharp turn just beyond that place?"

"Yes, I do."

"You will see the chapel when you get round the turn."

The place Mrs. Caxton alluded to, was a wild, secluded, most beautiful valley, the bottom of which as Eleanor said was almost filled up with the road, and the brook which rushed along its course to meet the river; itself almost as large as another river. Where the people could be found to go to a church in such a region, she could not imagine.

Heather clothed the hills; fairy cascades leaped down the rocks at every turning, lovely as a dream; the whole scene was wild and lonely.

Hardly any human habitations or signs of human action broke the wild reign of nature all the valley through. Eleanor was sure of a charming ride at least, whether there was to be a congregation in the church at the end of it or no; and she prepared herself accordingly. Mrs. Caxton was detained at home; the car did not go; three or four of the household, men and women, went on ponies as Eleanor did.

They set off very early, while the light was fair and beautiful yet, for the ride was of some length. It was not on the way to the village; it turned off from the fine high road to a less practised and more uneven track. It was good for horses; and riding in front, a little ahead of her companions, Eleanor had the luxury of being alone. Why had Mrs. Caxton bade her "settle that question" to-night? How could she; when her mind was in so much darkness and confusion on the subject? Yet Eleanor hardly knew specifically what the hindrance was; only it was certain that while she wished and intended to be a Christian, she was no nearer the point, so far as she could see, than she had been months ago. Nay, Eleanor confessed to herself that in the sweet quiet and peace of her aunt's house, and in her own release from pressing trouble, she had rather let all troublesome thoughts slip away from her; so that, though not forgotten, the subject had been less painfully on her mind than through the weeks that went before her coming to Pla.s.sy. She had wished for leisure and quiet to attend to it and put that pain to rest for ever; and in leisure and quiet she had suffered pain to go to sleep in a natural way and left all the business of dealing with it to be deferred till the time of its waking. How was all this? Eleanor walked her pony slowly along, and thought. _Then_ she had been freshly under the influence of Mr. Rhys and his preaching; the very remembrance of which, now and here, stirred her like an alarum bell. Ay, and more than that; it wakened the keen longing for that beauty and strength of life which had so shewn her her own poverty.

Humbled and sad, Eleanor walked her pony on and on, while each little crystal torrent that came with its sweet clear rush and sparkle down the rocks, tinkled its own little silver bell note in her ears; a note of purity and action. Eleanor had never heard it from them before; now somehow each rus.h.i.+ng streamlet, with its bright leap over obstacles and its joyous dash onward in its course, sounded the same note. Nothing could be more lovely than these cascades; every one different from the others, as if to shew how many forms of beauty water could take.

Eleanor noticed and heard them every one and the call of every one, and rode on in a pensive mood till Mrs. Pynce's cottage was pa.s.sed and the turn in the valley just beyond opened up a new scene for her.

How lovely! how various! The straitened dell spread out gradually from this point into a comparatively broad valley, bordered with higher hills as it widened in the distance. The light still shewed its entrancing beauty; wooded, and spotted with houses and habitations of all kinds; from the very humble to the very lordly, and from the business factories of to-day, back to the ruined strongholds of the time when war was business. Wide and delicious the view was, as much as it was unexpected; and spring's softened colouring was all over it.

Eleanor made a pause of a few seconds as soon as all this burst upon her; her next thought was to look for the church. And it was plain to see; a small dark edifice, in excellent keeping with its situation; because of its colour and its simple structure, which half merged it among the rocks and the hills.

"That is the church, John?" Eleanor said to Mrs. Caxton's factotum.

"That is it, ma'am. There's been no minister there for a good piece of the year back."

"And what place is this?"

"There's no _place_, to call it, ma'am. It's the valley of Glanog."

Eleanor jumped off her pony and went into the church. She had walked her pony too much; it was late; the service had begun; and Eleanor was taken with a sudden tremor at hearing the voice that was reading the hymn. She had no need to look to see whose it was. She walked up the aisle, seeking a vacant place to sit down, and exceedingly desirous to find it, for she was conscious that she was right under the preacher's eye and observation; but as one never does well what one does in confusion, she overlooked one or two chances that offered, and did not get a seat till she was far forward, in the place of fullest view for both seeing and being seen. And there she sat down, asking herself what should make her tremble so. Why had her aunt Caxton sent her that evening, alone, to hear Mr. Rhys preach? And why not? what was there about it? She was very glad, she knew, to hear him; but there would be no more apathy or languor in her mind now on the subject of that question her aunt had desired her to settle. No more. The very sound of that speaker's voice woke her conscience to a sharp sense of what she had been about all these months since she had heard it last. She bent her head in her hand for a little while, in a rus.h.i.+ng of thoughts--or ideas--that prevented her senses from acting; then the words the people were singing around her made their entrance into her ear; an entrance opened by the sweet melody. The words were given very plain.

"No room for mirth or trifling here, For worldly hope, or worldly fear, If life so soon is gone; If now the Judge is at the door, And all mankind must stand before Th' inexorable throne!

"No matter which my thoughts employ, A moment's misery or joy; But O! when both shall end, Where shall I find my destined place?

Shall I my everlasting days With fiends or angels spend?"

Eleanor sat cowering before that thought. "Now are we going to have a terrible sermon?" was her inward question. She would not look up. The preliminary services were all over, she found, and the preacher rose and gave out his text.

"A glorious high throne from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary."

Eleanor could not keep her eyes lowered another second. The well-known deliberate utterance, and a little unconscious indefinable ring of the tones in which the words were spoken, brought her eyes to the speaker's face; and they were never turned away again. "Do we need a sanctuary?"--was the first question the preacher started; and very quietly he went on to discuss that. Very quietly; his manner and his voice were neither in the slightest degree excited; how it was, Eleanor did not know, that as he went on a tide of feeling swept over the a.s.sembly. She could see it in the evidences of tears, and she heard it in a deep sough of the breath that went all over the house. The preacher was reaching each one's secret consciousness, and stirring into life that deep hidden want of every heart which every heart knew differently. Some from sorrow; some from sin; some from weariness; some from loneliness; some from the battle of life; some from the struggle with their own hearts; all, from the wrath to come. Nay, Eleanor's own heart was throbbing with the sense that he had reached it and touched it, and knew its condition. How was it, that with those quiet words he had bowed every spirit before him, her own among the number? It is true, that in the very containedness of his tones and words there was an evidence of suppressed power; it flashed out once in a while; and wrought possibly with the more effect from the feeling that it was contained and kept down. However it were, the minds of the a.s.sembly were already at a high state of tension, when he pa.s.sed to the other part of his subject--the consideration of the sanctuary. It was no discourse of regular heads and divisions; it is impossible to report, except as to its effects. The preacher's head and heart were both full, and words had no stint. But in this latter part of his subject, the power which had been so contained was let loose, though still kept within bounds. The eye fired now, and the voice quivered with its charge, as he endeavoured to set before the minds of the people the glorious vision which filled his own; to make known to others the "riches of glory" in which his own soul rested and rejoiced. So evidently, that his hearers half caught at what he would shew them, by the catching of sympathy; and from different parts of the house now there went up a suppressed cry, of want, or of exultation, as the case might be, which it was very thrilling to hear. It was the sense of want and pain in Eleanor's mind; not spoken indeed except by her countenance; but that toned strongly with the notes of feeling that were uttered around her. As from the bottom of a dark abyss into which he had fallen, a person might look up to the bright sky, of which he could see but a little, which yet would give him token of all the firmamental light and beauty up there which he had not. From her darkness Eleanor saw it; saw it in the preacher's face and words; yes, and heard it in many a deep-breathed utterance of gladness or thanksgiving at her side. She had never felt so dark in her life as when she left the church. She rushed away as soon as the service was over, lest any one should speak to her; however she had to wait some time outside the door before John came out. The people all tarried strangely.

"Beg pardon, ma'am," said John, "but we was waiting a bit to see the minister."

Eleanor rode home fast, through fair moonlight without and great obscurity within her own spirit. She avoided her aunt; she did not want to speak of the meeting; she succeeded in having no talk about it that I night.