A Sovereign Remedy Part 18

Aura wheeled, the lilies still in her arms. "I have no money," she cried, her voice ringing with pa.s.sionate scorn, "I never have any money, thank G.o.d!"

So with quick, springing step, her whole young soul aflame with indignation, she was off breasting the hill, leaving the hollows behind her, wis.h.i.+ng with all her heart that she could have carried the dead baby with her. To call it accursed! To count it unbaptized! The darling lying there so peaceful, so still, so waxen, so like the lilies. Ah! if she could only take it away from all the sordid thoughts, what burial would not her fingers compa.s.s there on the bosom of the kindly earth! For it and for the lilies. How soft it should lie, how flower-decked! Yes, the great white petals should s.h.i.+eld the little white face from the touch of the close, damp earth, and it should sleep--sleep--sleep!

The tears ran down her cheeks silently as, almost at the limit of her young and vigorous pace, she pa.s.sed on, pa.s.sed upwards, pursued by the one overmastering impulse to get away, to find some safe resting-place for what she would fain have carried.

But, by degrees, her thoughts became calmer; she began to see the whole pitiful story and put her finger intuitively on the points of offence; for she had seen little of the world, and knew still less of its ways. She thought of the lowing heifer and its bull-calf, of the second brood of young blackbirds over whose first flight she had but that morning seen the parents so excited, and then she thought of the fatherless unsought child whose only worth was the bringing of two-and-sixpence a week to its grandmother!

Truly her grandfather was right. Money was a curse.

But so were other things. The religion, for instance, which told poor Gwen that her child was accursed, that its death was a punishment.

Poor Gwen seated in her threadbare black, with her ap.r.o.n over her head, so unlike the girl in a blue cotton dress who used to tumble about on the thyme banks with her boisterous, rosy-cheeked baby.

It was pitiful. That cry _Beth n'ai! Beth n'ai! Gwae fi! beth n'ai!_ rang in Aura's ears as she sat down at last among the rocks of a sheep-shelter on the crest of a hill. Here in winter the south-west winds howled and swept the bare braes, wasting their force against the lichen-set boulders behind which even the shearling lambs could lie snugly, but in this early autumn the sun baked into the close-cropped turf, and mushrooms grew in cl.u.s.ters where the lambs had lain.

It was a favourite outlook of Aura's, for it gave over the widening estuary and the sea beyond. Beyond that again the setting sun; for it was growing late, and the autumn days began to close in.

She sat there on the wild thyme thinking, making up--as the young do almost unconsciously--her mind about many things, reaching forward to the future vaguely with certain new thoughts regarding it in her mind, and all the while watching the great pageant of the Death of Day enact itself out in the West.

It was a lurid sunset; full of flames, of deep, purple-stained clouds.

It was a pageant of pa.s.sion, self-existent, self-destroying.

Yet it was beautiful! She would sit and watch it to the end, she would see the anger and the threat of it pa.s.s into grey calm when the sun had gone.

So she sat on, the lilies still in her lap, until she was roused by a step, by one word--

"Gwen!"

She turned startled, to see the startled face of a young man behind her. It was a beautiful face, the sort of a face which women love, and in its quick amaze there was almost a hint of appeal, of hope for fair hearing.

The girl grasped the situation in a moment. He had been misled by her blue dress. He had thought she was Gwen; poor frail Gwen who was not "all wise," yet still had been wise enough to keep this secret of hers.

He turned with a half-muttered apology, in another instant he would have been gone, but Aura's strong, firm fingers were on his wrist; she looked at him from head to foot, judging him.

Then with one swift sweep of her other hand she struck his handsome face full with the fading lilies she still held.

"Coward!" she said. "Go! your task is done!"

The flowers broke softly on his warm flesh and blood, leaving no mark, but her words seemed to shrivel him; he slunk away.

She watched him disappear down the hillside, then with a sob she flung herself face down on the short turf, crus.h.i.+ng the lilies to their death, and cried as though her heart would break.

CHAPTER IX

The little village of Dinas was in a turmoil. Considering its small size, and the extreme peace of its situation happed round by everlasting hills, and so cuddled close to the very heart of calm creation, it held an extraordinary capability for fuss. The hot Celtic blood would get into the hot Celtic brain at the slightest provocation, and it had risen from the sub-normal of rural life to the fever-heat of a revolution over a baby whom some one had refused to baptize, and some one else had declined to bury.

The rector, relying on the Middle Ages, had pointed to the nettle-grown corner reserved for those whose salvation was doubtful.

The whole Calvinistic body, forgetful of election and predestination, had fled as one man from the authority of the Bible to that of the Burials Act.

Radical religion and religious radicalism had once more met in grips, and the guarantors of the little telegraph station in the village breathed freely by reason of the wires that were sent, and that came from the princes and powers of darkness and light all over the country.

The result was, of course, that foregone conclusion of these later days--a compromise. The churchyard belonged to the parish, the burial service to the Church. And so, with a curious falter at its innermost heart because of the absence of the rector's familiar surplice and biretta, the village had signalised its victory by a triumphal following of Gwen's baby to the grave, not of its fathers, but its mothers.

As they gathered round the coffin which looked so tiny far away down in the greasy, black earth, the sound of "Day of wrath, that dreadful day," sung by the rector at his usual evening service, floated out from the church to join Morris Pugh's indignant militant prayer to the Almighty; but the peaceful little dead child slept undisturbed by either.

Yet the rector, honest man, had no ill-feeling at all, but rather a profound pity for the lamb of his flock who had been lost through ignorance on his part, for had he known of its illness nothing would have prevented him from storming the shepherd's hut and claiming his right as rector. Indeed, but for the necessity for reprobating the scandalous withholding of one of the Church's sacraments from an innocent soul because its parents were blameworthy, there is small doubt that he would have asked no questions, and buried the small dead body decently and in order. As it was he came, after service was over, tall and ca.s.sock-garbed, to stand beside the tiny mound of new-turned soil which broke the lush green of the churchyard, make the sign of the cross over it, and pray a little prayer for mercy.

Nevertheless, he went back to his study and his ecclesiastical histories a harder man for the incident. His bishop had not upheld the authority of the Church; he had--in all reverence be it spoken--hedged, and the Rev. Gawain Meredith was too priestly, soul and body, for hedging with heretics.

For there was no mincing of words about him. The Wesleyans were possibly schismatics; all other dissenters were heretics, and the Calvinistic Methodists the most distinctly dangerous heretics with whom he had to deal. They reminded him in their social, religious, and political organisation of the Jesuits whose history he was studying.

He had a reluctant admiration for their determination to force means to an end, and he saw plainly how much capital they would make out of his refusal to bury the body. Elections to the parish council were coming on, and he had already made himself unpopular by questioning the expenditure. So he read the paragraphs concerning the baby's burial which he found waiting for him on his study table in the weekly local, with a setting of his thin lips. They might turn him out of the council if they choose, but while he was in it, he would do his duty by the ratepayers.

Morris Pugh had read these same paragraphs in ma.n.u.script; they had been sent to him for revision, and he had returned them without a word of comment; yet he had felt a vague regret pluck at his heart.

He was an enthusiast, pure and simple. Those chiefs of his party, who seized so quickly on every point of vantage, were enthusiasts and something more.

He felt ill at ease; though, in attempting to get at the truth concerning Gwen's fault he had acted almost at the instigation of his elders. Isaac Edwards and Richard Jones, stern fathers of the village, had been inexorable, and so Gwen, once the pride of the choir, despite her being "light in the weighing," had been practically excommunicated. Not that there had ever been any intention of such excommunication being permanent, or of its injuring the child; but spasmodic croup waits for nothing, and so--so the Middle Ages and the Burials Act had come into conflict.

This, however, was not the only cause for Morris Pugh's uneasiness.

Oddly enough, the disturbing element was the hundred pounds which Ned Blackborough had hidden in the cleft of the rocks. The last two months had been one long temptation to go and take it at all costs--take it and say nothing. And yet his soul revolted from the very idea. The constant conflict, however, had forced him into clearer thought, and he had shrunk back in horror from much that he saw in himself and others. The greed of gold! How it riddled all human life; it even touched the next, for it was the mainspring of religion. Money! Money!

There was a perpetual call for it. Half the spiritual life of his flock was due to the efforts of those who had built the chapel and who worked--for G.o.d, no doubt--but also to get five per cent. interest on their mortgages.

Yes! the souls for whom Christ died were bartering them for gold.

O! for something, some voicing of the Great Spirit, to stir them to a n.o.bler commerce!

This was his desire, his constant prayer, and he had grown haggard and anxious over the stress of both.

The last two days also had brought a fresh anxiety. Mervyn, his brother, had returned from a month's visit to Blackborough, curiously moody, curiously unlike himself; that is the earnest, clever lad who for years had been the pride of the village, the joy of his mother's and of his brother's heart. No doubt his failure to pa.s.s the examination had discouraged him; but was that all? It did not really matter; he was young yet, had another chance, and meanwhile could go on as he was, earning enough to keep him as clerk to the village councils and boards.

So as Morris Pugh, hollow-eyed, pale, lingered at the grave of the little child which he had just committed to the dust whence it had come, there was no stability in his thoughts. They wandered on dreamily until, suddenly as a flash, came the certainty that one of the many mourners, who had but a minute before been looking down on the tiny coffin, was father to what it held.

And he had stood there silent, unrepentant!

Yes; it must be so, for poor Gwen was no wanderer; her own people sufficed for that limited life.

He covered his face with his hands and turned swiftly, almost to stumble over his brother who stood behind him. His face was haggard also, and Morris looked at it with a quick dread clutching at his heart.

"There's--there's nothing wrong is there--Merve--" he faltered.

The lad flushed crimson. "Only you've trodden on my toe; that's all,"

he answered, bending low to brush off the dust of the grave which his brother's foot had left on his boot.