A Sovereign Remedy Part 21

But Morris Pugh saw none of these things. He had found what he sought--what all Religions seek--the Self that is not yourself. He had found it through an abstraction of the mind, not through the manifold face of matter. But the sense of finality, of universal Oneness, comes in a thousand ways, and he felt it fully. He could have sung in the gladness of his heart, even while his stumbling feet bruised themselves over the unheeded stones.

The little rush-fringed pool, by which he had sat with the others a.s.serting that money was the root of all evil, lay so still, so s.h.i.+ning, so set, that it also might have been frost-bound--like the heart of man before the Mercy of the Most High had touched it.

The root of all evil!

Morris smiled. He knew better now. There was nothing evil in the Holiest of Holies. Money was a great gift.

So, as if before an altar, every atom of him, soul and body, thrilling with high expectation, he knelt before the cleft in the rock to receive what had been given. His very hands trembled.

"Not unto us, Lord, but unto Thy name," he murmured softly.

Then came a pause. His fingers, feeling the cleft, found it empty.

Empty! Incredible! Impossible! A great amaze took him. He stood up and stared vacantly at the receding whiteness of the dew-covered, moonlit steeps.

Empty!

Then what became of----

Of everything!

He had been so buoyed up by certainty. He had been so sure of himself and of his G.o.d. He sat down on the frost-wet gra.s.s after a time and tried to think; but his mind was in a maze. He followed one path of thought after another, always to be brought up by that barrier of feeling that he had been fooled; or he had fooled himself. Had it not been for his previous exaltation, his exultation, he might by degrees have accepted the situation and considered which of the three other partic.i.p.ants in the secret had been beforehand with him. But there was no question of being beforehand with him. If what he had felt--nay!

had known--was true, they had been beforehand with G.o.d.

How long he sat, he did not know. It came upon him by surprise to hear the voice of a shepherd calling to his dogs. He looked round, and lo!

it was long past dawn. He must go back and tell Mervyn that he had made a mistake; or was it Someone else who had been tricked?

When he arrived at the village the first early hour had pa.s.sed, and folk were already beginning the day's work. Ah! what would Mervyn say, and what would he do?

It was terrible to try the latch of the cottage, find it open, and know that his brother must be waiting for him; waiting so anxiously.

But there was a respite. Mervyn was not in. Hwfa Morgan had arrived early, the woman who tended the house said, and they had gone out together just as she came in to light the fire.

Morris sat down beside it vaguely relieved. Hwfa Morgan might think of something. Meanwhile the warmth of the fire was comforting. He must have been very chill. His blood seemed to rush and bound through him like a melting river.

He was startled from a half-doze by Mervyn's entrance, and he stood up unsteadily.

"I am sorry, brother," he began, "but I--I mean some one has failed----"

Mervyn interrupted him curtly. "It's lucky I didn't trust to you--but it is all right--the thing's settled. Hwfa Morgan turned up this morning, and as you hadn't come back we talked it over, and he suggested taking Edwards into our confidence. So we went over to him, and he saw it would be as dangerous to his interests as to ours if there was any fuss, so he consented to take our security--yours, too, of course--that he shouldn't be a loser, and gave me a voucher of deposit all right. It can only be a question of a fortnight or so, for once a Central Committee takes over the revival regularly our expenses will be paid----"

"But the voucher?" began Morris.

Mervyn interrupted him impatiently, his naturally high colour heightening itself considerably.

"Oh! yes! of course. He--he antedated it. Luckily there had been no other deposits for three weeks, so the numbers on the counterfoils worked all right. And it doesn't really matter to any one, does it?"

He spoke a trifle defiantly.

"No," replied his brother, with an odd sound between a sob and a laugh. "I don't suppose it matters to--to any one. I--I think I'll go to bed, Merve--I must have got a chill on the mountains--I--I don't feel well."

"But there is the meeting," expostulated Mervyn; "it won't go without you."

Morris shook his head. "I should be no use, Mervyn--I--I can't even think." And then, strong man as he was, he broke down into sobbing.

CHAPTER XI

A whirling spin and din of machinery filled the air. All around was endless revolution, above was the ceaseless, curiously slow progression of the driving bands, those heavy-footed transmitters of elusive incomprehensible force, and below, under the great iron framings which held half a million machines in position, were men and women, grime-covered, fluff-covered, dust-covered, according to their trade, all moving about like automata with dead-alive hearts and hands, attending on some marvellous adaptation of mechanical power devised by those sane human hearts and hands out of their own powers.

Pulley and lever, and inclined plane, with all their endless derivatives, were hard at work, for Blackborough was the biggest manufacturing centre in the kingdom, and Blackborough was in the middle of its day's work.

And then, suddenly, a clock struck. Another given moment of eternity had pa.s.sed, the wheels stopped, the throbbing air grew still. Then from a thousand wide gateways humanity began to stream forth to flood the streets. The stream was thinner, less continuous than usual, for it was Sat.u.r.day; therefore pay-day, and tallies had to be made up at the cas.h.i.+er's desk.

So they came out by twos and threes, counting their gold and silver.

For half Blackborough, the past six days had resolved themselves into pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence.

"_She_ won't be 'ere likely, o' Monday," sn.i.g.g.e.red one of two girls, their hair already in curling-pins against the evening's outing, as they pa.s.sed a weary-looking woman whose thin shawl failed to conceal her figure, and whose heavy foot dragged over the greasy pavement.

"Wot ever did she go and get married for, an' to sech a drunken fellar too. She was a good-lookin' gel and 'ad a good time four year back."

"Oh! She'll be at it agin in a month's time none the worse," giggled the other girl pertly. "She lost 'er two fust, an' this 'un 'ull go too, you'll see. Just as well, and they comin' so rapid. My! They is fair beasts, they husbands; but I'd see mine futher fust, I would!"

And then, as they hurried home to dress, they fell to discussing the new hats which were "to do the real trick with their boys" on Sunday, when a long cycle ride was to end in a midnight train, a late supper, and after that bed--if there was time!

Even in their mill garb, they helped to swell the general tendency to lark and t.i.tter in the streets; but in truth those same streets were a somewhat curious sight on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, when, with money in its pocket, humanity was, at last, at leisure to be human; to loiter, to laugh, and to make love. For the upper crust of Blackborough society--the old red-sandstone section labelled "Court" in the social stratification of the postal directory--made a point of rural week-ends, so leaving the human pie free from any covering of culture.

It was amusing to watch. Advocates of realism would have found pictures and to spare amid the overdressed girls whose week's wage had been squandered on their finery, in the undersized boys prematurely given to ogle who had spent theirs on football, bets, and cheap cigarettes.

And as the daylight died down the squalor of it all showed still more clearly beneath the flaring gas-jets. Especially in the market streets where all the week's refuse of the great city was exposed for sale, warranted sound, while buyer and seller alike winked over the warranty!

Purple heaps of fly--blown meat labelled "prime cuts" in the butcher-shops, battered tomatoes on the barrows with "best home-grown"

flaunting in green and gold lettering above them; "genuine" b.u.t.ter, "fresh" eggs, and "selected dairy-fed pork," jostling each other in a booth.

Such is the market which centuries of civilisation have provided for the poor.

And the endless crowd pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, with money in its pocket, lingering in groups about the gin s.h.i.+nes at the corners, giggling, cursing, gossiping, quarrelling; each person treading on the heels of the next, and leaving no human footfall on the oozy pavement; only blisters and scars, only the certainty that some living thing had walked through the mire and carried some of the dirt away with it.

"Fine turbit! fine fresh Grimsby turbit!" shouted a man with a barrow.

As he turned down a darker by-street, a phosph.o.r.escent glimmer shone from his pile of stale plaice as a testimony to eternal truth!

Peter Ramsay, house surgeon to St. Peter's Hospital round the corner, making his way thither on his bicycle, followed on the glimmer, vaguely interested as to whether that semi-putrescent fish bought for Sunday's breakfast would send him a new patient.

"It's fresh, is it?" asked a wistful-looking old woman from a doorway.

"Smell it, laidy! There ain't no extry charge," retorted the coster surlily.

The old woman shook her head. That test was too stern. "She comes from Cornwall," she murmured to herself, "so 'twud put her more in mind o'

'ome, nor liver, wouldn't it?"