Part 13 (2/2)
Without a pause the sweet voice went on:
”Let my sins be all forgiven; Bless the friends I love so well; Take me, when I die, to 'eaven, 'Appy there with Thee to dwell.”
Amen and amen, dear little Lucy! Surely no stain of sin as yet has darkened your soul, but the thought of the good Lord who ”forgiveth iniquity, transgression and sin” cannot come to us too soon. Let it sink into the plastic wax of your memory and your heart, and harden into certainty, and then when the time comes for you to die--whether the day be near or distant--it will be well with you, ”happy there with Thee to dwell!”
There were other solos, but none which moved me like this of little Lucy's, and there were recitations by two of the boys which affected an entirely different compartment of my emotions.
They were highly moral pieces, I know, and they exhorted us to a course of conduct which must have been beneficial if followed; the trouble was that the eye had so much employment that the ear was neglected and so missed its opportunities.
Each boy licked his lips vigorously to start with, and then glued his eyes upon one fixed spot, as if he saw the words in bold type there.
If he did, an invisible compositor had set them up in the west window for the one lad, and on a corner of the ceiling for the other. The swiftness with which the words came out reminded me of a brakeless gramophone running at top speed; and it made the performers gasp for breath, which they dared hardly stop to renew lest memory should take wings and fly away. I am sure I was relieved when the final bob to the congregation was reached and the contortions ended.
The address was tedious, like the prayer, but fortunately it was not long; then the preacher came in to tea, it being Mother Hubbard's turn to entertain him.
The chapel people take the preachers according to an arranged plan with which they are all familiar. My old lady regards the privilege as in the nature of a heavenly endowment, and she has more than once reminded me that those who show hospitality to G.o.d's ministers sometimes entertain angels unawares. No doubt that is so, but the wings were very, very inconspicuous in the one who ate our b.u.t.tered toast that Sunday.
All the same he is, I am sure, a very good man, and a man of large and cheerful self-sacrifice which calls for admiration and respect, and I do sincerely honour him; and it is no fault of his that his great big hands are deeply seamed over their entire surface, and that the crevices are filled with black. He works, I discovered, at an iron-foundry, and I believe his hands were really as clean as soap and water could make them. But when all has been said, he need not have spread them over all the plate whenever he helped himself to another slice of bread, and he might just as well have taken the first piece he touched. I suppose I am squeamish, but I cannot help it. I found some amus.e.m.e.nt in pressing him to eat all he had touched, however, and seeing that he did it.
His conversation was chiefly remarkable for the use he made of the phrase ”as it were.” Mother Hubbard regards him as a genius, but I doubt if he is anything more than an intelligent eccentric. It must have been his flow of language which got him ”on the plan” that is to say, into the ranks of the local preachers of the Wesleyan Church--for, like the brook, he could ”go on for ever.”
He is a tall, heavy man, perhaps fifty years of age, with a ma.s.s of hair upon his head but none upon his face, except where thick eyebrows hang like brushwood over the twin caverns of his eyes. As he speaks he raises his right hand and holds the palm towards you, moving it slowly to and fro for emphasis, and he measures his words as he goes along.
He was describing his experiences in a new chapel where he had recently preached, a gothic building, ”more like a church, as it were, than a chapel.”
”Ah yes, Mrs. Hubbard,” he said (he never addressed me direct, perhaps because he suspected that I was not one of the confraternity), ”I always mistrust a chapel with a spire to it; and the spirit of Methodism, as it were, cannot dwell in transepts or chancels. There is not the heartiness, not the freedom, which we a.s.sociate with our chapels. The air is heavy, as it were, with the spirit of sacerdotalism. Why, ma'am, at this particular chapel--church, they call it--they had choir stalls, filled with men and boys, and a liturgical service, as it were. Ah yes! No sound of 'Hallelujah!' or 'Praise the Lord!' escaped the lips of the devout wors.h.i.+pper. They were stifled stillborn, as it were. It was cold, ma'am, cold and formal; John Wesley would never have found his heart strangely warmed in such an atmosphere. No!
”And yet, ma'am, there was something in the arrangements that stirred my feelings, as it were. Here, on my right hand, were grouped the scholars; children in the springtime of life, as it were. Yes! it was a moving sight, ma'am, to a man of feeling.” (I wickedly thought of his hands.) ”Life was before them--spread out like a map, as it were, with nothing but the outline; or like a copy-book which would be soiled and disfigured with many blots, as it were, before the end was reached.
Yes!
”And on my left were the elders of the flock, gathered there, I was told, because the acoustic properties, as it were, are excellent in the transepts: the grey-headed sires, who had almost fought through the battle and were now awaiting the recall, as it were. Men and women in the late evening of life, as it were, who would soon pa.s.s behind the sunset.
”And in front of me were the middle-aged, those who were bearing the burden and heat of the day, as it were. Yes! labourers in life's vineyard; earning their bread in the sweat of their brow, going forth to their work until the evening, as it were.
”Yes! And as I looked upon them, young and middle-aged and old, I said to myself in the language of the preacher: 'All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.'--Ecclesiastes iii. 20, ma'am.”
I got up and went into the garden, and filled my nostrils with the fragrance which earth was sending to heaven--as it were--and felt better.
Whit Monday was a hard day for me. After dinner my Easter experiences were repeated, and sitters came thick and fast. I really believe my work is giving satisfaction, for some of my last holiday customers had sent their friends to be ”taken”; and some called themselves to say ”How d'ye do?”
Nothing eventful transpired, however, and no Cynic turned up to disturb the serenity of my temper with sarcastic observations upon women, so I climbed the hill at the back of the house and joined the merry throng of school-children who were having a jolly time with their elders in a field at the top. And there I forgot my tiredness, and romped for a couple of hours with the wildest of them, having as much of the kitten in me as most folk.
When the red had finally died out of the western sky the dustman came round, and the eyes of the little ones grew heavy. But the grown-ups were enjoying themselves far too much to think of leaving so soon, so I gathered the infants around me and told them all the wonderful stories which had been locked away in the dusty cabinets of my memory. Not the ordinary nursery tales, which are as well known in Windyridge as in Westminster, but some of the simpler records of Greek mythology, and extracts from the lives of the saints.
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