"What's that?"

"That's Latin," said Dale. "_Q. I. Bono._"

"Oh, yes--exactly."

"Where's the good? Whatever one has, it isn't enough if this life is all we've got to look to and there's nothing beyond it."

Mr. Osborn had let the wheels run down. He came and sat opposite to Dale, and spoke very quietly.

"There is everything beyond it."

"And supposing that's so, one's difficulty begins bigger than before.

It's the life-risk a million times larger all over again--success or failure, punishment or peace."

"That's better than what happened to the match you threw into the fender--extinction."

"I want to believe. Mr. Osborne, I wish to speak with honesty. I feel the need to believe. If you can make me believe, you'll do me a great service."

"The service will be done, but it won't be I who does it."

"I want to be saved. I want the day when you can tell me I have gained everlasting salvation."

"The day will come; but it will not be my voice that tells you."

Mr. Osborn got up to fetch one of the six shabby volumes, and when he had returned to his chair he went on talking.

"What you should do is to take things quietly. You are a fine specimen, Mr. Dale, muscularly; but your nerves aren't quite so grand as your muscles." He said this just as doctors talk to patients, and as if Dale had been speaking of his bodily health. "Don't worry--and don't hurry. And I'd like to read you a pa.s.sage here, to set your thoughts on the right line.... Well, well, I fancied I'd put a paper-mark. I shall only garble it if I try to quote from memory. It was Doctor Clifford, speaking about Jesus at our last Autumn a.s.sembly.

He says Jesus never put G.o.d forward as a severe judge, or hard taskmaster, but as His Father.... Ah, here we are. May I read it?"

"Yes, I wish to hear it."

"'G.o.d is Father; He is our Father. To Him'--speaking of Jesus--'and to us G.o.d is Father, and that means that we are in a deep and real sense His children, and, being children, then brothers to each other; for if G.o.d must be interpreted in terms of fatherhood, then man will never be interpreted accurately until he is interpreted in the terms of brotherhood.'" Mr. Osborn closed the book and laid his hand on Dale's knee. "How does that strike you, Brother Dale?"

"It strikes me as beautifully worded--Brother Osborn."

"That's how I want you to think of Him. A Father's love. Nothing strange nor new about it. Just what you used to be thinking as a boy, coming home to Father."

"I can't remember my father," said Dale simply. "He died when I was a baby, and mother married again. I only knew a stepfather."

"Then you'll know the real thing now, if you join us." Mr. Osborn beamed cheerfully. "Understand, I don't press you. Why should I? The pressure behind you is not of this earth; and if it's there, as I think it is, you'll no more resist it than the iron bolt resists the steam-ram. But what's steam and _horse_-power?" And he beamed all over his face. "This is ten thousand _angel_-power to the square inch."

The rain began as Dale walked up the village street, in which no light except that of the public lamps was now showing. It fell sharply as he emerged into the open country, and then abruptly ceased. The odor of dust that has been partially moistened rose from the roadway; some dead leaves scurried in the ditch with a sound of small animals running for shelter; and he felt a heavy, tepid air upon his face, as if some large invisible person was breathing on him.

Then the heavens opened, and a flood of light came pouring down. The thunder seemed simultaneous with the flash. It was a crashing roar that literally shook the ground. It was as if, without prelude or warning, every house in England had fallen, every gun fired, and every powder-magazine blown up. Dale stood still, trying to steady himself after the shock, and ascertaining that his eyes had not been blinded nor the drums of his ears broken.

Then he walked on slowly, watching the storm. The lightning flooded and forked, the thunder boomed and banged; and it seemed to Dale that the whole world had been turned upside down. When one looked up at the illuminated sky, one seemed to be looking down at a mountainous landscape. The clouds, rent apart, torn, and shattered, were like ma.s.ses of high hills, inky black on the summits, with copper-colored precipices and glistening purple slopes; and in remote depths of the valleys, where there should have been lakes of water, there were lakes of fire. In the intervals between the flashes, when suddenly the sky became dark, one had a sensation that the earth had swung right again, and that it was now under one's feet as usual instead of being over one's head.

Dale plodding along thought of all he had read about thunder-storms.

It was quite true, what he said to Norah. Lightning strikes the highest object. That was why trees had got such a bad name for themselves; although, as a fact, you were often a jolly sight safer under a tree than out in the open. Salisbury Plain, he had read, was the most dangerous place in England; for the reason that, because of its bareness, it made a six-foot man as conspicuous, upstanding an object as a church tower or a factory chimney would be elsewhere. And he thought that if any cattle had been left out in those wide flat fields near the Baptist Chapel, they were now in great peril. Mav's cows were all safe under cover.

Then, stimulated by a new thought, he began to walk faster. He hurried on until he came to the middle of the flats; then, gropingly through the darkness, and swiftly through the light, he made his way to a gate that he had just seen standing high and solid between the low field banks. He climbed the gate, a leg on each side, to the top bar but one; and there, easily balancing himself, he stood high above every other object.

And he thought: "If I am to be killed, I shall be killed now. I stand here at G.o.d's pleasure, to take me or leave me."

He carefully observed the lightning. It fell like a live shot, a discharge of artillery aimed at a fixed point, and then bursting seemed to go out in all directions till it faded with a widespread glare. During this final glare after each discharge the land to its farthest horizon leaped into view. Thus he saw all at once the Baptist Chapel several hundred yards away, but seeming to be close ahead of him, much bigger than it actually was, looking familiar and yet strange--looking like the ark waiting to be floated as soon as the deluge should begin. At the same moment he saw the stones in the road, blades of gra.s.s at the side of the ditch, and nails on the gate-post near his foot.

He stood calmly surveying the tremendous pageant, and thought in each roar and crash: "This must be the climax."

That last flash had crimson streamers, and it swamped the road with violet waves. The fury and the splendor of the thing was overwhelming.

Was it brought about by Nature's forces or G.o.d's machinery?

t.i.tanic--like a struggle between the divine and the evil power--some fresh rebellion of Satan just reported up there, and G.o.d, rightly indignant, giving the devil what for--or G.o.d angry with _man_! Very magnificent, whatever way you regarded it.

The worst was over, and gradually the storm began to roll away.

Holding his hands high above his head, he felt the rain-drops beat upon them, saw the lightning soften and grow pale, heard the thunder booming more gently, grumbling, whispering--as if it had been the voice of the Maker of heaven and earth, murmuring in sleep.

Such a storm had naturally disturbed everything. Mavis and Norah were trembling on the lamplit threshold; horses rattled their head-stalls and stamped in the stables; even the bees were frightened in their hives. And a c.o.c.k, thinking that so much light and noise must mean morning, had begun to crow hours before the proper time.

Dale, listening to the c.o.c.k's crow while he told Mavis he was safe and sound, thought of Peter, the well-meaning man who wanted to believe but could not always do so.

XX

When the time came for Dale to be baptized Mr. Osborn offered to perform the ceremony at dawn in the stream that runs through Hadleigh Wood; but Dale refused the offer. He said he would much prefer to have it done within four walls, in the evening, at what he supposed to be the usual place, the chapel. He added an expression of the hope that there would not be many people there.

"There would only be a few of ourselves, true-hearted ones, in either event," said Mr. Osborn; "and out of doors is not unusual. I did it that way for George Hitching a year ago. We took him down to Kib Pool, and waited till the sun rose. Then in he went."

And without urging Dale to change his mind, Mr. Osborn in a few words touched off the beauty of this baptismal scene. He described how the dew was like diamonds on the gra.s.s, and they stood all among the shadows, and the rising sun seemed to touch George Hitching's head before it touched anything else. "Then we and the birds began to sing together. I promise you it was uncommonly pretty, as well as very moving."

Nevertheless, Dale remained quite firm. That idea of Hadleigh Wood at dawn held no attraction for him.

So far he had said nothing of all this to Mavis, but now one night after supper he broached the subject. He had laid down his knife and fork, and she had brought him the tobacco jar. He sat filling his pipe slowly, and then instead of lighting it he put it meditatively aside.

"Mavis, something has happened which will probably surprise you. I have found religion again."

"Oh, Will, I am glad."

Mavis was delighted; but when he told her that he was about to join the Baptists she did not feel so well pleased. She scarcely knew what to say. Why should he want to take the creed of dissenters, of quite common people? It was all very well for farm-laborers, sempstresses, and servants; but it did not seem good enough for her Will. Socially it was without doubt a retrograde step; and nowadays, when he got on capitally with the best of the gentlefolk, when they were all jolly and nice to him, it did seem a pity to go and mix himself up with a pack of ignorant underlings. The gentry, who of course all belonged to the Church of England, would not like it any better than she herself.

Moreover, that notion of total immersion was extremely repugnant to her. A grown-up person, an important person, a member of the District Council, splashing about in a tank! She asked him many questions concerning the baptism itself, and he told her all that he knew about it. He did not tell her, however, of Mr. Osborn's proposal that the immersion should occur in the wood-stream.

"What took your fancy, Will dear, with Mr. Osborn's teaching more than anybody else's?"

Then he told her all that Mr. Osborn had said of the fatherly attributes of G.o.d, of the fact that men were veritably His children, and that for communion with G.o.d one must be as a child approaching a father.

"Yes, dear, I'm sure that's true. But Mr. Norton would say just the same."