"Christianity appeals to self-regard as the motive of our best action,"

she went on, giving out her words in short sentences, "so there must be a self-regard which is good--too good to degrade itself to worldly ends; too good even to be a part of that amalgam--the gold of unselfishness and the alloy of selfishness--which makes the _ordinary_ motive of the _ordinary_ good man."

Her voice seemed to vibrate with scorn on the emphasized words.

"If we desired to live nearer heaven--" she said, and then she stopped.

Alec turned perforce to tell her, what she must now perceive, that he was still close to them; but this impulse was checked by a sudden thought. Was she not addressing himself? Was there another man now with her?

He stopped, looked backward, listened. He was quite alone with the lady, who went past him now, only looking, as she walked, to see why he was tarrying. In his fierce young loyalty to her he took for granted, without question or proof, that her escort had deserted her in revenge for her disdain. He would willingly have gone back to fetch him up, but the impossibility of finding a man who did not wish to be found, the impossibility, as it seemed to him, of letting her go further alone, the boorishness of calling after her--all this constrained him to follow. He ran to make his communication gently, and, as he ran, courage to make it failed him. He thought of her as delicately accustomed to incessant protection. At the thought of letting her know that she was telling her thoughts to a stranger, that she was alone at such hour and place with him, his throat swelled. He hated to speak words that would be so hateful to her; and when he came by her side breathless, and she spoke to him again, he walked on, waiting till she should stop, trying to formulate what he had to say, listening and watching intently for some sign of the recreant. Again speaking as though she must unburden her mind, she turned into the lane. Over its fences he peered down the dark main road, but neither in flash nor interval could the other man be seen. He had not the slightest notion what the lady was saying now; lofty philosophy or practical sarcasm it might be, it was all lost in his exaggerated idea of what her fear and dismay would be when he spoke.

Before he had a chance to speak, however, he saw, in dark outline, the building of the farm to which he supposed her to be going. It would be a thousand times better to conduct her in silence to the door, which was now so near. To tell her before could serve no end, for even if she should wish to return to seek her late companion she could there obtain an escort. So, with feeling of guiltiness in the part he was acting, and in the surly silence he a.s.sumed, Alec let her lead up the lane she must know better than he. Her previous speeches, which he had followed so closely, were only remembered now to give food for conjecture as to who she might be and what relation she held to her late companion. The interest in his own journey and its extraordinary object were lost for the time in the excitement of his knight-errantry.

He was astonished to see that the house, as they neared it, showed no sign of life and light. The lady, whether inmate or guest, must surely be expected; but the very roofs of the house and huge barns seemed to droop in slumber, so black was the whole place and closely shut. Alec was looking out for the house gate in order to step forward and open it, when, to his utter surprise, he saw that the lady with haste pa.s.sed it, and went on toward the hill.

He stopped with hand on the gate and called her.

"What is the matter?" she asked, checking her walk. "Are you ill? What is it?"

He supposed that his strange voice would tell her all, but, although she was evidently puzzled, to his further astonishment, she did not realise that he was a stranger.

"Why do you speak like that?" she asked. And she talked on rapidly about some waggon she expected to find at the foot of the path. She went on, in fact, as if unable to endure the loss of time; and he, thinking of the waggon and waggoner as a further point of safety for her, ran after.

In a minute they both came out of the lane on a small common. Here were two horses tied under a tree and an open waggon with its shafts laid down.

"Call the man," she said.

To Alec's call a man came sleepily from a small barn that was near. He said he had brought about a dozen women in the waggon, and they had gone up the hill. Impatiently she demanded of him how long it was since they had started to walk, and heard it was about a quarter of an hour. She went on once more, with what seemed to Alec incredible speed. But this time he gave way to no further indecision. Where she had darted under the trees he followed in her path.

They were just under the covert of the first trees on a steep footpath when he stopped her, and above him she turned, listening. The scent of moss and fern and overhanging leaf was sweet. So perfect a woodland bower was the place, so delicate did the lady seem to his imagination, that he wished he could tell his concern for her alarm and readiness to devote himself to her cause. But when he saw her shrink from him, he could only stand awkwardly, tell her in a few clumsy words that he and the other man had changed places, he did not know how, and he had thought to take her to the farm.

"Your voice is very like his," she said, looking at him strangely.

But he now knew certainly, what for the last hour had seemed to him almost impossible, that in very truth the religious a.s.sembly was to take place that night; and the thought of it, and of the strange excitement with which others had gone before them on that same path took from Alec, and, he supposed, from the lady also, the power to give much consideration to their own strange encounter. When he had told her of the time he had seen old Cameron at prayer in the lone wintry fields, and how far he had just walked to see him again in the strange conditions of to-night, they climbed on together.

CHAPTER XXII.

There is nothing of which men take less heed than the infection of emotion, a thing as real as that mysterious influence which in some diseases leaps forth from one to another till all are in the same pain.

With the exception, perhaps, of the infection of fear, which societies have learnt to dread by tragic experience, man still fondly supposes that his emotions are his own, that they must rise and fall within himself, and does not know that they can be taken in full tide from another and imparted again without decrease of force. May G.o.d send a healthful spirit to us all! for good or evil, we are part of one another.

There were a good many people who went up the mountain that night to find the enthusiasts, each with some purpose of interference and criticism. They went secure in their own sentiments, but with minds tickled into the belief that they were to see and hear some strange thing. They saw and heard not much, yet they did not remain wholly their own masters. Perhaps the idea that Cameron's a.s.sembly would be well worth seeing was gleaned partly from the lingering storm, for an approaching storm breeds in the mind the expectation of exciting culmination, but long before the different seekers had found the meeting place, which was only known to the loyal-hearted, the storm, having spent itself elsewhere, had pa.s.sed away.

There was an open s.p.a.ce upon a high slope of the hill. Trees stood above it, below, around--high, black ma.s.ses of trees. It was here old Cameron's company had gathered together. No woodland spot, in dark, damp night, ever looked more wholly natural and of earth than this. Sophia Rexford and Alec Trenholme, after long wandering, came to the edge of this opening, and stopped the sound of their own movements that they might look and listen. They saw the small crowd a.s.sembled some way off, but could not recognise the figures or count them. Listening intently, they heard the swaying of a myriad leaves, the drip of their moisture, the trickle of rivulets that the rain had started again in troughs of summer drought, and, amidst all these, the old man's voice in accents of prayer.

Even in her feverish eagerness to seek Winifred, which had sustained her so long, Sophia chose now to skirt the edge of the wood rather than cross the open. As they went through long gra.s.s and bracken, here and there a fallen log impeded their steps. A frog, disturbed, leaped before them in the gra.s.s; they knew what it was by the sound of its falls.

Soon, in spite of the rustle of their walking, they began to hear the old man's words.

It seemed that he was repeating such pa.s.sages of Scripture as ascribe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Whether these were strung together in a prayer, or whether he merely gave them forth to the night air as the poetry on which he fed his soul, they could not tell. The night was much lighter now than when the storm hung over. They saw Cameron standing on a knoll apart from his company, his face upturned to the cloudy sky.

Beyond him, over the lower ranks of trees, the thunder cloud they had feared was still visible, showing its dark volume in the southern sky by the frequent fiery shudderings which flashed through its length and depth; but it had swept away so far that no sound of its thunder touched their air; and the old man looked, not at it but at the calm, cloud-wrapped sky above.

"The Son of Man is coming in the clouds of heaven with power, and great glory."

The words fell upon the silence that was made up of the subdued sounds of nature; it seemed to breathe again with them; while their minds had time to be taken captive by the imagery. Then he cried,

"He shall send His angels with a trumpet, and a great voice, and they shall gather the elect upon the four winds. Two shall be in the fields; one shall be taken and the other left." He suddenly broke off the recitation with a heartpiercing cry. "My Lord and my G.o.d! Let none of Thy children here be left. Let none of those loved ones, for whom they have come here to entreat Thee, be among those who are left. Let it suffice Thee, Lord, that these have come to meet Thee on Thy way, to ask Thee that not one of their beloved may be pa.s.sed over now, when Thou comest--_Now!_"

The last word was insistent. And then he pa.s.sed once more into the prayer that had been the burden of his heart and voice on the night that Alec had first met him. That seemed to be the one thought of his poor crazed brain--"Come, Lord Jesus!"

The little band were standing nearer the trees on the upper side of the open. They seemed to be praying. Sophia came to the end of the straggling line they formed, and there halted, doubtful. She did not advance to claim her sister; she was content to single out her childish figure as one of a nearer group. She tarried, as a worshipper who, entering church at prayer-time, waits before walking forward. Alec stood beside his unknown lady, whose servitor he felt himself to be, and looked about him with no common interest. About thirty people were clad in white; there were a few others in ordinary clothes; but it was impossible to tell just how many of these latter were there or with what intent they had come. A young man in dark clothes, who stood near the last comers peered at them very curiously: Alec saw another man sitting under a tree, and gained the impression, from his att.i.tude, that he was suffering or perplexed. It was all paltry and pitiful outwardly, and yet, as he looked about, observing this, what he saw had no hold on his mind, which was occupied with Cameron's words; and under their influence, the scene, and the meaning of the scene, changed as his mood changed in sympathy.

A hymn began to rise. One woman's voice first breathed it; other voices mingled with hers till they were all singing. It was a simple, swaying melody in glad cadence. The tree boughs rocked with it on the lessening wind of the summer night, till, with the c.u.mulative force of rising feeling, it seemed to expand and soar, like incense from a swinging censer, and, high and sweet, to pa.s.s, at length through the cloudy walls of the world. The music, the words, of this song had no more of art in them than the rhythmic cry of waves that ring on some long beach, or the regular pulsations of the blood that throbs audibly, telling our sudden joys. Yet, natural as it was, it was far more than any other voice of nature; for in it was the human soul, that can join itself to other souls in the search for G.o.d; and so complete was the lack of form in the yearning, that this soul came forth, as it were, unclothed, the more touching because in naked beauty.

"Soon you will see your Saviour coming, In the air."

So they sang. This, and every line, was repeated many times. It was only by repet.i.tion that the words, with their continuity of meaning, grew in ignorant ears.

"All the thoughts of your inmost spirit Will be laid bare, If you love Him, He will make you White and fair."

Then the idea of the first line was taken up again, and then again, with renewed hope and exultation in the strain.

"Hark! you may hear your Saviour coming."

It was a well-known Adventist hymn which had often roused the hearts of thousands when rung out to the air in the camp meetings of the northern States; but to those who heard it first to-night it came as the revelation of a new reality. As the unveiling of some solid marble figure would transform the thought of one who had taken it, when swathed, for a ghost or phantom, so did the heart's desire of these singers stand out now with such intensity as to give it objective existence to those who heard their song.

Into the cloud-walled heaven they all looked. It is in such moments that a man knows himself.

Old Cameron, lifting up his strong, voice again, was bewailing the sin of the world. "We sinners have not loved Thee, O Christ. We have not trusted Thy love. We have not been zealous for Thy glory. This--this is our sin. All else Thou would'st have mended in us; but this--this is our sin. Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!" Long confession came from him slowly, bit by bit, as if sent forth, in involuntary cries, from a heart rent by the disappointment of waiting. In strong voice, clear and true, he made himself one with the vilest in this pleading, and all the vices with which the soul of man has degraded itself were again summed up by him in this--"We have not loved Thee. We have not trusted Thy love. We are proud and vain; we have loved ourselves, not Thee."

How common the night was--just like any other night! The clouds, as one looked at them, were seen to swing low, showing lighter and darker s.p.a.ces. How very short a time can we endure the tensest mood! It is like a branding iron, which though it leaves its mark forever, cannot be borne long. The soul relaxes; the senses reclaim their share of us.

Some men came rather rudely out from under the trees, and loitered near.

Perhaps all present, except Cameron, noticed them. Alec did; and felt concerning them, he knew not why, uneasy suspicion. He noticed other things now, although a few minutes before he had been insensible to all about him. He saw that the lady he waited upon had dropped her face into her hands; he saw that her disdainful and independent mood was melted.

Strangely enough, his mind wandered back again to her first companion, and he wondered that she had not sent back for him or mourned his absence. He was amazed now at his own a.s.sumption that design, not accident, had caused such desertion. He could almost have started in his solicitude, to seek the missing man, such was the rebound of his mind. Yet to all this he only gave vagrant thoughts, such as we give to our fellows in church. The temple of the night had become a holy place, and his heart was heavy--perhaps for his old friend, standing there with uplifted face, perhaps on account of the words he was uttering, perhaps in contrition. In a few minutes he would go forward, and take the old preacher by the arm, and try, as he had once tried before, to lead him to rest and shelter from so vain an intensity of prayer. But just now he would wait to hear the words he said. He could not but wait, for so dull, so silent, did all things remain, that the earnestness of the expectant band made itself felt as an agony of hope waning to despair.

Absorbed in this, Alec heard what came to him as harsh profane speech; and yet it was not this; it was the really modest address of a young man who felt constrained to speak to him.

"I don't know," he said nervously (his accent was American), "who _you_ may be, but I just wish to state that I've a sort of notion one of those fellows right down there means mischief to one of these poor ladies in white, who is his wife. I ain't very powerful myself, but, I take it, you're pretty strong, aren't you?"

Alec gave impatient a.s.sent; but the men whom he was asked to watch approached no nearer to the women but remained behind the preacher.

All this time old Cameron prayed on, and while it might be that hope in his followers was failing, in his voice there was increasing gladness and fervour.

The clouds above shifted a little. To those wrapped in true antic.i.p.ation their shifting was as the first sign of a descending heaven. Somewhere behind the thick clouds there was a crescent moon, and when in the upper region of the sky a rift was made in the deep cloud cover, though she did not shine through, the sky beyond was lit by her light, and the upper edges of cloud were white as snow.

As the well of clear far light was opened to the old man's gaze, his prayer stopped suddenly, and he stood only looking upwards. They did not see so much as know from the manner in which his voice had failed, that for him, at least, there were moments of ecstasy in the a.s.surance of hope.