The Case of Richard Meynell Part 5

"She'll not coom?" he said, in a faint voice of surprise. "Well, that's a queer thing. She wasn't used to be a tough 'un. I could most make her do what I wanted. Well, never mind, Rector, never mind. Sit tha down--mebbe you'd be wanting to say a prayer. You're welcome. I reckon it'll do me no harm."

His lips parted in a smile--a smile of satire. But his brows frowned, and his eyes were still alive and bright, only now, as the watcher thought, with anger.

Meynell hesitated.

"I will say the church prayers, if you wish it, Bateson. Of course I will say them."

"But I doan't believe in 'em," said the sick man, smiling again, "an' you doan't believe in 'em, noather, if folk say true! Don't tha be vexed--I'm not saying it to cheek tha. But Mr. Barron, ee says ee'll make tha give up. Ee's been goin' roun' the village, talkin' to folk. I doan't care about that--an' I've never been one o' your men--not pious enough, be a long way--but I'd like to hear--now as I can't do tha no harm, Rector, now as I'm goin', an' you cawn't deny me--what tha does really believe.

Will tha tell me?"

He turned, open-eyed, impulsive, intelligent, as he had always been in life.

The Rector started. The inward challenge had taken voice.

"Certainly I will tell you, if it will help you--if you're strong enough."

Bateson waved his hand contemptuously.

"I feel as strong as onything. That sup o' brandy has put some grit in me. Give me some more. Thank tha ... Does tha believe in G.o.d, Rector?"

His whimsical, half-teasing, yet, at bottom, anxious look touched Meynell strangely.

"With all my life--and with all my strength!"

Meynell's gaze was fixed intently on his questioner. The night-light in the basin on the farther side of the room threw the strong features into shadowy relief, illumining the yearning kindliness of the eyes.

"What made tha believe in Him?"

"My own life--my own struggles--and sins--and sufferings," said Meynell, stooping toward the sick man, and speaking each word with an intensity behind which lay much that could never be known to his questioner. "A good man, Bateson, put it once in this way, 'There is something in me that asks something of me.' That's easy to understand, isn't it? If a man wants to be filthy, or drunken, or cruel, there is always a voice within--it may be weak or it may be strong--that asks of him to be--instead--pure and sober and kind. And perhaps he denies the Voice, refuses it--talks it down--again and again. Then the joy in his life dies out bit by bit, and the world turns to dust and ashes. Every time that he says No to the Voice he is less happy--he has less power of being happy. And the voice itself dies away--and death comes. But now, suppose he turns to the Voice and says 'Lead me--I follow!' And suppose he obeys, like a child stumbling. Then every time he stretches and bends his poor weak will so as to give _It_ what it asks, his heart is happy; and strength comes--the strength to do more and do better. _It_ asks him to love--to love men and women, not with l.u.s.t, but with pure love; and as he obeys, as he loves--he _knows_--he knows that it is G.o.d asking, and that G.o.d has come to him and abides with him. So when death overtakes him he trusts himself to G.o.d as he would to his best friend."

"Tha'rt talkin' riddles, Rector!"

"No. Ask yourself. When you fell into sin with that woman, did nothing speak to you, nothing try to stop you?"

The bright half-mocking eyes below Meynell's wandered a little--wavered in expression.

"It was the hot blood in me--aye, an' in her too. Yo cawn't help them things."

"Can't you? When your wife suffered, didn't that touch you? Wouldn't you undo it now if you could?"

"Aye--because I'm goin'--doctor says I'm done for."

"No--well or ill--wouldn't you undo it--wouldn't you undo the blows you gave your wife--the misery you caused her?"

"Mebbe. But I cawn't."

"No--not in my sense or yours. But in G.o.d's sense you can. Turn your heart--ask Him to give you love--love to Him, who has been pleading with you all your life--love to your wife, and your fellow men--love--and repentance--and faith."

Meynell's voice shook. He was in an anguish at what seemed to him the weakness, the ineffectiveness, of his pleading.

A silence. Then the voice rose again from the bed.

"Dost tha believe in Jesus Christ, Rector? Mr. Barron, he calls tha an infidel. But he hasn't read the books you an' I have read, I'll uphold yer!"

The dying man raised his hand to the bookshelves beside him with a proud gesture.

The Rector slowly raised himself. An expression as of some pa.s.sion within, trying at once to check and to utter itself, became visible on his face in the half light.

"It's not books that settle it, Jim. I'll try and put it to you--just as I see it myself--just in the way it comes to me."

He paused a moment, frowning under the effort of simplification. The hidden need of the dying man seemed to be mysteriously conveyed to him--the pang of lonely anguish that death brings with it; the craving for comfort beneath the apparent scorn of faith; the human cry expressed in this strange catechism.

"Stop me if I tire you," he said at last. "I don't know if I can make it plain--but to me, Bateson, there are two worlds that every man is concerned with. There is this world of everyday life--work and business, sleeping and talking, eating and drinking--that you and I have been living in; and there is another world, within it, and alongside of it, that we know when we are quiet--when we listen to our own hearts, and follow that voice I spoke of just now. Jesus Christ called that other world the Kingdom of G.o.d--and those who dwell in it, the children of G.o.d.

Love is the king of that world, and the law of it--Love, which _is_ G.o.d.

But different men--different races of men--give different names to that Love--see it under different shapes. To us--to you and to me--it speaks under the name and form of Jesus Christ. And so I come to say--so all Christians come to say--_'I believe--in Jesus Christ our Lord_'. For it is His life and His death that still to-day--as they have done for hundreds of years--draw men and women into the Kingdom--the Kingdom of Love--and so to G.o.d. He draws us to love--and so to G.o.d. And in G.o.d alone is the soul of man satisfied; _satisfied--and at rest_."

The last words were but just breathed--yet they carried with them the whole force of a man.

"That's all very well, Rector. But tha's given up th' Athanasian Creed, and there's mony as says tha doesn't hold by tother Creeds. Wilt tha tell _me_, as Jesus were born of a virgin?--or that a got up out o' the grave on the third day?"

The Rector's face, through all its hara.s.s, softened tenderly.

"If you were a well man, Bateson, we'd talk of that. But there's only one thing that matters to you now--it's to feel G.o.d with you--to be giving your soul to G.o.d."

The two men gazed at each other.

"What are tha nursin' me for, Rector?" said Bateson, abruptly--"I'm nowt to you."

"For the love of Christ," said Meynell, steadily, taking his hand--"and of you, in Christ. But you mustn't talk. Rest a while."

There was a silence. The July night was beginning to pale into dawn.

Outside, beyond the nearer fields, the wheels and sheds and the two great chimneys of the colliery were becoming plain; the tints and substance of the hills were changing. Dim forms of cattle moved in the newly shorn gra.s.s; the sound of their chewing could be faintly heard.

Suddenly the dying man raised himself in bed.

"I want my wife!" he said imperiously. "I tell tha, I want my wife!"

It was as though the last energy of being had thrown itself into the cry--indignant, pa.s.sionate, protesting.

Meynell rose.

"I will bring her."

Bateson gripped his hand.

"Tell her to mind that cottage at Morden End--and the night we came home there first--as married folk. Tell her I'm goin'--goin' fast."

He fell back, panting. Meynell gave him food and medicine. Then he went quickly downstairs, and knocked at the parlour door. After an interval of evident hesitation on the part of the occupant of the room, it was reluctantly unlocked. Meynell pushed it open wide.