CHAPTER IX

The Revival Meeting

When Gildas reached Scethryg he found old Hezek seated alone on the settle, the little round table, on which stood a dip candle, drawn up at his elbow; by the dim light, he was poring over the weekly newspaper, which found its way to the farm with the groceries every Thursday evening.

Laying it down as Gildas entered, ‘Dear, dear!’ he said, ‘’tis wonderful what power that young man has over the hearts of the people! Evan Roberts, I mean; ’tis very plain God’s blessing goes with him, eh, Gildas? What think you about it?’

Gildas drew his chair to the table rather wearily. ‘I am tired,’ he said, ‘and hungry. Come, Gwenifer, lass, let’s have some fish fried. Where is Het?’

‘She’s gone to the prayer meeting at John Parry’s,’ said Hezek, and while Gwenifer moved about the hearth the old man returned to the subject of the revival. ‘Why are you against it, Gildas?’

‘I am not against it; may be ’tis wanted; but I am against these wild ways – people showing their hearts to the world, and crying out that they are sinners! There’s no need to shout that, ’tis plain enough when you come to deal with them; and d’ye think, Hezek, ’tis pleasing to God that a woman should leave her house empty, and her husband lonely, for any prayer meeting in the world? ’Tis a small job getting her husband’s supper, I know; but if it’s the job she ought to be doing, that is how she will be serving God best at that moment, and that’s my opinion plain for you!’

‘And you are about right, I dare say. Nance, where is she?’ said Hezek.

‘Down in the village,’ said Gildas. ‘There is something strange about her lately.’

‘Dear anwl!’ said the old man uneasily. ‘I have seen no change in her myself, but she cannot be obstinate to you, Gildas, who are so kind to her,’ and he rose to open the door and to peer out into the darkness.

‘Where can she be?’ he said returning.

‘With Nelli Amos,’ said Gildas. ‘She keeps the chapel, so I daresay she is busy tonight; but what Nance wants there I cannot see.’

‘But, ’machgen-i,’ said the old man, ‘can’t you share in her feelings about it?’

‘No, I cannot,’ said Gildas and turned to the table, on which Gwenifer was laying the supper. When she had finished, she bade him good-night in her usual manner, by laying her fingers on his arm and nodding.

‘Art going? Good-night, then, and, Gwenifer, I thank thee, lass.’

‘Here she is!’ exclaimed Hezek, as a light step was heard in the yard and Nance entered.

‘Well indeed, I am hungry,’ she said, sitting down. ‘’Tis helping Nelli Amos I have been to dust and clean the chapel.’

‘And dost think, ’merch-i,’ said Gildas, ‘there was more call for thee to do that, than to come home with me?’

‘Yes,’ said Nance curtly. ‘’Tis working for the Lord!’

‘That is not my opinion, then,’ said Gildas, ‘and I tell you, Nance, if you are going to follow the path on which you have started, you and I will drift far apart.’

‘You and I!’ She should have noticed the dropping of the familiar ‘thee and thou’, but, full of her new-found zeal, she heeded not the cloud that lowered over Gildas’s face.

He finished his meal in silence, and at last rising, said, ‘Well, good-night, I am rather cold after my wetting.’

When he had gone, Hezek turned to the hearth, and drawing Nance to a chair beside him, began to lay before her the danger of offending her husband. ‘He’s a stern man, Nance, though just and true; beware how thou dost anger him, dear heart.’ But Nance listened impatiently, and the pout on her lips grew more pronounced.

‘Dakee,’ she said, ‘I have felt the power of the Diwygiad, I have given myself to it, and if Gildas turns his back upon it I go not with him.’ And when she rose to put out the lights, the old man felt, as he had often done in the days of her childhood, that his words had made no impression upon her, and he muttered something about a ‘wilful woman’ as she let him out before bolting the door.

Thus, in spite of her grandfather’s warning, each day, as it drew to a close, found her rounding off her household duties with a view to being ready for the meetings at Brynzion. And Gildas, quietly accepting the inevitable, would take his sickle, his hoe, or his rake, and turn straight away from his meals to his work. But it was not without a pang that he noted the empty hearth and Nance’s little rush chair vacant in the evenings.

In the first months of his married life, when the work of the day was over, he had been accustomed to turn to that hearth for cheer and companionship. Now, how changed was everything, he thought, and he looked rather wistfully round the comfortable old kitchen as he passed out to the farmyard, for it is a mistaken idea that the longing for the peaceful joys of homelife is reserved for women only to feel. On the threshold, however, the shadow that had fallen on his face lightened a little as he caught the sound of a woman’s voice. Loud and clear it came on the evening air, and Gildas, listening, recognised the tune as an ancient Welsh drinking-song to which had been set the words of a modern hymn. It was Nance’s voice, and as he listened the singer came out of the ‘boidy,’ carrying on her hip a pail of frothing milk. The sinking sun shone straight into her eyes, so that she saw not where her husband stood still to look at her. The tune was in a minor key, like much of the Welsh music, and she sang its mournful cadences with a strong realisation of the self-abasement which they expressed.

Oh, wretched that I am,

Adrift upon the sea!

Oh, fill my sails with heavenly airs,

And waft me home to Thee.

As she finished the verse she stopped, and leaning her pail on a low wall stood silently musing, her eyes fixed on the ground. Her full, round mouth had taken a curve of sadness, there were lines between her eyebrows which should have no place on the face of a young and happy wife.

With a deep sigh, she took up her pail again and passed on to the house, and Gildas, both pained and softened by the look of sorrow on the young face, turned aimlessly towards the moor.

There was no work to do there, and it was almost unconsciously that he turned his steps that way. But not for Gwenifer only did that great open tract of moorland bring a message of peace and solace; no one could tread its lonely paths or breathe its pure air without a feeling of the insignificance of things seen, and the overwhelming reality of the unseen.

Even sights and sounds that recalled to the senses the realm of nature around, seemed but to impress the mind more vividly with a sense of the immanence of a spiritual power behind and beyond it. To Gildas, as he walked further and further away from the house, and at last sat down where nothing was in sight save the moor below and the sky above, to him came those soft influences which we so sedulously banish by our devotion to the cares and pleasures of the world.

The lines smoothed out of his face, the shadow lifted from his brow, and a great wave of pity swept over him for the woman whose clear voice still rang in his ears. ‘Oh, wretched that I am!’ Poor little Nance! so young, so warm-hearted, so anxious to be good. Had he been selfish and cruel in opposing her devotion to the Diwygiad? From a furze-bush near him came a waft of sweet odour that seemed to say, ‘Love her, Gildas, and forgive her.’ From the sea came a western breeze that whispered, ‘Thou art strong, oh, Gildas, and she is weak; forgive her and love her!’ ‘In my deed,’ he exclaimed, as he rose hurriedly to his feet, ‘I believe they are right, and I am a hard man. Poor little Nance!’ And he wheeled round and strode back towards Scethryg, taking a short cut which he had avoided before, and which led him by Gwenifer’s cottage.

‘Hoi, Gwenifer, lass!’ he called out as he caught sight of her in her garden. ‘I haven’t seen thee all day; where hast been?’ He opened the little wattled gate and looked round. She was standing in the middle of her garden in the full glow of the sunset light; in her arms she held a large bundle of scarlet poppies which she had just weeded out; they trailed round her skirt, they clung to her shoulders, reflecting the crimson light like sparks of fire. Drawing nearer the gate, she looked over her bundle of brilliant colouring at Gildas, with the clear calm eyes that always reminded him of the brown pool in the little river that brawled down through the alders to Tregildas sands; pointing to her glowing bundle, she raised her eyes to his with so much meaning that he understood.

‘Yes, beautiful,’ he said, ‘’tis pity they are so troublesome.’ As he spoke and looked at her – a recognition of her beauty swept over him, and with it a pang of regret. Regret of what he scarcely knew, and he had no time to consider, for he must return to Scethryg. He would show Nance that he at least was not changed; he would lighten her heart, and she should never more say, ‘Oh, wretched that I am.’

‘I am going to Brynzion,’ he said to Gwenifer, ‘so I mustn’t stop; perhaps I have been hard to poor Nance. Good-bye, lass;’ and he hurried on, bearing with him, however, an impression of a fair face that rose above a crowd of red flowers. Facing the east, he saw the moon rising clear and round over the landward hills, though at the right dark clouds were rising too. ‘Dear anwl!’ he said, as he hurried on, ‘the moon reminds me of Gwenifer – so far above us, so silent, so fair, the storms of life touch her not.’

Drawing nearer home, he heard a loud boyish voice calling to him. Ben Stable, standing on the garden hedge, made a sign to his master to hurry, and long before Gildas reached him he had shouted his news. Rattler had hurt his foot – sprained it, Ben feared; and Gildas hastened to the stable to examine the injured limb and to apply the necessary remedies, so that his arrival at the farmhouse door was delayed a full half-hour.

He was not surprised, therefore, to find that Nance had already left the house. Well, he would follow; and hurrying through his change of clothes, he was soon tramping over the moor to the village. The sky had darkened with gathering clouds; like threatening hosts of gloom they spread from the south towards the rising moon, and the long line of golden haze in the west was all that remained of the sunny day that had passed away.

The air was heavy and murky as Gildas reached the village; no human being was in sight, no lounging smokers round the kilns.

‘Thunder, most like,’ he said to himself. ‘Caton pawb! Where are the people? All in the meeting, I suppose;’ but, looking towards the chapel, he was surprised to see no light in the long windows. All was darkness, and no singing came surging out through the open doors. Entering a cottage, he found the only occupant, a crippled woman, sitting alone by the fire.

‘Hello, Fani!’ he said. ‘What, all alone? Where’s Deio and Maggi? What’s become of all the people?’

‘In chapel, of course,’ answered Fani, and her pale face grew reproachful and indignant; ‘where I would be myself if I could only crawl there.’

‘But there is no meeting,’ said Gildas, ignoring her angry looks, though he was quite aware of them, ‘there’s no light, no singing.’

‘No,’ she answered, swaying backwards and forwards, ‘they are often praying in the darkness to save the lights, but they are all there; and go you, too, Gildas Rees – go you in and take your place by your wife’s side, and if the Spirit does not move you to offer up a prayer, at least breathe an “Amen” sometimes to warm the meeting. I am sitting here alone and watching, and I am seeing many things, mishteer; you at home instead of in chapel; mestress, pwr thing, going alone; and – come here, man, let me whisper to you. Walk home with her yourself over the moor o’ nights.’ She pressed her hand upon his arm, and then straightening herself, continued to look at him with meaning in her eyes, but Gildas turned abruptly away. ‘I have no time for gossip tonight,’ he said, and passed out through the doorway, a hot flush dyeing his face – a flush that faded and left his countenance set and hard as a white mask as he approached the chapel door.

Outside, the closing dusk and a rising wind that sighed through the thorn-bushes – inside, darkness, lighted only by the moon that shone full through the long windows, and only one voice that rose and fell in hushed accents of prayer and penitence: old Bensha’s, the shepherd on the next farm to Scethryg, a man whose blameless life and gentle disposition were proverbial. Gildas recognised it at once. ‘Well indeed,’ he thought, ‘old Bensha’s prayers come from a good heart, whatever,’ and he prepared to edge his way through the packed congregation to the Scethryg pew, when he was startled by a familiar voice that, breaking in upon the old man’s prayer, burst into a fervid petition for mercy. It was Nance’s voice! and Gildas, astonished and angry, stood still to listen, scarcely believing his own ears. Nance to raise her voice alone in an assembled multitude! Nance to lay her feelings bare before this crowd! It was intolerable to the proud man, whose idea of womankind had been formed upon the retiring modesty of Gwenifer’s character. Such, too, he had thought, was Nance; but now her confessions of sin, her fervid prayers for forgiveness, her rapt uplifted countenance, all failed to awaken in his heart the tender pity that had turned his footsteps so hurriedly from the moor. The tenderness died away, and only strong disapproval remained. Already Fani’s words were rankling and kindling a fierce jealousy – of whom, of what, he scarcely stopped to ask himself. The words, ‘Oh, wretched that I am!’ returned to his mind again, but only to increase his resentment of this publicity. Nance knew his feelings well; how dared she thus defy his wishes! ‘Ach-y-fi,’ he muttered to himself, ‘I never dreamt that she would be raising her voice before people like this.’

But Nance was quite oblivious to the crowd around her. Alone in a whirlwind of stormy passions, she was pouring out her soul in a fervid appeal for help. Oh for an anchor to hold on to in the sea of unrest on which she was tossing! Oh for a breath from Heaven to fill her sails, and waft her to rest and peace! And as her voice rose in excited tones, a chorus of ‘Amens’ and ‘Bendigedigs’ arose from the assembled throng around her, and Gildas grew hot and cold by turns with a shrinking sense of shame.

Again there was a chorus of ‘Amens.’ Nance’s voice grew more impassioned, and what were these words that reached his ears from the darkness? Oh, God! he could not bear it. For Nance, carried away by the enthusiasm of the crowd, had embarked upon another wave of prayer: ‘And yet another petition I make to Thee; hear me, O Lord. Dear friends, lend me the wings of your prayers to aid my own. My husband, Lord! he who is so near to me, so far estranged from Thee; save him, O Lord! Save him now; wherever he is, whether on the moor, or in the field, or in the house. Touch his heart now, and let him no longer oppose Thy Holy Spirit in this place. Bend his proud head, O Lord, and soften his hard heart.’

Here she had given voice to the general feeling; now at last she had expressed the thoughts that had permeated through the whole neighbourhood for weeks, and a hundred voices joined in her prayer: ‘Save him now, O Lord. Touch his hard heart: humble it, break it, if need be, but bring him to his knees.’ And a chorus of ‘Save him, Lord! Save Gildas Rees!’ burst from the whole congregation, while Nance sobbed and swayed in an ecstasy of fervour.

Just within the chapel door the subject of their prayers was standing straight and white, as if turned to stone. A few of those around him had, of course, recognised him at once on his entering the chapel, and, seeing his look of dumb misery, one man made room for him on the bench upon which he was sitting; but Gildas took no notice. He heard the ejaculations and pleadings that rose from every corner of the building, and, with a strange feeling of being overpowered by some mysterious influence that seemed to fill the darkness, Gildas, the practical and clear-headed, looked around him in bewildered astonishment. Was that old Bensha the shepherd’s face? Was this Nelli Amos who prayed so loudly beside him, ‘Humble his proud heart’? And yet another voice rose above the sea of praise and prayer – a boy’s voice clear and ringing, a voice as familiar to him almost as Nance’s! But whence came this flow of eloquence – these fervid utterances, expressed in language that surely emanated from some other source than the heart and lips of an ignorant farm labourer? Could this be Ben Stable? And, as he listened, Gildas’s own heart seemed to burn within him. His head throbbed, his pulses quickened, and for a moment he was in danger of losing his self-control; for what was this strange power that seemed to hold him in its grip, and to constrain him to cry aloud, ‘God forgive me, for I am a sinner’?

But only for a moment was his firmness shaken. Every instinct of his strong and rugged nature rose up in arms against this feeling of coercion; and where a man of less strength of will would have succumbed, and added another to the number of ‘conversions,’ Gildas Rees refused to yield to the mysterious power that seemed to palpitate through the darkness around him.

‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘I am a sinful man!’ and never had he realised it more acutely than at the present moment. But was there not the wide moor, the fields, the barn in which he could pray aloud if he desired? Was not his own heart wide enough for repentance, for reformation, for bitter thoughts and wounded feelings? Yes, he felt the power of the Diwygiad; but he held firm to his convictions that the fervour and excitement around him were unnecessary adjuncts to the simple communion between a man and his God.

Gildas Rees had not thought much about these things. He had been too busy with his reaping, his sowing, and his mowing; but, while he had toiled in the pure, keen moorland air, they had unconsciously dawned upon him and had become ingrained into his nature.

Great beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead; he clenched his hands tightly as he stood there proud and defiant, while all around him surged the sound of sobs and prayers, ‘Save Gildas, Gildas Rees! Save him now, O Lord!’

Slowly he turned towards the door, endeavouring to reach it through the throng who pressed around him; and shocked, almost awestruck, at the obduracy of the unrepentant sinner, they shrank back and made way for him to pass out into the darkness. Once in the open air, he seemed to regain at a bound his usual decision and firmness, and to shake off the strange sense of compulsion that had weighed upon him, and, reaching the kiln, he sat down on its low wall, feeling more exhausted than he had ever done before.

The dusky night was falling over moor and sea, the air was full of the soft splashing of the waves upon the shore, like the sound of a mother hushing her babe to sleep. Yes, here was peace and rest – the peace in which Gildas’s honest nature had grown and thriven, and to which he returned with the natural satisfaction of a boy who throws off the restrictions of school for the freedom of home. Rising, he turned his back on the kilns, and made his way towards Scethryg, for he thirsted for the solitude and freedom of the moor.

He was filled with a bitter sense of indignation towards Nance; but the hotter the feelings that raged within him, the keener the dart that wounded him, the deeper did Gildas Rees bury them all under that mask of stony hardness that had fallen over his face.

When Nance returned from Brynzion that night, she expected an angry reception from her husband; for she had heard of his presence in the chapel, and knew that she had wounded his tenderest feelings and offended his proud, reserved nature irretrievably; so she came prepared with angry retorts and self-justifications, for the fervour of religious feelings that filled her within the chapel took wing when the meeting broke up, and the natural self asserted itself once more with more or less power. In some cases the warmth, the zeal, the awakened conscience remained to strengthen and mould the remainder of life; but not so with Nance. Her heart was aflame with a host of conflicting feelings: with fear of the material hell-fire which she had been brought up to believe in, with repentance, with longing for peace and purity, but, above all, with the guilty love which she had now ceased to make any efforts to banish from her heart. The thought of Gildas, whom until tonight she might have drawn to her with a smile or a caress, had become distasteful to her, and henceforth she thought, as she drew near the glimmering light in the farm kitchen window, she would be justified in hating him: for had he not turned his back upon the Holy Spirit, and disdainfully cast from him the prayers of the congregation?

She had walked home alone over the moor, for Hezek had often of late turned in to Fani’s cottage to read to her or to refresh her with an account of the fervour of the meetings which she was unable to attend.

Where was Captain Jack? Nance wondered, and her lonely walk had not smoothed her ruffled feelings.

She was not prepared for the quiet scene that met her eyes as she entered the house, and the calmness and homely comfort only added fuel to the fire of unrest that was burning within her. She looked round and called loudly on Gwenifer.

The bread and cheese, the jug of buttermilk, were still on the table, though it was long past supper-time, and Gildas, sitting at the old bookcase-desk, was bending over his accounts. The face which he raised as Nance entered was that of a man ten years older than the Gildas who had hurried through the farmyard a few hours earlier, intent on winning back the love and confidence of his young wife.

Every vestige of colour had left his face as he looked up from his accounts; there were lines between the black eyebrows, and the bright flashing eyes looked dull and sunken.

There was no trace of anger in his voice, however, nor indeed of any feeling, as he answered: ‘Gwenifer is gone home; it was getting late for her to cross the moor alone,’ and turned again to his accounts.

‘Cross the moor? Dear anwl! Nobody cares how often I cross it alone, seems to me,’ said Nance, drawing her chair to the table. To this Gildas made no reply, but, closing his account book, rose and bolted the door before he turned to the stairs which opened into the kitchen.

Nance began her supper, a little subdued by her husband’s unexpected calmness. Soon bringing her simple meal to an end, however, her mood seemed to change. She clattered the plates and dishes and swept up the stone floor with many thumps and thrusts against the clumsy furniture, which fortunately was strong and solid enough to bear its rough treatment without injury. As she worked she sang, and at last, flinging another log on the fire, sat down before the blaze; and opening her hymn-book of large Welsh print, with all the tunes in sol-fa notation, began the repertory of revival hymns which had become so popular in the neighbourhood that every ploughboy shouted them up and down the furrows, and every milkmaid sang them over her pail.

The clock had long struck eleven, and still the weird and mournful hymns continued, Nance turning leaf after leaf of her hymn-book in a kind of feverish excitement. Upstairs Het slept through everything, but Gildas, sleepless and restless, heard it all, and longed for peace.

‘Seems to me no one cares how often I cross the moor alone!’ The words had recalled to his mind Fani’s warning.

‘Walk home with her yourself over the moor o’ nights!’

What had she meant? Who had been Nance’s companion in her frequent walks from the meetings? But he was not of a suspicious nature, and above all things hated village gossip; so, with a weary sigh, he turned his head on his pillow, and cast from him the thought as of no consequence.

Midnight! and the old clock seemed to throb with indignation at the unusual sound of singing at such an hour. As the ringing echo of its last stroke died away, Nance closed her hymn-book and began her way up the old crooked stairs.