CHAPTER XXXI

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AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.

"And while we suffer, let us set our souls To suffer perfectly; since this alone, The suffering, which is this world's special grace, May here be perfected and left behind." --MRS. HAMILTON KING.

Far up amid the lonely heights of Craig Aran, on the Sunday evening which followed the events recorded in the last chapter, wandered the footsteps of Master Jeremy Taylor. Once again a guest at the house of his old friend the Earl of Carbery, he had been taking Sunday duty for an aged friend of the earl's at Wernolen, a wild distant spot in the mountains, and purposed wending his way ere nightfall to the farm Glyn Melen, not many miles distant, with the double object of seeking a night's shelter in that spot of well-known loveliness, and of trusting still to find there his beloved friend Percival in company with Lady Bryn Afon and her daughter, and to hear that the wedding ceremony, in which he had long since promised to take his part, might now be not very far distant. News of its postponement on account of the sudden illness of Primrose had been some while since sent to him, as well as to Lady Rosamond and such other old friends as had been bidden to the ceremony; but no further details had as yet reached his ear, and he much longed to hear that all was well, and his friend's happiness assured. The day at first appointed for the wedding was but four days hence. He would without further delay seek out his friends in their mountain retreat, trusting to see the bloom of health once more restored to the sweet face of the Fair Maid of Gwynnon, and to learn that the glad day of her union with Percival might still be near at hand. It was not yet long after six in the evening, and the sight of a little ivy-covered church tower nestling beneath the brow of a not far-distant crag attracted Jeremy's feet thither; and reflecting that he would yet reach Glyn Helen before nightfall, he resolved to say his evening prayer ere passing onwards, and profit in so far as he might by the probably rude eloquence of the unlettered Welsh curate likely to occupy the pulpit in so benighted a region. The little building was well filled, and it was only in a far corner at its furthest end that Master Taylor could find a vacant seat. But whose voice was it from which the barbarous Welsh words rolled out so musically, and whose tones made him start from his dark corner and eagerly scan the features of him from whom they proceeded? Was it Percival Vere or his ghost, who with face of deadly pallor and brown locks thickly strewn with grey, yet spoke with Percival's own voice of ringing music, and raised to heaven those deep, far-searching eyes which could belong to none other than Sir Galahad? Master Taylor's thoughts wandered beyond his control during the conclusion of the prayers, for his heart ached miserably for his friend, whom he saw so terribly changed in countenance, whose very voice rang with a burning intensity of pain, and who, when he mounted the pulpit and faced the congregation, looked but like some pale spectre of his former self, gazing forth upon his flock with eyes worn and weary with sleeplessness, and dimmed with the troubled, yearning expression gained through days of agonised searching into the mysteries of the divine will. Jeremy shrank into his corner, knowing that his friend was addressing a congregation to whom his sorrows were unknown, and to whom he was a stranger, and unwilling himself to be recognised, lest his presence should give pain. He listened almost breathlessly for the text, and when in clear, unfaltering tones the young preacher read out the words, "Son of man, behold I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke," he bent his head upon his breast and wept. "Yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep," continued the stern, unnaturally-controlled tones of the chaplain, "neither shall thy tears run down."

"Shanno is dead," murmured Jeremy to himself, and the tears wrung from his own tender heart coursed unseen down his cheeks, as with bent head he listened, straining every nerve to lose no word of his friend's utterance, and thinking of his own loved wife and babe at home. But though soon, borne along on the torrent of the preacher's eloquence, the people's hearts failed them for sorrow at his heartrending description of the prophet's woe, and sobs burst from them on every hand, yet Percival himself spake on, dry-eyed, with unfaltering lips, nor ever failed for word to make his lesson of sublimest resignation strike home to the very inmost heart of his hearers. Yet though to them he failed not to convey the message he desired, or to impart his teaching with fullest seeming confidence, his friend, reading below the surface of his mind and learning the undercurrents beneath that glow of burning eloquence, perceived the inward torture which had driven the young preacher in very self-defence to give forth so bravely to others that hard lesson beneath which his own soul yet shrank in bitter recoil. To his own rebellious soul had Percival been preaching in those plain, stern accents of glowing force, in which only his bosom friend had detected the lack of his own heart's loving submission, the secret failing of that spirit of sweetness and loving-kindness which had ever been one of the most beautiful features of his character, and which now, eclipsed by the weight of his suffering, gave the unnaturally hard ring to his voice and the icy composure to his demeanour. But to the simple mountain-folk, to whom he was an utter stranger, his voice had been like that of a herald from heaven, and his face as the face of an angel, and to their ears never had their own tongue resounded more musically and sweetly within those ancient walls. Subdued and softened, they passed out of the church, and took their way down the hillside, talking gently together of the wonderful words of the unknown preacher, and making vague conjectures as to the sorrows which had so plainly marked his beautiful countenance.

Meanwhile the young chaplain, exhausted in mind and body, lay prostrate at the foot of the altar, his face buried in his hands, and dry, tearless sobs from time to time shaking his otherwise motionless frame. His friend waited long for him in the porch, till finding that even the clerk had left the church, and that still Percival tarried, he turned back into the now fast-darkening building, and sought for him amid the shadows, till there on the altar-step he found him, wrestling with his misery, as he thought, alone with God. He stooped over him, gently touching him on the shoulder, and Percival rose, startled, to his feet, and turned haggard eyes upon the friend he had so little expected just then to see.

"You, Jeremy!" he said in a low voice. "How come you here? Have you--were you here during the service!" "God has sent me to you," answered Master Taylor simply. "Yes, I have heard you preach, Percival, and I know that you have been shooting no bow at a venture, but speaking to your own troubled soul. Come with me and tell me of your trouble, the traces of which upon your countenance have sorely vexed my heart, while from yon dark corner I have, all unknown to yourself, watched and listened and wondered for this last hour or more."

"I marvel that I did not see you," said Percival, still looking at his friend as though he felt himself in a dream; "but truly I saw nought that was around me. How come you here, Jeremy?"

"It seemed long since I had heard aught of yourself and of her whom I scarce dare name," answered Master Taylor gently; "and my ministrations having been needed this morning and also in the forenoon at your church in the hollow, where an aged friend of my Lord Carbery's hath fallen ill, I was but now purposing to postpone my return to Gelli Aur until the morrow, in order that I might journey this evening towards Glyn Melen, in the hope of yet finding you within its walls. I but turned aside for an hour, to acquaint myself with yet another of these remote mountain churches, where I little thought to hear such a masterly discourse as yours, friend Percival. But of yourself."

"I have been a wanderer these four days in the mountains," said Percival wearily, "and had little wish to preach to these poor simple folk lessons of patience which the least among them could have taught myself far better. But I chanced like you to note this ivy-covered tower in my ramblings, and, being seen this morning amid the congregation by the vicar, was entreated to take for him this evening service, that he might in his turn relieve a sick brother. Perchance it has been well, since open speech is wont at times to relieve a bursting heart. Is it sore hypocrisy, think you, friend Jeremy, to preach from the pulpit those virtues against which your inmost soul is meanwhile in fearful rebellion? I trow I am both hypocrite and blasphemer, for my own soul is dark within me; and while I know that God is just, I cannot feel that He is good! How many days of writhing torture, think you, the prophet endured ere he could bless Him for His dealings? Must not his human will, like some poor bird dashing with impotent rage against the bars of its cage, have for many a long hour beaten its wings against that divine will which is full of hidden mystery, into whose unseen depths I have been gazing throughout these weary days and nights, till my brain whirls and mine eyes are weary unto death--yet the light I see not!"

"Shanno is dead?" said Master Taylor gently.

"Dead! nay!" exclaimed the chaplain eagerly, as though the very word "death" suddenly awoke in him a keen consciousness of the contrast which after all lay betwixt that total removal of the "light of the eyes" of the stricken prophet and that tender dealing of Providence with himself which still left his life gladdened with the hope of a continual holy friendship, and the blessed near presence of her he loved. "Dead? No, Jeremy; but," and the sudden light which had illumined his face died out again, "doomed--doomed to bear the curse of her miserable forefathers--to expiate in her tender soul and body the sins of theirs--the sins with which _my_ forefather for ever cursed hers, and which I would fain bear ten thousand-fold to save her one pang! Surely it is for me to suffer--not for her the innocent victim; yet her own load none can bear but herself, though the share which falls to each of us is a bitter one! Yet that I may be strong to bury mine own within my bosom, and bear what I may of hers upon my own shoulders, must I needs watch and fast alone here in the desert, and I pray you leave me, dear Jeremy! Go below to the farm, and seek, an you will, to cheer her by your presence, for I see her no more till we meet on our wedding morning, four days hence, in the hillside church at Cwmfelin, there to plight an eternal troth of the soul, and to partake together of that most Holy Sacrament, which shall surely strengthen us in the putting away of our earthly dreams."

"Nay, I will not leave you, Percival!" cried his friend. "You are worn and faint, and you shall tarry no longer thus alone in your watch and fast. I will fast and pray with you! You shall not banish from your side the friend who loves you more than a brother, and I will share your lonely vigil--at a distance an you will--but leave you I will not!" And with boylike impulsiveness he flung his arms round Percival's neck and kissed him.

The young chaplain clung to him silently for a moment; then the unnatural tension of his nerves gave way and he burst into tears. "Percival," said his friend, as he gently led him to a seat on the mossy turf, "in my own still new-found marriage-joy my heart shrinks from the thought of your bitter pain, and words of comfort from my lips, which have not tasted your sorrow, seem to me most cruelly presumptuous. Yet hear the words of one whose name you greatly love and honour----"

"Jeremy," interrupted Percival, "the bitterness lies in the very _goodness_ of the gift that is withdrawn! It is, I doubt not, hard to give up a cherished sin, but how much harder--ten thousand-fold harder--is it to give up that which is in itself right, and good, and desirable! In that lies the very essence of the bitterness! What could I have offered to God more pure and holy than that life we were about to offer Him together in our mutual love and service? In sacrificing to Him a sinful affection I could have seen His justice but now----"

"Those words I was about to speak, dear friend, are still my best answer," replied Jeremy, "and what more to say I know not! God's saint, St. Thomas à Kempis, saith: 'This is a _favour to Thy friend_, that for love of Thee he may suffer and be afflicted in the world, how often soever and by whom soever Thou permittest such trials to befall him!' Perchance He may suffer these words to comfort thy sore spirit, Percival, since assuredly thou hast verily long since been accounted His 'friend!'"

A shiver ran through the young chaplain's frame, but he made no answer. The shades of night gathered about the desolate churchyard, and the grave-stones began to gleam faintly white in the ghostly light of the late-rising moon, which, appearing slowly above the distant crags, warned the friends at last of the lateness of the hour; and they rose from the turf where they had long been sitting, first in silence, then in deep converse. A new light of hope and strength dawned on Percival's worn countenance. "You have come to me verily as 'an angel strengthening me,' Jeremy," he said with a sad smile. "Now you have learned all I have to tell, and I do indeed bid you leave me. Fear not for me--I am yet strong to bear what remains. Go to Glyn Melen, and spend these three days with my Primrose and her mother, ere they take their journey to Bryn Afon. Stay--I would fain spend one last hour with her I love, by the Robbers' Cavern, and watch with her the outflowing of the river-springs once again--fair picture of our twin lives! Bid her, an she will, to turn aside on her journey, and under your escort meet me there on the eve of our wedding-day, three evenings hence, some while ere sunset, that on that eve of our day of looked-for bliss, now snatched from our grasp, we may tarry awhile together in that sweet spot, ere we pursue our journey to the valley. My Lady Bryn Afon will travel safely with her attendants, and you with us, dear friend, shall overtake them long ere they reach home. I will be there, hard by the spot where the springs burst forth from their caverns, by four of the clock, and will, with your permission, look to meet her there in your safe charge. Till then adieu, and prithee look not so sadly at leaving me! Methinks I feel God nearer than some hours since, and to Him I would fain yet say much in secret. Like some bird of passage pursuing its lonely flight across the midnight sky towards an unknown shore, so must I too face the black night alone, content not yet to see my goal, yet with faith to believe in the far-off shining of some distant horizon, where my feet may at length find firm footing." So with a last embrace the friends parted; and while Master Taylor pursued his way with aching heart in the dim moonlight towards Glyn Melen, Percival Vere wandered, he scarce knew whither, into the solitary places of the mountain heights, where the night winds alone might breathe to one another in softest whisper the secret communings of his soul with God.

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