CHAPTER I

His Only Child

IF you take a railway map of England and Wales, you will see that, in spite of its close network of railroads, meeting and crossing in all directions, there are still many tracts of country where the villages must be several miles from any station. In these out-of-the-way spots life is more at a standstill now than even in the days when stage-coaches and wagons were wont to run from town to town, taking the villages in their route, and carrying with them the common gossip of a whole neighbourhood. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, before the railway system was as fully developed as it is at present, but when it had already given a death-blow to the old coaching business, many a village was cut off thus from its former intercourse with the outer world, and left to live apart from the common life of the nation, or to find its own way to a reunion.

In such a remote place, on the borderland which is half English and half Welsh, lived Christmas Williams. The village was scarcely more than a hamlet, having no pretension to a village street, its scattered cottages standing alone in their own gardens. A brown, shallow, brawling little river, which filled the quiet air with its singing, ran along under the churchyard walls, over which the tall lime-trees threw their deep shadows on the busy stream. West of the churchyard, still on the bank of the river, lay Christmas Williams' garden: his special, favourite garden, not the common piece of ground beside his house open to every foot, but his own locked up, fenced-in plot, reached by a footpath across his orchard.

Just within sight of the church stood Christmas Williams' house, the village inn, holding a conspicuous position on a slope of ground, with a primitive sort of terrace in front of it; over the wall of which he could often be seen leaning, to look down on the carts and wagons passing in the lane below, and to send messages, some friendly and some hostile, by the drivers to their masters, on the various farmsteads lying round the village.

There was no one in the neighbourhood who was considered better off, or who had so widespread an influence as Christmas. He had been churchwarden for many years, as well as constable of the township; for rural police were not yet in existence. It was he who kept the keys of the church, as well as of the crib, which was a small jail built in one corner of the churchyard, and the terror of all the children of the parish.

Yet the crib was seldom occupied, except sometimes after a club-day at the village inn, when any drunken brawl was sure to excite Christmas Williams' wrath, and bring down swift punishment on the offenders. It was in vain to urge the argument that hard drinking was to his own profit; he only permitted his customers to have as much as he considered good for them; and if by any mischance they overstepped the doubtful line between sobriety and drunkenness, down came the keys of the crib, to which, as constable, he felt pledged to commit all brawlers and disturbers of the public peace.

There was not a soul for miles round, as far as the distant town to which he went to market twice a month, who did not know Christmas Williams to be a just, upright man, and, above all, a man of his word. His word was as good as another man's oath. His father had kept the village inn before him, and had borne the same character. His grandfather, too, had been landlord, churchwarden and constable; an honest, plodding man. The house, with its wainscotted walls, and its large, open kitchen, spacious enough to hold comfortably all the men in the village; the office of churchwarden, with its close connection with the rector; and the post of constable, making him the official guardian of the public peace: all these had become almost as hereditary as the estates of the duke, who owned a good part of the county. The duke was not prouder of his descent and name than was Christmas Williams.

It was a peaceful, pretty village, with low round hills encircling it, their soft outlines stretching across the sky, with coppices of young larch-trees and dark Scotch firs climbing up their slopes. The air, sweeping over a thousand meadows, where cowslips and buttercups grew in profusion, bore no slightest taint of the smoke of cities. A soft tranquility seemed to brood over the place in almost unbroken silence. The grey old church, with no charm about it except its age, wore a look of idleness and disuse, as if it had done with active service, and was resting before settling down into ruins. Even on Sundays the doors yawned merely to admit a handful of old-fashioned, steady-going people, who listened sleepily to the old rector, as he read to them one of Blair's Sermons, out of a volume from his library, not even taking the decent trouble of making a manuscript copy of it.

The rector was an unmarried man, with few ideas beyond the pursuit of country pleasures, which he had followed so long that they had mastered him, and now held him in utter bondage. He was keen after a fox, and could not keep away from a coursing match. His parishioners saw much more of him in Christmas Williams' snug fireside corner than in his desk and pulpit.

Who can tell how the mischief crept in? Little by little, step by step; first a Sunday-school class in Widow Evans' cottage; a quiet prayer-meeting or two; then an afternoon preaching. A change was coming over the village; or, more truly speaking, over a small portion of the villagers, but those were the steadiest and best. Christmas took no notice of it at first; and the rector cared for none of those things.

The Sunday-school could hardly come under Christmas Williams' eyes, for he spent the most of every Sunday in his garden by the churchyard, scanning his well-kept beds, and strolling to and fro along the walks, from which he could see the headstones on his father's and grandfather's graves, and be forced sometimes to think of the far-off time when his own should be standing beside them. It was the chief trouble of his prosperous life that he had no son to carry on the name of Christmas Williams. Still, his trouble was a slight one, for he had a gentle, pretty little daughter, whom he had christened Easter, and whom he loved almost as if she had been a son. Easter must marry young and well, that he might hear her children call him grandfather.

But when the afternoon preaching began, and Widow Evans' son, a young stripling who was not yet out of his time as a draper's apprentice, stood up boldly, and with ready speech taught his fellow-villagers what he himself was learning in the distant market-town, of eternity, of the Saviour, and of God, Christmas roused himself. Worse than that, by-and-by the lad brought with him a grave, earnest, eloquent man, who preached such words as pricked the people to their hearts, and sent them home talking and pondering over these new things. It was high time for Christmas to bestir himself, both as churchwarden and constable.

"You can do nothing, Christmas," said the rector, sitting in his favourite chimney-corner; while Easter, as she went about her work softly and quickly, filled his glass for him from the brown jug on the table between him and her father. "Come, live and let live. They don't hurt me, and they ought not to hurt you. What harm is there in a bit of psalm-singing and Bible-reading in a cottage? Bless you! I wonder any one of them sets his foot inside the church; and I'll be the last to blame them if they don't."

"I've said I'll put a stop to it, and I'll do it," cried Christmas. "I'm a man of my word. I'll duck young Evans in my horsepond, if I can only catch him. They shall be cut up root and branch. You'll see I'll make short work of it."

"You cannot hinder them from meeting in Widow Evans' house, my man," replied the rector; "and you cannot stop them singing, and praying, and preaching, as they please. She's my tenant, and I'll not disturb her, poor soul! Let the thing alone, I say. Nobody knows better than me that it was a mistake putting me into the Church; I'm no more fit for it than for heaven itself. If I believed it would do me any good, I'd go to their meetings myself."

He spoke sadly, and bent his head down for a minute; and Easter, seeing it, drew nearer to the grey-haired old clergyman, whom she had known and loved all her lifetime.

"Well, if I cannot put a stop to it," exclaimed Christmas, "no man, woman, or child goes from my house to any of those fools' meetings. Whoever does that, shall never cross my threshold again."

Easter's fair face grew pale, and her hands trembled as she rested them for support on the table at which they were sitting. But there was a steady light in her eyes, resolute as her father's, as she fastened them upon his angry face.

"Father," she said, in a low, tremulous voice, "father, I've been there every Sunday since they began. And I am converted, and believe in God, and I must obey Him rather than you."