CHAPTER II.

The Man Who Preached in Noah's Ark, and Some of His Hearers.

Noah's Ark was a big, bare building, frigid in its lack of adornment or grace. Two things only made it fit for a place of worship--one who preached and those who listened. The woollen workers of Liddon with their drab-gowned, prim-bonneted women, filled the hard benches, women and young children on one side of the house, and men and boys on the other. Percy and Vere were seated with Ned and the doctor, with Betty and Bee just across the broad aisle. They were fashionably late, and the whole congregation were singing, without a touch of instrumental music to lead the hard strength of their voices--

"Let the house of the Lord be filled with glory, Hallilujah."

Three times they sang the line, their voices swelling in a harsh exaltation that was almost menacing.

"Let the preacher be filled with Thy love, Hallilujah. "Let the members be filled with Thy love, Hallilujah".

Ten verses in all they sang, each consisting of the triple repeating of one line. Betty listened with the distaste of an educated music lover, yet she was oddly fascinated by the strength that showed in every note of the shouted hymn. These Methodists hurled their joy and confidence in God like a gauntlet of defiance at some unseen foe, and Percy's blood tingled. He recalled a morning on the hills of Spain, before the battle of Vimiero, when he had been with Wellington's army. There was the same intense sense of many men held together for one thing, and swayed absolutely by one man's words; but here, both the Commander and Enemy of these Methodists were of the other world, and according to Percy's arid philosophy, probably did not exist. He had fed his mind on Rousseau and Tom Paine, till he believed the miraculous and supernatural were scientifically impossible, and he felt irritated at the very tangible faith of these people in intangible possibilities.

The congregation were seated again, and George Ferguson in his regimentals, a splash of scarlet in that hall of grays and drabs, stood at the preacher's desk. He was a slightly built man, about twenty-four, and in no sense an orator, but he had a good voice and delivery, and believed so intensely in what he said that his simple words had a certain power.

He was telling his own story--"I was born August 1, 1786, in Derry, Ireland. My parents were respectable and in comfortable circumstances, but though members of the Church of England, had no knowledge of spiritual things. I was allowed to follow my own inclination and became very wicked and profane. The one exception to the godlessness round me was an aunt--a Methodist--who grieved at the way I was growing up, and would talk to me of my soul. So I became anxious, fearing to lie down to sleep lest I should wake in hell. I would lie awake groaning and sobbing, 'Oh, God, have mercy on me.' I went whenever I could with my aunt to class meetings and preachings, and at one I wept openly, saying when spoken to--'I am so wicked. I am not washed in the Blood, and I am afraid I shall be lost. May God have mercy on me.' The preacher and class prayed with me, and then he said, laying his hand on my head, 'George, you will yet go to preach the Gospel to sinners.' So I obtained grace, and resolved to turn from my sinful manner of life, being then seven."

The last words came as a shock to Percy, who wondered what kind of sinful life could be lived by a boy under seven in a respectable home. But the congregation saw nothing incongruous in it; they shouted "Amens" and "Hallilujah" as the speaker paused, then listened, many groaning aloud as he went on to tell of his "fall from grace". His parents moved from Derry into the country where there were no Methodists, and he drifted with other boys into attending cock-fights, and horse races on Sundays. At sixteen he was bound out for three years to learn his trade at a muslin factory. The hours there were long, and the work and confinement very hard to a boy accustomed to the indulgence of home. "I felt like Israel in Egypt in bondage under taskmasters," he said quaintly, "but in my dungeon I saw the Cloud, the Pillar, the Rock, the quails and the manna that I had rejected, and I hungered for them. I joined the Methodist Society as a probationer, I read the Bible daily on my knees, I retired for prayer seven times a day, I fasted entirely every Friday, and kept close watch over my words and conduct, hoping to find peace with God. The persecutions of my shopmates were hot and heavy, but I was convinced I must be singular, I felt it was life or death--death to live after the flesh. Mental distress and severe fasting reduced me to a skeleton, and my master kindly sent me home on a visit, but it was my soul that was suffering, I felt I had sinned beyond the mercy of God. I was tempted to give up. If God could not pardon me I had better know the worst of my case at once, by putting an end to my miserable life. I took a rope to an old warehouse one night, fixed it to a beam, and made a noose."

He paused dramatically, and his audience leaned forward with excited faces. All the colour and passion that raised their lives from grayness was in the unseen world. The excitement that outsiders sought in theatre and lurid novel, in war and gambling for high stakes, the early Methodist found in these soul-conflicts with the Enemy.

In a wonderfully soft voice Ferguson continued, "As clear as if spoken I heard the words, 'Pray first'. I instantly fell on my face, crying to God for Christ's sake to have mercy on me--on vile and wretched me. In a moment the rock was smitten, and I rested on Christ. I threw myself in the Blood of the Atonement crying--'Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.' In a moment hope took the place of despair. I had peace with God. I loved God above all things. Christ was the altogether lovely."

Ferguson's voice had risen to a shout, he stamped his feet and clapped his hands in an ecstasy, as his words rang above the tumult of the congregation, who were now jumping up and down in their seats, weeping, singing, shouting "Hallilujah", clapping their hands, while some fell on the floor where they lay rigid as if in a trance. Betty half rose, then sat very still. Bee was rather too astonished to be able to think, and Percy was studying Ferguson's face. Its features showed the Scotch blood that is the backbone of Ulster, and a stainless life with much fasting and prayer, had given it an intense refinement. There was as little sign of mental as of moral weakness in it. Percy told himself the man was self-deluded; but in his heart he was not quite sure of it.

The congregation quieted enough to hear the preacher again, and Ferguson resumed, "I returned to work a new creature. I thought I was out of Babylon--that the Enemy had done with me; I expected this 'time of singing birds' to last the whole year. But the Enemy said to me, 'You are young, if you tell of this wonderful change people will not believe you. Keep it to yourself till you see if you can hold out. If you don't you may hurt the cause of God'. So--

'I was brought into thrall, I was stript of my all, I was banished from Jesu's face.'"

The audience intent on every phase of this soul-drama, groaned deeply as they swayed to and fro in their seats, and Ferguson lingered over the details of his next three months of mental agony. "But on June 11, 1805, I secured peace at last. Though I was in the shop I began at once to praise God aloud, and my shop mates said, 'The matter is decided at last, George is quite crazy.'"

Again the joyful tumult rose, and Percy felt irritated. He lived above the low moral standards of his day, and he thought it preposterous to preach that nothing saved a man but this converting. How could Ferguson with his intelligence believe that without salvation he was as low in the sight of God, as the vilest man on earth? Then he looked at the boys by him. Ferguson and the elders were shouting Bible promises above the "blessed disorder", and urging penitents to come forward. Ned, white-faced, and trembling with excitement, but with determination in his eyes, rose and held out his hand to Vere. Percy saw in his cousin's face a reflection of the whirl of feeling round him, and had a vision of himself breaking the news to Sir John that the heir of the Haslems had knelt at a Methodist penitent bench. Then he wondered if this mad religion might not give Vere the moral strength he knew he needed. On the spur of that thought, he whispered to the wavering boy, "Ferguson's a straight man, if you believe what he says, go forward."

But Ned went up alone. All that was good in Vere clung to Ned, and whatever sense of peace and strength he knew, he had met only in Dr. Brown's home, but he felt he could not face his grandfather's anger, nor give up in a moment his habits of idleness, and his drifting into doubtful pleasures rather than seeking them.

After the meeting the boys stood together, Ned quivering with the thought that he had pledged every fibre of his strong young body forever to the service of the Lord who had died for him. Vere said eagerly, "I feel as you do, Ned, but I can't go forward. If you were in my place--if my grandfather were yours, you would keep your religion to yourself for a little while."

And Ned, as was his habit, excused Vere and believed him. So the boys parted, Ned joining his grandfather who pressed five guineas into Ferguson's hand, as he bade him good-bye, saying, "If ever thee passes this way again, George, remember my house is also the home of all weary pilgrims on the road to Canaan, no matter what the colour of their coats may be."

The young soldier listened with bowed head, until he went off, and it was six months later that a messenger brought Dr. Brown and Ned a thick letter from Battle Barracks, Sussex, where Ferguson's regiment was quartered. Ned's letter was mainly advice to young Christians, mixed with bits of the writer's experiences. "In a crowded, noisy room," Ferguson wrote, "I have learnt the secret of lying on my cot so shut away in spirit from my surroundings, that I can hear the voices that speak to my soul as distinct as if I was in a solitude."

Ned was walking just outside the town as he read the letter, and then he met Vere, who exclaimed excitedly, "Glorious news, Ned! Sir John's going to get me a commission as soon as I'm sixteen--next month, and I'll be off to see life in his Majesty's service."

In spite of his up-bringing in a Quaker home Ned felt half-envious of his friend's future, and Vere went on impulsively. "What are you going to be, Ned? You don't want to spend your life taking pills to old women. Of course you couldn't expect your grandfather to help you to be a soldier, yet it's the only life for a gentleman. Why don't you write to your father and tell him you want to enter the army like me? That little cat, Bee, talks as if he was quite well off--almost a gentleman."

Ned did not answer, he really knew nothing of his father. Certainly very interesting and valuable presents came to him every year on his birthday, from far-off York, where Mr. Edgar lived with the second wife he had married and her three little boys; but he seemed to have given his eldest son entirely up to his grandfather.

So Vere went away, but Ned was far too loyal to his grandfather to ever think of appealing to an unknown father against him. Nevertheless, now that Vere's departure had broken off all his connection with Haslem Towers, he began to feel that life at Liddon was very dull. He saw Bee sometimes when she rode out with Betty; she was growing up into a tall girl, but she still smiled at him with a child's frank friendship. Betty decidedly refused to forbid this very slight intercourse, when Sir John grumbled at it, so he said no more, for Bee had grown very dear to him. He was content to give her her own way in calling herself by her father's name, but he was resolved that some day she should marry her cousin, Vere, and be mistress of Haslem Towers. Her refinement of spirit and high courage, he thought, might save the unhappy boy, who in the temptations of an idle garrison life was showing many signs of moral and mental weakness; Sir John refused to believe the worst. "Boys will be boys," he said impatiently to Betty. "Of course I'll pay his debts again, and ask no questions; if he sows all his wild oats now, he'll make all the better husband for our little maid later. She'll steady him fast enough, never fear--Bee Goode, as the minx insists on calling herself, not bad, eh! She shall be his wife on the day he is twenty-one, and she will be seventeen."

Betty felt a womanly reluctance to think of Bee thus sacrificed, yet she went on helping to train Bee in the ignorance of life that should make her unable to resist when those she loved and trusted pushed her skilfully into marriage. Betty, though a good woman, was warped by the artificial world in which she lived; she knew that Bee's parents had left her nothing; her brother, Eli, five years older, was with relatives in Boston, but Bee, when seven, had been adopted by the Edgars, who had given her up unwillingly to Sir John. Betty could not imagine any lot for a girl but marriage; and surely, she honestly believed, luxury in England, even with the lowest of husbands, was better than exile in some howling wilderness.

Bee had not forgotten her American brother, or her Canadian friends, but she never heard from either, and she believed Sir John when he blamed French privateers for the destruction of the Atlantic mail. She still wrote sometimes, but as none of her letters went overseas, her friends there naturally thought she had forgotten them in English luxury. Vere, who knew his grandfather's plan, hated Bee with all his mean little soul, but never dreamed of refusing to obey; and Bee, who had not the faintest idea that she was destined by her kin to be her cousin's wife, still despised him. Conditions of thought round her, however, were gradually bringing her to feel that it was the bounden duty of the relatives of the heir of Haslem Towers to make any sacrifice to save him.

In the big world outside Liddon much was happening. England, with her industries crippled, her commerce half-strangled, and seeing the carrying trade slipping into American hands, passed the unfortunate Orders-in-Council proclaiming any ship that did not touch an English port the lawful prey of her men-of-war. The answer of the United States was an immediate threat of war, should the order not be rescinded. England, fearing to lose Canada, whom she could not then defend--she did not imagine that Canada could defend herself--rescinded the orders, all of which did not prevent the States from declaring war on June 18, 1812.

The post that brought the news to Liddon also brought a letter for Ned from his father--"Upper Canada will be invaded before this reaches you," Edgar wrote. "We have a population of 70,000--both the Canadas have only 225,000, against the eight millions of the States, but we mean to keep the old flag flying. We have 1,500 miles of frontier to defend, and only 4,000 English regulars to help us do it. We have appointed our Governor, General Isaac Brock, as Commander, and are calling out every man between eighteen and forty-five. I am going, and I began this letter meaning to command you, as my son, to start for Canada at once, and add one more man to our little army. My friend, Surgeon Tam, at the Isle of Wight, would arrange for your passage out. You may refuse to obey me; I know you belong to a religion that teaches a man that he can enjoy the protection of the laws of a country, and grow rich there, but he must not fight in its battles. It is a 'sin' for him to go to war, but quite right to accept the safe living that other men are dying to defend. I cannot compel you to obey me, but, oh my son, won't you give up your religion and come to be my comrade? I have a wife, whom you would love if you knew her, and three little boys; won't you be near to give them a protection if I fall? No one can doubt the righteousness of our cause. I don't deny England has often sinned and blundered, but no land on earth has sinned and blundered so seldom as she, and her flag is the only one that shall ever wave over Canada--so help us, God! The American people have been excited by exaggerated stories of England's claiming the right to search their ships for deserters from her navy, but the President and Congress wish to take our country--our Canada. Will you come to be a soldier, to help me, your father?; or is your honour less to you than this Methodist salvation?"

Silently Ned laid the letter before his grandfather; the Quaker doctor read it, looked at the boy keenly, and said quietly--"Thee means to go, I see, but what of giving up thy faith?"

"Grandfather, I am a Methodist, not a Friend. I know some of our people think with you about war, but others are like Ferguson, whom you call a good man. I must go, to show my father that I can; I must keep my religion, yet fight bravely beside him. Don't you think I ought to go? Don't you think Canada is in the right?"

The Quaker looked at him wistfully. Ned was nineteen, and careful rearing, and the habits of self-discipline that his rigid faith taught him, had given both his body and mind the strength of tempered steel. Dr. Brown had planned he should be a healer of wounds and a saver of life, like himself, and now all this splendid young manhood must be offered to the Moloch of war. But he said--"In many ways I admire thy father, but he is over-hasty in judgment; yet I am free to think he does right in fighting in this war, and certainly thee must go as he says. I know thee will never forsake the rules of thy faith."

* * *

Ned, wandering off by himself to say good-bye to his old life, was amazed, in his loneliness, to find Bee. She also was alone; sitting on a stone, in tears.

"Miss Bee," exclaimed Ned, "Are you hurt? What is the matter?"

[Illustration: "Miss Bee," exclaimed Ned, "are you hurt? What is the matter?"]

She stood up; a tall slender girl in a purple serge riding habit and a plumed hat; not a beauty, but fast developing into a woman who would have the elusive flaire of charm. "I came out here by myself--ran away in fact," she said impulsively. "I could not bear servants or friends or anyone near me--I had to cry alone. You are a Friend; why isn't everybody like you? Why do they make these awful wars? Do you know that Sir John has got the War Office to take him off the retired list and he is going to Canada, and Vere with him? And we think Cousin Percy is going too, and he will take Betty and me. They are going to fight, and Eli, my brother, I know, will fight too, on the other side; it is the most miserable war that ever was."

"Perhaps your brother won't want to fight," said Ned trying to comfort her. "I should think many Americans would see they were in the wrong--."

"You know nothing about it," she interrupted with flashing eyes. "We only hear one side here, but I know there is another. Sir John and Cousin Betty would be so angry if I said such a thing at home, and I love them--and I love Eli too." Under her breath she added, "and I am an American."

She stopped, suddenly realizing her impulsiveness in confiding in a young man who was almost a stranger. "But he is one of those odd people," she thought, "who think women should preach, and rule, just like men; and that a man mustn't do anything that a woman shouldn't." So much Bee had heard, and she thought Ned's ideas must be foolish, and rather improper, but interesting. Ned said nothing, but caught her horse, which was grazing near.

"Thank you," she said, rather shyly as she mounted, "for listening to me. I feel better now."

She galloped off, and Ned looked after her--"What an odd girl," he thought. "But she is rather interesting."