Chapter V: The Fruit of Faith

Matters fell out much as Hilary Woodrow desired. He returned to Dawlish in October, and soon afterwards Brendon brought his wife and child to the sea.

His master and he took long walks together among the Haldon hills, and Daniel learnt with enormous satisfaction that the other had of late experienced great changes of spirit. The big man gloried in this fact from a personal point of view, because it appeared to justify his immense faith in prayer. He had petitioned Heaven for Hilary Woodrow; and here dawned the answer. Daniel doubted not that this was the beginning of a larger and deeper conversion. He urged Woodrow to go farther.

"There's no standing still," he said. "There's no standing still for you now--no more than the light stands still when the sun rises. Brighter and brighter surely it must grow, till the full light of the Gospel of the Son of God warms your heart. Man! what's deeper than that, what shows all clearer than that--or throws a darker shadow--the shadow of our sins?"

"What a preacher you are!"

"'Tis the good tidings of what you say. They make even my slow mind move quick. 'Ye believe in God, believe also in Me'; 'tis that I'm thinking."

"Ah, Dan, that's a very different matter."

"God'll show you 'tis the same."

Thus oftentimes they talked; then work called Brendon, and he went home again. But his wife and child stopped for some weeks longer beside the sea; because little Gregory gained benefit from the change, and Sarah Jane was anxious to remain for his sake.

The old-time fires were now banked deep in Daniel's mind under the changes and chances of his life. Jealous he was, since a large power of jealousy pertained to his nature; but for Woodrow he had long since failed to feel anything but the staunch devotion of a brother. Apart from this emotion, awakened by the circumstance of the farmer's personal goodness to him, another far deeper, begot of natural instinct, told him that Hilary was harmless now. Whatever his attitude towards Sarah Jane had been, the very openness of their friendship and the close intimacy of their conversation under his own eyes and before his own ears, had convinced the husband that no shadow of danger existed in their relations. The past in truth was dead enough, and Brendon, a man of clean mind, despite jealousy, made the mistake of supposing that it had never been. He went further and, looking backward, blamed himself for an unseemly attitude, and confessed his sin to his Maker.

The past was dead, and neither Hilary nor Sarah Jane, as they walked together at the edge of the winter sea, sought or thought upon its grave. Far otherwise, she found that in the light of his new opinions he could now bitterly mourn the past. On a grey day, when a slight shore wind smoothed the water and the sea was almost of the same colour as the gulls that floated upon it, the man and woman sat under shelter of a red cliff, talked together, and watched Sarah Jane's child gathering cowry shells upon the beach.

"How your husband rejoices in his God! Have you marked it, Sarah Jane? Such a trust and such a great, live gratitude underlying his scrupulous obedience."

"Well he may be grateful."

"I'm only a child in knowledge of the divine idea. He's got far beyond that. And yet--sometimes--I wonder what would happen to his religion--and to us--if he knew."

"I don't wonder. I know what would happen. He might be sorry after--when 'twas too late--but while the storm was raging in his heart, God's self wouldn't hold him."

"I understand."

"And I wouldn't blame him neither. Think--the solid earth giving way under his feet. 'Twould be no less to him."

"It's very awful--considered in that manner. I hope you're wrong."

"The sea would be weak and the rocks would be soft compared to him."

"You've never felt he ought to know?"

She gasped and stared.

"My God! No, I haven't."

"Sometimes I have, Sarah Jane."

Her eyes rested on him in profound and horrified amazement.

"You can say that! Believing in God has brought you to that! Then I wish you'd never come to it, Hilary Woodrow."

"I have almost felt that if I lived very much longer, I might tell him."

"You won't live much longer afterwards, if you do. He's said to me in naked words, that 'tis no sin to kill them as have done what we have done. His Bible is behind him."

"Nevertheless, if you were dead, I should tell Brendon."

"I'm not dead, and I don't want to die. You--you to say this awful thing to me! I feel as if I was going mad. I can't believe it. I won't believe 'tis you talking. You--knowing all you know!"

Something akin to indignation trembled in her voice; and he marked it and felt shame.

"The thought came to me in a dream," he declared. "Of course it's unthinkable awake. But I wanted to hear how it would sound."

She was much moved.

"It sounds like a bell tolling," she said. "You grow to be such an own-self man now--along of finding God, I suppose. You think to tell Brendon would ease your soul, no doubt. But what about his? You've come to reckon that you did wrong--that I did wrong--but can't you see what might be rest to your mind is hell for his? Don't you know him well enough to know what it would mean to him? I can see the things that would happen--like a row of awful----there, you've made my brain whirl; you've throwed me into a maze of terror for that man."

The other noticed that not a thought of fear for herself influenced Sarah Jane. Neither did she concern her mind with him after his confession. Her husband filled her heart.

Hilary pacified her and quite agreed with her; he laughed at her fervour and declared that his God and her husband's were as different as love from hate; that his God was hers, not Daniel's. She made no answer; but the reflection that even from the fantasies of a dream he could pluck such an idea and utter it in her ears, transformed her feeling towards him from that hour for ever. The shock of this experience aged the spirit within her. She returned home at the appointed time; and was glad to be home. But her mental life had changed.