A Sovereign Remedy

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

The little village of Dinas was in a turmoil. Considering its small size, and the extreme peace of its situation happed round by everlasting hills, and so cuddled close to the very heart of calm creation, it held an extraordinary capability for fuss. The hot Celtic blood would get into the hot Celtic brain at the slightest provocation, and it had risen from the sub-normal of rural life to the fever-heat of a revolution over a baby whom some one had refused to baptize, and some one else had declined to bury.

The rector, relying on the Middle Ages, had pointed to the nettle-grown corner reserved for those whose salvation was doubtful. The whole Calvinistic body, forgetful of election and predestination, had fled as one man from the authority of the Bible to that of the Burials Act.

Radical religion and religious radicalism had once more met in grips, and the guarantors of the little telegraph station in the village breathed freely by reason of the wires that were sent, and that came from the princes and powers of darkness and light all over the country.

The result was, of course, that foregone conclusion of these later days--a compromise. The churchyard belonged to the parish, the burial service to the Church. And so, with a curious falter at its innermost heart because of the absence of the rector's familiar surplice and biretta, the village had signalised its victory by a triumphal following of Gwen's baby to the grave, not of its fathers, but its mothers.

As they gathered round the coffin which looked so tiny far away down in the greasy, black earth, the sound of "Day of wrath, that dreadful day," sung by the rector at his usual evening service, floated out from the church to join Morris Pugh's indignant militant prayer to the Almighty; but the peaceful little dead child slept undisturbed by either.

Yet the rector, honest man, had no ill-feeling at all, but rather a profound pity for the lamb of his flock who had been lost through ignorance on his part, for had he known of its illness nothing would have prevented him from storming the shepherd's hut and claiming his right as rector. Indeed, but for the necessity for reprobating the scandalous withholding of one of the Church's sacraments from an innocent soul because its parents were blameworthy, there is small doubt that he would have asked no questions, and buried the small dead body decently and in order. As it was he came, after service was over, tall and cassock-garbed, to stand beside the tiny mound of new-turned soil which broke the lush green of the churchyard, make the sign of the cross over it, and pray a little prayer for mercy.

Nevertheless, he went back to his study and his ecclesiastical histories a harder man for the incident. His bishop had not upheld the authority of the Church; he had--in all reverence be it spoken--hedged, and the Rev. Gawain Meredith was too priestly, soul and body, for hedging with heretics.

For there was no mincing of words about him. The Wesleyans were possibly schismatics; all other dissenters were heretics, and the Calvinistic Methodists the most distinctly dangerous heretics with whom he had to deal. They reminded him in their social, religious, and political organisation of the Jesuits whose history he was studying. He had a reluctant admiration for their determination to force means to an end, and he saw plainly how much capital they would make out of his refusal to bury the body. Elections to the parish council were coming on, and he had already made himself unpopular by questioning the expenditure. So he read the paragraphs concerning the baby's burial which he found waiting for him on his study table in the weekly local, with a setting of his thin lips. They might turn him out of the council if they choose, but while he was in it, he would do his duty by the ratepayers.

Morris Pugh had read these same paragraphs in manuscript; they had been sent to him for revision, and he had returned them without a word of comment; yet he had felt a vague regret pluck at his heart.

He was an enthusiast, pure and simple. Those chiefs of his party, who seized so quickly on every point of vantage, were enthusiasts and something more.