“O, Thou who in the wilderness did rain down the corn of heaven, that Thy children might eat and be filled; Thou who brought streams out of the rock and caused waters to run down like rivers that their thirst might be quenched, and that they might be preserved alive—Thou of whom it was said of old: ‘Thou visitest the earth and waterest it; Thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water; Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; Thou settlest the furrows thereof; Thou makest it soft with showers; Thou blessest the springing thereof; Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness’—Hear us! We beseech Thee! Thou causest it to rain on the earth where no man is—on the wilderness wherein is no man—cause it also to rain upon us. Thou causest it to rain alike upon the just and the unjust, let us not hang midway between Thine anger and Thy love. Remember Thy promise to pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. Thou, O God! didst once send ‘a plentiful rain whereby Thou didst confirm Thine inheritance when it was weary’; deny us not a like consolation, we faint beneath the hot frown of Thine anger. Let Thy shadow comfort us! As the thirsty hart panteth for the waterbrooks, we long for Thy blessing. Before man was upon the earth Thou caused a mist to rise up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth; continue Thy mercy to us, who, sharing Adam’s fall are yet heirs to the Redemption. Slay not us in Thine anger, O Lord! Behold, we are athirst! Give Thou us to drink. Are there any vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? Or can the Heaven give showers? Art not Thou He—O Lord our God? Therefore we will wait upon Thee, for Thou hast made all these things. When Elijah strove against the sorcerers of Baal didst Thou not hear him? Like unto him we are cast down before Thee. O grant us our prayer! Show to us also the little cloud like a man’s hand that comforted the land of Ahab. Grant that we, too, by faith shall hear ‘the sound of abundance of rain!’”
He paused. There was a moment of tense silence.
“And Thine shall be the glory, Amen,” he faltered forth brokenly. He had no further words; the advocate had pleaded for his cause. He waited the voice of the judge. There followed a longer pause fraught with the emotion of a great need.
Sidney’s heart ached for these people; a thousand inarticulate pleas entered the wide gate of his sympathies and demanded utterance at his lips. A sultry breath entered the open window fraught with the odour of parched earth and burnt-up grass. The old priest and his three grey-haired elders, standing amid the kneeling people, seemed to him like brave standards ready to prop up a falling faith till its ruin crushed them, willing sacrifices for the people; they were mute, but their very presence standing thus was eloquent. Surely the God of their Fathers would remember the children of these men who had indeed “given up all and followed Him” out to the western wilderness? Long ago he had led forth His people out of Egypt. They had murmured against Him yet He had not left them to perish in their sins; was the hand that had given water from the rock and corn from Heaven empty now?
Long ago the great progressive miracle of Nature’s processes was inaugurated; were the wheels of God’s machinery clogged?
A shrill, trembling treble voice rose brokenly. For a few ineloquent phrases it continued, and then died away in sobs expressive of mortal need. It was Tom Shinar’s wife; their farm was to be sold at mortgage sale in the autumn. Mary Shinar had gone herself to plead with the lawyer in Brixton through whom the mortgage had been placed. Mary sat on the edge of a chair in an agony of nervousness whilst the perky clerk went in to state her business, and the lawyer came out of his comfortable office and told her they could stay on the farm “till the crop was off the ground,” he did not know the terrible irony of his mercy.
In the light of ordinary day Tom Shinar and his wife bore themselves as bravely as possible. Their neighbours asked them questions as to next year’s crops to force them to betray what was a secret only by courtesy. All the community knew the facts of the case, and when Tom, forced into a corner by questions, said “he ’lowed he’d be movin’ in fall,” every man knew what he meant. When Mary, in a like position, said she “reckoned they wouldn’t have to bank up the cellar that winter, ’cos Tom was thinking of changing,” the women said to each other afterwards: “They’re to be sold out in October—Mr. Ellis is takin’ the farm.”
A mortgage sale is an ordinary enough event, and the prospect of one not so unique as to require dwelling on, but the sight of Mary Shinar’s face as she let it fall between her hands after her abortive prayer, decided the fate of Sidney Martin. The sound of a woman’s trembling tones was the touch which sent Sidney over the brink of the pit Fate had prepared for him. The last echo of her shrill voice died away—a sob filled the room of the wonted Amen. The sob did not die till it filled Sidney Martin with fatal inspiration; again he agonized in one of his childish visions when the Pain of the world, exaggerated by his morbid mother’s teachings, seemed to environ him with the tortures of hell. His supra-sensitive personal atmosphere was surcharged with electrical currents of pain and need and want, defeated effort, dead hope, fruitless battling, and these discharging themselves in his bursting heart, filled it with exquisite agony. His spirit battled against his imagination and rushed to his lips.
He began to speak. No one in that congregation could ever recall one word or phrase of Sidney Martin’s prayer for rain. As the “poor, poor dumb mouths” of Cæsar’s wounds lent Antony eloquence, so each line and careworn furrow upon the countenances of those about him sped the speech of Sidney Martin.
The women sobbed aloud, the men felt their heavy souls lifted up. Lanty, whose ardent nature made him peculiarly susceptible to the charm of eloquence, fell upon his knees involuntarily. Mabella felt a pleader powerful enough to win their cause was here amid the stricken congregation, and Vashti felt once again a wildly exultant throb of her own power which had won such a man.