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[I]

THE May sun shone through the unblinded window of Muriel Temple’s bedroom, and a warm wind lifted the curtains. A moving shaft of light fell on her face, and she stirred and wakened to a sense of impending evil. For a moment, she could not recall the nature of the trouble which had overshadowed her mind. “To be with Christ, which is far better,”—the words which had brought sleep came back, and with them she remembered. Six months, the specialist had said—or it might be twelve or eighteen—but it was not likely to be so long. He could not recommend an operation. He had been very kind, but quite definite. There would be more pain later, he admitted—but much could be done to deaden it. She hesitated about that. It might be better to endure the pain, if it were God’s will. She was not afraid. She would want to be conscious of death when it came. “To be with Christ, which is far better.” She did not doubt it.

She had hoped that another operation might have been possible, followed by some degree of recovered activity, though she knew that she would never see South Africa again. But that hope was over now. If God had decided that He did not need her further, she must not be faithless and defiant. He could build the new mission church at Nizetsi, on which her heart had been set, without her aid should He will it. She knew that; but she did not think that it was His will, or he would not have sent her this summons to lay aside the work she was doing. Perhaps, had she made better use of the time she had—

It was twenty years since she had sailed from Southampton for her first station in Basutoland. Life had seemed long then, and now ... The night cometh when no man can work.

Her thought paused, as the bells of Sterrington church commenced their summons for the early communion. She did not like the Anglican service. She knew it to be full of superstitions, and laxities. Sinners should be converted, not confirmed. But she had a wide charity of mind, and today she would gladly have knelt in any place that was dedicated to her Master’s service, however blindly.

She thought of dawn moving over the earth, and of a world that waked to worship.

Fast as the light of morning broke

On island, continent and deep

Thy far-spread family awoke

Sabbath all round the world to keep.

She remembered how she had used that great conception of James Montgomery to move a Zulu audience. She did not think of it as James Montgomery’s hymn. She did not know or care who had written it. She had no literary sense. But she had imagination, if only she were approached on the one side on which her mind was open, and she had a gift of clear and musical speech which could take an audience with her—till her throat had failed. Even in the harsh Zulu gutturals ... She-who-speaks-as-we-speak, so they had called her.

Thy poor have all been freely fed,

Thy chastened sons have kissed the rod,

Thy mourners have been comforted,

Thy pure in heart have seen their God.

The familiar words brought comfort. God was so very near to those who sought Him. She reached out for the Bible on her bedside table. She would read the usual morning chapter. As she did so, Mrs. Wilkes knocked timidly, and, being answered, brought in her breakfast.

Mrs. Wilkes brought some gillies also. She knew that Muriel loved flowers. It was a world full of kindness, even for those for whom Death was waiting impatiently. Death might be near, but God was always nearer.

Muriel lay till late, as she had reluctantly promised her doctor, and rested in the garden during the afternoon, half asleep in the sunlight. Unused to leisure, her mind wandered backward in reminiscences that were sometimes sad, and sometimes pleasant to recall. She had had much happiness, she decided, and many mercies.

The sky was comparatively clear, its smoke-laden atmosphere having been unrecruited since the previous noon, and the sun was warm and bright. Sterrington, though on the edge of one of England’s invented hells, was clear of mine or foundry for twenty miles on its northwestern side, from which the winds of that time and place most commonly blew.

Muriel felt that it was a fair world, and a kind one. It was sad to think that it might be the last earthly summer that she would see. She did not feel ill when she lay quietly: only weak if she tried to do too much.

In the evening she felt the need of joining in the acts of worship in which her life so largely consisted. There was a little Unitarian chapel in the village, but that was impossible. Unitarians (Muriel knew) are not Christians at all. There was nothing else but the Anglican church and there she went (borrowing a prayer-book from Mrs. Wilkes) to hear a sermon from a text in the 1O7th Psalm, “He turneth the wilderness into a standing water,” which wandered into abstract considerations of the methods of the Divine control of the cosmos, the antiquity of geologic records—the rector was an enthusiast in geology—and introduced, rather awkwardly, the newest theories as to the rather numerous occasions on which Great Britain had been separated or reunited to Western Europe, with allusions to the “Carboniferous Limestone Sea,” the “deltaic apron of the Hercynian Mountains,” and the “confluent deltas of the Millstone Grit,” which may have featured prominently in his reading of the previous week, but were unlikely to be received with any intelligent interest by his evening audience.

To Miss Temple’s thinking, it was not a sermon at all.