Morris Pugh, looking at his brother, saw that past month as in a
dream, indeed. He, as the preacher, forgetful of everything save his
mission, and those four voices, Gwen's soprano, Alicia Edwards's
contralto, Mervyn's tenor, and Hwfa Morgan's bass, blending into every
message of penitence or peace which emotion could desire. So they had
gone preaching and singing, rousing an almost frenzied response
wherever they went. And all the while----
"I don't understand yet," he said slowly. "Why was all this money
required?"
Mervyn echoed the "all" with half-pathetic scorn. "A hundred pounds
doesn't go far in running a revival," he said savagely. "One must
start the thing. Why, even before we left Dinas, Gwen and Alicia had
to get their clothes, they couldn't go in what they had got, and there
was music wanted. One had to get a chorus, and the men couldn't sit up
all night and work all day. Morgan and I talked it all over, for some
one must look after practical things, you know, and I said I would
finance it till the subscriptions came in. It's no use your looking
like that, Morris. Any fool would tell you money had to be got somehow
for the time, and it would have been all right but for this row with
the rector. That isn't my fault."
Morris Pugh started as if he had been stung. "No! it was mine," he
said. "I am the elder. I ought to have considered."
Mervyn rose quickly, and, going over to his brother, laid a caressing
hand on his shoulder.
"Now don't, Morris," he said, using a common Welsh endearment, "let us
forget ourselves for a while. I suppose it was wrong, but--" here his
lip quivered, "it musn't injure the work. My God! how awful that would
be." He flung himself on the chair again and, stretching his arms out
over the table, positively sobbed. He was a prey to every emotion,
every feeling that in this moment of anxiety and bewilderment swept
over him, for he and his brother had come home but half an hour ago
full of elation from a successful meeting at the other end of the
county, to find that the rector, ousted member of village boards and
councils, had insisted on a scrutiny of the accounts ere making over
office next day.
And Mervyn knew that the balance would be a hundred pounds short; the
hundred pounds which had been paid over by the central fund for
educational purposes, and which should have been deposited in the Post
Office Bank when it had come in a month ago. He had not done so,
however, because, on emergency, he had borrowed the loan of the use of
it for something else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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