II

Again Deb and Keturah confronted each other in the kitchen.

"Och, och, to think it!" sighed Deb.

"Well, 'tis natural, now isn't it? They were old people."

"Aye, but she's that lonely; 'tis pitiful to see her distress."

"But they died peaceful; neither one wanted other more than three hours;

I'm thinkin' the old man barely set foot in heaven before the old woman

was travellin' after him. If the Lord had 'a' planned that,--and perhaps

He did,--He couldn't have done better, now could He? If Peter has the

keys, as master says he has, he must have smiled to see those two old

people hurryin' so to get in together, the old woman with that hasty

step of hers a-skippin' after him."

"Aye, aye, they went together," sighed Deb, wiping away tears; "but,

och! the mistress is like a distracted creature, pacin' up and down, up

and down the house, wringin' her hands, her soft, pretty eyes all cried

out, an' goin' every day to the grave where those poor souls lie."

"Poor souls," sniffed Keturah, "nothin' could satisfy ye, Deborah.

They're lyin' side by side in the same grave on earth, an' singin' an'

rejoicin' hand-in-hand in heaven. Ye think too little an' talk too

much," concluded Keturah, who thus far had done most of the talking

herself.

The old woman had no patience with sentimentality about death, for she

had served forty years in a minister's family, where life in its birth,

its growth, its death, had come and gone about her with epical fullness.

There was little human history that Keturah's old eyes had not as calmly

surveyed as they looked now upon the tearful face of Deb.

"But she weeps so, poor dear, an' the only time she seemed more cheerful

was when the pastor came to bury the old people. When they came back

from the grave she begged him to stay awhile, but he couldn't, an' then

she cried an' cried again, poor child."

"Well, well," said Keturah, with a shrewd, troubled look, "'tis a pity."

"But he loves her, now doesn't he?"

"Aye, he does whatever."

"T'was only a week ago," said Deb, patting herself on her corsage again,

"I was sayin' somethin' was comin'; an' I thought then, when we were

talkin' 'twould be their gettin' married, aye, I did indeed."

"Indeed, so ye did," Keturah repeated. "Tut, there's the knocker

clappin'. Now who would be comin' this late, and the master so tired?"

Keturah hobbled swiftly through the kitchen and narrow hallway to the

door.

"Well, Mrs. Morgan!"

"Yes, Keturah, is your master in?"

"Aye, in his study; will ye go in there?"

To the Reverend Samson Jones, since the death of the widow Morgan's

parents, life had seemed nothing more dignified than a low gambling

game. He had done what he believed a man should do; after protracted

delay and a final self-conquest greater than any one knew, he had done

the thing duty told him to do. Had he delayed twenty-four hours longer

to do this duty, that for which he had waited and longed through six

years would have been his. Now, horse and rider had stumbled together,

and all the principles which have been as a guide-post to his fervid

spirit lay prostrate with him.

When the door opened and the widow Morgan came in, Samson Jones was

sitting idly in his study-chair, nerveless and confused, one moment

saying to himself that he would send for Jane Elin and tell her all, the

next minute terrified at the very thought, and the third moment

condemning himself for lack of courage to accept what had come upon him

through no fault of his own. The aspect of his thin, long face had

become so ghastly, and the confusion of his words so unusual, that not

only had Keturah and Jane Elin watched him with alarm, but the deacons

and good-wives of Gelligaer began to question, to talk of the oncoming

of the spring and its bad effect on the system, to suggest a holiday for

their beloved pastor; and one good-wife had gone so far as to consult

Keturah and to write to Mrs. Jones, his mother. His thoughts and

feelings were like filings with no centrifugal force to gather them in.

As he jumped to his feet with the exclamation, "Dolly!" these thoughts

and feelings flocked swiftly about the love he had for her.

The widow's eyes looked red and her voice quavered as she said, "I am so

lonely, Samson, och, so lonely!"

"Aye," said Samson, trying to shift his glance from her appealing face.

Dolly dropped into a chair and slipped back her scarf. Her chin trembled

pitifully. "I am so lonely, Samson; I thought perhaps you had forgotten

me?"

"No, I've not indeed."

"Well, and don't you love me any more? I thought you'd never forget."

"Aye, I love you but--but----"

At this Dolly rushed upon him like an impulsive, gladdened child. "Och,

then, nothing else matters, nothing at all whatever!" She clung to him

eagerly, and with her arms about him the last vestige of Samson Jones's

resolution was quenched.

After that, through the blissful evening he knew nothing but blind

snatching at ecstasy. He tried to forget everything. That night, when he

saw Dolly home, she was an appeased, contented child whose only thought

of the morrow is the untroubled one that it will come again and again

with the same delicious happiness.

But never had Samson Jones known anything like the week that followed,

with its dissimulations petty and large, its pained irresolution, its

alternations between ecstasy and despair. The surface of his mild

zealous eyes had come to have the feverish look of a man living in a

delirium. With Jane Elin he was gallant, attentive, punctilious, a

finished lover. With Dolly he gave himself up so to the luxury of their

love, that the widow Morgan wondered why she had not seen before the

extravagant passionateness of his nature.

For her part, Jane Elin rang again and again on the surface of this

emotion called love and listened with troubled ears to the hollow

sounds within. Jane Elin had had just twenty-four hours in which to

rejoice undisturbed in her new happiness. She was no idle

sentimentalist, afraid to face the truth, or with rose-coloured glasses

through which to look at the truth. Up to this point she had seen

clearly the course of events and the ninepins fate had played with a

question she believed finally settled. At last the widow was free, and

Jane Elin was sober-thoughted at the new aspect that that fact put upon

her relations to the minister. With both, despite the fact that Samson

Jones was exceeding in devotion to each the highest expectation either

could have held, intuition of something wrong about their lover made

them keenly anxious.

On the Sunday after this week that Gelligaer will never forget, the

minister, without a note of any kind on the desk or in his hand,

preached a sermon of extraordinary power. And the old white-haired

deacons sitting in a row around the pulpit nodded their heads

approvingly, for it seemed to them that the good old times of fifty

years ago were coming back, when all preaching in Wales was

extemporaneous. Keturah alone looked with troubled face upon the

minister, certain that a catastrophe was overtaking him, at the nature

of which she had shrewdly guessed. And it was the Monday following this

Sunday that the Reverend Samson Jones made a convulsive resolution to

see Jane Elin and tell her all. He would send for her to come to his

pastoral study; it would be easier to talk with her there. His action in

sending for Jane Elin was like the action of the man who instinctively

puts out his hand to shield his head from a blow, for Samson Jones saw

the calamity coming upon him.

He stood with down-dropped eyes as she came into the study, fingering

the objects on his writing-table.

Jane Elin went up to him swiftly. "What is it, Samson? Has anything

happened? Do you need me?"

"Aye, I have been meaning this last week--it seemed only right--I don't

see how it is possible--I----"

"Och, tell me, Samson, tell me quickly, what is it?"

"Well, that day two weeks ago----"

"Dear, dear!" Jane Elin interjected, turning pale.

Samson Jones was thinking of an escape, any escape--this was too

horrible, he could not continue with it--when his eye fell on a letter

just received from his mother in answer to the one sent by the deacon's

wife, and the word "mother" flashed over his whole being like a great

light revealing a path in the darkness. The joy in the freedom that came

to him with this thought was almost too great for him to bear. His

mother would help him.

"My mother," he stammered, "my mother, och, it is too horrible!"

"Dear anwyl!" said Jane pitifully, thinking of sickness or of death. "Is

it that bad?"

"Aye," he muttered, looking around wildly, and then at his watch;

"there's just time to catch the narrow-gauge to Qwyllyn. Och, goodbye!"

And he was gone.

With a sense of real relief, Jane Elin stood still a moment. It was

that, after all, which had been worrying him. Why had he not told her

before that his mother was ill?