"Dear, if you'll believe me, I'm thinking quite as much of you. At
twenty-two you would tie yourself for life!"
"That's my look-out," said Sidney, grandly. "Age isn't everything, and
I'm not a boy; anyhow I know my own mind, if you don't know yours."
Gwynneth's eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, why did you tell me you cared for me?" she exclaimed. "Why did you
make me say I cared for you? It was true--it was true--but we seem to
have spoilt it by putting it into words. Oh, I was so happy before you
spoke! I never was so happy as all last week. I could have gone on like
that--I was so happy. And now it's all different already; you are, and I
am . . ."
Sidney was watching her tears unmoved, for she had made him reflect. All
at once he saw his heartlessness, and next moment he was kissing her
tears away; vowing there was no difference in him; but, if it was
otherwise with her, well, then, let them consider everything unsaid, and
start afresh.
Gwynneth shook her head. Her eyes were dry again and full of thought.
"No, dear, we can't do that; and you mustn't think I am not happy in
your love, because I am. Only, there seemed to be such a spell between
us before we were sure of each other. But perhaps it's always like
that."
In the end they were engaged, but it was not to be a public engagement
for six months. Meanwhile Sidney returned to Cambridge for the Long,
having taken only a part of his degree; and Gwynneth quickly recovered
her reputation as a reformed character in the eyes of Lady Gleed, who
was less against the match than her husband, and who took the girl to
innumerable parties, each of which Gwynneth made a determined effort to
enjoy as thoroughly as the first half of the First Trinity ball.
She seemed always in the highest spirits; and there was no one about her
who knew her well enough to know also that this perpetual brightness was
hard and unnatural in Gwynneth. Closer observers than Sir Wilton and his
wife might indeed have suspected as much; but there was only one
occasion upon which Gwynneth betrayed the livelier symptoms of a
troubled spirit. This was on her birthday at the beginning of July; upon
the breakfast table was a registered packet with the Cambridge
post-mark, and in its morocco case Gwynneth presently beheld a richer
necklace than she had ever dreamt of possessing as her own. Yet the
look in her face was so strange that Lady Gleed was obliged to speak.
"Don't you like pearls, my dear?"
"Oh! yes, oh! yes."
"But you don't look pleased."
"No more I am!"
And she rushed from the room in unaccountable tears, and upstairs to her
own, where she was presently discovered writing a letter at top speed,
and crying bitterly as she wrote; it was Lady Gleed herself who
discovered her.
"What _is_ the matter, Gwynneth?"
"I am writing to Sidney. I cannot take such presents from him. I am
writing to tell him why."
"I think you are very silly," said Lady Gleed. "But your uncle wants to
see you in his study; that is really why I came up; and I don't think
you'll be so silly when you have heard what he has to tell you."
There was an air of mystery about Lady Gleed, who furthermore kissed
Gwynneth before they separated on the landing. The girl went downstairs
with chill forebodings. Sir Wilton was seated at his massive desk, but
rose fussily as she entered, and wheeled up a chair with almost
excessive courtesy. Gwynneth had seldom seen him looking so benign.
"I sent for you," said Sir Wilton, resuming his own seat, "because I
have some news for you, Gwynneth, which I am sure you will be as glad to
hear as I am to communicate it. It is against the law to dwell upon a
lady's age, but at yours I think you can afford to forgive me. I
believe that you are twenty-one to-day?"
Gwynneth had not thought of that before, and at the present moment she
could scarcely believe she was no more. She made her admission with a
sigh.
"Then for twenty-one years," pursued Sir Wilton, beaming, "or let us say
for as many of them as you can remember, you have, I presume, looked
upon yourself as an entirely penniless young lady? That has not been the
case; at least it is the case no longer. I--I hope I am not giving you
bad news?"
Gwynneth was trembling all over. She had lost every vestige of colour.
"My mother!" she gasped. "Why did she never know?"
"Because, under the terms of your grandfather's will, nobody but myself
was to know anything at all about it until to-day."
"It was cruel," cried the girl, in a breaking voice; "it might have kept
her here! It makes me not want to hear anything now . . . but of course
I must . . . forgive me, please."
"My dear child," said Sir Wilton, kindly, "it is natural enough that you
should feel that. I can only ask you to believe that I at least had no
choice in the matter. And there were reasons; it is too painful to go
into them; your father was my brother, and I had rather say no more. I,
for my part, was obliged to fulfil the conditions. I have tried to do my
duty. I would gladly have done more, but your dear mother was the most
independent woman I ever met. I honoured her for it. But what could I
do? I must beg of you, my dear, to look upon the bright side; and,
believe me, this business has the very brightest side it is possible to
imagine."
Gwynneth did her best. It was fine to be independent in her turn. But
the thought of her mother made her ashamed to touch a penny. And it was
a matter of several thousand pounds, invested all these years at
compound interest, yet with that absolute safety which distinguished the
financial operations of Sir Wilton Gleed.
Sir Wilton could not say off-hand what the present capital would yield
if left where it was at simple interest, but he fancied it would work
out at seven or eight hundred a year at the very least. And these
figures, which sounded fabulous to poor Gwynneth, were obviously in
themselves the bright side upon which her uncle had harped. Yet he
continued to beam as though there was something more to come, and looked
so knowing that Gwynneth was obliged to ask him what it was.
"Can't you see?" he said. "Can't you see?"
"It is an immense amount of money. I can't see beyond that."
"You heard me say that nobody knew anything at all about it except
myself, and, of course, my solicitors?"
"Yes."
"Even your aunt did not know until I told her just now."
"Indeed."
"And Sidney won't know until you tell him!"
Then Gwynneth saw. Sir Wilton took care that she should. He did not on
principle approve of marriages between cousins; he said so frankly; he
might be wrong. But there was one thing which made him very proud of his
son's choice. And this was that thing; there were others also upon which
Sir Wilton touched with much playful gallantry.
"But perhaps," said he, "you won't have anything more to say to the poor
lad now!"
XXV
SIGNS OF CHANGE
Georgie was a short head taller, and no pinafore concealed the glories
of his sailor suit; but it was still the same baby face, round as the
eyes that greeted all comers with the same friendly gaze. His sentences
were longer and more ambitiously constructed; but he still said
"somekin" and "I wish I would," and, when excited, "my Jove!" And his
lady once more danced attendance by the hour and day together; for Sir
Wilton and Lady Gleed were paying visits until September; and Sidney was
still understood to be making up for lost time at Cambridge.
Gwynneth had enjoyed the child's society the year before; now she seemed
dependent upon it. She would have him with her daily on one pretext or
another, sometimes upon none at all. She said she liked to hear him
talk, and that was well, for Georgie's tongue only rested in his sleep.
But now there was often an intrinsic interest in his conversation. He
gave Gwynneth many an item of village news which was real news to her.
Thus it was from his own lips that she first heard of his accident, on
seeing the scar through his hair.
"Course I was in bed," swaggered Georgie; "I was in bed for years an'
years an' years--in bed and sensible."
"Oh, Georgie, do you mean insensible?"
"No, sensible, I tell you."
"Did you know what was going on?"
"Course I di'n't, not a bit. How could I fen I was sensible?"
"My poor darling, it might have killed you! How ever did you do it?"
But, as so often happens in such cases, that was what Georgie had never
been able to remember. So Gwynneth turned to Jasper Musk, who sat within
earshot; it was in the Flint House garden, on the very afternoon of her
return.
"That was my fault," said Jasper, gruffly enough, yet with such a glance
at Georgie that Gwynneth was sorry she had broached the subject, and
changed it at once.
But she reverted to it as soon as she had Georgie to herself. Who had
looked after him when he was ill? She was feeling very jealous of
somebody.
"Granny did."
"No one else?"
"An' grand-daddy."
"Was that all, Georgie?"
Gwynneth was very sorry she had ever gone abroad.
"Course it wasn't all," said Georgie, remembering. "There was the funny
old man from the church."
"Mr. Carlton?"
"Yes."
"So _he_ came to see you?"
"Yes, he often. I love him," Georgie announced with emphasis; "he makes
lovely, lovely, _lovely_ faces!"
"And does he ever come now?"
"No, not now, course he doesn't; he's too busy buildin' his church."
"So he's building still!"
"Yes, 'cos he builds wery nicely," Georgie was pleased to say; "better'n
me, he builds, far better'n me."
"And is he still alone?"
"All alone," said Georgie; "all alonypony by his own little self!"
And the inconsequent nonsense sent him off into untimely laughter,
louder and more uproarious than ever, quite a virile guffaw. But
Gwynneth could not even smile. And now when neither listening to Georgie
nor haunted by her engagement, Gwynneth began to think of the lonely
outcast behind those trees, as she had begun indeed to think of him the
spring before last, while her mind and life were yet unfilled by the
motley interests which this last year had brought into both.
The thought afflicted her with a sense of personal hardness and cruelty;
there was this lonely man, doing the work of ten, not spasmodically, but
day after day, and year after year, still unaided and unforgiven by the
very people in whose midst and for whose benefit those prodigies of
labour were being performed. Gwynneth knew now that there had been some
mysterious wickedness before the burning of the church. It was all she
cared to know. What crime could warrant such hardness of heart in the
face of such devotion, skill, patience, consummate endurance, and
invincible determination? These were heroic qualities, no matter what
vileness lay beneath or behind them; and the generous capacity for
hero-worship was very strong in Gwynneth. She would have honoured this
man for his splendid pertinacity, and have wiped all else from the
slate. That his own parishioners continued to dishonour him, and that
she perforce had to do as they did, made her indignant with them and
dissatisfied with herself. So far as Gwynneth was honestly aware, this
feeling was a purely impersonal one. It would have been excited by any
other being who had achieved the like and been thus rewarded. It is
noteworthy, however, that Gwynneth found it necessary to explain the
position to herself.
It was strange, too, how her life had impinged upon his, strange because
the points of contact had in each case left a disproportionate
impression upon her mind. She often thought of them. There was once in
the very beginning, when she had actually stopped him in the village to
ask the name of the poem from which he had quoted on Sunday. Gwynneth
had never told a soul about this, she was so ashamed of her unmaidenly
impulse; but she still remembered the look of pleasure that had flashed
through his pain, and the kind sad voice which both answered her
question and thanked her for asking it. That must have been only a day
or two before the fire; the same summer there was the silent scene
between them in the drawing-room, when she longed to shake hands with
him, to show him her sympathy, but did not dare. Then came the finding
of Georgie in the stonemason's shed, only the spring before last; but
Gwynneth found that she had been gauche as usual even then, that she had
never risen to any of these occasions, but that her one small attempt to
express her sympathy had been nothing less than a piece of tactless
presumption on her part. And yet she felt so much!
Well, it was something that Musk had opened his doors to him, if only
under pressure of a harrowing occasion; even then it was much, very
much, in the prime infidel of the parish. It was a beginning, an
example; it might show others the way. Gwynneth presently discovered
that it had.
She had not brought Georgie to see the saddler this time, and she was
trying to follow that thinker's harangue as though she had really come
to him for political instruction; but all the while the sound from among
the trees distracted her attention and mystified her mind. It was
neither the ringing impact of iron upon iron, nor the swish of a sharp
steel point through the soft sandstone. It was the drone of a saw, as
Gwynneth knew well enough when she asked what the sound was in the first
opportunity afforded her.
"That's the reverend," said the saddler, dryly.
"It sounds like sawing," said disingenuous Gwynneth. "Has he reached the
roof?"
"Gord love yer, miss, not he!"
Gwynneth was consumed with an interest that she feared to show,
especially with the saddler looking at her through his spectacles as
others had done when Mr. Carlton supplied the topic of conversation. It
was a look that seemed to ask her how much she knew, and it always
offended her. She did not want to know what he had done; all her
interest was in what he was doing, alone there behind the trees. Yet now
she felt that speak she must, if it was only to soften a single heart,
in the very slightest degree, towards that unhappy man; and she had come
to the saddler with no other purpose.
"Does no one go near him yet?" she asked point-blank.
The saddler leant across his bench; the girl had refused the only chair
in the little workshop, and was standing outside at the open window, as
all his visitors did.
"You won't tell Sir Wilton, miss?"
"I shan't go out of my way to make mischief, Mr. Fuller, if that's what
you mean. But you had better not tell me any secrets," said Gwynneth,
with a coldness that cost her an effort; however, the saddler's skin was
in keeping with his calling.
"Then you can keep that or not," said he, "as you think fit; but _I_ go
and see him now and then, and, what's more, I'm not ashamed of it."
"I should think not!" the girl broke out; and Fuller sunned himself in
the warmth of fine eyes on fire. "I mean," stammered Gwynneth, "after
all this time, and all he has done!"
"What I said to myself last Christmas, miss; and I'm the only man that
say it to-day, in this here village full of old women and hypocrites; if
you'll excuse my blunt way o' speaking to a young lady like you. 'This
here's gone on long enough,' thinks I; 'an' it's the season of peace an'
good-will,' I says to myself; 'darned if I don't step across the road to
cheer up the poor old reverend, an' Sir Wilton can turn me out of house
an' home if he find out an' think proper.' Don't you mistake me, miss; I
wasn't thinking of Sir Wilton in what I said just now, and ought not to
have said to a young lady like you. No, miss, Sir Wilton has his own
quarrel with the reverend; and _I_ had _my_ quarrel, as far as that go;
but, Gord love yer, a man of my experience can afford to forgive an'
forget, an' be generous as well as just. There isn't a juster man alive
than me, Miss Gwynneth; and not a soul in this parish, or out of it,
that can say I'm not generous too."
"I'm sure of it, Mr. Fuller. But did you go over to the rectory?"
"There and then," cried Fuller; "there--and--then. And I told him
straight that I for one--but that's no use to go over what I said and he
said," observed the saddler, hastily. "I can only tell you that in ten
minutes we were chattun away as though nothun had ever come between us.
And what do you suppose, miss? What do you suppose?"
Gwynneth shook her head, unable to imagine what was coming, and anxious
to hear.
"He hadn't seen a newspaper in all these years! Hadn't so much as heard
of that there Home Rule Bill of old Gladstone's, and didn't even know
there'd been a war in the Sowd'n!" Gwynneth looked equally ignorant of
this. "You know, miss? The Sowd'n, where General Gordon was betrayed
and deserted by them varmin you'd stick up for. But we won't quarrel no
more about that: only to think of the poor old reverend knowun no more
about it than the man in the moon until I told him! Why, I had to tell
him one of the Royal Family was dead an' buried; it would have been just
the same if it had been the Queen herself, God bless her!"
"So he has been absolutely shut off from the world," Gwynneth murmured.
"There you've hit it, miss! 'Shut off from the world,' there you've put
it into better language than I did," said the saddler, with his most
complimentary air. "Gord love yer, miss, it used to be the reverend that
passed his _Standard_ on to me; but ever since last Christmas it's been
me that's taken my _East Anglian_ over to him; so the boot's been on the
other leg properly; and right glad I've been to do anything for him, and
to take my pipe across now and then as though nothun had ever happened.
Not that he fare to care much for that, neither; he've been so long
alone, I do believe he've got to like his own society as well as any.
Yes, miss, shut off from the world he have been and he is; but he won't
be shut off from the world much longer!"
"Oh?"
Gwynneth's interest was re-awakened.
"No," said Fuller, with the air of mystery in which his class delights;
"no, miss, he's not one to be shut off longer than he can help. Hear
that sound?"
"I do indeed."
Latterly she had been listening to nothing else.
"That's a saw!"
"Well?"
"Do you know what he's sawun?"
"No."
"Planks for benches!"
Gwynneth repeated the last word in a puzzled whisper; and so stood
staring until the obvious explanation had become obvious to her. It
remained inexplicable.
"I don't see the good of benches before the church is finished, Mr.
Fuller."
"He mean to hold his services whether that's finished or not. And I mean
to attend 'em," the saddler said with an air.
"But--I thought----"
"He was suspended for five year, and the bishop has given him leave to
get to work directly the five year is up. That I happen to know."
"It must be nearly up now!"
"That's up next Sunday as ever is, and you'll know it when you hear the
bell ring. He's got one of the old uns slung to a tree, for I helped him
to sling it, and it's the first help he's had all this time. I wouldn't
mention it, miss, for the reverend doesn't want a crowd; there'll be
quite enough come when they hear the bell, if it's only to see what
happens; but the whole neighbourhood 'll be there if that get about."
"And there's really going to be service in the church--just as it
is--without a roof--this very next Sunday!"
It sounded incredible to Gwynneth, and yet it thrilled her as the
incredible does not. The very drone of the saw was thrilling now.
"There is, miss, and I mean to be there," said the village Hampden, with
inflated chest. "I can't help it if that cost me Sir Wilton's custom,
the reverend and me are good friends again, and I mean to be there."
XXVI
A VERY FEW WORDS
It had been in the air all Saturday, but few believed the rumour until
ten minutes to eleven next morning. At that hour and at that minute Long
Stow was electrified by the measured ringing of a single bell--a bell
hoarse with five years' rest and rust--a bell no ear had heard since the
night of the fire.
Gwynneth was afield upon the upland, far beyond the church, a pitiful
waverer between desire and indecision. Now she must go; and now she must
not think of it. It was unnecessary, gratuitous, provocative,
ostentatious, unmaidenly, immodest--and yet--both her duty and her
desire. So the string of adjectives might be applied to her; they were
no deterrent to a nature which hesitated often, but seldom was afraid.
Gwynneth treated more respectfully the poignant query of her own
consciousness: was she absolutely certain that she did not at all desire
to show off like the saddler? She was not.
She did desire to show off, if it was showing off to honour openly the
man whom she admired and wished others to admire. She gloried in the
man's achievement, and possibly also in her own appreciation of it and
him. That was her real point of contact with the saddler. But for
Fuller there was the excuse of unconsciousness, and for Gwynneth there
was not. So she read herself that Sunday morning, under an August sky
without a fleck and a sun that drew the resin from those very pine-trees
upon which the outcast had so often gazed. It was thereabouts that
Gwynneth lingered, of self-analysis all compact. Then the hoarse bell
began--came calling up to her from the clump of chestnuts and of
elms--calling like a friend in pain . . .
Gwynneth reached church by way of the strip of glebe behind it and the
gate into this from the lane, thus escaping the throng already gathered
at the other gate. She saw nothing but the rude benches as she entered
in; the last of these was too near for her; she shrank to the far end of
it, close against the wall, and the bell stopped as she sank upon her
knees. The beating of her heart seemed to take its place. Then there
came a light yet measured step. It passed very near, with a subdued and
subtle rustle, that might yet have meant one other woman. But Gwynneth
knew better, though she never looked.
"_I will arise, and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I
have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be
called thy son._"
Already the girl could not see; all her being was involved in an effort
to suppress a sob. It was suppressed. There were no tears in the voice
that so moved Gwynneth. How serene it was, though sad! It began to
soothe her, as she remembered that it had done when she was quite a
little girl. She was a little girl again: these five years fled . . .
But oh, why had he chosen _that_ sentence of the scriptures? Gwynneth
looked at her book (for now she could see) and found that some of the
others would have been worse.
At last she could raise her eyes; and there was Fuller in the very
front; and not another soul.
But Gwynneth cared for nothing any more except the gentle voice that it
was her pride to follow in the general confession, kneeling indeed, yet
kneeling bolt upright in her proud allegiance.
A strange picture, the rude benches, the ragged walls; the east window
still a chasm, the hot sun streaming through it down the aisle; and over
all the blue cruciform of sky, broken only by the nodding plumes of the
taller elms. And a congregation yet more strange--only Gwynneth and the
saddler. But this did not continue. Gwynneth heard movements in the
porch behind her, and presently a stumble on the part of one driven in
by the press; but no voices; not a whisper; and ere-long he who had been
forced in, tired of standing, came on tiptoe and occupied the end of
Gwynneth's bench.
Now it was the second lesson. The rector was reading it in the same
sweet voice, with all his old precision and knowledge of his mother
tongue, and never a trip or an undue emphasis. No one would have
believed that that voice had been all but silent for five whole years.
And yet some change there was, something different in the reading,
something even in the voice; the clerical monotone was abandoned, the
reading was more human, natural, and sympathetic. The change was in
keeping with others. The rector wore no vestments in the naked eye of
heaven, but only his cassock, his surplice, and his Oxford hood. There
were flowers upon the simple table behind him, such roses as still grew
wild in his tangled garden, but no candle to melt double in the sun. The
lectern he had done his best to burnish; but it was still a cripple from
the fire. Above, the rector's hair shone like silver, for the sun swept
over it, but the lean dark face was all in shadow. Gwynneth only saw the
fresh trim cut of the grizzled beard, and the walnut colour of the
gnarled hand drooping over the book. That speaking hand!