And the child ran to her, while the man's eyes followed him hungrily, climbing no higher than Georgie's height.
"Oh, look what a lovely, lovely face the workman made me; do look, I say! Is it wery kind of him to make me such a lovely thing?"
Gwynneth had been dragged to where the new head stood mounted upon a misfit; and Carlton had been obliged to rise. But his eyes had not risen from the child.
"Is it kind of him, I tell you?" persisted Georgie.
"Very kind," said Gwynneth, "indeed."
And civility compelled Carlton to look up at last.
"It was only to pass the time," he said. "I was obliged to bring him in out of the rain."
"It was so good of you," murmured Gwynneth. "But it was not good of Georgie to run away as soon as my back was turned!"
Georgie paid no heed to this reproach; he was busy playing with the uncouth head.
"Oh, don't say that," said Carlton, quickly; "I don't get so many visitors! Are you the little chap'sgoverness?" he added, yet more quickly, to undo the visible effects of his words.
"No, I'm—from the hall, you know."
He could not but start at this. But now he was guarding his tongue. And, as he reflected, there came back to him the vague memory of a face in church, followed by the sharper picture of a very young girl at the piano in a pleasant room—the last that he had ever been in.
Gwynneth had recalled the same scene, and could see him as he had been, while she gazed upon him as he was.
"I remember," he said, gravely. "So you take an interest in this little chap, Miss Gleed?"
"Rather more than that," replied Gwynneth, taken out of herself in an instant, and declaring her innocence by her sudden and unconscious enthusiasm. "I love him dearly," she said from her heart: and together their eyes returned to the round sailor hat, the brown pinafore and the browner legs which were all that was now to be seen of Georgie the engrossed.
"He is indeed a dear little fellow," said Carlton, smothering his sighs.
"And so affectionate!" added Gwynneth, thinking of the strange pair together as she had found them.
"Marvellously independent, too, for his age."
"He is not quite four. You would think him older."
"Indeed I would . . . And so you are his 'lady'!"
"So he insists on calling me."
"You seem to be very much to him," said RobertCarlton, jealously enough at heart, as he looked for once into the fine, kind, enthusiastic eyes of Gwynneth; but they fell embarrassed, and his own were quick enough to wander back to the boy.
"I have been more or less alone since last autumn," said Gwynneth. "Georgie has been as much to me as I can possibly have been to him."
"But he lives at the Flint House, does he not? I—I gathered he was a grandchild of the Musks."
"So he is."
"Are they bringing him up?"
"Yes."
"Kindly?"
"Oh, yes—kindly. But——"
"Are they fond of him?"
"Touchingly so; but, of course, they are two old people."
"And so you stepped in to lighten and brighten a little child's life!"
Gwynneth blushed unseen; for all this time he was looking at Georgie and not at her.
"You mustn't put it like that," she said, "for it isn't the case. It was quite a selfish pleasure. I was all alone. And it began by his being dreadfully ill."
"What—Georgie?"
"Yes, and I was able to nurse him a little. And after that we couldn't do without each other. But now we shall have to try."
He had looked at her with the last quick question, and was looking still, a new anxiety in his eyes.
"Do you mean that you are going away?" he said; and his tone did not conceal his disappointment.
"I am sorry to say I am," replied Gwynneth, feeling all she said.
"Soon?"
"To-morrow."
"Far?"
"Abroad."
"But not for long!"
"A year."
Her eyes fell at last before the frank trouble in his; and he ended the pause with a sigh. "I am very sorry," he said. "I was hoping that you would often bring him here to see me." Nor was any compliment taken or intended in a speech which rang with the primitive sincerity of one who had spoken very little for a very long time.
Gwynneth took the short step that brought her to the opening of the shed. She had suddenly discovered that the rain had never ceased pattering on the corrugated roof, and was wondering when the shower would stop. She wished it was fair, for more reasons than one. It was high time she took Georgie away; and she did not know what Musk would say when he heard where they had been. She only knew his opinion of parsons generally, and of all that they professed, though she had once heard him allow that they were not all as bad as this one. Besides, even Gwynneth felt natural qualms in the society of an outcast whom no one else went near, quite apart from the popular conviction that he hadburnt his own church to the ground. That she had never believed. And now, when she found him all but at his work; when she saw him at close quarters, aged and bent, with tattered clothes and battered hands, yet handsome as ever, and now picturesque; and when she looked upon the gigantic work that had aged him, the finished wall here, the deliberate preparations there; then that old calumny was blown to final shreds for Gwynneth. He might have done worse, as she had sometimes heard said, but he had not done that. And the woman went to work within her: was there nothing she could do for him? Was there no little luxury she could get and send him? His clothes were torn—if only she could mend them! Alas! that she was going abroad next day.
Another moment and she was glad: how could she do anything, a young girl, when all the rest of the world held aloof? Anything that she did, or tried to do, would inevitably, if not rightly and properly, be misconstrued. Yet, after this, it would be too painful to live so near and to go on doing nothing. She had felt that long ago; and the memory of their last encounter reoccupied her thoughts. No, she could do no more now than she had been able to do then. Therefore she was glad to be going away. And all this passed through her mind in the mere minute that elapsed before the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Yet in that minute Robert Carlton had got Georgie back upon his knee, and Gwynneth caught him trying to extract a promise from the child; in another he had risen, a duskier bronze than before, and wastelling her honestly what the promise was to have been.
"I wanted him to come again to see me finish that head, but not to tell his grandparents where he was going, or they would not let him. You see, I am ashamed of it already! Make allowances for one who has not spoken to either woman or child for very nearly four years."
Gwynneth was deeply moved.
"Allowances," she could but repeat; "allowances!"
"Allow'nces, allow'nces!" chimed Georgie, to whom a new word was necessarily humorous.
Carlton picked him up, and kissed him lightly for the last time. To Gwynneth he only bowed. And she was longing to take his hand.
"Good-bye, Miss Gleed; a good journey and a happy time to you."
Gwynneth had to say something, since she could do nothing, to show her sympathy. "I think it's all wonderful—wonderful!" was all she did say, with a little wave towards the sandstone walls. And yet her small speech haunted her for weeks, seeming in turns so many things that she had never meant it to be.
Georgie also waved with energy. "Good-bye, good-bye, I'll see you in the mornin'!" was his irresponsible farewell.
And so they disappeared together, as the sun shone again through the trees with the emerald tips, now dripping diamonds too; but to Robert Carlton that little scene of his endless labours, the shed, thestrewed stones, the barrow, the rising walls, the blossoming chestnuts, the jewelled elms, had never looked so drab and desolate before.
Yet, long after it was really dark, the lonely man still hovered about the spot, now standing where the child had stood with his brown pinafore and his browner legs; now sitting empty-kneed in the empty barrow; now handling the rough stone head that he had hewn in a few minutes for little Georgie.
Next morning he was early at his arch, and had soon finished the voussoir which he had been roughing out when this vital interruption occurred. But he was not satisfied with the stone, and wasted much time in turning it over and over and wondering whether it would do or not. Now this was a point upon which Carlton usually knew his mind in a twinkling. Indecision of any sort was, indeed, among the last of his failings; but that man is not himself who has not closed an eye all night; and Robert Carlton had only closed his in prayer.
Later in the morning his case was worse. He would think of the boy until the chisel went too deep and spoilt another stone. Or, just when he was beginning to get on, he would drop his tools and wheel round suddenly, half hoping to see a second little apparition in a sailor hat with the brim turned down. But these things do not happen twice, much less when looked and longed for, as Carlton knew very well. And yet his knowledge did not help him in the matter; on the other hand, it drove him again and again to his gate, to gaze wistfully up and down the road he never traversed; and this was the most disastrous habit of all.
Once more the work stood still; for the first time in three whole years, it stood practically still for days.
Meanwhile, at the Flint House, there had never been any secret as to what had happened between showers at the church. Gwynneth had told Mrs. Musk, and Mrs. Musk had deemed it better to tell Jasper himself than to let him gather the truth from Georgie's prattle. And in the event Musk took it better than his wife had dared to hope, merely vilifying quick and dead with renewed rancour, and grimly undertaking that the incident should not occur again.
So Georgie saw more of his grandfather than he had ever seen before, and rather more than he cared to see after his close association with Gwynneth, whose wonderful letter from Leipzig was small comfort to so small a soul, though Mrs. Musk had to read it to Georgie many times a day.
"Oh! I wish I would go and see workman," the boy would exclaim without fear. "I wish I would! I wish I would!"
"I daresay you do," Jasper would growl from his chair.
"Then can I; can I, I say, grand-daddy?"
"No, you can't."
"Oh! why can't I?"
"Because I tell you."
"But, you see, grand-daddy, he was making me such a lovely, lovely face. I must go back for it. Really I must. He did say he finish fen I go back. So of course I must go. See? See? See?"
Thus pestered, Jasper once thundered:
"Oh, yes, I see! I know him—I know him. I see hard enough! But if ever you do go I'll—I'll—I'll give ye what ye never had afore and'll never want again!"
"Oh, don't be angry wif me," Georgie whimpered. "Oh, I wish my lady would come back!"
"I daresay you do," said Jasper, calming. "And I don't."
But a child forgets; at all events Georgie did; and so surely as hisennuiin the garden, within strict sight of the terrible old man in the chair, reached a certain pitch, so surely did the treasonable aspiration rise to his innocent lips.
"I wish I would go and see workman. IwishI would!"
But at last one day the old man rose, stick and all; and at this even Georgie trembled; for it was long since he had seen his grandfather on his feet. Over the grass he came hobbling, ungainly, abnormal, frowning down upon the buttercups. Georgie crept aside. But Musk passed him without a word. Three times he limped the length of the overgrown lawn, muttering, frowning; and the third time his lameness was palpably less.
"Why, Jasper," cried Mrs. Musk, running out, "you're getting better!"
"No, I ain't," he roared. "You mind your own business and get away indoors."
Mrs. Musk was meekly obeying, and Georgie escaping at her skirt, when a second roar recalled the child. Jasper was leaning with both hands onthe stick before him, his frown gone, but in its place a surely devilish smile, since the child mistook it for the real thing.
"So you're still longun to go back and see the workman, as you call him, at the church?"
"Oh, yes, I are!"
And round eyes kindled at the thought.
"Very well. You may."
Georgie could scarcely believe his ears.
"Fen may I? Now? Now, I say?"
"When you like, so long as you don't bother me."
Georgie jumped and shouted in his joy.
"Goin' to see workman, goin' to see workman! Oh, my Jove, my Jove! Goin' to see workman makin' lovely, lovely faces all for me—every bit!"
"Hold your noise," said Jasper, roughly; "and go, if you're going."
Carlton had given up expecting him, divining at last that Musk knew of their one interview, and would never let them have another. So once more Georgie surprised him at his work; but this time he had to hail his friend; for now Carlton was making up for lost time, and at the moment, up on a scaffolding, was all absorbed in the exciting task of fitting the finished voussoirs over the wooden centre which supported the arch until the keystone should complete it. And the keystone was actually in one hand, a trowel full of mortar in the other, when the first sound of Georgie's voice drove all else from his mind.
"I say, I say, I say!" he ran up shouting. "Workman, workman!"
But now the workman was only collecting himself, and thanking God with quivering lips, before he could trust himself upon his ladder.
"So here you are at last," he said, swinging the child off his legs without endearment. Yet all his being yearned towards the merry independent little boy. The straight strong legs seemed browner and rounder already. It might have been the same holland pinafore; it was the same sailor hat.
"Yes, here I are," said Georgie, "and I wish you would make lovely, lovely faces out of bwick."
"Not run away again, I hope?"
"No, 'cos I came by my own self."
Carlton asked no more questions. Any minute the child might be missed and sent for; every moment was precious meanwhile. It was a heavenly day in early June, the elms in full leaf at last against the blue, the churchyard dappled with light and shade, the fresh sandstone yellow as gold where the sun caught it fairly. And in the sunlight stood its own incarnation—sturdy champion of the golden age—laughing child of June.
Carlton could see nothing else.
"Come on, I say," urged Georgie; "come an' make faces, quick, sharp!"
And he dragged the sculptor to his rude studio.
"There it is, there it is," shouted Georgie, spying the unfinished head high up on the shelf. "You did say you finish fen I come back. Finish—finish—quick, sharp!"
Carlton brought the thing outside, for the shed was close, and went to work at the foot of his ladder, with Georgie sitting on the lowest rung. And any merit which the rough attempt had possessed was speedily removed by an over-elaboration on which Georgie insisted, and which certainly served its purpose by earning his vociferous applause.
"Oh, his eyes! What funny eyes! Make them open and shut, I say—can you?"
A doll, which Gwynneth had unearthed, before she knew her Georgie very well, had retained this accomplishment even when the head was off its body.
"I'm afraid I can't do that," said Carlton.
"Try—try."
So Carlton gouged in the soft stone till the holes for the eyeballs had disappeared.
"Now open them again!"
And fresh holes were made: they were the most sunken eyes ever seen before Georgie was tired of the game. Next he must have ears, which were supposed to be concealed by the very heavy head of hair; and when the ears arrived, they were not worth having without ear-rings; but there the sculptor was nonplussed, and struck.
"All right," said Georgie, cheerfully; "then I'll carry it home without."
"What, run away directly it's done?"
The cold-blooded ingratitude of infancy was new to Carlton, as his hurt face was to Georgie, who eyed it with some compassion.
"All right," said he; "I'll stay a little bit if you like."
"And sit on my knee, Georgie."
"All right."
But there was no sentiment about Georgie to-day; it was mere magnanimity, and he showed it.
"Quite comfy, Georgie?"
"No," sighed the boy, screwing about on the one thin thigh; "I think it's only a little comfy."
"That better?"
And, the other leg being slipped under his small person, Georgie said it was.
"Are you sure, Georgie, that you want to take that head home at all?"
"Course I are," said Georgie, decidedly. "I must take it, you see; course I must."
Carlton was again tormented by the ignoble inclination which he had overcome by impulse rather than by will at the last interview. Was a child of four too young to keep a secret? If only this one could be induced to go and come back, and back, and back, without ever saying a word to anybody! The proposition had shamed him before; and did now; but the new love within him was stronger than his shame.
"You wouldn't show it," suggested Carlton, "to your grandfather, would you?"
"Course I'll show it to him," said Georgie, for whom the stipulation was too oblique.
"But he'll be angry!"
"Course he won't," said Georgie, more superior than ever, and with the air of one who does not care to argue any more.
"But you know he was before," said Carlton, drawing his bow.
"Oh, bovver!" exclaimed Georgie, losing patience."Well, then, he won't be angry to-day, I know he won't."
"How do you know, Georgie?"
"'Cos he did tell me I could come."
"Not here?"
Georgie nodded solemnly.
"Yes, he did. I know he did."
What could it mean? The child was strangely dependable for his years; indeed, it was impossible to look in those great and candid eyes and to doubt the testimony of the equally candid little tongue. Then what could it mean? Had Musk relented? Was he relenting? Carlton's heart leapt at the thought, and with his heart his eyes; and in the same second he had his answer.
Close at hand in the sunlight, where Georgie had stood last, brimming over with delight, there now stood Jasper Musk himself, huge with hate, livid with rage, vindictive, remorseless—but not surprised. Carlton saw this at the first glance, in the triumphant lightning flashing from the fixed eyes, and playing over the heavy, grim, inexorable face. And that was his answer; furthermore it prepared him for all, and more than all, that was to come.
"Put the boy down," said Jasper Musk, with sinister self-control.
Instinctively the child slipped to the ground; but there his courage failed him, so that he turned his back upon the terrible old man, and hid his face in the lap that he had left.
"Come here, George!"
But Carlton held him firmly with both hands.
Musk bore down on them in a series of little shuffling steps, his great face wincing with the pain of each. His voice had already risen; now it was so terrible to hear, so hoarse and high with passion, that in an instant Carlton had his thumbs in the small boy's ears.
"Snivelling hypocrite! Whited sepulchre! Do you hand the child over to me, or I'll break this stick across your back. So I've caught ye, temptun him here to make up to him behind my back! But you don't—no, you don't—not while I'm alive to stop that. He's nothun to you and you're nothun to him, and do you meddle with him again at your peril. I've taken the trouble to learn the law of it, so I know. God damn ye! will you take your hands off him, or am I to break your blasted head?"
"You can do what you like," said Carlton; "but the boy shall not hear you using that language to me. So you will never get a better opportunity than you have." And his nostrils curled as he bent his defenceless head over that of the boy, and pressed a little harder with his thumbs.
The other gnashed his teeth, and his great hand tightened on his stick. But he could not strike like that. And his enemy knew it; trust him to know when he was safe!
"I'm not going to prison for ye," said Musk, "if that's what you want. I daresay you'd think that worth a crack on the head to get me locked up for a bit; well, then, you shan't. Do you leave go o' the kid, and I won't swear no more."
The effort at self-control was plain enough,as Carlton looked up, without complying all at once.
"One moment," he said. "You sent him here yourself, I think?"
"What, the child?"
"Yes."
"I didn't send him. He was pestering me to come. So at last I gave him leave to do as he liked."
"In order that you might follow and abuse me in front of him!"
"I'll tell no lies," said Musk, sturdily. "I meant to let him hear what I thought of you, and I won't deny it."
Carlton looked a little longer upon the broad face between the steely bristles and the silvery hair; it had aged nothing in these years which had been as twenty to himself; and for the moment there was all the old rugged dignity in its independent purpose and honest unrelenting hate. A bargain had been in Carlton's mind, but at the last he decided to trust his enemy instead.
"It's all right, Georgie," he whispered: "we are not really angry with each other. Run away and play."
"But I don't want to!"
"You must," said Carlton, and rose without taking further notice of the child. "Mr. Musk," he said, in a low voice but firm, "is it to be like this between us to the bitter end?"
"That is."
"I do not ask your forgiveness——"
"Glad to hear it."
"I only ask—in pity's name—to be allowed to do something for the boy!"
Musk moved a muscle at last, and his eyes came close together with a gleam. "I daresay you do," said he.
"But will you not listen——"
"I'm listening now, ain't I?"
"Ah, but not to my prayer! I see it in your face; you have no pity. God knows how little I deserve! Yet it's little enough that I ask: only to see him sometimes, and not even to see him if you set your face against it. I would be content—at least I would try to be—if I knew he was going to good schools, if—if I might have hand or voice in his life. You say I have no rights. That is my punishment; a new one, that I never felt until I saw the boy for the first time the other day; but if you knew how I have felt it since! If you knew what it would be to me to do anything—give anything——"
"I knew that were comun," said Musk, nodding to himself . . . "So you'd like to do the handsome, would you?" His whole face became suddenly suffused, as with walnut-juice; the very whites of his eyes seemed white no longer, while the pupils shrank to steel points in their midst. "I know you!" he cried, beside himself again; "but don't you try them games with me. That's your line, that is—buy your way back! You'd buy it with the parish, by making them a church; and you'd buy it with the boy, by making things for him; but that's what you never shall do, not while I live to prevent it . . . What you got there, George? You give that here!"
It was the sandstone head with the sunken eyes, and Georgie was clinging to it in his trouble underneath the scaffolding; in an instant Musk had seized it from him, and dashed it with all his might against the wall, so that the soft stone flew into a dozen pieces. It was like blood to a wild beast: the demon of destruction broke loose in Jasper Musk.
"And that's how I'd treat the rest of your damned handiwork," he roared, "if I was the village! I'd have no church of your building; I'd bring that down about your ears right quick!" His wild eye lit upon the wooden centre of the unfinished arch, and "This is what I'd do," he shouted, lunging at the woodwork with his heavy stick. "Hypocrite! Pharisee! Disgrace to God and man! Leper as——"
But the centre had been dealt a heavy thrust, as from a battering ram, with each expression; with each it had bulged a little; but the last lunge drove the whole framework from under the unfinished arch, which came crashing down amid a yellow cloud. Musk shuffled backward in time to save his toes; for an instant then both he and Carlton stood aghast.
Robbed of his latest treasure, and moreover having seen it smashed to atoms before his eyes, Georgie had been howling lustily when the crash came: when the yellow cloud lifted he lay silent enough, in a little brown heap below the scaffolding, and already the blood was through his hair.
Carlton had him in his arms that instant.
"He's insensible," he said quietly. "A nasty scalp wound, and may be more. What day is this?"
"Wednesday."
Musk did not know what he was saying, but the cool question had elicited a correct though unconscious reply.
"Wednesday used to be the doctor's day at the dispensary——"
"And is still," cried Musk, coming to his senses.
"Then one of us must run for him."
"I can't run!"
"Then you must hold him while I do. Stop! I'll take him to the house; you must bathe his head while I'm gone."
Another minute and the boy lay in the rectory study, upon the little bed in which Carlton had fought death and won three years before; yet another, and up limped Jasper, crooked with pain, out of breath, but gasping for news of Georgie as though he had been a week on the way.
"Has he come to yet?"
"No, and there's a lot of blood. We must stop it if we can. Wait till I get a sponge and some water."
Jasper Musk was bending over the boy, looking huger than ever upon his knees, when Carlton returned to the room.
"What have I done?" he was muttering. "What have I done? What have I done?"
"Nothing that you could help," replied Carlton, briskly. "Now you keep squeezing this sponge out over his head—never mind the bed—till I get back."
Georgie lay insensible for hours. It was not the loss of blood, which looked much worse than it was, and ceased altogether with the dressing of the wound.There was, however, somewhat serious concussion underneath; and Dr. Marigold bluntly refused to guarantee the event.
"The pity is to move him," he grumbled towards night. "But is there anybody here who could nurse the boy?"
"Only myself," said Carlton, who had been quiet and quick to help all the afternoon.
The doctor shot an upward glance through his shaggy white eyebrows.
"Well, you're handy enough, I must say; and, as we know, the very devil to do things single-handed; but this you couldn't do. No, I'd like to take him straight to the infirmary, only I'm on horseback."
"There are traps in the village."
"They would jolt too much."
"Then let me carry him."
"It's five miles."
"Never mind. I could do it. And he shouldn't jolt—he shouldn't jolt!"
The mellow voice that had charmed the countryside in bygone years, it fell and quivered with infinite tenderness and love, and it sped to the heart of the gaunt old doctor. So this time Marigold raised his whole head, and his look was open, prolonged, and penetrating.
"No, no, Mr. Carlton," he said at length, and in the tone of old times. "It might do no good, after all. But I'll tell you what you shall do: you shall carry him to the Flint House, and I'll spend the night there if I must."
All this while Jasper Musk was sitting stunned andstaring in the rector's chair. He had not moved for an hour, nor did he now until Carlton touched him on the shoulder.
"We are going, Mr. Musk. I am carrying Georgie to your house."
Musk raised a ghastly face.
"He isn't dead?"
"No."
"Nor going to die?"
"God forbid! But the danger is great. The doctor is going to stay with him all night."
And there was a touch of jealousy in his tone, lost upon Jasper Musk, but not on him who inspired it. Silently they left the house, and stole down the drive in the blue twilight. Carlton led, treading almost on tip-toe, as if not to wake a child that only slept in his arms. And so they came to the Flint House, its master limping on the doctor's arm.
"Go in, Mr. Carlton," said Marigold. "There's no one else to carry him upstairs."
And he detained Jasper below.
"You must let that man stay till he is out of danger," the doctor said.
"Why must I?"
"Because I am not justified in staying all night; and he will look after the boy as you and your wife cannot, and as no one else will, now that Miss Gleed is away."
Jasper bowed sullenly to his fate. But the doctor was not done.
"Besides," said he, his kind hand on the other's arm; "besides, he feels this as much as you do, andGod knows he's gone through enough! To-day, I tell you candidly, but for him your little lad would be in a worse way than he is. Now don't you think after this that all of us—even you—might begin to be just a little less hard—even on him?"
Georgie's lady was meanwhile enjoying her life in Leipzig, and the more keenly since she had gone abroad without any thought of pleasure, but only to work. This was characteristic of Gwynneth Gleed. She was not light-hearted enough for a young girl; there had been too much sorrow in her early years, too little sympathy in those that came after; natural joy she had never known. A born delight in books, a blind appreciation of the country, a passion for music, and the love of one little child; these were the pleasures of Gwynneth in her twentieth year; nor as yet did they include that zest in the present, that joy of merely living, that healthy appetite for admiration, that proper pride in one's own person, that catholicity of liking for one's fellow-creatures, which are of the very spirit and essence of youth. And to youth Gwynneth added something at least akin to beauty; but never knew it until she came to live among strangers in a strange land.
These strangers, who were mostly English, and many of them young students like herself at the Conservatoire, were singularly kind to Gwynneth from the first. In some ways they were the best friends the girl ever had. They taught her the duty of gaiety at her time of life, and the absolute necessity of acertain amount of vanity in every human being. Gwynneth was given to understand that she had more to be vain about than most. Attracted themselves by the uncommon girl with the fine eyes and the shy manner, her new friends did much to mitigate the latter by making the very most of her looks and accomplishments, and seeing to it that Gwynneth did the same. She was not allowed to dress as she liked in Leipzig, nor to spend the whole of a fine afternoon at her piano, nor to be out of anything that was going on. The gaieties of the English colony were of a simple character in themselves, but they were Gwynneth's high-water-mark in dissipation, and ere long she was throwing herself into them with that enthusiasm which she brought to every pursuit. She had learnt to waltz remarkably well, and to talk brightly about nothing in particular to the acquaintance of a minute's standing. She was none the less assiduous at her practising and her harmony, and was still capable of immediate and immense excitement over this poet or that composer; but these were no longer her only topics. Nor was a holland pinafore and the small urchin it contained entirely forgotten in these days. Gwynneth wrote to Georgie oftener than to anybody else in England. And yet it was to the theatres and a real ball or so that she first looked forward upon her return.
Lady Gleed was much more than agreeably disappointed in the new Gwynneth; herself incapable of seeing beneath the thinnest surface, she could scarcely believe it was the same girl. Gwynneth was better-looking and had more to say for herself than hadever appeared possible to Lady Gleed, who decided to keep her niece in town for the rest of the season, if not to present so creditable adébutanteat the next drawing-room. And a much more critical person, her son Sidney, coming up from Cambridge for a night, was not less favourably impressed.
Gleed of Trinity, a third-year man, was in his turn a vast improvement upon the private scholar who had seldom addressed a syllable to Gwynneth in his holidays, but had gone past whistling with his dogs. He was now a really handsome little man, with a clear brown skin and a moustache as mature as his manner; looked and spoke like a man of thirty; and could be amusing enough with his sly satire and his ready repartee. Cynical this youth must always be, but the cynicism was more good-humoured and less ill-natured than formerly, and not abhorrent in the man as it had been in the boy. At all events it amused Gwynneth, who was furthermore surprised and excited to find that Sidney had read quite a number of great books, and rather entertained than otherwise by his blasphemous opinions of many of them. So they had something in common after all; and Sidney was certainly very attentive and gay and nice-looking.
It was in the drawing-room in Hyde Park Place, during an hour which went very quickly, that Gwynneth made these discoveries; she was still too simple to remark, much less read, the calculating droop of Sidney's eyelids or the veiled preoccupation of the hereditary stare.
"I wonder if you'd care to have a look at Cambridge," at last said Sidney, in the purely speculative tone.
"Like to? I'd love it!" cried Gwynneth at once.
Sidney paused, without relaxing his stare. She was certainly very animated. Sidney was not sure that he cared for quite so much animation with so little cause.
"I shouldn't wonder if you did rather like it," he proceeded, "in May-week—which never is in May, you know."
"Oh? When is it?"
"The week after next. There'll be heaps going on. Races every afternoon——"
"And don't you steer your boat?" interrupted Gwynneth, a partisan on the spot.
Sidney smiled.
"I cox it, Gwynneth; and if we aren't head of the river we shall not be very far off. But it isn't only the races; there are all sorts of other things, a good match, garden-parties galore, and a dance every night."
"You dance there!"
"Yes," said Sidney; "do you?"
"Rather!"
"Get some in Leipzig?"
"All that there was to get."
"They dance well out there?"
"I don't know."
"But you do, of course?"
Gwynneth saw the drift of this examination, and showed that she saw it, but Sidney liked her the better for her dry reply:
"You'd better try me."
"You'd better tryme," he rejoined adroitly.
"Very well," said Gwynneth. "Here?"
"Come on," said Sidney, his eyes sparkling, his brown skin a warmer hue; and in an instant they were threading their way between the cumbrous chairs and tiny tables of the big room, ploughing through its heavy pile, he in patent leather boots, she in her walking shoes, and not so much as a piano-organ in the street to set the time. Yet, even under these conditions, a turn was enough for Sidney, though he did not want to stop, and was very quick in asking whether he would do.
"You know you will," said Gwynneth, forgetting everything in the prospect of so excellent a partner.
"And you dance rippingly," declared her cousin; "by Jove, I wish we could have you at the First Trinity ball!"
So did Gwynneth; but, instead of betraying further eagerness, sat down at the piano, and, saying it was nothing without the music, forthwith treated Sidney to snatch after snatch of the waltzes of the hour, rendering each with a brilliance of touch and a delicacy of execution alike worthy of a better cause. A year ago Gwynneth would not have done this.
Sidney, his hands in his pockets, but a sparkle still in his eyes, stood watching her without a word until the end.
"Look here," he then announced, "you've simply got to come, and that's all about it. Of course the mater couldn't get away, but Lydia isn't so full up, and I should think she'd jump at it. I'll write to herand fix it up. There's a piano in our rooms, and we'll have it tuned for you; no, we'll get a grand in for the week; and the whole court will be full of men listening."
"Who are 'we'?" inquired Gwynneth.
"Oh, I share rooms with another fellow; an Eton man; you'll like him."
And once more Sidney looked a little critically at his cousin, as though he wanted to be quite sure that the Eton man would like her. But at this moment the dressing-gong threw him into consternation. It appeared that he was dining out at some club, had come up for this dinner, was only sleeping in the house, and would be gone first thing in the morning. So he had better say good-bye; and did so with rather unnecessary warmth, Gwynneth thought; nevertheless, it was the dullest evening she had yet spent in Hyde Park Place, though there was a little dinner-party there also, after which the inevitable performance by Gwynneth was received with the customary acclamation.
It may be supposed that the girl was not enchanted with the prospect of Lydia for chaperone; but she determined thus early to allow nothing to interfere with her enjoyment of the Cambridge festivities. So when Mrs. Goldstein came in her carriage on the next day but one, to say that she supposed they must go, not that she was keen upon it herself, but to please Sidney, and also because she thought it only right for young girls like Gwynneth to have a good time while they could, the latter tried to seem as grateful as though every word of Lydia's did not irritate or repel her. She there and then received dictatorial instructions as to dresses requisite for the week, and undertook to follow them to the letter. It was not a congenial attitude for Gwynneth to assume, but she also was at present bent upon that "good time" which her cousin recommended. Lydia, on the other hand, cultivated the air of one who is personally past all that. She seldom smiled, but yet had a certain secret fondness for excitement. Gwynneth feared that she was far from happy; she seemed dissatisfied with her position in society, and spoke disrespectfully (when she did speak) of the dark, dapper, capable man of business, her indulgent husband.
There came a time when Gwynneth Gleed would have given much to forget the merriest week of her life, but the memory of the next few days was not to be destroyed. The girl never forgot the narrow streets teeming with exuberant youth, the narrow river in similar case, the crush and rush and uproar on the banks, the procession of boats flashing past, each with an eight in which Gwynneth took no interest, but a ninth who had always the same calm, brown, clean-cut face in her mind's eye. How well he looked, swinging with his crew, he in his blazer, cool and malicious, doing his part with splendid precision if only they did theirs! One night they made their bump right opposite the boat in which Gwynneth stood on tiptoe; and Sidney's smile at the supreme moment was one of her vivid recollections; and her little scene with Lydia another, which she brought upon herself by cheering as loud as any ofthe men. Sidney seemed very popular. Gwynneth was so proud to be seen with him, especially when he wore his battered mortar-board and blue gown, which appealed in some foolish way to her own vague intellectual aspirations. And she looked down upon all the gowns that were not blue.
But everything in Cambridge did appeal to Gwynneth, from the anthem and the chancel-roof in King's Chapel to luncheon with Sidney and the Eton man in Old Court. Lydia was for ever reproving her cousin's enthusiasm; but Gwynneth was enjoying herself too much to resent anything that Mrs. Goldstein could say. At the outset, however, a close observer might have caught even Sidney with a cocked eyebrow, and the eye beneath upon the Eton man; the girl was so frank and unsophisticated in the display of her delight; but the Eton man seemed to admire it in her, and Sidney gave up looking like that. The Eton man was twice his height, could sing, and swore that nobody had ever played his accompaniments as Gwynneth did; but he was not in any boat, and he could not compare with Sidney as a partner. Nevertheless, his attentions and attractions had more to answer for than anybody knew.
Gwynneth had thought Sidney very nice in town, but at Cambridge he was perfect. He was a thorough little man of the world, unconscious, unconcerned, whereas many of the men whom Gwynneth met were scarcely worthy of the name. Sidney did things like a prince, having an enviable allowance, and a very good idea of the way in which things should be done. And his arrangements were masterly; no day like thelast, or next; and the whole a whirl of gaiety and excitement literally intoxicating to one whose experience of this kind was so limited as poor Gwynneth's. It all ended with the First Trinity ball. There is no need to dilate on the astonishing magnificence of this revel; it was the most memorable and splendid of them all; and the Backs by night, with a moon in the heaven above and another in the water below, and grey old gables salient in its light, and the Guards' Band in the faint distance, that ought to have been so loud and near; all this was even more entrancing than the ball itself, and Gwynneth moved as in a dream. She had had the audacity to divide her dances between Sidney and the Eton man; but one of them was given cause to complain towards the end, and the more so since the girl had never looked so radiant in her life. The next day Gwynneth and Lydia (who would not speak to her) were to return to town. It had never been arranged that Sidney was to accompany them; yet he did; and before evening there was trouble in Hyde Park Place.
Sir Wilton would not hear of it at first; he was soon obliged to do that. But he stood firm in refusing his consent to a formal engagement between Sidney and his first cousin, and found an unexpected ally in Gwynneth herself. The girl was paying for her week's delirium by a deeper depression than her face betrayed or her heart admitted. Already she was beginning to disappoint her cousin. But this was too much.
"You agree with him?" gasped Sidney. "You'drathernotbe engaged? Then why, my darling, did you ever say 'yes'?"
"It wasn't to that question, dear," said Gwynneth, colouring.
"It amounted to the same thing."
"It will amount to the same thing," Gwynneth said earnestly; "at least I hope and pray that it may. But, of course, it's quite true that we're both very young; and at least it's within the bounds of possibility that—one or other of us might—some day—change."
"Speak for yourself," said Sidney, with a taunting bitterness.
"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 inhim; 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 asher 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.
"Whatisthe 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 affordto 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 thatshe 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!"
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; "Iwas 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."
"Sohecame to see you?"
"Yes, he often. I love him," Georgie announced with emphasis; "he makes lovely, lovely,lovelyfaces!"
"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. Whatcrime 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 longedto 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 ather 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; butIgo 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'llexcuse 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; andIhadmyquarrel, 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? TheSowd'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 hisStandardon to me; but ever since last Christmas it's been me that's taken myEast Anglianover 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——"