“So your good parishioners are grateful for my indulgence,” he said, with something approaching a sneer. “Let them thank the Providence to whom, as you tell me, they are beginning to be resigned, that He protected the object of their hatred from them! Had I not received the keeper’s word that she was safe and sound, I would have left no stone unturned to make every scoundrel of them know the full penalties of the law touching assault and housebreaking. They complained of poison ... they would have learned something of gallows! But their offence to me was not worth the trouble their punishment would entail. She escaped—let them be!”
“These are hard words,” said the parson disturbed, and he was about to add all the excuses he had already found for his flock in the trouble they had themselves endured and in the evil influence of Margery among them, when David interrupted again:
“I am a hard man, it seems! Well, I need be, to endure life.”
And Dr. Tutterville wisely held his peace.
The two friends proceeded towards Bindon House in silence. The reverend Horatio was now pondering over certain phrases of David’s which seemed ever and again, like the lightning that on a dark night flashes out upon the bewildered wayfarer, one instant to show him the road, only to leave him the next hopelessly groping in the mire.
“If she had grown into your heart, how had it been with mine!... Why, man, I have loved her since the first instant! First I was wrapt in gorgeous dreams, and then there came the blank. Then came the blank—then came the blank.” The phrase recurred, with meaning insistence like the burden of a catch. Presently he gave a kind of start. If he dared but connect these flashes! If he but dared hazard his unsteady steps upon the astonishing road they seemed to reveal! But he kept his peace.
In spirit David was back in the Herb-Garden, not the poor, dishonoured, bruised place upon which he had just turned his back, but the garden of that wondrous dawn where he and Ellinor had wandered into such a lovely land. He yearned for the moment when the guardian gates should be erect once more and the key of them within his hand.—Therein, as a man locks up the casket that holds the faded flowers, the crushed letters, all that fate has left him of his love, would he hold close for evermore the tenderest memory of his life.
CHAPTER II
A MESSENGER OF GLAD TIDINGS
Oh, my love, my breath of life, where art thou!
—Keats (Endymion).