“God’s finger touched him, and he slept.”
So the marriage was followed by a death, and the lighter refreshments of the dance were merged in the splendours of a funeral feast. And the soul of granfer Wiseman was satisfied withal.
The Rector was sorely troubled by the disaster that had taken from him another of his prime favourites among the lads of the village.
But of the events that had led up to it he was strangely tolerant. “It’s heredity,” he said, “and you can’t fight against it. Not an angel from heaven could persuade them that the sea has not made over to them all the property it lays at their doors. It mayn’t be good law,” he added, “but, after all, there’s something to be said in favour of their view.”
CHAPTER XV
And now, during the calm and quiet summer months that followed, my life took its tone from the harmony of Nature, and rested itself for a while in one great calm. Taking its rest like Nature, the better to prepare itself against the advent of stress and storm.
Hardly a day passed during this halcyon time that I did not see Marion. Sometimes it would be at the Rectory, sometimes at the Manor House; oftener still in some cottage where there was sickness or trouble which she could comfort and relieve. To ourselves, at any rate, life in those days was full of interest; it may be, for that very reason, void of interest to those who only watched its progress from without.
One day the rooks re-appeared in the trees of the Manor House farm. I suppose it was one of the periodical visits which they are accustomed to pay, off and on, before they close their summer establishment finally to take up their abode in some mysterious winter residence. In my boyish days it seemed to me the height of unwisdom to abandon your city of habitation just when the winter gales were due. But perhaps a rook lives his real life elsewhere, and only comes down to rusticate in the country as a volunteer or militiaman goes into camp, i.e. for duty’s sake, which, in the case of the rook, means the fatigue duty of rearing and raising a family. Somewhere (in the pages of the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’ for example) and some day I will look up their winter address. In this neighbourhood it is probably among the cliffs of Portland or on the rock-bound promontory of St. Aldhelm’s Head that a letter would find them. Anyhow, they were with us again to-day.
“Do you think they talk to one another, Peggy?” I said, as they were making a great to-do in the trees adjoining our garden.
“I can’t say, sir, I’m sure; but if they do, it’s pretty much, I allow, on the same subject. Seems like a warning of some kind to my ears.”