For the time of going back drew near, and he did not dread it, though loving Thatches and all it meant more and more with every day. But of course, even in the temporal world, he was not to lose Thatches. That was quite understood between them. The P.G. would be welcome whenever he cared to come.
V
HE was playing chess on the afternoon before his departure. Tea was over and Mrs. Baldwin had gone out. Guy had noticed that she had been perhaps a little stiller than usual that day, when he had seen her, and that he had seen her little. The game did not go very well; they were neither of them keen on it; and when the old gentleman had won an easy victory, he leaned back in his chair, the board still on its little table between them, and said, “Poor Effie! She’s still in the church, or in the churchyard, I expect.”
Guy felt the shock of a great surprise. Strangely enough, though Mrs. Baldwin had spoken of her husband and of his death, and though his books were there, he did not associate him with Thatches, nor with the churchyard. And with the word, “churchyard,” a painful anxiety rose in him.
“Is it an anniversary?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Haseltine nodded, sighing and rubbing his hand over his head. “September twenty-ninth. I’d forgotten myself till just a little while ago. Oliver died on this day. Her husband. Poor Effie!”
“They lived here?” Guy asked. He had imagined that it had been after her bereavement that she and her father had found and made a home of Thatches.
“Oh, yes. They lived here. All their married life,” said Mr. Haseltine. “Ten years or so. It was a great love-match. They were very happy. I never saw a happier couple—until the end.”
“Did anything part them?”
Mr. Haseltine had put his hands into his pockets and was gazing at the board as if with a painful concentration, and though he shook his head he answered, “It was the malady. Cancer, you know. Cancer of the face. Such a handsome fellow, too: beautiful, bright, smiling eyes; beautiful mouth. All gone. All disfigured, cruelly disfigured, and with horrible suffering.”