There was a pause, while Grant’s hands clenched and unclenched on the chair, his sorrowful mind reckoning up his defeat; and then Billy said again—“Miss Verity’s always been top-dog in Cantacute!” and a sharp echo of assent ran round the choir. Afterwards, they would remember that they had followed Billy-boy’s lead, and be annoyed about it,—also that they had shown him his importance far too obviously,—but at the moment there were no side-issues, the point at stake loomed too large. That murmur of assent showed Grant where he stood as nothing else could have done,—showed him his opponent’s strength and his own helplessness, the single-handedness of his own fight, and the long power of her prestige.
Verity’s gaze was on the floor, and her attitude told nothing, yet he knew as if he had heard it just what pæan of triumph was swelling her conquering soul, with the inspiring word “salmon” as its passionate motif. She had smitten him to the dust, although in a thoroughly ladylike manner. She had humiliated him in the eyes of his own parish without apparently raising a finger. She had won her victory and proved her power by snatching back his hard-saved lamb to wander once more in the wilderness.
He said nothing further,—just let his eyes travel round the group, not reproachfully but rather wistfully, as if wondering by what reason one man should be ready to die for a cause, while another simply yawned in its face; and looked for one long, final moment at the bent head of his conqueror,—and in that one moment thought, curiously enough, not of his own shame and her treacherous subtlety, but of the way the light played on the fine gold of her hair.
“I knew you’d make a bally ass of yourself!” Larry remarked comfortingly, outside. “I knew you’d absolutely no earthly of any kind. Why couldn’t you take a sportsman’s advice? You’ve gone an’ upset Verity all for nothin’, an’ that means a devil of a time for Larry Lyndesay. She’ll be as snarky as anythin’ after this, I can tell you. She doesn’t really like playin’ Alexander all round the place. No nice woman does; only the hat-pin kind. I can’t think why parsons are always bargin’ in an’ settin’ people by the ears!
“All the same, I was admirin’ you no end!” he added confidentially, on the steps. “Grange was admirin’ you, too,—my shover, you know. I could see him sketchin’ you on the back of that ‘Sweetin’’ thing. I’ll bag it afterwards, and send it round. You might call it ‘Beardin’ the Begum.’ An’ don’t you get worried about Verity an’ Billy-boy. She’ll probably post him along to-morrow, done up in a neat parcel. All Verity requires is a little cultivatin’,—just cultivatin’. Haven’t you noticed that most of the parishes round here are engineered by women? You can’t get your Salic business runnin’ all in a minute, you know,—not in Cantacute, anyhow. Just you take my tip, old man, an’ you’ll not regret it. Try a little cultivatin’!”
Larry’s worldly diplomacy rang in poor Grant’s ears all the way home. Would he really be justified in “cultivatin’” his proud little lady? Didn’t it mean the sacrifice of his most rooted beliefs, the upheaval of the foundations upon which his very life was set? As representative of his Church, he was her spiritual superior; for all that, as man, he longed to kiss her feet. To yield to her banner would be rank treachery, and all the more because beneath it stood no foe but the dear form of Verity Cantacute. All night he thought and fought and prayed, and all night he sang without ceasing to her bent head—
“So the minutes slip away:
We get older, every day:
Soon we’ll be too old to play.
(Honey, there’ll be dancin’ in the sky!)