There were half a dozen homeward-going worshippers ahead of them, a hundred yards away, and a handful more a hundred yards behind, as Ezra's backward glance discerned. They were all moving in the same direction, and at pretty much the same pace. The air was very quiet, and the clear music of the bells made no hinderance to their talk.
“I'm thinkin', Miss Blythe,” said Ezra, slowly, walking with his hands clasped behind him and his downcast eyes just resting on her face and gliding away again, “I'm thinkin' as the spectacle of them two young lives being linked the one with the other gives a sort of a lonely seeming to the old age as you and me has got to look to.”
“Perhaps so, Mr. Gold,” said Rachel, stopping with dry brevity in her walk and holding out her hand. “I must hasten homeward. I wish you a good-morning.”
Ezra took her proffered hand in his, shook it gravely, and accepted his dismissal.
Not many newspapers came to Heydon Hay, and the few that found their way thither reached the regular subscribers a day or two after their news was stale to London readers. Ezra got his Argus regularly every Tuesday morning, and in fine weather would sit in the garden to read it. It happened that on the Tuesday after the first time of asking of the banns, he sat beneath a full-leaved, distorted old cherry-tree, gravely reading “Our Paris Correspondence,” when his eye fell upon an item of news or fancy which startled him and then set him a-thinking. “All Paris,” said our correspondent, “was delightfully fluttered by the approaching marriage of the Marquis of B. and Madame De X. Madame De X. was a reigning beauty in the days of the Consul Plancus. It would be unfair to reveal her precise age even if one knew it. The Marquis of B. was turned seventy. The two had been lovers in their youth, and had been separated by a misunderstanding. The lady had married, but the gentleman for her sake had kept single. Monsieur X. had lived with his bride for but a year, and had then succumbed to an attack of phthisis. Now, after a separation of forty years, the two lovers had met again, the ancient misunderstanding had been romantically explained, and they had decided to spend the winter of their days together. Paris was charmed, Paris was touched by this picture of a life-long devotion presented by the Marquis of B.”
Ezra, rising from his seat, laid the paper upon it and walked soberly about the garden. Then he took up the journal, surrounded the paragraph which related to the devotion of the Marquis of B. with heavy ink-marks, waited patiently until the lines dried, folded up the paper, put it in his pocket, and walked into the road. There he turned to the left, and went straight on to Miss Blythe's cottage. There in the garden was Miss Blythe herself, in a cottage bonnet and long gloves, busily hoeing with little pecks at a raised flower-bed of the size of a tea-tray. She looked up when Ezra paused at the gate, nodded with brisk preciseness in answer to his salutation, and then went on industriously pecking at the flower-bed.
“My weekly paper has just arrived, Miss Blythe,” said Ezra. “It appears to contain an unusual amount of interestin' matter, and I thought I'd ask you in passing if you'd care to have a look at it.”
“You are remarkably obliging, Mr. Gold,” said Rachel. “I thank you extremely.” She took the newspaper from his hand and retired into the house with it. Ezra lingered, and she returned to resume her occupation.
“It is beautiful weather,” said Ezra.
“It is beautiful weather, indeed,” said Rachel. Ezra lingered on, but rather hopelessly, for she would not so much as glance in his direction so far as he could see, but her features were entirely hidden by the cottage bonnet.