Tom entered upon these words, and Uncle Chirgwin's eyes dropping upon him as he spoke, his utterance sounded like a prophecy. So the boy's mother read it, and with a half sob, half shriek, she turned in all the frenzy of sudden maternal wrath. Her sharp tongue dropped mere vituperation, but did so with boundless vigor, and the woman's torrent of unbridled curses and threats swept that scene of storm to its close. Joan went first from the door, while Mr. Chirgwin, picking up his hat and buttoning his coat, retreated after her before the volume of Thomasin's virago attack. Tom stood open-mouthed and silent, dumfounded at the tremendous spectacle of his mother's rage and his father's stricken silence. Then, as Mrs. Tregenza slammed the door and wept, her husband sunk slowly down with something strangely like terror in his eyes. The man in truth had just passed through a physical crisis of alarming nature. He sat in his easy-chair now, removed his hat, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with hands that shook. It was not what he had heard or beheld that woke alarm in a spirit which had never known it till then, but what he had felt: a horror which crowded down upon every sense, gripped his volition with unseen hands, blinded him, stopped his ears, held his limbs, stirred his brains into a whirling waste. He knew now that in his moment of passion he had stood upon the very brink of some terrific, shattering evil, possibly of death itself. Body or brain or both had passed through a great, unknown danger; and now, dazed and for the time much aged, he looked about him with slow eyes—mastered the situation, and realized the incident was ended.
"The Lard—'the Lard is King,'" he said, and stopped a moment. Then he slowly rose to his feet and with the old voice, though it shook and slurred somewhat upon his tongue, spoke that text which served him in all occasions of unusual stress and significance.
"'The Lard is King, be the people never so impatient; He sitteth between the cherubims, be the airth never so unquiet'!"
Then he sat again and long remained motionless with his face buried in his hands.
Meantime the old horse dragged Uncle Chirgwin and his niece away along the level road to Mousehole. Joan was wrapped in a tarpaulin and they proceeded silently a while under cold rains, which swept up from a leaden south over the sea. The wind blew strong, tore green leaves from the hedges, and chimed with the thoughts of the man and his niece.
"How did you come to speak so big an' braave, Uncle Thomas? I couldn' say no more to en, for the lights rose up in my throat an' choked me; but you swelled out somethin' grand to see, an' spawk as no man ever yet spawk to faither afore."
"'Twas put in me to say; I doan't knaw how ever I done it, but my tongue weern't my awn for the time. Pull that thing tighter about 'e. This rain would go through a barn door."
At the steep hill rising from Mousehole to Paul, Uncle Chirgwin got out and walked, while the horse, with his shoulders to the collar, plodded forward. Then, down the road came the laboring man, Billy Jago, mentioned aforetime as one who had worked for Mr. Chirgwin in the past. He touched his hat to his old master and greeted him with respect and regard. For a moment the farmer also stopped. No false sentiment tied Billy's tongue and he spoke of matters personal to those before him, having first mournfully described his own state of health.
"But theer, us gaws down to the tomb to make way for the new born. I do say, an' swear tu, that the butivulest things in all wild nachur be a ship in full sail an' a wummon in the fam'ly way. Ban't nothin' to beat 'em. An' I'll say it here, 'pon this spot, though the rain's bitin' into my bones like teeth. So long to 'e, maaster, an' good cheeldin' to 'e, miss!"
The man rolled with loutish gait down the hill; the darkness gathered; the wind whistled through high hedges on the left; farmer Chirgwin made sounds of encouragement to his horse, which moved onward; and Joan thought with curious interest of those things that Billy Jago had said.