“I never saw anything to complain of in the Bosbury window,” he replied, “but some representing the Trinity I gladly saw destroyed. At Abingdon, when Sir William Waller had the market cross hewn down, I helped to break in pieces the images of the saints surrounding it, for some folk still knelt to them. And though at Winchester we regretted the irreverence shown to the tombs of the dead, and did our utmost to check it, we found it well-nigh impossible to control the people, for they connect all pictures and sculpture with the hated tyranny of Popish times.”
“I don’t understand how you can endure such sights,” said Hilary.
“Perhaps you hardly understand that a soldier has to endure sights so much more dreadful. Human beings crushed, battered, mangled—homes destroyed, and families destitute and starving—all the horrors of war. When once you have learnt to love people, you can’t think so much of mere things.”
“I don’t think you ever really cared for what was beautiful,” she said, reproachfully.
He winced. For was not her radiant loveliness tugging at his heart—torturing him with an intolerable longing to have her for his own to all eternity?
Norton would skilfully have taken advantage of such an opening and used it for his selfish ends, but Gabriel’s voice only sounded a little constrained, as he replied:
“You are right in deeming me no artist.”
Into his mind there came a sudden recollection of the comfort that Hilary’s miniature had been to him through these years of pain and separation; and then a horrible memory of what had passed about it in the church at Marlborough, and the sickening thought that Norton was even now seeking to ensnare her.
What was he to do? How could he best serve her? Their differences in religion and politics seemed to loom up larger than ever, and hopelessly to part them.
The sound of the soldiers and the villagers joining in the thanksgiving psalm broke in upon his sad thoughts. When the verse ended, he turned to Hilary and there was again a look of hope in his eyes. He was standing beneath the beautifully carved old rood screen and she was strangely moved by the pathos of his expression.