Poor, wet Mrs. Granite waded out again, without a murmur, to hear it; she walked beside the minister, alone; it was a long walk, for the new people met in the well-known hall near the head of Angel Alley.
“Ben Trawl’s kinder off his hook,” she explained apologetically. “He wouldn’t come along of us, nor he wouldn’t let Jane come, neither. He has them spells.”
Jane Granite watched them off with aching heart. As he closed the door, the minister smiled and lifted his hat to her. Where was there a smile like his in all the world of men? And where a man who thought or knew so little of the magic which his beauty wrought?
For love of this radiance and this wonder the heart of the coldest woman of the world might have broken. Little Jane Granite looked after him till he was drowned in the dark. She came in and stood at the window, busying herself to draw the shade. But Ben Trawl watched her with half-closed eyes; and when bright, wide eyes turn dull and narrow, beware of them!
“Come here!” said Ben, in the voice of a man who had “kept company” with a girl for three years. In Windover, the respectable young people do not flirt or intrigue; breach of troth is almost unknown among them. To walk with a girl on Sunday afternoon, and to kiss her Sunday evening, is to marry her, as a matter of course. Ben Trawl spoke in the imperious tone of the seafaring people who call a wife “my woman,” and who lie on the lounge in the kitchen while she brings the water from the well.
“You come here, Jane, and sit on the sofy alongside of me! I’ve got a word or so to say to you.”
Jane Granite came. She was frightened. She sat down beside her lover, and timidly surrendered the work-worn little hand which he seized and crushed with cruel violence within his own.
“Mr. Granite wasn’t never wholly satisfied about Ben,” Mrs. Granite was saying to the minister as they splashed through the muddy slush. “His father’s Trawl the liquor dealer, down to Angel Alley, opposite our place, a little below. But Jane says Ben don’t touch it; and he don’t. I don’t know’s I’ve any call to come between her and Ben. He’s a stiddy fellow, and able to support her,—and he’s that fond of Jane”—
“He seems to be,” said Bayard musingly. His thoughts were not with Mrs. Granite. He hardly knew what she had said. He was not used to this petty, parish atmosphere. It came hard to him. He underestimated the value of these wearisome trifles, in the large work performed by little people. Nothing in the world seemed to him of less importance than the natural history of Ben Trawl.
“The wind is east,” he said abstractedly, “and there’s a very heavy sea on.”