"Stop!" said George, standing upright. "You were loud enough in your denunciations when a lady,"—somehow he hated saying "your wife"—"when a lady was present. Let's hear the whole matter now. When did you meet me before, and where? And why, pray, don't you take this opportunity for a word in season? Do you only preach under shelter of petticoats?"
"There's been matter enough atwixt you and me," said Barnabas. Good God! there had been matter enough, indeed!
He would have answered Mr. Sauls differently in his hot youth; now, after many seasons of constant labour for a Master who claimed his fighting powers, his reply came slowly, with no loss of self-command; but none the less forcibly for that.
"I've seen ye twice afore. If it were twice fifteen years ago I'd know ye again. I saw ye once fooling with a maid, teachin' her the devil's game, that meant play to ye, and death to her. I saw ye a second time standin' by her grave."
The veil of those fifteen years seemed lifted for a moment; both men felt themselves back in that London churchyard thick with fog, with Lydia's grave between.
"She paid the price, and you got off scot free," said the preacher. "It seemed to me then as if it would ha' evened things to ha' laid ye dead too; but they held me back, and now——" He broke off short, and there was silence for a moment.
George broke it with the elaborately nonchalant accent that showed he was a little stirred. "Ah well! I was shockingly out of training in those days," said he. "It was lucky that you didn't yield to your desire to even things; for you'd have swung for it, you know. Let's hear all you have to say; for you won't get another chance of converting this reprobate—and now!" For all the studied coolness of his tone, his fingers clenched; it was not Lydia he was thinking of now.
"And now," said the preacher steadily, "I will let vengeance alone. No, I've naught to say. I didn't come to preach to ye; I've hated ye too much for that. Ye asked me where we'd met, and why I said ye are no fit company for her. Now ye know."
"Thanks!" said George. "Yes—now I know." That stress on the "her," that reverence and something more than reverence in the preacher's voice, stung his desire to quarrel. It became uncontrollable; he must.
"I don't pretend to piety," he said, playing with the chain of the locket he had picked up, after all; for his common-sense could not allow him to leave it hanging on a fence. "I am no saint, as you are very much aware. Perhaps that's why I've an unholy horror of men who make sermons a vehicle for love-making, and catch good women by trading on an instinct for self-sacrifice; women who would never dream of looking at them, if they were approached in any other way. I may have done things to be ashamed of; most men have. But there are forms of hypocrisy that make one sick to contemplate. I don't know that I was ever a hypocrite." He put up his eyeglass, and stared at the preacher slowly from head to foot. "Nevertheless, I own that your plan has paid best. I congratulate you on the success of your preaching."