Martha rose in an instant, aflame.
"There's bin that, Adam Bate, a-goin' on in this 'ouse this day, as no one didn't want to 'ave no supper--not if they was Christian--but bein' a man--there's bread and cheese in the cupboard."
[CHAPTER XXI]
March had come in like a lion. Even in the village of Dinas, sheltered as it was, the east wind swept down the funnel of the valley and through the very houses, as only an east wind in Wales can sweep, bitter, absolutely unsparing of man or beast.
Alicia Edwards gathered her cross-over shawl closer to her as she stood in her father's shop and listened for the click of the telegraph instrument. It was almost the only amusement she had now, and any moment might bring the wire for which Adam Bate and the housekeeper at Cwmfaernog had been calling in vain these two days past.
It was becoming serious. They would have to bury the poor, dead gentleman after all, if some one did not come to help them to arrange--the other thing. For in this far away Welsh village, where every boy and girl had been educated up to the standard set by the most advanced progressivists of the day, the very idea of cremation was absolute damnation. It could be nothing else, since how could the Creator resurrect a body that did not exist? So half the village thought it only right that such an atheist as Mr. Sylvanus Smith had been in life should meet the fire without delay, and the other half, more mercifully inclined, explained the difficulty in getting hold of Mr. Cruttenden, the dead man's executor, as symptomatic of pity on the part of Providence.
Alicia Edwards, thinking over this, sighed. It was only one more case in which the teaching of school ran counter to the knowledge that was necessary in daily life. For what would her father, the elder, what would she herself say, if she was to allow even elementary science to interfere with her belief? The world was a very confusing place. There was but one certain thing in it for a woman, and that was love; but every one could not get love. She thought of her own struggle for it and her failure. Myfanwy had beaten her. She had reft Mervyn away even from his great vocation, and rumour had it that, after a little longer service in Williams and Edwards's shop, those two would be married and set up in a small business of their own. In face of this, what did all the rest matter? Despite all the talk in the village concerning Mervyn's sudden departure and Morris Pugh's equally sudden resignation of the pastorship of Dinas, she had held her tongue with fair discretion, only allowing a few mysterious surmises to leak out. To begin with, Myfanwy's last words had alarmed her, and then the offenders had passed altogether from her control. What would it matter to Mervyn, now employee in Williams and Edwards, if it was found out that he had ruined half the girls in Dinas?
Besides, something new and stern in her father's attitude towards her in regard to the revival made her suspect that he was not without his suspicions. The less said about morals the better, especially since the effect of those midnight meetings was already making itself felt in the immediate neighbourhood. For Isaac Edwards was relentless on this point. He had downright refused to let her go on with her sweet singing now that all her companions had died or disappeared; so having, of course, lost her post as pupil teacher, there was nothing for it but to stop at home and prepare, so her father said, for a normal college. The girl herself stiffened a sullen lip and looked down the lane which led to the minister's house now occupied by the Reverend Hwfa Williams; for he admired her. Of that there could be no question. The possibility of marrying him, indeed, had become quite a factor in her life, and she decided most points with a view to this possibility. Small wonder then if Alicia Edwards's amicability and her general desirability as a minister's wife had begun to strike Hwfa Williams himself, while even Isaac Edwards was beginning to waver in his insistance on Logarithms and the Science of Tuition.
"Put on your hat, Alicia," he said from his ledger, "and run down the road. It will warm you up before you have to go to the Bible class."
And Alicia went, nothing loth. It was better battling with the wind than watching for telegrams which never came, especially when there was the chance of coming back with the wind and with a man whose pale, heavy, dark-browed face was beginning to become to you, by diligent care and concentration, the handsomest in the world.