He felt all this. He could not have explained why, but as plainly as if he had been forewarned, he knew that some terrible blow was about to fall.
Thickens sat staring straight before him now, gnawing hard at one of his nails, and looking like a man having a hard struggle with himself.
It was a very plainly-furnished but pleasant little room, whose wide, low window had a broad sill upon which some half-dozen flowers bloomed, and just then, as the two men sat facing each other, the last glow of evening lit up the curate’s troubled face, and left that of Thickens more and more in the shade.
“That’s better,” he said with a half laugh. “I wish I had left it till it was dark. Look here, Mr Bayle, I’ve been in trouble these five years past.”
“You?”
“Yes, sir. I say it again: I’ve been in trouble these six or seven years past, and it’s been a trouble that began like a little cloud as you’d say—no bigger than a man’s hand; and it grew slowly bigger and bigger, till it’s got to be a great, thick, black darkness, covering everything before the storm bursts.”
“Don’t talk riddles, man; speak out.”
“Parables, Mr Bayle, sir, parables. Give me time, sir, give me time. You don’t know what it is to a man who has trained himself from a boy to be close and keep secrets, to have to bring them out of himself and lay them all bare.”
“I’ll be patient; but you are torturing me. Go on.”
“I felt it would, and that’s one of the things that’s kept me back, sir; but I’m going to speak now.”