The little chapel was especially enchanting to Henry; the stained glass of the east window was most lovely, deep, rich, seeming to sink into the inmost depths of colour; it gave out shadows of purple and red and blue that he had never seen before. The three old flags that hung over the little choir were tattered and torn, but proud. All the rooms in the house were small, the ceilings low, the fireplaces deep and draughty.
Henry soon perceived that Duncombe loved this house with a passionate devotion. He seemed to become another man as he moved about in it busied continually with tiny details, touching this, shifting that, having constant interviews with Spiders, the gardener, a large, furry-faced man, and old Moffatt, and Simon, the apple-cheeked footman; an identity suddenly in its right place, satisfying its soul, knowing its true country as he had never seemed to do in London.
Henry saw no recurrence of the crisis in the cab. Duncombe made no allusion to it and gave no sign of pain—only Henry fancied that behind Duncombe's eyes he saw a foreboding consciousness of some terror lying in wait for him and ready to spring.
The room in which he worked was a little library, diminutive in comparison with the one in London, on the ground floor, looking out on to the garden with the statue of Cupid and the pond—a dear little room with old black-faced busts and high glass-fronted bookcases. He had brought a number of books down with him, and soon he had settled into the place as though he had been there all his life.
The interval of that bright, sunny, bird-haunted week seemed, when afterwards he looked back to it, like a pause given to him in which to prepare for the events that were even then crowding, grey-shaped, face-muffled, to his door. . . .
[CHAPTER VII]
AND PETER IN LONDON
The Third of the Company meanwhile was feeling lonely and deserted in London. London in August is really depressing in spite of its being the conventional habit to say so. Around every worker's brain there is a consciousness of the wires of captivity, and although the weather may be, and indeed generally is, cold, wet and dark, nevertheless it is hard to doubt but that it is bright and shining by the sea and on the downs.