CHAPTER II.
"Therefore he loved gold in special."—Chaucer.
"It is a great calamity, a heavy dispensation!" said a neighbour to Patty Fripp.
"He will get over it in time—the master," said others, especially the women; "all men get over these things—he'll marry again, no doubt; he is too young to live all alone in the world."
Patty was very indignant at this suggestion being made already.
"Time tries all, and soothes all," said another gossip; "we shall see by and by—men don't break their hearts for love, look you. And how about the little boy?"
"Poor little soul! he is fretting sorely for his mother," said Patty, polishing her face with her checked apron, after having 'a good cry'; "but that is just human natur, I s'pose."
To the lonely man it seemed strange that Mary was no longer in the cottage at Finglecombe, and it was difficult for him, for a time, to realise the idea that she was gone for ever from her place; that he would never see her again; and that morning and night would come inexorably; the weeks become months, and the months become years; and that no Mary, with all her great love and tenderness, was there to bear a part in the long vista of life that lay before him.
His loneliness became at times insupportable, and he was frequently absent from home—a circumstance which never occurred in Mary's time. On these occasions the long and sleepless hours of night were terrible to little Derval, with his true Devonshire dread of the supernatural, for he had no longer the sweet consciousness of the near presence of his watchful mother.
At such times, till sleep sealed his eyes, he had but one thought—that out there in the dew and darkness of night, as in the sunshine by day, was the grave of one who had loved him and tended him, as no other human being would do, in the little churchyard, where the white tombstones and crosses contrasted so strongly and beautifully with the emerald green of the turf and the darker tint of the vast ancient yew that overshadowed them.