“But he loves her, now doesn’t he?”
“Aye, he does whatever.”
“T’was only a week ago,” said Deb, patting herself on her corsage again, “I was sayin’ somethin’ was comin’; an’ I thought then, when we were talkin’ ’twould be their gettin’ married, aye, I did indeed.”
“Indeed, so ye did,” Keturah repeated. “Tut, there’s the knocker clappin’. Now who would be comin’ this late, and the master so tired?”
Keturah hobbled swiftly through the kitchen and narrow hallway to the door.
“Well, Mrs. Morgan!”
“Yes, Keturah, is your master in?”
“Aye, in his study; will ye go in there?”
To the Reverend Samson Jones, since the death of the widow Morgan’s parents, life had seemed nothing more dignified than a low gambling game. He had done what he believed a man should do; after protracted delay and a final self-conquest greater than any one knew, he had done the thing duty told him to do. Had he delayed twenty-four hours longer to do this duty, that for which he had waited and longed through six years would have been his. Now, horse and rider had stumbled together, and all the principles which have been as a guide-post to his fervid spirit lay prostrate with him.
When the door opened and the widow Morgan came in, Samson Jones was sitting idly in his study-chair, nerveless and confused, one moment saying to himself that he would send for Jane Elin and tell her all, the next minute terrified at the very thought, and the third moment condemning himself for lack of courage to accept what had come upon him through no fault of his own. The aspect of his thin, long face had become so ghastly, and the confusion of his words so unusual, that not only had Keturah and Jane Elin watched him with alarm, but the deacons and good-wives of Gelligaer began to question, to talk of the oncoming of the spring and its bad effect on the system, to suggest a holiday for their beloved pastor; and one good-wife had gone so far as to consult Keturah and to write to Mrs. Jones, his mother. His thoughts and feelings were like filings with no centrifugal force to gather them in. As he jumped to his feet with the exclamation, “Dolly!” these thoughts and feelings flocked swiftly about the love he had for her.