When the train stopped at Brixton the first person whom Sidney saw was Lanty. Lanty tall and strong, and debonair as ever. He greeted Sidney very heartily.
“You’ve come for keeps this time,” he said, as he led the way to where the roan, a trifle more sedate than formerly, stood waiting between the shafts of a very spick-and-span buggy.
“We will go straight to the preacher’s,” said Lanty. “I hope we’ll be in time.”
“Is he so low?”
“Dying,” said Lanty simply. He touched the roan with the reins and it sprang forward. Sidney’s heart fled before. The landscape upon either side stretched dimly before his eyes. He was conscious that Lanty was speaking to him, and he made suitable replies. But all his mind was glamoured by one thought, for Vashti had promised that Mr. Didymus should marry them.
Was this then THE DAY?
They passed Lanty’s house, a square building with heavily timbered porch, and Lanty drew rein to call “Mabella, Mabella!” But there was no reply.
“She must have gone into Dole,” said he, and once more they went on. Ere long they were driving up the streets of Dole. The women stood at the doorways with elaborate pretence of being occupied. The men endeavoured to infuse surprise into their recognition of Sidney, although most of them had purposely elected to stay in the village “choring” around the house instead of going to the fields or the woods.
The wise wives of Dole, knowing the amiable weakness of their husbands, had preferred special requests that day to have work done about the house. In Dole a man always thought he was conferring a personal favour upon his wife if he straightened up a leaning garden fence, mended a doorstep, or banked up a cellar for winter. There were six cellars banked up in Dole on the day when Sidney entered it. Upon the spring air the odour of fresh-turned earth speaks of new ploughed fields and fresh harvests, but in autumn the earthy smell is chill and drear, and brings with it a sense of mortality, a hint of the end. And this atmosphere hung heavy over the little village as Sidney entered it.