While the invisible destinies were thus inaugurating their projected work upon Brand and Linda, Nance and Mrs. Renshaw issued forth from the churchyard.
“If only life were clearer,” the girl was thinking, “it would be endurable. It’s this uncertainty in everything—this dreadful uncertainty—which I can’t bear!”
“That was a beautiful psalm we had just now,” said Mrs. Renshaw, in her gentle penetrating voice as, after some minutes’ silent walking they emerged upon the bridge across the Loon. Nance looked down over the parapet and in her depressed fancy she saw the drowned figure of herself, drifting, face upward, upon the flowing water.
“Yes,” she replied mechanically, “the psalms are always beautiful.”
“I don’t believe,” the lady went on, glancing at her with eyes so hollow and sorrowful that it seemed as though the twilight of a world even sadder than the one they looked upon emanated from them, “I don’t believe I understand that little sister of yours. She’s very highly strung—she’s very nervous. She requires a great deal of care. To tell the truth, I don’t consider my son Brand at all a good companion for her. I wish they’d waited and not gone off like that. He doesn’t always remember what a sensitive thing the heart of a young girl is.”
They had now reached the southern side of the Loon and were on the main road between Rodmoor and Mundham. A few paces further brought them to the first houses of the village. Something in the helpless, apologetic, deprecatory way with which, just then, Mrs. Renshaw greeted an old woman who passed them, had a strangely irritating effect upon Nance’s nerves.
“I don’t see why young people should be considered more than any one else!” she burst out. “It’s a purely conventional idea. We all have our troubles, and what I think is the older you get the more difficult life becomes.”
Mrs. Renshaw’s face assumed a mask of weary obstinacy and she walked more slowly, her head bent forward a little and her feet dragging.
“Women have to learn what duty means,” she said, “and the sooner they learn it the better. Those among us who are privileged to make one good man happy have the best that life can give. It’s natural to be restless till you have this. But we must try to overcome our restlessness. We must ask for help.”