The priest had just lit his cigarette and was sipping his tea when he was startled by the sudden appearance of Nance Herrick, white and desperate and panting for breath.
“I had to come to you,” she gasped, refusing his proffered chair and sinking down on the grass. “I had to! I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop in that house. I saw him last night. He was walking with her near the harbour. I spoke to them. I was quiet—not angry or bitter at all and he let her insult me. He let her whip me with her tongue, wickedly, cruelly and yet so under cover, so sideways—you know the kind of thing, Hamish?—that I couldn’t answer. If I’d been alone with her I could have, but his being there made me stupid, miserable, foolish! And she took advantage of it. She said—oh, such mean, biting things! I can’t say them to you. I hate to think of them. They went right through me like a steel lash. And he stood there and did nothing. He was like a man in a trance. He stood there and let her do it. Hamish—Hamish—I wish I were at the bottom of the sea!”
She bowed her white, grief-distorted face until it was buried in the grass. The sun, playing on her bright hair, made it look like newly-minted gold. Mr. Traherne sank on his knees beside her. His ugliness, intensified by the agitation of his pity, reached a pitch that was almost sublime. He was like a gargoyle consoling a goddess.
“Child, child, listen to me!” he cried, his husky grating voice flinging itself upon the silence of her misery like a load of rubble upon a marble pavement.
“There are moments in our life when no words, however tender, however wise, can do any good. The only way—child, it is so—it is so!—the only way is to find in love itself the thing that can heal. For love can do this, I know it, I have proved it.”
He raised one of his arms with a queer, spasmodic gesture and let it drop as suddenly as he had raised it.
“Love rejoices to bear everything,” he went on. “It forgives and forgives again. It serves its beloved night and day, unseen and unfelt, it draws strength from suffering. When the blows of fate strike it, it sinks into its own heart and rises stronger than fate. When the passing hour’s cruel to it, it sinks away within, below the passing of every possible hour, beyond the hurt of every conceivable stroke. Love does not ask anything. It does not ask to be recognized. It is its own return, its own recognition. Listen to me, child! If what I’m saying to you is not true, if love is not like this, then the whole world is dust and ashes and ‘earth’s base built on stubble’!”
His harsh voice died away on the air and for a little while there was no sound in that garden except the twitter of birds, the hum of insects, and the murmur of the sea. Then she moved, raised herself from the ground and rubbed her face with her hands.
“Thank you, Hamish,” she said.