Left to herself, Valentia Seldom rose and went back to her letter. But the pen fell from her limp fingers, and tears stained the already written page.
The funeral service had only just commenced when Vennie reached the churchyard. She remained at the extreme outer edge of the crowd, where groups of inquisitive women are wont to cluster, wearing their aprons and carrying their babies, and where the bigger children are apt to be noisy and troublesome. She caught a glimpse of Ninsy Lintot among those standing quite close to where Mr. Clavering, in his white surplice, was reading the pregnant liturgical words. She noticed that the girl held her hands to her face and that her slender form was shaking with the stress of her emotion.
She could not see Luke’s face, but she was conscious that his motionless figure had lost its upright grace. The young stone-carver seemed to droop, like a sun-flower whose stalk has been bent by the wind.
The words of the familiar English service were borne intermittently to her ears as they fell from the lips of the priest who had once been her friend. It struck her poignantly enough,—that brave human defiance, so solemn and tender, with which humanity seems to rise up in sublime desperation and hoist its standard of hope against hope!
She wondered what the sceptical Luke was feeling all this while. When Mr. Clavering began to read the passage which is prefaced in the Book of Common Prayer by the words, “Then while the earth be cast upon the Body by some standing by, the priest shall say,”—the quiet sobs of poor little Ninsy broke into a wail of passionate grief, grief to which Vennie, for all her convert’s aloofness from Protestant heresy, could not help adding her own tears.
It was the custom at Nevilton for the bearers of the coffin, when the service was over, to re-form in solemn procession, and escort the chief mourners back to the house from which they had come. It was her knowledge of this custom that led Vennie to steal away before the final words were uttered; and her hurried departure from the churchyard saved her from being a witness of the somewhat disconcerting event with which the solemn transaction closed.
The bringing of James’ body to the church had been unfortunately delayed at the start by the wayward movements of a luggage-train, which persisted in shunting up and down over the level-crossing, at the moment when they were carrying the coffin from the house. This delay had been followed by others, owing to various unforeseen causes, and by the time the service actually began it was already close upon the hour fixed for the confirmation.
Thus it happened that, soon after Vennie’s departure, at the very moment when the procession of bearers, followed by Luke and the station-master’s wife, issued forth into the street, there drove up to the church-door a two-horsed carriage containing Gladys and her mother, the former all whitely veiled, as if she were a child-bride. Seeing the bearers troop by, the fair-haired candidate for confirmation clutched Mrs. Romer’s arm and held her in her place, but leaning forward in the effort of this movement she presented her face at the carriage window, just as Luke himself emerged from the gates.
The two young people found themselves looking one another straight in the eyes, until with a shuddering spasm that shook her whole frame, Gladys sank back into her seat, as if from the effect of a crushing blow received full upon the breast.
Luke passed on, following the bearers, with something like the ghost of a smile upon his drawn and contorted lips.