The opening words, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God,” would bring their own message at a not very distant day; but now they only spoke to me, something as a mother addresses a too happy, too wildly-exultant child, when she says in her tenderest tones, “Come and rest here in my arms for a little while, between your play.” Yes, I was only a child as yet, at play with life; but the music awoke in me the possible future, the possible working day, the possible time of rain, the possible storm, the possible need of a shelter from its blast. To heighten the effect of the music, came the effect of the cathedral itself. It is not a very beautiful English cathedral, but it was the first I had seen. Having never revelled in the glories of Westminster, I could appreciate the old grey walls of Hereford; and what man had done in the form of column and pillar, of transept and roof, the sun touched into fulness of life and colouring to-day. The grey walls had many coloured reflections from the painted windows, the grand old nave lay in a flood of light, and golden gleams penetrated into dusky corners, and brought into strong relief the symmetry and beauty of aisle and transept, triforium and clerestory. I mention all this—I try to touch it up with the colour with which it filled my own mind—because in the old cathedral of Hereford I left behind me the golden, unconsciously happy existence of childhood; because I, Gwladys, when I stepped outside into the Cathedral Close, and put my white-gloved hand inside David’s arm, and looked up expectantly into David’s face, was about to taste my first cup of life’s sorrow. I was never again to be an unconscious child, fretting over imaginary griefs, and exulting in imaginary delights.
“Gwladys,” said David, looking down at me, and speaking slowly, as though the words gave him pain, “Owen is coming home.”
Chapter Five.
Why did you Hesitate?
Let no one suppose that in their delivery these words brought with them sorrow. I had been walking with my usual dancing motion, and it is true, that when David spoke, I stood still, faced round, and gazed at him earnestly, it is also true that the colour left my cheeks, and my eyes filled with tears, but my emotions were pleasurable, my tears were tears of joy.
Owen coming home!
Nobody quite knew how I loved Owen, how my heart had longed for him, how many castles in the air I had built, with him for their hero.
In all possible and impossible dreams of my own future, Owen had figured as the grand central thought. Owen would show me the world, Owen would let me live with him. He had promised me this when I was a little child, and he was a fine noble-looking youth, and I had believed him, I believed him still. I had longed and yearned for him, I had never forgotten him. My love for my good and sober brother David was very calm and sisterly, but my love for Owen was the romance of my existence. And now he was coming home, crowned with laurels, doubtless. For he had been away so long, he had left us so suddenly and mysteriously, that only could his absence be accounted for by supposing that my beautiful and noble brother had gone on some very great, and important, and dangerous mission, from which he would return now, crowned with honour and glory.