It was fairly obvious, so concluded John shrewdly, that a route chosen for a morning ramble was not likely to be again sought in the afternoon. The proceeding would savour too strongly of unoriginality of ideas. But, so he pondered within his mind, it was just possible that some other route might be chosen, and that by the favour of the gods he might hit upon it. Therefore he had set out, leaving matters to those same gods.
Having, after circumlocutious and disappointed walking, gained his present post of eminence, he had lain down in the shadow of a blackberry bush to muse over, and carp at, the fickleness of the gods to whom he had trusted, and incidentally to survey the surrounding country for a moving white-robed figure.
Till this present, no figure of any kind had come within his range of vision; then, five minutes or so agone, turning his eyes leftwards, he had perceived a stout elderly priest climbing the hillside towards him.
Here was some solace. If it were not the rose herself, it was at least one who, it might pretty safely be concluded, was tolerably well acquainted with the rose. A small backwater of a place, such as Malford, does not, he might suppose, yield many priests, nor even, presumably, more than one. There was little doubt in his mind but that the approaching figure was the priest who officiated at Delancey Chapel.
John observed him intently, as I have said. He saw him lower himself on to the grass with the slow deliberate movement of a stoutish man, saw him gazing straight in front of him. From his position John had a view of his face in something less than profile, but it was the dejection of his attitude, rather than his face, that at the moment impressed our John. He watched him, intent, absorbed.
“Something,” observed John mentally, “has recently upset his equilibrium. Like a wise man he has come into the open to gain restoration of balance.”
Which mental observation showed John to be possessed of no little shrewdness, as you will perceive. And then, by a really marvellous leap of intuition, he bounced straight into the heart of affairs, went in with a splash, and came up gasping.
“Oh!” cried John to his soul, “that rumour, that obnoxious and detestable rumour is true, and he has just been made aware of the unassailable fact. The poor old fellow!”
No wonder he looked dejected, no wonder he gazed with all his eyes in the direction of the towers of Delancey Castle plainly visible above the distant trees. If the rumour were true, and John was now very certain of its truth, it was enough to wring tears from the heart of a flint, to call forth protestation from the tongueless trees and mute stones of the old Castle itself.
An American claimant to that place! that utterly and entirely English place! Its very walls, its surrounding trees and fields, were so unmistakably and undeniably English. You might have taken up the whole thing and planted it down in any remote and unexpected quarter of the globe that you had chosen, and its whole atmosphere would have shrieked its English origin dumbly, but quite, quite explicitly, at you. At any time its origin would have been unassailable, and truly fifty times more so at this present moment, as it lay serene and peaceful in the blue and golden warmth of an August afternoon.