"They are in the church," Jeanne Latimer said, as he greeted her with the polished manner for which he was famous on the doorstep of the Rectory. Then she had fled indoors with the swift sense of foreboding and desire to reach cover that a bird feels when, on a summer day, the wind suddenly changes and the murmur rises of a thunder cloud that as yet but edges the horizon.
Angus, hearing music, opened the door and stepped into the shelter of the very pew that had shielded Poppea that winter night more than six years before. Why he did it he could not have said, but when one is watchful and suspicious by nature, the habit often becomes the dictator. Having turned aside, he waited until the song ended, waited in a condition of mixed rage and pain that amazed him, feelings stirred in him which he believed buried; he seemed in some distant place; he could not account for himself to himself. Even then he did not move at once; the blending of the voices to any other ear had been uplifting. As Philip stepped from the stall to the lower level of the chancel steps and Poppea laid her hand lightly on his shoulder to steady him, John Angus caught the expression of his face, and suspicion, as ever, being his interpreter, he gnashed his teeth.
In another minute he was walking up the aisle masked in the perfect self-control he wore to all outside his household.
"Philip, I have come for you," he said in clearly modulated tones, not realizing that a warmer greeting might be expected after five months of absence.
"Some other day, Mr. Latimer; I've only within an hour returned and wish to see my son," without even a hand clasp, was his reply to the rector's outstretched hand, words of greeting, and invitation to join Mrs. Latimer in a cup of tea in the Rectory.
To Poppea he did not speak; looking toward her, he swept her with a deliberate stare in which dislike and absolute non-recognition were curiously blended. She at first had been impelled to look away, but feeling his glance, she turned and met it proudly, head erect, without either contempt or flinching, and even as she stood thus, John Angus, gathering up the boy's music and the cloak he always wore, hurried him from the church, without time for a word of explanation or good-by.
"Poor Philip," said Poppea, lowering her head, while tears filled the eyes she turned toward Latimer.
"Yes, poor Philip," he echoed; "yet not so poor in any way as John Angus."
Once in the carriage, the man's self-control seemed to dominate him once more. He said nothing about the happenings of the past few minutes, but turned the talk to Philip's work, even before the boy himself had recovered from the suddenness of the meeting with its incomprehensible discordance. The tutor, who had been in Bridgeton, whither he frequently went during Philip's practice afternoons, had returned, and in an agony of apprehension was superintending the arrangements of the tea things on the screened veranda overlooking the garden. He need not have trembled, for John Angus paid no heed to him after a formal greeting, but relaxed unusually in his effort to interest Philip and draw him out, and the boy, warming under his father's rare interest, spoke frankly of his hopes and fears.