"Yes, he'll soon be going away, and for good too! Never will he set foot inside Mitchelhurst Place again—I can tell him that! When he crosses the threshold he crosses it once for all. Never again—never again!"
This time Barbara, who is looking to the fastenings of the windows, is in no haste to speak. She feels as if she had been conspiring with Harding, and, remembering their schemes for his return, her uncle's reiterated assurances ring oddly and mockingly in her ears. "When he crosses the threshold, he crosses it once for all." No, he does not! He is going away to work, he will come back and buy the Place of Mr. Croft, he will be living there for years and years when poor Uncle Hayes is dead and gone. And she, Barbara, has done it all. With a word and a look she has given a master to Mitchelhurst.
But, being a prudent girl, she merely says "Good night."
[CHAPTER X.]
AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION.
Mr. Pryor, aloft in his pulpit in Mitchelhurst church, with a sounding-board suspended above his head, was preaching about the Amalekites to a small afternoon congregation. The Amalekites had happened to come out of that drawer in his writing-table of which Mr. Hayes had spoken, and perhaps did as well as anything else he could have found there. He was getting over the ground at a tolerable pace, in spite of an occasional stumble, and was too much absorbed in his manuscript to be disturbed by an active trade in marbles which was going on in the front row of the Sunday scholars. Indeed, to Mr. Pryor's short-sighted eyes, his listeners were very nearly as remote as the Amalekites themselves.
Some of the straw-plaiting girls, whose fingers seemed restless during their Sunday idleness, were nudging and pulling each other, or turning the leaves of their hymnbooks, or smoothing their dresses. A labourer here and there sat staring straight before him with a vacant gaze. A farmer's wife devoted the leisure moments to thinking out one or two practical matters, over which she frowned a little. The clerk, in his desk, attended officially to the Amalekites, but that was all.
Barbara and Reynold were apart from all the rest in the square, red-lined pew which had always belonged to the Rothwells. When they stood up their heads and Reynold's shoulders were visible, but during the sermon no one could see the occupants of the little inclosure except the preacher.
Reynold had established himself in a corner, with his head slightly thrown back and his long legs stretched out. Barbara, a little way off, had her daintily-gloved hands folded on her lap, and sat with a demurely respectful expression while the voice above them sent a thin thread of denunciation through the drowsy atmosphere. Harding did not dislike it. Anything newer, more real, more living, would have seemed unsuited to the dusty marble figures which were the principal part of the congregation in that corner of the church. He had knelt down and stood up during the service, always with a sense of union between his own few years of life and the many years of which those monuments were memories; and the old prayers, the "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord," had fallen softly on his ears. Perils and dangers seemed so far from that sleepy little haven where he hoped to live his later days, and to come as a grey-haired man, when all the storms and struggles were over, and hear those words Sunday after Sunday in that very pew. Barbara, from under her long lashes, stole a meditative, questioning glance at him while he was musing thus, and the glance lingered. The young fellow's head rested against the faded red baize, his eyes were half closed, his brows had relaxed, his mouth almost hinted a smile. He was not conscious of her scrutiny, and, seeing his face for the first time as a mere mask, she suddenly awoke to a perception of its beauty.