Overhead, it appeared that the Amalekites typified many evil things, and were by no means so utterly destroyed as they should have been. Mr. Pryor intended his warnings to be as emphatic as those of the fierce old prophet, and he drew a limp white finger down the faded page lest he should lose his place in the middle. Time had made the manuscript a little unfamiliar. "My brethren," said the plaintive voice from beneath the sounding-board, "we must make terms—ahem!—we must never make terms with these relentless enemies who lie in wait for us as for the Israelites of old. Remember"—he turned a leaf and felt the next to ascertain if it were the last. It was not, and he hurried his exhortation a little, finding it long, yet afraid to venture on leaving anything out. Meanwhile a weary Sunday-school teacher awoke to sudden energy, plunged into the midst of the boys, and captured more marbles than he could hold, so that two or three escaped him and rolled down the aisle, amid a general manifestation of interest. The luckless teacher was young and bashful, and the rolling marbles seemed to him to fill the universe with reverberating echoes.
The vicar reached the goal at last, and gave out a hymn. Then the young people in the red-lined pew appeared once more, Miss Strange singing, Reynold looking round to deepen and assure his recollection of that afternoon. When he found himself in the churchyard, passing under the black-boughed yews with Barbara, he broke the silence. "I shall be far enough away next Sunday."
It was so strange to think that by the next Sunday his work would have begun, the work which he so loathed and so desired. He had directed his letter to his uncle at his place a few miles out of town, where Mr. Harding always went from Saturday to Monday, and he remembered as he spoke that the old gentleman would have received it that morning. Reynold pictured a little triumph over his surrender, but he did not care. Something—it could hardly be Mr. Pryor's sermon—had sweetened his bitter soul, and he did not care. He felt as if that little corner of Mitchelhurst church had become an inalienable possession of his, and he could enter into it at any time wherever he might chance to be.
Barbara was sympathetic, but slightly pre-occupied. If young Harding had understood women a little better he would certainly have perceived the pre-occupation, but as it was he only saw the sympathy. When they got back to the Place she delayed him in the garden, as if she too felt the charm of that peaceful afternoon and regretted its departure. They loitered to and fro on the wide gravel path, where grass and weeds encroached creepingly from the borders, and paused from time to time watching the sun as it went down. At last, when there was only a band of sulphur-coloured light on the horizon, Barbara turned away with a sigh.
Reynold did not understand her reluctance to go in. In truth she was uneasy at the thought of the long evening which her uncle and he must spend in the same room. Mr. Hayes had come down in a dangerous mood that morning, not showing any special remembrance of Harding's offence of the night before, but seeming impartially displeased with everything and everybody. If ill-temper were actual fire, his conversation would have been all snaps and flashes like a fifth of November. Letters absorbed his attention at breakfast, but Barbara perceived that they only made him crosser than before. Happily, however, since a storm of rain hindered the morning's church-going, he went to his study to write his answers, and was seen no more till lunch-time, after which the weather cleared, and the young people walked off together to hear about the Amalekites. Reynold had no idea how anxiously Barbara had been sheltering him all day under her little wing, but now the sun was down, there was no help for it, they must go in and face the worst. She had paused and looked up at him as if she were about to say something before they left the garden, but nothing came except the little sigh which he had heard.
Even when they went in, fate seemed a little to postpone the evil moment. Harding, coming down-stairs, saw a light shining through the door of a small room—the book-room, as it was sometimes called. A glance as he passed showed Barbara, with an arm raised above her head, taking a volume from the shelf. "Can I help you?" he asked, pausing in the doorway.
"Oh, thank you, but I think this is right." She examined the title-page. The window shutters were closed, the room was dusky with its lining of old brown leather bindings, and Barbara's candle was just a glow-worm glimmer of brightness in it. "You might put those others back for me if you would. I can manage to take them down, but it isn't so easy to put them up again."
Tall Reynold rendered the required service quickly enough, while she laid the book she had chosen with some others already on the table, and began to dust them. It was an old-fashioned writing-table, with a multitude of little brass-handled drawers. The young man took hold of one of these brass handles, and noticed its rather elaborate workmanship. "Look inside," said the girl, as she laid her duster down.
The drawer was full of yellowing papers, old bills, and miscellaneous scraps of various kinds. She pulled out a few, and they turned them over in the gleam of candle-light. "Butcher, Christmas, 1811," said Barbara, "and here is a glazier's bill. What have you got?"
"To sinking and bricking new well, 32 ft. deep," Reynold replied. "It is in 1816. To making new pump, 38 ft. long."