"Yes, I was obliged to go. So we started along the Quarry Road, and when we got some way we began to quarrel. I had a book with me that Mr. Allonby had given me, and Godfrey tried to take it away. I would not let him, and he grew very angry. I held it above my head, and he sprung up and hung on me, and managed somehow to get his foot underneath mine, so that I slipped on the road, and he got the book. I was feeling very low-spirited, and so weary of his tiresome ways that I began to cry. We were on the road leading to the cliff from the quarries, close to the cottage where Mrs. Parker lives. She has a son called Saul who is an idiot, and he hates Godfrey, because he used to set his bull-dog at him. The other day Saul threw a stone at Godfrey from behind a tree, and hit his leg, and so Godfrey was determined to pay him out. When he saw the cottage it reminded him of this, so he said he should run home to the stable-yard, and get Venom, his dog. He turned back, and ran along the road towards home, and I was too tired and too unhappy to follow him. I thought I would give him the slip, so I just went off and hid myself in the woods by Boveney Hollow. I sat in the woods and cried for a long time, and at last the wind had risen so, and the sky looked so black and threatening, that I was frightened, and I guessed that Godfrey had gone home by that time, so I came out of the woods by the shortest way, and when I reached the high-road I met Mr. Fowler and Mr. Cranmer, so I went home with them."
"And that was the last you saw of your brother?"
"Yes."
"He ran home to fetch his dog, in order to set it at Saul Parker the idiot?"
"Yes. He had done it before. He said it was to teach Saul to behave himself; for you know poor Saul doesn't know any manners, and he is always rude to strangers, he hates them so. If he so much as sees the back of a person he does not know, he begins to scream with rage."
"Is he—this idiot—considered dangerous?"
"Dangerous? Oh, no, I think he is quite gentle, unless you tease him. At least, I do remember Clara Battishill saying that he was growing cruel. He is a big boy. Mr. Fowler tried to persuade his mother to let him go to a home, where they would teach him to occupy himself; but she cried so bitterly at the idea of losing him; he is all she has to love."
Mr. Percivale was silent; his eyes perused the pattern of the worn carpet.
Furtively Elsa lifted her eyelids, and critically examined his face. A high, noble-looking head, the eyes of a dreamer, the chin of a poet, the mouth of a man both resolute and pure.
His fair moustache did not obscure the firm sweet line between the lips; something there was about him which did not belong to the nineteenth century; an atmosphere of lofty purpose and ideal simplicity. His expression was quite unlike anything one is accustomed to see. There was no cynicism, no spite, no half-amused, half-bored tolerance of a trivial world—none of that air of being exactly equipped for the circumstances in which he found himself, which belonged so completely to Claud Cranmer.