He held out his hand, involuntarily, and Catharine placed hers in it. Then, seeing a small crowd already collected in the street, he hurried out to speak to them.
Meanwhile evening had fallen, a late September evening, shot with gold and purple. Behind the village the yellow stubbles stretched up to the edge of the Chase and drifts of bluish smoke from the colliery chimneys hung in the still air.
Meynell, standing on the raised footpath above the crowd, gave notice that a special service of mourning would be held in the church that evening. The meeting of the Church Council would of course be postponed.
During his few words Mary made her way to the farther edge of the gathering, looking over it toward the speaker. Behind him ran the row of cottages, and in the doorway opposite she saw her mother, with her arm tenderly folded round a sobbing girl, the sister of one of the dead. The sudden tranquillity, the sudden pause from tumult and anguish seemed to draw a "wind-warm space" round Mary, and she had time, for a moment, to think of herself and the strangeness of this tragic day.
How amazing that her mother should be here at all. This meeting of the Reformers' League to which she had insisted on coming—as a spectator of course, and with the general public—what did it mean? Mary did not yet know, long as she had pondered it.
How beautiful was the lined face!—so pale in the golden dusk, in its heavy frame of black. Mary could not take her eyes from it. It betrayed an animation, a passion of life, which had been foreign to it for months. In these few crowded hours, when every word and action had been simple, instructive, inevitable; love to God and man working at their swiftest and purest; through all the tragedy and the horror some burden seemed to have dropped from Catharine's soul. She met her daughter's eyes, and smiled.
When Meynell had finished, the crowd silently drifted away, and he came back to the Elsmeres. They noticed the village fly coming toward them—saw it stop in the roadway.
"I sent for it," Meynell explained rapidly. "You mustn't let your mother do any more. Look at her! Please, will you both go to the Rectory? My cook will give you tea; I have let her know. Then the fly will take you home."
They protested in vain—must indeed submit. Catharine flushed a little at being so commanded; but there was no help for it.
"I would like to come and show you my den!" said Meynell, as he put them into the carriage. "But there's too much to do here."