“We are but frail human creatures, Effie, though we have big souls; the dull rooms are best for us at this hour of the night.”
“I would like to walk with you down among the trees. I would like to go down the Dene and hear the water rushing, but not to Allonby churchyard.”
“No, nor to Allonby at all, Effie. Take time, my bonnie dear, let no one hasten your thoughts. Come, I cannot have you out here in the night in your white frock. You look like a little ghost; and what would Mrs. Ogilvie say to me if you caught cold just at this crisis of affairs?”
He stopped to laugh softly, but put his arm round her, and led her back within the door.
“The night is bonnie and the air is fresh, but home and shelter are the best. Good-night, and God bless my little Effie,” he said.
The people in the village, whose minds were now relieved from the strain of counting all the carriages, and were going to sleep calmly in the certainty that everybody was gone, heard his firm slow step going past, and knew it was the minister, who would naturally be the last to go home. They took a pleasure in hearing him pass, and the children, who were still awake, felt a protection in the fact that he was there, going leisurely along the road, sure to keep away any ghost or robber that might be lurking in the stillness of the night. His very step was full of thought.
It was pleasant to him, without any sad work in hand, to walk through the little street between the sleeping houses, saying a blessing upon the sleepers as he passed. Usually when he was out so late, it was on his way to some sickbed to minister to the troubled or the dying. He enjoyed to-night the exemption and the leisure, and with a smile in his eyes looked from the light in Dr. Jardine’s window, within which the Dr. was no doubt smoking a comfortable pipe before he went to bed, to the little inquisitive glimmer higher up in Rosebank, where the old ladies were laying aside their old finery and talking over the party. He passed between them with a humorous consciousness of their antagonism which did not disturb the general peace.
The stars shone with a little frost in their brightness, though it was but August; the night-air blew fresh in his face; the village, with all its windows and eyelids closed, slept deep in the silence of the night. “God bless them all—but above all Effie,” he repeated, smiling to himself.
CHAPTER VI.
The Diroms belonged to a class now very common in England, the class of very rich people without any antecedents or responsibilities, which it is so difficult to classify or lay hold of, and which neither the authorities of society nor the moralist have yet fully comprehended. They had a great deal of money, which is popularly recognized to be power, and they owed it to nobody but themselves.