“Every one here seems very fond of you,” he replied.
Indeed, he was struck by Welsley’s evident love of Rosamund. It was like a warm current flowing about her, and about him now, because he was her husband. He was greeted with cordial kindness by every one.
“It is jolly to be received like this,” he said to Rosamund. “It does a fellow good when he’s just come home. It makes him feel that there is indeed no place like England. But it’s all owing to you.”
But she protested.
“They all admire and respect you for what you’ve done,” she said. “You’ve brought the best introductions here, your own deeds. They speak for you.”
He shook his head, loving her perfectly sincere modesty.
“You may be a thousand things,” he told her, “but one thing you’ll never be—vain or conceited.”
The charm of her, which was compounded of beauty and goodness, mixed with an extraordinary hold upon, and joy in, the simple and healthy things of life, came upon him with a sort of glorious newness after his absence in South Africa. He loved other people’s love of her and the splendid reasons for it so apparent in her. But for Robin he might nevertheless have felt baffled and sad even in these moments dedicated to the joys of reunion, he might have felt acutely that the completeness and perfection of reunion depended upon the exact type of union it followed upon. Robin saved him from that. He hoped very much in Robin, who had suddenly given him a confidence in himself which he had never known till now. This was a glorious possession. It gave him force. People in Welsley were decidedly impressed by Mrs. Leith’s husband. Mrs. Dickinson remarked to her Henry over griddle cakes after the three o’clock service:
“I call Mr. Leith a very personable man. Without having Mrs. Leith’s wonderful charm—what man could have?—he makes a distinct impression. He has suppressed force, and that’s what women like in a man.”
Henry took another griddle cake, and wondered whether he was wise in looking so decided. Perhaps he ought to suppress his undoubted force; perhaps all his life, without knowing it, he had hovered on the verge of the blatant.