“Not only by your singing,” he added.
She looked at him inquiringly. His eyes had gone to Dion.
“Not only by that.”
And then he spoke almost in a murmur to her.
“He’s come back worth it,” he said. “Good night. God bless you both.”
The following day was made memorable by the “installation” of Mr. Thrush as a verger of Welsley Cathedral.
The Cathedral was not specially crowded for the occasion, but there was a very fair congregation when Rosamund, Dion and Robin (in a sailor suit with wide blue trousers) walked in together through the archway in the rood-screen. One of the old established vergers, a lordly person with a “presence” and the air of a high dignitary, met them as they stepped into the choir, and wanted to put them into stalls; but Rosamund begged for seats in a pew just beyond the lectern, facing the doorway by which the procession came into the choir.
“Robin would be swallowed up in a stall,” she whispered to Dion.
And they both looked down at the little chap tenderly, and met his blue eyes turned confidingly, yet almost anxiously too, up to them. He was wondering about all this whispering with the verger, and hoping that nothing had happened to Mr. Thrush.
They found perfect seats in a pew just beyond the deanery stalls. Far up in the distance above them one bell, the five minutes’ bell, was chiming. Its voice recalled to Rosamund the “ping-ping” of the bell of St. Mary’s Church which had welcomed her in the fog. How much had happened since then! Robin was nestling against her. He sat between her and his father, and was holding his father’s hand. By dividing Dion from her he united her with Dion. She thought of the mystery of the Trinity, and then of their mystery, the mystery of father, mother and child. To-day she felt very happy, and happy in an unusual way. In her happiness she know that, in a sort of under way, she had almost dreaded Dion’s return. She had been so peacefully content, so truly at rest and deeply serene in the life at Welsley with Robin. In her own heart she could not deny that she had loved having her Robin all to herself; and she had loved, too, the long hours of solitude during which, in day-dreams, she had lived the religious life. A great peace had enveloped those months at Welsley. In them she had mysteriously grown into a closer relation with her little son. She had often felt in those months that this mysterious nearness could never have become quite what it had become to her unless she had been left alone with Robin. It was their solitude which had enabled her to concentrate wholly on Robin, and it was surely this exclusive concentration on Robin which had drawn him so very close to her. All the springs of his love had flowed towards her.