"Yes. He always leaves the door wide open while he rings the bells—so that his mates can come in from the sea to him."
"Poor fellow! Poor fellow!"
He got up.
"I shall go across to the church now," he said.
"I'll take you there. Wrap yourself up. It's cold to-night."
"It is very cold."
The painter pulled a great cloak over his shoulders and a cap down over his glittering and melancholy eyes, that had watched for many years all the subtle changes of the colour and the movement of the sea. Uniacke opened the Vicarage door and they stood in the wind. The night was not dark, but one of those wan and light grey nights that seemed painted with the very hues of wind and of cloud. It was like a fluid round about them, and surely flowed hither and thither, now swaying quietly, now spreading away, shredded out as water that is split by hard substances. It was full of noise as is a whirlpool, in which melancholy cries resound forever. Above this noise the notes of the two bells alternated like the voices of stars in a stormy sky.
"Even living men at sea to-night would not hear those bells," said the painter. "And the drowned—how can they hear?"
"Who knows?" said the clergyman. "Perhaps they are allowed to hear them and to offer up prayers for their faithful comrade. I think faithfulness is heaven in a human heart."
They moved across the churchyard, and all the graves of the drowned flickered round their feet in the gusty greyness. They passed Jack Pringle's grave, where the "Kindly Light" lay in the stone. When they gained the church Sir Graham saw that the door was set wide open to the night. He stood still.