“I suppose it is the inevitable experience of a clergyman in a country parish,” he replied, with a smile.
“Yes, I suppose it is. So few can take an interest in your tastes, and aspirations, and intellectual pleasures, and pursuits. Is not that so?”
“It may seem vanity to think so.”
“Oh no; I think not. The people you meet every day are mostly concerned in their turnips or the wheat or their cattle, and their talk is the merest village gossip. It must indeed be very depressing to listen day after day to nothing but that. One has, of course, a refuge in books.”
“But books are not life. The daydreams of the library are a poor substitute for the real action of a mans own heart and brain.”
“Then one has also the great fields of natural science to explore. I think you will find the work of my husband interesting, and if you could turn your mind in the same direction, you would find in him inexhaustible sympathy.”
As she spoke, they reached the low-arched portal of the chapel. The thick oaken door, studded with big iron nails, was open, and before them stood a man who bowed profoundly to Mrs. Haldane, and then darted a swift, penetrating glance at the vicar.
“Mr. Haldane is within, Baptisto?” she asked.
“Yes, senora.”
He stood aside to allow them to pass, and as Mr. Santley entered he regarded the man with an eye which photographed every feature of his dark Spanish face. It was a face which, once seen, stamped itself in haunting lineaments on the memory. A dusky olive complexion; a fierce, handsome mouth and chin; a broad, intelligent forehead; short, crisp black hair sprinkled with grey; a thin, black moustache, twisted and pointed at the ends; and a pair of big, black, unfathomable eyes, filled with liquid fire. It was the man’s eyes that arrested the attention first, gave character not only to the face but to the man himself, and indeed served to identify him. In the village, “the foreign gentleman with the eyes” was the popular and sufficient description of Baptisto.