The Squire set the logs ablaze. "No pipe, Mark?"
"Not yet." He stretched out his lean length before the ruddy birch blaze and was silent. The Squire watched him and made no attempt to disturb the deep reverie in which the young clergyman remained. At last the great grey eyes turned from the fire, and Rivers sat up in his chair, as he said, "You must have seen how inconsiderately I have allowed my depression to dismiss the courtesies of life. I owe you and my dear Mrs. Penhallow both an apology and an explanation."—
"But really, Mark—"
"Oh, let me go on. I have long wanted to talk myself out, and as often my courage has failed. I have had a most unhappy life, Penhallow. All the pleasant things in it—the past few years—have been given me here. I married young—"
"One moment, Mark. Before you came to us the Bishop wrote me in confidence of your life. Not even Mrs. Penhallow has seen that letter."
"Then you knew—but not all. Now I have had a sad relief. He told you of—well, of my life, of my mother's hopeless insanity—and the rest."
"Yes—yes—all, I believe—all."
"Not quite all. I have spent a part at least of every August with her; now at last she is dead. But my family story has left with me the fear of dying like my brothers or of becoming as she became. When I came to you I was a lonely soul, sick in mind and weak in body. I am better—far better—and now with some renewal of hope and courage I shall face my world again. You have had—you will have charity for my days of melancholy. I never believed that a priest should marry—and yet I did. I suffered, and never again can I dream of love. I am doubly armed by memory and by the horror of continuing a race doomed to disaster. There you have it all to my relief. There is some mysterious consolation in unloading one's mind. How good you have been to me! and I have been so useless—so little of what I might have been."
Penhallow rose, set a hand on Rivers's shoulder, seeing the sweat on his forehead and the appeal of the sad eyes turned up to meet his gaze. "What," he said, "would our children have been without you? God knows I have been a better man for your company, and the mills—the village—how can you fail to see what you have done—"
"No—no—I am a failure. It may be that the moods of self-reproach are morbid. That too torments me. Even to-day I was thinking of how Christ would have dealt with that miserable man, Peter Lamb, and how uncharitable I was, how crude, how void of sympathy—"