Tommy lurched forward and struck him in the face, and in a moment the pale boy had sent him rolling heavily in the road. I picked him up, for I was passing on my way home from the station, and noticed the flush on his cheeks, and saw that they were streaked with blood and dust.
They tell me that I, too, lost my temper, and even now I cannot remember all I said to Morris and his satellites and the little crowd in the Flaming Lion. I remember taking Tommy home, and helping my man to undress and wash him and put him to bed, and I shall never forget the evening that I spent downstairs in my study, staring dumbly over the misty valley to the far downs, and seeing only two grave grey eyes looking rebukingly into mine.
Late in the evening the vicar joined me, and we sat silently together in the little study.
My man lit the lamp, and brought us our coffee, and came again to fetch it away, untasted.
Perhaps you smile as you read this.
"You ridiculous old men," I can hear you say. "To magnify so trivial an incident into a veritable calamity."
And, again, I can only plead that, in our quiet life, maybe, we attached undue importance to such a slight occurrence.
Yet, nevertheless, to us it was very real, almost overwhelmingly real, and the tragedy of it lay, nearly two years back, in the panelled study of Camslove Grange.
Presently the vicar looked at me, and his face, in the red lamplight, seemed almost haggard.
"'I could never repay the man who taught my boy to love God,'" he repeated, "and he said those words to me—to me."