"But, dear heart, don't you know...."
"Certainly I know. But do you think they can keep a Ballamoar in yonder place long? 'Deed they can't. He'll be coming out soon, and then those dirts of Manx ones who have been making such a mouth will be the first to run to meet him."
It would have been cruel to gainsay her, therefore Fenella described the object of her journey, told of her father's threat and the Bishop's excuses.
"So now I'm looking for a clergyman who will be brave enough to marry us," she said.
They were in the dining-room, and through the glass door to the piazza they could see, on the edge of the cliffs, a field's space from the church, a lonely house without a tree or a bush about it, looking as if it had been slashed by the rain and winds of a hundred winters. It was the Jurby parsonage—the home of Parson Cowley. Janet pointed to it and said,
"Have you been there?"
At that question Fenella remembered a story her father had told her about something splendid that Victor had done, before she returned to the island, to save the drunken parson of Jurby in the eyes of the parishioners. In another minute she was back in her carriage.
"Good-bye, child, and God bless you!" said Janet by the carriage door. "And don't forget to tell my boy that Mother will be lighting the fire in the Deemster's room every night of life for him."
The parsonage looked yet more desolate at a nearer view than at a distance. Sea-fowl were screaming in the sky above it and the earth was quaking from the measured beat of the waves against the cliffs below. A patch of garden in front was rank with long grass, and the salt breath of the sea had encrusted the glass of the windows with a grey scale that was like the mould on a dead face.
The door was opened by a timid, elderly woman, the parson's wife, who was her own servant and looked as if all the pride of life had been crushed out of her.