"I wish I could go down to the village to-night, I know"—she said.
"To-night! What do you wish that for?"
"Because, Mr. Rhys is going to preach; and I do want to go so much; but
I can't."
"Going to preach!—why is he so well as that?"
"He isn't well at all," said Julia,—"not what you would call well. But he says he is well. He is white and weak enough yet; and I don't think that is being well. He can't go to Lily Dale nor to Rythdale; so some of the people are coming to Wiglands."
"Where is he going to preach?"
"Where do you think? In Mr. Brooks's barn. They won't let him preach at the inn, and he can't have the church; and I do want to see how he can preach in the barn!"
Mr. Brooks was a well-to-do farmer, a tenant of the Rythdale estate, living near the road to the old priory and half a mile from the village of Wiglands. A consuming desire seized Eleanor to do as her little sister had said—hear Mr. Rhys preach. The desire was so violent that it half frightened her with the possibility of its fulfilment.
She told Julia that it was an absurd wish, and impracticable, and dismissed her; and then her whole mind focussed itself on Mr. Brooks's barn. Eleanor saw nothing else through the morning, whatever she was doing. It was impossible! yet it was a first, last, and only chance, perhaps in her life, of hearing the words of truth so spoken as she knew they would be in that place that night. Besides, she had a craving curiosity to know how they would be spoken. One month more, Eleanor once securely lodged in Rythdale Priory, and her chance of hearing any words whatever spoken in a barn, was over for ever; unless indeed she condescended to become an inspector of agricultural proceedings. Yet she said to herself over and over that she had no chance now; that her being present was a matter of wild impossibility; she said it and re-said it, and with every time a growing consciousness that impossibility should not stop her. At last impossibility shaped itself into a plan.
"I am going down to see Jane Lewis, mamma," was Eleanor's announcement at luncheon.