The distance from Talgwynne put walking out of the question; but she descended from the farm gig in which an acquaintance had driven her as near to Pencoed as wheels could go, to make the rest of her way on foot. She had been obliged to start early to reach the chapel in time for the meeting, and as she neared it the sound of singing came to her on the wind. She paused outside the door; looking stealthily in, and seeing the tall figure of Black Heber, she slipped noiselessly into a seat.
The little, box-like building was half full of men and women; elderly people, for the most part, in dark-coloured clothes. The windows, which were small, with diamond leaded panes set low in the walls, let in an even light on their subdued homeliness.
Apart from them, at a table covered with faded red cloth, was the same man who had baptized Catherine in the pool at Bethesda.
The hymn was a long one and the singers were well embarked on it; the predominance of men in the gathering gave it a fulness and strength of sound; and, as it was one immensely popular in the district, its solemn rhythm and swaying time were marred by no uncertainties. Heber stood in a line with Susannah, by the opposite wall, head and shoulders above the other worshippers, his eyes fixed on his book. She could hear his strong, melodious voice separately, fervent, and steady; and she listened to it as a person by a river’s side will listen to the tune of one particular eddy in the full underlying rush of water.
It was easy to see, here in the quietness of the chapel, how much more of youth there was in the man than in the impression he gave to others. He was little over thirty and the lines on his face were not lines of care, but the marks traced by exposure and hard exercise. His eyes were the narrowed eyes of men who look over long distances in rigorous weathers, and if his thin beard hid jaw and chin, the outline of his chest and shoulders was sharp and young. Now and again he would look up, throwing back his head as he sent a note from his expanded lungs into the swell of the hymn. The words that floated out round her had neither interest nor meaning for Susannah; for her there was only a single person, a single voice, under that roof. They had reached the last lines:
“Ye men of God, lift up your souls,
Nor halt with failing breath;
Yet one more stream before us rolls,
The dark blue flood of death.
Across its waves our pathway lies,
The hosts go on before;
And Zion’s city meets our eyes
Set on the other shore.”
As the singing ceased, Heber shut his book and looked round like one awakened, straight at Susannah. The act was so spontaneous that neither he nor the woman, whose gaze was fixed on him, had time to return from the widely separated regions in which their respective souls roamed.
In that instant there was revealed to the shepherd the thing that he had never suspected. Perhaps the feelings roused by the strenuous, half-militant spirit of the hymn and the beat of its swinging music had lighted the whole range of his imagination; perhaps the shock of the contrast between that seen by his inner and his outer vision quickened it; in any case, the passion in Susannah’s face shot its message across the chapel and he stood stock still while the rest of the congregation sat down. Then he thought of his cousin and Catherine as he had seen them that night in the kitchen at Talgwynne, and the blood ran hot to his tanned face.
Black Heber was not vain; he had no time for vanity, had it been in him; nevertheless, Susannah’s look pierced to his inactive, remote self-consciousness. He resumed his seat, feeling as if a rough hand had taken him by the collar. When a man without vanity loves a woman as much as he loved Catherine Dennis, the unasked favour of another is only a gyve to be shaken off. Unreturned love must be worn either as a fetter or as a decoration; and though there are many men whose pride it is to go through life decked out in the cheap jewellery of the affections, the shepherd was not one of them. Had he found time to think of such things they would have irritated him. He did not care for ornaments; he only cared for freedom and for getting what he wanted. Though he believed himself to have lost Catherine for good and all, his freedom remained; and he felt now as though Susannah menaced it.