‘Who told you that?’ asked Gilbert, as he pulled off his overcoat and threw it into the cart.
‘Ma’ Grannie.’
Speid vaulted over the low wall beside them and began to descend the slope. Half-way down it he heard Jimmy’s voice crying luck to him and saw his cap lifted in the air.
The rain of the previous day and night had made the ground heavy, and he soon found that the remaining time would just serve him and no more. He ran on at a steady pace, taking a straight line to the edge of the woods; most of the fields were divided by stone dykes and those obstacles gave him no trouble. Sometimes he slipped in wet places; once or twice he was hailed by a labourer who stopped in his work to watch the gentleman original enough to race over the open landscape for no apparent reason. But he took no heed, plodding on.
When he came to where the corner of the woods protruded, a dark triangle, into the pasture land, he struck across it. The rain had made the pines aromatic, and the strong, clean smell refreshed him as he went over the elastic bed of pine-needles strewn underfoot. The undignified white bobtails of rabbits disappeared, right and left, among the stems at his approach, and once, a roe-deer fled in leaps into the labyrinth of trunks.
Before emerging again into the open he paused to rest and look at his watch; walking and running, he had come well and more quickly than he had supposed; he thanked heaven for the sound body which he had never allowed idleness to make inactive. It wanted twenty-five minutes of eleven, and he had covered a couple of miles in the quarter of an hour since he had left Jimmy. He judged himself a little under two more from Morphie kirk. The boy’s unexpected knowledge of the habits of brides had amused him, even in his hurry, and he devoutly hoped it might prove true.
Standing under the firs and pines, he realized the demand he was about to make of this particular bride. He wondered if there were a woman in the world bold enough to do what he was going to ask Cecilia to do for him. He was going to stand up before her friends, before the bridegroom and his relations, the guests and the onlookers, and ask her to leave the man to whom she had promised herself for a lover she had not seen for nearly two years; one who had not so much as an honest name to give her. Would she do it? He reflected, with a sigh, that Jimmy’s knowledge would scarce tell him that. But, at the same time, loving her as he loved her, and knowing her as he knew her, he hoped.
He was off again, leaping out over a ditch circling the skirts of the wood; he meant to follow the outline of the trees till he should come to a track which he knew would lead him down to where the kirk stood under a sloping bank. Many a time he had looked, from the further side of the Lour, at the homely building with its stone belfry. It had no beauty but that of plainness and would not have attracted anyone whose motives in regarding it were quite simple. But, for him, it had been enchanted, as common places are enchanted but a few times in our lives; and now, he was to face the turning-point of his existence in its shadow.
This run across country was the last stage of a journey begun in Spain nearly a month since. It had come down to such a fine measurement of time as would have made him wonder, had he been capable of any sensation but the breathless desire to get forward. His hair was damp upon his forehead and his clothes splashed with mud as he struck into the foot-track leading from the higher ground to the kirk. The way went through a thicket of brier and whin, and, from its further side, came the voices and the rough East-coast accent of men and women; he supposed that a certain crowd had gathered to see the bride arrive and he knew that he was in time.
It was less than ten minutes to eleven when the assembled spectators saw a tall man emerge from the scrub and take up his position by the kirk door. Many recognised him and wondered, but no Whanland people were present, and no one accosted him. He leaned a few minutes against the wall; then, when he had recovered breath, he walked round the building and looked in at a window. Inside, the few guests were seated, among them Barclay, his frilled shirt making a violent spot of white in the gloom of the kirk. Not far from him, his back to the light, was Crauford Fordyce, stiff and immaculate in his satin stock and claret colour; unconscious of the man who stood, not ten yards from him, at the other side of the wall. It was evident from their bearing that, by this hour, the minds of the allies were at rest. Gilbert returned to the door and stood quietly by the threshold; there was an irony in the situation which appealed to him.