There was the silence of a moment, and there broke from Rhys a cry so bitter, so despairing, that it seemed as though the heart from whose depths it came had broken. Then he sank down by the table, and, laying his head on his arms, sobbed like a little child, with his face hidden on the sleeve of his shabby coat.
It was not until the Pig-driver had been long gone that he raised himself. The light had sputtered out beside him, and he got up and groped his way to the ladder. He climbed to the room above, crossed the threshold into the night, and set his face to the hills.
[1] A broken jug.
[CHAPTER XXXVI
THE NEW YEAR]
AT Great Masterhouse the mist clung round the doors and crept like a breathing thing against the windows, as though it would envelope and cut it off from the rest of the living world. Inside the house there was that sense of subdued movement which is caused by the presence of many people all bent upon the same purpose, and the kitchen was half-filled with men and women ranged on benches and chairs round the walls and near the table. The light illumined their faces and threw their shadows in varying degrees of grotesqueness against the whitewash which formed the background.
Beside the hearth, a little apart from the rest, sat Mrs. Walters in the straight chair which she usually occupied, the upright pose of her figure bearing a silent rebuke to some of those who had fallen into glaringly human attitudes. Opposite to her was Nannie Davis. Between them the great fire burned and glowed in the chimney under the high mantel with its rows of brass candlesticks, which stood “with their best side towards London,” as the old woman said.
The man in black who had preached in the little chapel when George had been discovered asleep there by Anne was standing by the kitchen table. His hand rested on an open Bible and he was reading from it in a loud monotonous voice. In stature he was small and mean, but he threw out his syllables with the assurance of one accustomed to sway his audience.
To-night he was lodged at Great Masterhouse, for the farm was his head-quarters whenever his tour of preaching brought him to the Black Mountain district. He had seldom visited the house without holding a service in it at least once during his stay, and now, on the last night of the old year, he had settled with Anne that a meeting should take place near midnight, so that he and his hearers should have the chance of beginning the new one in prayer and supplication. It was a thing which had never been done before, and he hoped that some who might otherwise have failed to be present would be drawn to it by curiosity and the novelty of the experience.