Part 31 (1/2)

After what seemed to her an age, she heard her mother's step, and the Rector following. Catharine stood again beside her daughter, brus.h.i.+ng away at last a few quiet tears.

”You oughtn't to face this any more, indeed you oughtn't,” said Meynell, with urgency, as he joined them. ”Tell her so, Miss Mary. But she has been doing wonders. My people bless her!”

He held out his hand, involuntarily, and Catharine placed hers in it.

Then, seeing a small crowd already collected in the street, he hurried out to speak to them.

Meanwhile evening had fallen, a late September evening, shot with gold and purple. Behind the village the yellow stubbles stretched up to the edge of the Chase and drifts of bluish smoke from the colliery chimneys hung in the still air.

Meynell, standing on the raised footpath above the crowd, gave notice that a special service of mourning would be held in the church that evening. The meeting of the Church Council would of course be postponed.

During his few words Mary made her way to the farther edge of the gathering, looking over it toward the speaker. Behind him ran the row of cottages, and in the doorway opposite she saw her mother, with her arm tenderly folded round a sobbing girl, the sister of one of the dead. The sudden tranquillity, the sudden pause from tumult and anguish seemed to draw a ”wind-warm s.p.a.ce” round Mary, and she had time, for a moment, to think of herself and the strangeness of this tragic day.

How amazing that her mother should be here at all. This meeting of the Reformers' League to which she had insisted on coming--as a spectator of course, and with the general public--what did it mean? Mary did not yet know, long as she had pondered it.

How beautiful was the lined face!--so pale in the golden dusk, in its heavy frame of black. Mary could not take her eyes from it. It betrayed an animation, a pa.s.sion of life, which had been foreign to it for months.

In these few crowded hours, when every word and action had been simple, instructive, inevitable; love to G.o.d and man working at their swiftest and purest; through all the tragedy and the horror some burden seemed to have dropped from Catharine's soul. She met her daughter's eyes, and smiled.

When Meynell had finished, the crowd silently drifted away, and he came back to the Elsmeres. They noticed the village fly coming toward them--saw it stop in the roadway.

”I sent for it,” Meynell explained rapidly. ”You mustn't let your mother do any more. Look at her! Please, will you both go to the Rectory? My cook will give you tea; I have let her know. Then the fly will take you home.”

They protested in vain--must indeed submit. Catharine flushed a little at being so commanded; but there was no help for it.

”I _would_ like to come and show you my den!” said Meynell, as he put them into the carriage. ”But there's too much to do here.”

He pointed sadly to the cottages, shut the door, and they were off.

During the short drive Catharine sat rather stiffly upright. Saint as she was, she was accustomed to have her way.

They drove into the dark shrubbery that lay between the Rectory and the road. At the door of the little house stood Anne in a white cap and clean ap.r.o.n. But the white cap sat rather wildly on its owner's head; nor would she take any interest in her visitors till she had got from them a fuller account of the tumult at the pit than had yet reached her, and a.s.surances that Meynell's wound was but slight. But when these were given she pounced upon Catharine.

”Eh, but you're droppin'!”

And with many curious looks at them she hurried them into the study, where a hasty clearance had been made among the books, and a tea-table spread.

She bustled away to bring the tea.

Then exhaustion seized on Catharine. She submitted to be put on the sofa after it had been cleared of its pile of books; and Mary sat by her a while, holding her hands. Death and the agony of broken hearts overshadowed them.

But then the dogs came in, discreet at first, and presently--at scent of currant cake--effusively friendly. Mary fed them all, and Catharine watched the colour coming back to her face, and the dumb sweetness in the gray eyes.

Presently, while her mother still rested, Mary took courage to wander round the room, looking at the books, the photographs on the walls, the rack of pipes, the carpenter's bench, and the panels of half-finished carving. Timidly, yet eagerly, she breathed in the message it seemed to bring her from its owner--of strenuous and frugal life. Was that half-faded miniature of a soldier his father--and that sweet gray-haired woman his mother? Her heart thrilled to each discovery.

Then Anne invaded them, for conversation, and while Catharine, unable to hide her fatigue, lay speechless, Anne chattered about her master. Her indignation was boundless that any hand could be lifted against him in his own parish. ”Why he strips himself bare for them, he does!”

And--with Mary unconsciously leading her--out came story after story, in the racy Mercian vernacular, ill.u.s.trating a good man's life, and all