Through Welsh Doorways Part 21

There was little human history that Keturah's old eyes had not as calmly surveyed as they looked now upon the tearful face of Deb.

"But she weeps so, poor dear, an' the only time she seemed more cheerful was when the pastor came to bury the old people. When they came back from the grave she begged him to stay awhile, but he couldn't, an' then she cried an' cried again, poor child."

"Well, well," said Keturah, with a shrewd, troubled look, "'tis a pity."

"But he loves her, now doesn't he?"

"Aye, he does whatever."

"T'was only a week ago," said Deb, patting herself on her corsage again, "I was sayin' somethin' was comin'; an' I thought then, when we were talkin' 'twould be their gettin' married, aye, I did indeed."

"Indeed, so ye did," Keturah repeated. "Tut, there's the knocker clappin'. Now who would be comin' this late, and the master so tired?"

Keturah hobbled swiftly through the kitchen and narrow hallway to the door.

"Well, Mrs. Morgan!"

"Yes, Keturah, is your master in?"

"Aye, in his study; will ye go in there?"

To the Reverend Samson Jones, since the death of the widow Morgan's parents, life had seemed nothing more dignified than a low gambling game. He had done what he believed a man should do; after protracted delay and a final self-conquest greater than any one knew, he had done the thing duty told him to do. Had he delayed twenty-four hours longer to do this duty, that for which he had waited and longed through six years would have been his. Now, horse and rider had stumbled together, and all the principles which have been as a guide-post to his fervid spirit lay prostrate with him.

When the door opened and the widow Morgan came in, Samson Jones was sitting idly in his study-chair, nerveless and confused, one moment saying to himself that he would send for Jane Elin and tell her all, the next minute terrified at the very thought, and the third moment condemning himself for lack of courage to accept what had come upon him through no fault of his own. The aspect of his thin, long face had become so ghastly, and the confusion of his words so unusual, that not only had Keturah and Jane Elin watched him with alarm, but the deacons and good-wives of Gelligaer began to question, to talk of the oncoming of the spring and its bad effect on the system, to suggest a holiday for their beloved pastor; and one good-wife had gone so far as to consult Keturah and to write to Mrs. Jones, his mother. His thoughts and feelings were like filings with no centrifugal force to gather them in.

As he jumped to his feet with the exclamation, "Dolly!" these thoughts and feelings flocked swiftly about the love he had for her.

The widow's eyes looked red and her voice quavered as she said, "I am so lonely, Samson, och, so lonely!"

"Aye," said Samson, trying to shift his glance from her appealing face.

Dolly dropped into a chair and slipped back her scarf. Her chin trembled pitifully. "I am so lonely, Samson; I thought perhaps you had forgotten me?"

"No, I've not indeed."

"Well, and don't you love me any more? I thought you'd never forget."

"Aye, I love you but--but----"

At this Dolly rushed upon him like an impulsive, gladdened child. "Och, then, nothing else matters, nothing at all whatever!" She clung to him eagerly, and with her arms about him the last vestige of Samson Jones's resolution was quenched.

After that, through the blissful evening he knew nothing but blind s.n.a.t.c.hing at ecstasy. He tried to forget everything. That night, when he saw Dolly home, she was an appeased, contented child whose only thought of the morrow is the untroubled one that it will come again and again with the same delicious happiness.

But never had Samson Jones known anything like the week that followed, with its dissimulations petty and large, its pained irresolution, its alternations between ecstasy and despair. The surface of his mild zealous eyes had come to have the feverish look of a man living in a delirium. With Jane Elin he was gallant, attentive, punctilious, a finished lover. With Dolly he gave himself up so to the luxury of their love, that the widow Morgan wondered why she had not seen before the extravagant pa.s.sionateness of his nature.

For her part, Jane Elin rang again and again on the surface of this emotion called love and listened with troubled ears to the hollow sounds within. Jane Elin had had just twenty-four hours in which to rejoice undisturbed in her new happiness. She was no idle sentimentalist, afraid to face the truth, or with rose-coloured gla.s.ses through which to look at the truth. Up to this point she had seen clearly the course of events and the ninepins fate had played with a question she believed finally settled. At last the widow was free, and Jane Elin was sober-thoughted at the new aspect that that fact put upon her relations to the minister. With both, despite the fact that Samson Jones was exceeding in devotion to each the highest expectation either could have held, intuition of something wrong about their lover made them keenly anxious.

On the Sunday after this week that Gelligaer will never forget, the minister, without a note of any kind on the desk or in his hand, preached a sermon of extraordinary power. And the old white-haired deacons sitting in a row around the pulpit nodded their heads approvingly, for it seemed to them that the good old times of fifty years ago were coming back, when all preaching in Wales was extemporaneous. Keturah alone looked with troubled face upon the minister, certain that a catastrophe was overtaking him, at the nature of which she had shrewdly guessed. And it was the Monday following this Sunday that the Reverend Samson Jones made a convulsive resolution to see Jane Elin and tell her all. He would send for her to come to his pastoral study; it would be easier to talk with her there. His action in sending for Jane Elin was like the action of the man who instinctively puts out his hand to shield his head from a blow, for Samson Jones saw the calamity coming upon him.

He stood with down-dropped eyes as she came into the study, fingering the objects on his writing-table.

Jane Elin went up to him swiftly. "What is it, Samson? Has anything happened? Do you need me?"

"Aye, I have been meaning this last week--it seemed only right--I don't see how it is possible--I----"

"Och, tell me, Samson, tell me quickly, what is it?"

"Well, that day two weeks ago----"

"Dear, dear!" Jane Elin interjected, turning pale.

Samson Jones was thinking of an escape, any escape--this was too horrible, he could not continue with it--when his eye fell on a letter just received from his mother in answer to the one sent by the deacon's wife, and the word "mother" flashed over his whole being like a great light revealing a path in the darkness. The joy in the freedom that came to him with this thought was almost too great for him to bear. His mother would help him.

"My mother," he stammered, "my mother, och, it is too horrible!"

"Dear anwyl!" said Jane pitifully, thinking of sickness or of death. "Is it that bad?"

"Aye," he muttered, looking around wildly, and then at his watch; "there's just time to catch the narrow-gauge to Qwyllyn. Och, goodbye!"

And he was gone.

With a sense of real relief, Jane Elin stood still a moment. It was that, after all, which had been worrying him. Why had he not told her before that his mother was ill?

She walked thoughtfully toward the kitchen. "Keturah, is she very ill?"

"Who?"

"The master's mother; he told me to tell you he'd gone to catch the narrow-gauge. Is she?"

Keturah's eyes widened and contracted as she said, "Aye, very."

"Och, 'tis too bad! I must go to him."

"Nay, nay, there's no need, Miss Williams, he'll manage somehow."

"Aye, but I can nurse her; yes, I must go; I can get the next train."

"Well, ye know best," replied Keturah.

Keturah continued to sit by the fire, muttering to herself: "Well, well indeed, 'tis as I thought; dear, the poor la.s.s, the poor lad! Trouble, trouble, trouble!" She leaned forward to stir the pot. "He'll not be wantin' it, not at all." Keturah dwelt moodily on her thoughts, with no change in att.i.tude except when she took the oat-cake from the skillet and reached forward to stir the pot. "'Tis certain disgrace whatever; och, och, the poor lad!"

Suddenly there was the rush of hurrying feet and Deb came in breathless and excited. "Well, well, he's gone, and I didn't know that his mother----" she gasped.

"Aye, he went over an hour ago," interrupted Keturah.

"He was pa.s.sin' the window, an' my mistress saw him an' called to him; but he wouldn't stay, he said he couldn't, he was runnin' to catch the train."

"Aye, so he was indeed," agreed Keturah.

"An' she ordered me to pack up an' call the coach, an' so I did; she thought she'd get there all the quicker to help him than by takin' the train an' makin' so many changes."