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Darkness had fallen by now, though a patch of fading light glimmered in the west. The wind blew more strongly, and the soft rain beat in flurries about his head. His was not an easy face to read, and you couldn’t have told that in the last half hour he had suffered the worst knock of his life.
Four days later Ross returned to the church to bury the hopes he had carried with him for more than two years.
‘Someday,’ Elizabeth said in a low tone, ‘I hope you’ll come to forgive me. We were so young. Later—’ With death in his heart Ross watched her husband approach.
‘You forget yourself,’ she whispered, forcing the words out. ‘Oh no I don’t. I remember you.’
She had been speaking quickly and fiercely. These were the arguments her love had forged in the quietness of her bedroom.
‘Goodbye, my love. If there’s nothing else, give me leave to keep the memory.’
What was the matter with him? No sense of humour to leaven life? Must every act be dead serious, a weight upon his head and hands? Loving was a recreation; all the poets sang of its lightness, its levity; only the dull clod raised barriers of creed or conscience.
The brightest light had drained from the sky, leaving the clouds flushed with a rich plum-coloured afterglow. All the sparse countryside stood out in the warm light, the goats pasturing in numbers on the moorland, the scanty ricks of gathered corn, the wooden huts of the mines, the grey slate and cob cottages; the girls’ faces under their wide hats were lit with it, the horses’ noses gleamed.
