Hugh's laugh drew Frank's attention to them. He smiled broadly and came forward with outstretched hand, effusive and gushing.
"Hugh... and Joscelyn! How DO you do! How DO you do! My, it's good to see all you folks again. You don't look a day older, Joscelyn... handsomer than ever. It don't seem possible it's ten years since I danced at your wedding. How time does fly!"
Joscelyn felt sure she was in a nightmare. She must wake up. This ridiculous, hideous situation couldn't be real. She saw Hugh shaking hands with Frank... Frank whom he had vowed to thrash if he ever set eyes on him again. Now he would disdain to do it. Joscelyn saw the disdain in his eyes... in his bitter mouth. Thrash this poor creature for whom his bride had thrown him over. The idea was farcical.
"And how's the family?" said Frank with a sly wink.
Something in the electric silence that followed gave Frank time to think. There was a titter from some ill-bred young cub by the door. Frank had never heard the sequel to the wedding at which he had danced. But he felt he had put his foot in it somehow. Probably they had no family and were sensitive about it. His tongue was always getting him into trouble. But hang it, if they hadn't a family they ought to have. Hugh needn't glower like that. As for Joscelyn, she had always been a high and mighty piece of goods. But she needn't be looking at him as if he were some kind of a new and fancy worm. The airs some people gave themselves made him tired.
The Reverend Joseph had concluded his prayer and with a sigh of relief the waiting group passed into the church. Joscelyn, who only wanted to run... and run... and run, had to follow Aunt Rachel in and sit quietly through a sermon of which she heard not one word. She felt as if she had been stripped naked to the gaze of a world that was laughing at her shame. It was of no avail to tell herself that no one but Hugh ever knew or suspected that she had loved Frank Dark... or something she had believed Frank Dark to be. The feeling of naked humiliation persisted. How Hugh must be mocking her! "You flouted me for this! What do you think of your bargain?"
Hugh was not thinking anything of the sort. He thought Frank Dark a pretty poor specimen of a man... not worth all the hatred he had lavished on him... but he did not know that Joscelyn saw what he did. After all, Frank was still handsome in a florid way and women's tastes were odd enough. Hugh was another who did not hear much of Joseph Dark's sermon. All the old bitterness and anger of his wedding-night was surging up in his soul again. What a mess had been made of his life... through no fault of his own. There were a dozen girls he might have had; some of them were in the church that night. He looked at them all and decided that, after all, he'd rather have Joscelyn. Just as things were... Joscelyn with that glorious sweep of red-gold hair over her pale, proud face. If she were not his, at least she was no other man's. Nor could be. SHE could never divorce HIM. Hugh ground his teeth in savage triumph. Frank Dark should never get her... never!
Big Sam, with Little Sam sitting across from him, gazing at the buxom Widow Terlizzick like, Big Sam vowed to himself, an intoxicated dog, did not hear much of the sermon either. Which was a pity because it was a remarkably good sermon... brilliant, eloquent, scholarly. Joseph Dark's listeners sat spellbound. He played skilfully on their emotions... perhaps a shade too skilfully... and they responded as a harp responds to the wind. They felt caught away from sordid things to hill-tops of vision and splendour; life, for the time being at least, became a thing of beauty to be beautifully lived; and few there were who did not feel a throb of glad conviction when the speaker, leaning earnestly over the desk and addressing individually every member of his audience, said thrillingly:
"And never, even in your darkest and most terrible moments, forget that the world belongs to God," closing the Bible, as he spoke with a thunderclap of victory.
Of the few was Stanton Grundy. He smiled sardonically as he went out.
"The devil has a corner or two yet," he said to Uncle Pippin.
"Gosh, but that was a sermon though," said Uncle Pippin admiringly.
"He can preach," conceded Grundy grudgingly. "I wonder how much of it he believes himself."
Which was unfair to Joseph Dark, who believed every word he preached... while he was preaching it, at all events... and surely could not be justly blamed because Robina Dark had, all unasked, given him the heart that should have belonged only to her liege lord, Stanton Grundy.
"Frank Dark's got terrible fat," said Aunt Rachel as she and Joscelyn walked home. "He's following in the footsteps of his father. HE weighed three hundred and fifty-two pounds afore he died. I mind him well."
Joscelyn writhed. Aunt Rachel had always possessed the knack of making everything she mentioned supremely ridiculous. Joscelyn's romantic love for Frank Dark was dead... dead past any possibility of a resurrection. It had died as suddenly as it had been born, there in the porch of Bay Silver Church. But she could have wished, for her own sake, to be able to look upon the corpse with some reverence... some pity... some saving wish that it could have been otherwise. It was dreadful to have to mock herself over dead love... to hear others mocking. Dreadful to think of having wasted on Frank Dark the years that should have been given to bearing Hugh's children and building a home for him and for them at Treewoofe. Dreadful to think that all the passion and devotion and high renunciation of those processional years had been squandered on a man who had simply become a person likely to "weigh three hundred and fifty-two pounds before he died." Joscelyn would have laughed at herself except for the fact that she knew if she began to laugh she would never be able to stop. All the world would laugh at her if it knew. Even the tall, wind-writhen lombardies against the moonlit clouds above William Y.'s place, seemed to be pointing derisive fingers at her. She hated the stars that twinkled at her... the chilly, foolish night-wind that whined mockingly... the round hill shoulders over the bay that were shaking with merriment. What was Aunt Rachel saying? Something about Penny Dark being more conceited than ever since he had got Aunt Becky's bottle of Jordan water.
"He needn't imagine he's got the only one in the clan."
Joscelyn felt that she wanted to do something very cruel. She wanted to make some one else feel a little of the pain and humiliation she was enduring.
"Oh, but he has, Aunt Rachel. I spilled your bottle of Jordan water long ago and filled it up with water from the barn pump. That's what you've been worshipping all these years!"
II
One grey November evening Gay carried home a letter from Noel. When the postmaster had handed it out to her, her heart had given a suffocating bound, as it would do, she thought, if she were buried underground and Noel walked by her grave. It was a long time since she had had a letter from him. A long time since she had seen him... not since that bitter night at the Silver Slipper. She did not even hear much about him... her clan were surprisingly considerate in regard to that. Almost too considerate. Their avoidance of all reference to Noel was too pointed. Gay knew what it meant when everybody stopped talking as she entered a room. It hurt her... or her pride. For she had still some pride left in which she tried pitifully to wrap herself from what she thought was the half- pitying, half-contemptuous gaze of her little world. She felt as if every one must be watching her to see how she took it... watching her around corners... behind window-blinds... across the church.
And she had still a tormenting secret hope that all would come right yet. Noel MUST have loved her. It couldn't have been all pretence. He was just bewitched by Nan's daring and "differentness" and bold coquetry... by the way she could use her eyes. What if... Gay caught her breath as she hurried along... what if this letter were to tell her he had come to his senses... what if it were asking her to forgive him and take him back? Why else should he have written at all?