The girl's eyes flashed, and displayed her nervous excitement, as, with
her head perfectly motionless, she watched, with her gaze now in one
pew, now in the other, ready to trap the first glance. For to her it
was no solemn scene, only a worldly battle, in which she had made up her
little mind to come out victor.
The service proceeded, and Tom Candlish half sat, half knelt in his
rarely occupied place, close to the grotesque effigy of his ancestors.
He did not kneel, for he had an antipathy to making the knees of his new
black trousers dusty; but his mien was quite contrary to established
custom. When he did attend Duke's Hampton church, he spent as much as
possible of his time standing, with his hands resting over the side of
the pew, staring at every woman in the place. Now, to Dally's great
satisfaction, he did not once look about him, but kept his chin upon his
breast--his way of displaying his grief.
Leo, in her place in the Rectory pew, was as careful of mien, and an
ordinary watcher would have been content. But Dally Watlock was not an
ordinary watcher, and she had settled in her own mind that Tom Candlish
and Leo would, sooner or later, look at one another, if only for a
moment, and it was to catch that glance she waited.
Dally was right, and the glance was so keen and quick that she was the
only one who noticed it. But there it was, sure enough, just at the
moment when the rector stepped down from the reading-desk, and there was
a shuffling noise in the centre aisle, where the undertaker's men were
busy. One quick interchange at one moment, as if those two
instinctively knew that the time had come, and Dally Watlock drew a long
breath between her set teeth, while her little eyes glittered, and again
seemed to flash.
Then the church slowly emptied, the churchyard filled, and the people
formed a half-circle about the mausoleum, whose railing-gates stood
open, and whose door at the foot of the stone steps gaped, while a faint
glare came from within, to shine upon an end of the coffin, as the sun
shone upon the other.
The Reverend Maurice May's pathetic voice rose and sank through the rest
of the service to the time when the coffin was borne down the steps, and
there rested once more; and his words sounded even more tearful still as
he finished, closed the book, and with bent head took four steps into
the vestry, and sat down and sighed, before removing his gown, bowing to
his curate as if too much overcome to speak, and returning to his
carriage, to follow the others to the Hall.
Meanwhile, with a great show of importance, Moredock assisted the
undertaker's men in the closing of the yawning door of the vault,
afterwards shutting the iron gates with a strange, echoing clang, and
turning the key; while North, who seemed wrapped in thought, stood
watching him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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