“I’m sorry,” said Andy, very gently.
“You needn’t be,” said old Mrs. Werrit. “It doesn’t matter now.” She paused, and added after a moment, “You’ll find out—all that matters at the very end—is how near you’ve gotten to God in your life.”
Then she closed her eyes again, and Andy shut his little book and put it in his pocket without a word, and crept reverently down the crooked stairs as if he were leaving the presence of some one very great.
When he was far down the village street, and too far from the little house to go back again, he realised that, for the first time in his professional career, he had failed in his ministration to the aged poor. He fingered his little book, feeling inclined to go back again, and all the way home something within him smarted and burned underneath his wandering thoughts.
Youth knows nothing more unpleasant than those secret growing pains of the soul of which it does not understand the meaning.
Perhaps it was these—or it might have been the dull evening after a day of clouds and storms—anyway, Andy felt driven forth after supper to tramp restlessly up and down the garden path by the churchyard hedge. Had he chosen the right life? Was he fitted for a country parson?
New and perplexing doubts of himself began to assail him for the first time as he tramped up and down, casting a glance at Brother Gulielmus every now and then over the churchyard hedge.
Had he tramped up and down here too? For the garden dated back to that time, though the house was modern. Had he wondered and felt restless too?
But gradually the regular motion quieted Andy’s nerves, and he began to notice how the crimson rambler had grown, and to feel the freshness of the dew-laden air.
Then, quite suddenly, for no reason at all, he remembered with wonderful vividness how Elizabeth’s hand had looked upon the door of the carriage. His mental picture of her face was indistinct, but her hand seemed painted on the summer darkness, and he felt an intense longing to take it in his own.