Andy stood there, looking after the man as he went up the lane to the little house where he slept at night, and where he had kept his wife, and maintained his children ever since early youth. He smelt of earth and sweat and was rough in his manner, and yet he enabled the Vicar of Gaythorpe to get hold of that thought which had previously eluded him.
It is pleasant to see the glory in things that are glorious, but there is a still more intimate and exquisite pleasure about seeing glory in things which seem sordid. It is a sort of treasure-hunting of the soul—as fresh and full of life as a boy’s treasure-hunt in a water-logged hulk—as full of the thrillingly unexpected.
Andy went back into the study and took down some accounts which he had shelved. They dated from the late Vicar’s time, and were complicated, and he stuck to them until they were done.
At last he put down his pen and stretched himself, and something he had vaguely been keeping at bay ever since the early afternoon swept over him like a tide. He lit a candle and went out into the silent hall where the light was already extinguished, and unlocked the dining-room door. It had the odd look common to all unused rooms at night—they seem to be waiting in some uncanny and yet quite conscious way for somebody long gone.
Andy came there to search for nearer dreams of Elizabeth. Elizabeth as she had been in her youth and gracious kindness only a few hours before. Elizabeth as she might be when they were married. And he found instead the most clear and vivid memory of a man he had never seen. He never thought much of the old Vicar, for what he had heard of him in no way appealed to the imagination. And yet now he suddenly remembered the years his predecessor had spent between these walls, and that he must, too, have been young when he came—young and full of life and hope.
It was, truly, as if the old Vicar held out a hand in that still, dimly-lighted room, claiming recognition, and the new Vicar gave it in a half-spoken—
“Poor old chap! I’d forgotten he planted the rose trees and the holly hedge. He must have liked the garden.”
Then Andy went to bed, but he was restless and could not sleep, for now the dreams of Elizabeth that he went to look for in the dining-room pressed so close around him that he remained vividly awake.