As Gower had anticipated, with lively feelings of pleasure, Mr. Woodseer was at the wonted corner of his back room, on the stool between two tallow candleflames, leather scented strongly, when the wanderer stood before him, in the image of a ball that has done with circling about a stable point.
‘Back?’ the minister sang out at once, and his wrinkles gleamed:
‘To be sure, you are. One can read it on your boots. Mrs. Jones will spread you a table. How many miles to-day? Show the soles. They tell a tale of wear.’
They had worn to resemble the thin-edged layers of still upper cloud round the peep of coming sky.
‘About forty odd to-day, sir. They’ve done their hundreds of miles and have now come to dock. I ‘ll ask Mrs. Jones to bring me a plate here.’
Gower went to the housekeeper in the kitchen. His father’s front door was unfastened by day; she had not set eyes on him yet, and Mr. Woodseer murmured:
‘Now she’s got the boy. There ‘s clasping and kissing. He’s all wild Wales to her.’
The plate of meat was brought by Mary Jones with Gower beside her, and a sniffle of her happiness audible. She would not, although invited to stay and burning to hear Gower, wait in the room where father and son had to talk together after a separation, long to love’s counting. She was a Welshwoman of the pure blood, therefore delicately mannered by nature.
‘Yes, dear lad, tobacco helps you on to the marrow of your story, and I too will blow the cloud,’ said Mr. Woodseer, when the plate was pushed aside and the pipe appeared.
So Gower’s recital of his wanderings began, more puffs than speech at the commencement. He was alternately picturesque and sententious until he reached Baden; there he became involved, from thinking of a revelation of beauty in woman.
Mr. Woodseer rapped the leather on his block.
‘A place where they have started public gambling, I am told.’
‘We must look into all the corners of the world to know it, sir, and the world has to be riddled or it riddles us.’
‘Ah. Did you ever tell a lie, Gower Woodseer?’
‘You played. The Lord be thanked you have kept your straight tongue! The Lord can always enter a heart of truth. Sin cannot dwell with it. But you played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving; and that was a backsliding; and there will have to be a climbing up. And what that means, your hold on truth will learn. Touch sin and you accommodate yourself to its vileness. Ay, you love nature. Nature is not anchorage for vessels like men. If you loved the Book you would float in harbour. You played. I do trust you lost.’