Had he but known it, that walk was symbolical of the rest of his life. When he did get home his rather ancient “evening shoes” were quit worn out.
“The Duke is coming at the end of the month,” announced Wiggins to the minister, as they anchored and fished for poddlies in the bay.
“My brother; he’s at school at Leamington; he’s going to Eton in three years. He’s ten, four years older nor me.” Wiggins was a model of conciseness in the way he imparted information.
“Why do you call him the Duke?” asked the minister in rather an abstracted voice; he was watching a tall lady on the distant links.
“’Cause he is one; his name’s Marmaduke, and he is a tremenjous Duke; they all say so.”
“Oh, mother, and uncles, and boys, and people.”
“Not a bit; he’s handsome; he’s exactly like mother.”
The minister smiled. Was Mary handsome? he wondered. For many days now he had forgotten to take her beauty into account. He never compared her with other women. She was not to him more beautiful, not more clever, not more kind than other women; she was simply what that Frenchman said of his lady--she was _mieux femme_. There was no one else.
“Are you very fond of your brother?” asked the minister, forcing himself to attend to Wiggins.
“I’m glad he goes to school,” replied that gentleman guardedly. “He rather bangs me about.”
“Is Wiggins a family name?” abruptly demanded the minister.
“You _are_ a jokey man,” said Wiggins admiringly. “Why, it’s because of my hair they call me that; my name’s Tregenna--‘Tre, Pol, and Pen,’ you know. Mother’s Cornish.”
At this moment Wiggins had a bite, therefore excitement reigned for the next five minutes, and even the advent of the Duke was forgotten.
Did Mary Burton know what she was doing when she admitted this obscure Free Kirk minister to friendship and intimacy? Did she realize how contact with her kindness, her simplicity, her gentlehood, was making him every day more hopelessly her slave? In after years, when he walked in darkness, with a hunger that nothing appeased, Andrew would ask himself this question, and whichever way he answered it he blessed her. He no more thought of blaming her than the sailor thinks of tracing the storm to the evening star.
“She shall have worship of me,” he said in those early days of wonder and happiness. “She still has worship of me,” he said after years of unsatisfied longing and ceaseless pain.