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Title: The Weavers, Volume 3.
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6263]

[This file was first posted on November 14, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

CHAPTER XV
SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN
Faith raised her eyes from the paper before her and poised her head

meditatively.
"How long is it, friend, since--"
"Since he went to Egypt?"
"Nay, since thee--"
"Since I went to Mass?" he grumbled humorously.
She laughed whimsically. "Nay, then, since thee made the promise--"
"That I would drink no more till his return--ay, that was my bargain;

Soolsby looked at her over his glasses, resting his chin on the back of
the chair he was caning, and his lips worked in and out with a suppressed
smile.

"Friend, thee knows I am almost an old woman now." She made marks
abstractedly upon the corner of a piece of paper. "Unless my hair turns
grey presently I must bleach it, for 'twill seem improper it should
remain so brown."

She smoothed it back with her hand. Try as she would to keep it trim after the manner of her people, it still waved loosely on her forehead and over her ears. And the grey bonnet she wore but added piquancy to

sheltered.
"I am thirty now," she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing.
The old man's fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after

"'Tis tough understanding why there's no wedding-ring on yonder finger. There's been many a man that's wanted it, that's true--the Squire's son from Bridgley, the lord of Axwood Manor, the long soldier from Shipley Wood, and doctors, and such folk aplenty. There's where understanding fails."

Faith's face flushed, then it became pale, and her eyes, suffused,
dropped upon the paper before her. At first it seemed as though she must
resent his boldness; but she had made a friend of him these years past,
and she knew he meant no rudeness. In the past they had talked of things
deeper and more intimate still. Yet there was that in his words which
touched a sensitive corner of her nature.

"Nay, till he came to live in this hut alone older by many a year. Since then he is older than me by fifty. I had not thought of marriage before he went away. Squire's son, soldier, or pillman, what were they to me! He needed me. They came, did they? Well, and if they came?"

Old Soolsby's face turned away. His house overlooked every house in the
valley beneath: he could see nearly every garden; he could even recognise
many in the far streets. Besides, there hung along two nails on the wall
a telescope, relic of days when he sailed the main. The grounds of the
Cloistered House and the fruit-decked garden-wall of the Red Mansion were
ever within his vision. Once, twice, thrice, he had seen what he had
seen, and dark feelings, harsh emotions, had been roused in him.

"He will need us both--the Egyptian will need us both one day," he
answered now; "you more than any, me because I can help him, too--ay,
I can help him. But married or single you could help him; so why waste
your days here?"

"Is it wasting my days to stay with my father? He is lonely, most lonely
since our Davy went away; and troubled, too, for the dangers of that life
yonder. His voice used to shake when he prayed, in those days when Davy
was away in the desert, down at Darfur and elsewhere among the rebel
tribes. He frightened me then, he was so stern and still. Ah, but that
day when we knew he was safe, I was eighteen, and no more!" she added,
smiling. "But, think you, I could marry while my life is so tied to him