For three months, off and on, in the intervals of seeing Alice, he longed, with an intense and painful longing, for his God.  He longed for him just because he felt that he was utterly separated from him by his sin.  He wanted the thing he couldn’t have and wasn’t fit to have.  He wanted it, just as he wanted Alice Cartaret.

And by his sin he did not mean his getting drunk.  Greatorex did not think of God as likely to take his getting drunk very seriously, any more than he had seemed to take Maggie and Essy seriously.  For Greatorex measured God’s reprobation by his own repentance.

His real offense against God was his offense against Alice Cartaret.  He had got drunk in order to forget it.

But that resource would henceforth be denied him.  He was not going to get drunk any more, because he knew that if he did Alice Cartaret wouldn’t marry him.

Meanwhile he nourished his soul on its own longing, on the Psalms of David and on the Book of Job.

Greatorex would have made a happy saint.  But he was a most lugubrious sinner.

XLVII

The train from Durlingham rolled slowly into Reyburn station.

Gwenda Cartaret leaned from the window of a third class carriage and looked up and down the platform.  She got out, handing her suit-case to a friendly porter.  Nobody had come to meet her.  They were much too busy up at the Vicarage.

From the next compartment there alighted a group of six persons, a lady in widow’s weeds, an elderly lady and gentleman who addressed her affectionately as “Fanny, dear,” and (obviously belonging to the pair) a very young man and a still younger woman.

There was also a much older man, closely attached to them, but not quite so obviously related.

These six people also looked up and down the platform, expecting to be met.  They were interested in Gwenda Cartaret.  They gazed at her as they had already glanced, surreptitiously and kindly, on the platform at Durlingham.  Now they seemed to be saying to themselves that they were sure it must be she.

Gwenda walked quickly away from them and disappeared through the booking-office into the station yard.

And then Rowcliffe, who had apparently been hiding in the general waiting-room, came out on to the platform.

The six fell upon him with cries of joy and affection.

They were his mother, his paternal uncle and aunt, his two youngest cousins, and Dr. Harker, his best friend and colleague who had taken his place in January when he had been ill.

They had all come down from Leeds for Rowcliffe’s wedding.

* * * * *

Rowcliffe’s trap and Peacock’s from Garthdale stood side by side in the station-yard.

Gwenda in Peacock’s trap had left the town before she heard behind her the clanking hoofs of Rowcliffe’s little brown horse.