The Weavers | Page 6

Suddenly his eyes darkened, he
became abstracted, and gazed at the window where the twig flicked
softly against the pane, and the heat of summer palpitated in the air. "It
has good grace to my ear," he added slowly.
Luke Claridge looked at him intently. He began to realize that there
were forces stirring in his grandson which had no beginning in Claridge
blood, and were not nurtured in the garden with the fruited wall. He
was not used to problems; he had only a code, which he had rigidly
kept. He had now a glimmer of something beyond code or creed.
He saw that the shrill Elder was going to speak. He intervened. "Thee is
charged, David," he said coldly, "with kissing a woman--a stranger and
a wanton--where the four roads meet 'twixt here and yonder town." He
motioned towards the hills.
"In the open day," added the shrill Elder, a red spot burning on each
withered cheek.
"The woman was comely," said the young man, with a tone of irony,
recovering an impassive look.
A strange silence fell, the women looked down; yet they seemed not so
confounded as the men. After a moment they watched the young man
with quicker flashes of the eye.
"The answer is shameless," said the shrill Elder. "Thy life is that of a
carnal hypocrite."

The young man said nothing. His face had become very pale, his lips
were set, and presently he sat down and folded his arms.
"Thee is guilty of all?" asked John Fairley.
His kindly eye was troubled, for he had spent numberless hours in this
young man's company, and together they had read books of travel and
history, and even the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe, though drama
was anathema to the Society of Friends--they did not realize it in the
life around them. That which was drama was either the visitation of
God or the dark deeds of man, from which they must avert their eyes.
Their own tragedies they hid beneath their grey coats and bodices; their
dirty linen they never washed in public, save in the scandal such as this
where the Society must intervene. Then the linen was not only washed,
but duly starched, sprinkled, and ironed.
"I have answered all. Judge by my words," said David gravely.
"Has repentance come to thee? Is it thy will to suffer that which we
may decide for thy correction?" It was Elder Fairley who spoke. He
was determined to control the meeting and to influence its judgment.
He loved the young man.
David made no reply; he seemed lost in thought. "Let the discipline
proceed--he hath an evil spirit," said the shrill Elder.
"His childhood lacked in much," said Elder Fairley patiently.
To most minds present the words carried home--to every woman who
had a child, to every man who had lost a wife and had a motherless son.
This much they knew of David's real history, that Mercy Claridge, his
mother, on a visit to the house of an uncle at Portsmouth, her mother's
brother, had eloped with and was duly married to the captain of a
merchant ship. They also knew that, after some months, Luke Claridge
had brought her home; and that before her child was born news came
that the ship her husband sailed had gone down with all on board. They
knew likewise that she had died soon after David came, and that her
father, Luke Claridge, buried her in her maiden name, and brought the

boy up as his son, not with his father's name but bearing that name so
long honoured in England, and even in the far places of the earth--for
had not Benn Claridge, Luke's brother, been a great carpet-merchant,
traveller, and explorer in Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Soudan--Benn
Claridge of the whimsical speech, the pious life? All this they knew;
but none of them, to his or her knowledge, had ever seen David's father.
He was legendary; though there was full proof that the girl had been
duly married. That had been laid before the Elders by Luke Claridge on
an occasion when Benn Claridge, his brother was come among them
again from the East.
At this moment of trial David was thinking of his uncle, Benn Claridge,
and of his last words fifteen years before when going once again to the
East, accompanied by the Muslim chief Ebn Ezra, who had come with
him to England on the business of his country. These were Benn
Claridge's words: "Love God before all, love thy fellow-man, and thy
conscience will bring thee safe home, lad."
"If he will not repent, there is but one way," said the shrill Elder.
"Let there be no haste," said Luke Claridge, in a voice that shook a
little in his struggle