Chapter 20

On Sunday morning the rain had ceased, and Janet, looking out of the bedroom window, saw, above the house-tops, a shining mass of white cloud rolling under the far-away blue sky. It was going to be a lovely April day. The fresh sky, left clear and calm after the long vexation of wind and rain, mingled its mild influence with Janet’s new thoughts and prospects. She felt a buoyant courage that surprised herself, after the cold crushing weight of despondency which had oppressed her the day before: she could think even of her husband’s rage without the old overpowering dread. For a delicious hope—the hope of purification and inward peace—had entered into Janet’s soul, and made it spring-time there as well as in the outer world.

While her mother was brushing and coiling up her thick black hair—a favourite task, because it seemed to renew the days of her daughter’s girlhood—Janet told how she came to send for Mr. Tryan, how she had remembered their meeting at Sally Martin’s in the autumn, and had felt an irresistible desire to see him, and tell him her sins and her troubles.

‘I see God’s goodness now, mother, in ordering it so that we should meet in that way, to overcome my prejudice against him, and make me feel that he was good, and then bringing it back to my mind in the depth of my trouble. You know what foolish things I used to say about him, knowing nothing of him all the while. And yet he was the man who was to give me comfort and help when everything else failed me. It is wonderful how I feel able to speak to him as I never have done to any one before; and how every word he says to me enters my heart and has a new meaning for me. I think it must be because he has felt life more deeply than others, and has a deeper faith. I believe everything he says at once. His words come to me like rain on the parched ground. It has always seemed to me before as if I could see behind people’s words, as one sees behind a screen; but in Mr. Tryan it is his very soul that speaks.’