Her sobs ceased, but she could not sleep. A full moon strained its rays through the tattered curtain, and as it climbed, she watched the panel of light on the wall opposite steal down past a text above the washstand, past the washstand itself, to the bare flooring. "God is love" said the text, and Molly had paid a pedlar twopence for it, years before, at Epworth fair—quite unaware that she was purchasing the Wesley family motto. She heard her mother and sisters below bid one another good night and mount to their rooms. An hour later her father went his round, locking up. Then came silence.

Suddenly she sat up in her bed. She had heard—yes, surely—Hetty's voice. It seemed to come from outside, close below her window— Hetty's ordinary voice, with no distress in it, speaking some words she could not catch. She listened. Actual sound or illusion, it was not repeated. She climbed out of bed and drew the curtain aside. Bright moonlight lay spread all about the house and, beyond, the fenland faded away to an unseen horizon as through veils of gold and silver, asleep, no creature stirring on the face of it.

She let drop the corner of the curtain and on the instant caught it back again. A dark form, quick and noiseless, slipped past the shadow by the yard-gate. It was Rag the mastiff, left unchained at night: and as he padded across the yard in the full moonlight, Molly saw that he was wagging his tail.

She watched him to his kennel; stepped to her door, lifted the latch cautiously and stole once more along the passage to Hetty's room.

"Hetty!" she whispered. "Hetty dear! Were you calling? Is anything wrong?" She shook the door gently. No answer came. Mr. Wesley had left the key in the lock after turning it on the outside: and still whispering to her sister, Molly wrenched it round, little by little. No one stirred below-stairs: no one answered within. She pushed the door open an inch or two, then wider, pausing as it creaked. A draught of the warm night wind met her as she slipped into the room, and—her fingers trembling and missing their hold—the door fell to behind her, almost with a slam.

She stood still, her heart in her mouth. In her ears the noise was loud enough to awake the house. But as the seconds dragged by and still no sound came from her father's room, "Hetty!" she whispered again.

Her eyes were on the bed as she whispered it, and in the pale light the bed was patently empty. Still she did not comprehend. Her eyes wandered from it to the open window.

When she spoke again it was with the same low whisper, but a whisper which broke as she breathed it to follow where it might not reach.

"What have they done to you? My darling, God watch over you now!"

She crept back to her room and lay shivering, waiting for the dawn.



BOOK III.



PROLOGUE.

In a chilly dawn, high among the mountains to the north of Berar, two Britons were wandering with an Indian attendant. They came like spectres, in curling wreaths of mist that magnified their stature; and daylight cowed each with the first glimpse of his comrade's face, yellow with hunger and glassy-eyed with lack of sleep. They were, in fact, hopelessly lost. They had spent the night huddled together on a narrow ledge, listening hour by hour to the sound of water tumbling over unknown precipices; and now they moved with painful cramped limbs, yet listlessly, being past hope to escape or to see another dawn.

The elder Briton was a Scotsman, aged fifty or thereabouts, a clerk of the H.E.I.C.; the younger an Englishman barely turned twenty, an officer in the same company's service. They hailed from Surat, and had arrived in Berar on a trade mission with an escort of fifty men, of whom their present attendant, Bhagwan Dass, was the solitary survivor; and this came of believing that a "protection" from the Nizam would carry them anywhere in the Nizam's supposed dominions, whereas the de facto rulers of Berar were certain Mahratta chieftains who collected its taxes and who had politely forwarded the mission into the fastnesses of the mountains. There, at the ripe moment, the massacre had taken place, Mr. Menzies and young Prior escaping on their hill-ponies, with Bhagwan Dass clutching at Prior's stirrup-leather. The massacre having been timed a little before nightfall, darkness helped them to get clear away; but Menzies, by over-riding his little mare, flung her, an hour later, with a broken fetlock, and Prior's pony being all but dead-beat, they abandoned the poor brutes on the mountain-side, took to their feet and stumbled on until the setting of the young moon. With the first light of dawn they had roused themselves to start anew, lingering out the agony: for the slopes below swarmed with enemies in chase, and even if a village lurked in these heights the inhabitants would give no help, being afraid of their Mahratta masters.

They had crossed a gully through which a mountain runlet descended, unrolling a ribbon of green mossy herbage on its way, and slipping out of sight over the edge of a precipice of two hundred feet or so. Beyond this the eye saw nothing but clouds of mist heaving and smoking to the very lip of the fall. Young Prior halted for a moment on the farther slope to take breath, and precisely at that moment something happened which he lived to relate a hundred times and always with wonder. For as his eye fell on these clouds of mist, a beam of light came travelling swiftly down the mountain and pierced them, turning them to a fierce blood-red; next, almost with an audible rush, the sun leapt into view over the eastern spurs: and while he stared down upon the vapours writhing and bleeding under this lance-thrust of dawn—while they shook themselves loose and trailed away in wreaths of crimson and gold and violet, and deep in the chasms between them shone the plain with its tilled fields and villages—a cry from Bhagwan Dass fetched him round sharply, and he beheld, a few yards above him on the slope, a man.

The man sat, naked to the waist, at the entrance of a low cave or opening in the hillside. He seemed to be of great age, with a calm and almost unwrinkled face and gray locks falling to his shoulders, around which hung a rosary of black beads, very highly polished and flashing against the sun. From the waist down he was wrapped in a bright yellow shawl, and beside him lay a crutch and a wooden bowl heaped with rice and conserves.

Before the two Britons could master their dismay, Bhagwan Dass had run towards the cave and was imploring the holy man to give them shelter and hiding. For a while he listened merely, and his first response was to lift the bowl and invite them with a gesture to stay their hunger. Famished though they were, they hesitated, and reading the reason in their eyes, he spoke for the first time.

"It will not harm you," said he in Hindustani: "and the villagers below bring me more than I can eat."

From the moment of setting eyes on him—Prior used to declare—a blessed sense of protection fell upon the party; a feeling that in the hour of extreme need God had suddenly put out a shield, under the shadow of which they might rest in perfect confidence. And indeed, though they knew the mountain to be swarming with their enemies, they entered the cave and slept all that day like children. Whether or no meanwhile their enemies drew near they never discovered: but Prior, awaking towards nightfall, saw the hermit still seated at the entrance as they had found him, and lay for a while listening to the click of his rosary as he told bead after bead.

He must, however, have held some communication with the unseen village in the valley: for three bowls of milk and rice stood ready for them. They supped, forbearing—upon Bhagwan Dass's advice—to question him, though eager to know if he had a mind to help them further, and how he might contrive it. Until moonrise he gave no sign at all; then rising gravely, crutch and bowl in hand, stepped a pace or two beyond the entrance and whistled twice—as they supposed for a guide. But the only guides that answered were two small mountain foxes—a vixen and her half-grown cub—that came bounding around an angle of the rock and fawned about his feet while he caressed them and spoke to them softly in a tongue which none of the party understood. And so they all set out, turning their faces westward and keeping to the upper ridges; the foxes trotting always a few paces ahead and showing the way.

All that night they walked as in a dream, and came at daybreak to a ledge with a shrine upon it, and in the shrine a stone figure of a goddess, and below the ledge—perhaps half a mile below it—a village clinging dizzily to the mountain-side.—There was no food in the shrine, only a few withered wreaths of marigolds: but the holy man must have spoken to his foxes, for at dawn a priest came toiling up the slope with a filled bowl so ample that his two arms scarcely embraced it. The priest set down the food, took the hermit's blessing and departed in silence: and this was the only human creature they saw on their journey. Not for all their solicitation would the hermit join them in eating: and at this they marvelled most of all: for he had walked far and moderately fast, yet seemed to feel less fatigue than any of them. That night, as soon as the moon rose, he started afresh with the same long easy stride, and the foxes led the way as before.

The dawn rose, but this time he gave no signal for halting: and the cool of morning was almost ended when he led them out through the last broken crests of the ridge and, pointing to a broad plain at their feet, told them that henceforward they might fare in safety. A broad road traversed the plain, and beside it, some ten to twelve miles from the base of the foothills, twinkled the white walls of a rest-house.

"There," said he, pointing, "either to-day or to-morrow will pass the trader Afzul Khan: and if indeed ye come from Surat—"

His mild eyes, as he pointed, were turned upon Menzies, who broke out in amazement: "For certain Afzul Khan is known to us, as debtor should be to creditor. But how knowest thou either that he passes this way or that we come from Surat?"

"It is enough that I know."

"Either come with us then," Menzies pressed him, "and at the rest-house Afzul Khan shall fill thy bowl with gold-dust; or remain here, and I will send him."

"Why should he do aught so witless?"

Menzies laughed awkwardly. "Though money be useless to thee, holy man, I dare say thy villagers might be the gladder for it."

The hermit shook his head.

"Anyhow," broke in Prior, addressing Menzies in English, "we must do something for him, if only in justice to some folks who will be glad enough to see us back alive."

"My friend here," Menzies interpreted, "has parents living, and is their only son. For me, I have a wife and three children. For their sakes, therefore—"

But the hermit put up a hand. "Something I did for their sakes, giving you back to the chains they will hang upon you. It was weakness in me, and no cause for thanks." He turned his begging bowl so that it shone in the sun: an ant clung to it, crawling on its polished side. "If ye have sons, I may live belike to see them pass my way."

"That is not likely."

"Who knows?" The old man's eyes rested on Bhagwan Dass. "Unlikelier things have befallen me while I sat yonder. See—" he turned the bowl in his hand and nodded towards the ant running hither and thither upon it. "What happens to him that would not likewise happen if he stood still?"

"There is food at the rest-house," Menzies persisted; "but I take it you can find food on your way back, even though since starting we have seen none pass your lips: and that is two days."

"It will be yet two days before I feast again: for I drink not save of the spring by which you found me, and I eat no food the taste of which I cannot wash from me in its water."

Menzies and Prior eyed one another. "Cracked as an old bell!" said the younger man in English, and laughed.

"Is it a vow?" Menzies asked.

"It is a vow."

"But tell me," put in Prior, "does the water of your spring differ from that of a thousand others on these hills?"

"The younger sahib," answered the hermit, "understands not the meaning of a vow; which a man makes to his own hurt, perhaps, or to the hurt of another, or it may even be quite foolishly; but thereby he stablishes his life, while the days of other men go by in a flux of business. As for the water of my hillside," he went on with a sharp change of voice and speaking, to their amazement, in English, "have not your countrymen, O sahibs, their particular springs? Churchman and Dissenter, Presbyterian and Baptist—count they not every Jordan above Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus?"

He turned and walked swiftly from them, mounting the slope with swift loose strides. But while they stared, Bhagwan Dass broke from them and ran in pursuit.

"Not without thy blessing! O Annesley sahib, go not before thou hast blessed me!"

Two days later, at sunset, a child watching a little below the hermit's spring saw him limp back to it and drink and seat himself again at the entrance of the cave; and pelted down to the village with the news. And the hill-people, who had supposed him gone for ever, swarmed up and about the cave to assure themselves.

"Alas!" said the holy man, gazing out upon the twilight when at length all had departed, leaving him in peace. "Cannot a man be anywhere alone with God? And yet," he added, "I was something wistful for their love."



CHAPTER I.

"To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him: neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws which he set before us. O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing."

The voice travelled down the great nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and, as it came, the few morning worshippers—it was a week-day—inclined their faces upwards: for it seemed to pause and float overhead and again be carried forward by its own impulse, a pure column of sound wavering awhile before it broke and spread and dissolved into whispers among the multitudinous arches. To a woman still kneeling by a pillar close within the western doorway it was as the voice of a seraph speaking with the dawn, fresh from his night-watch over earth. She had been kneeling for minutes, and still knelt, but she could not pray. She had no business to be there. To her the sentences carried no message; but the voice smiting, pure and cold, across the hot confusion in her brain, steadied her while it terrified.

Yet she knew the voice well enough. It was but John Romley's. The Dean and Chapter wanted a precentor, and among a score of candidates had selected Romley and two others for further trial. This was his chance and he was using it; making the most of it, too, to the mingled admiration and disgust of his rivals listening in the choir beside him.

And she had dressed early and climbed to the cathedral, not to pray, but to seek Romley because she had instant need of him; because, though she respected his character very little, he was the one man in the world who could help her. She had missed him at the door. Entering, she learned from a verger that he was already robing. Then the great organ sounded, and from habit she dropped on her knees.

John Romley, unseen in the choir, was something very different from John Romley in private life with his loose face and flabby handshake. Old Mr. Wesley had once dismissed him contemptuously as vox et praeterea nihil: but disembodied thus, almost a thing celestial, yet subtly recalling home to her and ties renounced, the voice shook Hetty's soul. For it came on her as the second shock of an ambush. She had climbed to the cathedral with but half of her senses awake, drowsed by love, by the long ride in the languorous night wind, by the exhaustion of a long struggle ended, by her wondering helplessness on arriving—the chill sunlight, the deserted street, the strange voice behind the lodging-house door, the unfamiliar passage and stairs. She had lived a lifetime in those hours, and for the while Wroote Parsonage lay remote as a painful daily round from the dream which follows it. Only the practical instinct, as it were a nerve in the centre of her brain, awake and refusing to be drugged, had kept sounding its alarm to rise and seek Romley; and though at length she obeyed in a panic, she went as one walking in sleep. The front of the cathedral, as she came beneath its shadow, overhung her as a phantom drawn upon the morning sky, its tall towers unsubstantial, trembling against the light, but harmless even should they fall upon her. She entered as one might pass through a paper screen.

The first shock came upon her then. She passed not out of sunlight into sunlight, but out of sunlight into a vast far-reaching, high-arching gloom, which was another world and another life; the solemn twilight which her upbringing had taught her to associate with God. Once before in her life, and once only, she had stood within the minster—on her confirmation day, when she had entered with her hand in her mother's. Her eyes sought and found the very place where she had sat then among the crowd of girl-candidates, and a ghost in a white frock sat there still with bowed head. She remembered the very texture and scent of that white frock: they came back with the awe, the fervour, the passionate desire to be good; and these memories cried all in her ears, "What have you to do with that child? Which of you is Hetty? You cannot both be real."

They sang in her ears while she questioned the verger about Romley. He had to repeat his answers before she thanked him and turned towards one of the lowest seats. She did not repent: she was not thinking of repentance. She loved, she had given all for love, and life was fuller of beautifying joy than ever it had been even on that day of confirmation: but beneath the joy awoke a small ache, and with the ache a certain knowledge that she might never sit beside the child in white, never so close as to touch her frock; that their places in this building, God's habitation, were eternally separate.

Then the organ ceased, and the voice began to speak. And the voice uttered promise of pardon, but Hetty heard nothing of the words—only the notes.

"And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and A dam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden."

Less terrible this voice was; a seraph's rather, at the lodge-gate, welcoming the morn. Yet Hetty crouched by her pillar, afraid. For the day he welcomed was not her day, the worship he offered was not her worship; for her a sword lay across the gate.

Her terror passed, and she straightened herself. After all, she did not repent. Why should she repent? She was loved; she loved in return, utterly and without guile, with a love which, centred upon one, yet embraced all living creatures. Nay, it embraced Heaven, if Heaven would accept it. And why not?

"Wherefore let us beseech him," said the voice, "to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do at this present; and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy . . ."

"Pure and holy"—but she desired no less, and out of her love. She wanted to be friends with all at home, to go to them fearlessly and make them understand her as she understood them, and to be good all the days of her life. "True repentance"? Why repent? . . . Ah, yes, of course: but God was no haggler over hours. In an hour or two . . . "That those things may please him which we do at this present—" She caught at her heart now as the terror—a practical terror this time—returned upon it. At all costs she must find John Romley after service, though indeed there was little danger of missing him, for he, no doubt, would be seeking her.

Her mind was clear now.

She lay in wait for him as he stepped out under the great porch, with a clean surplice on his arm. He paused there with a smile on his face, glanced up at the blue sky, clapped on his hat, and descended the steps gaily, whistling a phrase from the Venite exultemus; too far preoccupied to recognise Hetty, until she stepped forward and almost laid a hand on his arm.

"Miss Mehetabel!"

Plainly, then, he was not seeking her.

"You in Lincoln? This is a surprise—a pleasant surprise, indeed!"

"But I came in search of you. I have been waiting—" She nodded her head towards the porch.

"Eh? You heard? 'Twas not altogether a breakdown, I hope? You must allow for some nervousness—did you detect it? No? Well, I don't mind owning to you I was nervous as a cat: but there, if you didn't detect it I shall flatter myself I did passably." He laughed, evidently on the best terms with himself. His breath smelt of beer. "The Rector is with you, of course?"

"My father? But, Mr. Romley, I don't think you understand—"

"I shall do myself the pleasure of calling on him this morning. Nothing could have happened better, and I'm in luck's way to-day, for certain. It seems the Dean and Chapter require a certificate from him—a testimonial—just a line or two, to say that I'm a decent respectable fellow. We have not been friends of late—I hope Miss Patty keeps pretty well, by the way—but he won't deny me that small favour. You were not seeking me on her account?" he added, by an afterthought. "Patty?" She uttered her sister's name to gain time, for in truth she was bewildered, alarmed.

He nodded. "We are not allowed to correspond, as you know. But she must keep up her heart: your father will come round when he sees me precentor. 'Tis a good opening. We must allow for the Rector's crotchets (you'll excuse me, I feel sure): but give him time, I say— give him time, and he'll come round right and tight."

"My father is not with me. Oh, Mr. Romley, you have heard, surely? I was told—but there, you have the licence."

"The licence! What licence?" He stared at her.

Her heart sank. Here was some horrible mistake. She bethought herself of his careless habits, which indeed were notorious enough in and about Wroote and Epworth. "It must be among your letters—have you neglected them lately? Ah, think—think, my friend: for to me this means all the world."

"Upon my word of honour, Miss Hetty, I don't understand one word you're saying. Come, let us have it clear. What brings you to Lincoln? The Rector is not with you. Who, then?"

"We came here last night—early this morning, rather—"

"'We'?"

"I have left home. You know what we intended? But my father locked me up. I had tried to be open with him, and he would listen to nothing. So—as everything was ready—and you here with the licence—"

John Romley stepped back a pace. It is doubtful if he heard the last words. His eyes were round in his head.

"You are here—with—him!" He gasped it in an incredulous whisper. For a moment in her earnestness she met his stare. Then her hands went up to her face. "You? You?" he repeated slowly. His eyes shrank from her face and wandered helplessly over the smoke, over the red roofs of the town below them.

"But we came to get married!" She plucked her hands away from her face and stepped close to him, forcing his reluctant eyes to meet hers. Her cheeks flamed: he groaned at the sight of her beauty. "But we came to get married! John, there is nothing—surely nothing?—that with your help cannot be set right? Ah, I forget—by marrying us you will offend father, and you find now that you want this favour of him. John, it cannot be that—you cannot be playing so cruel a trick for that—and after your promise? Forgive me if I am selfish: but think what I am fighting for!"

"It will cost me the precentorship," answered he slowly, "but I hadn't given a thought to that."

"It shall cost you nothing of the kind. After all, father is juster to others than to me. I will write—we will both write: I will tell him what you risked to save his daughter. Or, stay: any clergyman will do, will he not? We need only the licence. You shall risk nothing: give me only the licence and I will run and find one."

"Dear Miss Hetty, I made no promise. I have no licence. None has reached me, nor word of one."

"Then he must have it! He told me—that is, I understood—" She broke off with a laugh most pitiful in John's ears, though it seemed to reassure her. "But how foolish of me! Of course he must have it. And you will come with me, at once? At the least you are willing to come?"

"Surely I will come." John's face was gloomy. "Where are the lodgings?"

"I cannot tell you the name of the street, but I can find them. John, you are an angel! And afterwards I will sit and tell you about Patty to your heart's content. We can be married in the parlour, I suppose? Or must it be in church? I had rather—far rather—it were in church if you could manage that for us: but not to lose time. Perhaps we can find a church later in the day and get permission to go through the service again. I daresay, though, he has it all arranged—he said I might leave it to him. You won't tell him, John, what a fright I have given myself?"

So her tongue ran on as they descended the hill together. John Romley walked beside her stupidly, wondering if she were in truth reassured or chattering thus to keep up her hopes. They might, after all, be justified: but his forebodings weighed on his tongue. Also the shock had stunned him and all his wits seemed to be buzzing loose in his head.

They did not notice, although they passed it close, a certain signboard over a low-browed shop half-way down the street. Afterwards Hetty remembered passing the shop, and that its one window was caked with mud and grimed with dust on top of the mud. She did not see a broad-shouldered man in a dirty baize apron seated at his work-bench behind the pane. Nor after passing the shop did she turn her head: but walked on unaware of an ill-shaven face thrust out of its doorway and staring after her.

William Wright sat at his bench that morning, fitting a leather washer in a leaky brass tap. In the darkest corner at the back of the shop his father—a peevish old man, well past seventy—stooped over a desk, engaged as usual in calculating his book-debts, an occupation which brought him no comfort but merely ingrained his bad opinion of mankind. Having drunk his trade into a decline, and being now superannuated, he nagged over his ledgers from morning to night and snatched a fearful joy in goading William to the last limit of forbearance. William, who had made himself responsible for the old man's debts, endured him on the whole very creditably. "Here's a bad 'un," "Here's a bad 'un," piped the voice from time to time.

William trimmed away at his washer.

"Hello! Who's been putting this in the ledger?" The old man held up a thin strip of leather. "Oh, Willum, here's a very bad 'un!"

"What name?" asked William indifferently, without turning his head.

"Wesley, Reverend Samuel—Wroote and Epworth Rectory— twelve-seventeen-six. Two years owing, and not a stiver on account. Oh, a poisonous bad 'un!"

"That's all right!"

"Not a stiver on account!"

"All right, I tell you. There won't be any paying on account with that bill: it'll be all or nothing. All, perhaps; and, if so, something more than all"—he laid down his clasp-knife and almost involuntarily put a hand up to his cheek—"but nothing, most like. I put that slip of leather there to remind me, but I don't need it. 'Twelve-seventeen-six'—better scratch it off."

"'Scratch it off'? Scratch off twelve-seventeen-six!" Old Wright spun round on his stool. But William sat gazing out of the window. He had picked up his knife again, but did not at once resume work.

The next thing old Wright heard was the clatter of a knife on the bench. William sprang up as it dropped, crept swiftly to the shop door, and stood there craning his head into the street and fumbling with his apron.

"What's the matter? Cut yourself? It don't want a doctor, do it?"

William did not answer: suddenly he plucked off his apron, flung it backwards into the shop, and disappeared into the street. The old man tottered forward, picked it off the floor and stood examining it, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish's.



CHAPTER II.

"'Brought him'! Who told you to bring him?"

Hetty's lover faced her across the round table in the lodging-house parlour. The table was spread for two, and Hetty's knife and plate stood ready for her with a covered dish before it. He had breakfasted, and their entrance surprised him with an empty pewter in his hand, his chair thrust back sideways from the table, his legs extended towards the empty fire-place, and his eyes bent on his handsome calves with a somewhat moody frown.

"Who told you to bring him?"

John Romley stood in the doorway behind Hetty's shoulder. She turned to him bravely and quietly, albeit with the scare in her face.

"I ought not to have brought you in like this. You will not mind waiting outside, will you?—a minute only—while I explain—"

Romley bent his head and walked out, closing the door.

"Dear"—Hetty turned—"you must forgive me, but I could not rest until I had brought him."

He had risen, and stood now with his face averted, gazing out of the window where a row of clouts and linen garments on a clothes-line blocked the view of an untidy back-yard. He had known that this moment must come, but not that it would take him so soon and at unawares. He let his anger rise while he considered what to answer; for a man in the wrong will miss no excuse for losing his temper.

Hetty waited for a moment, then went on—"And I thought you had given him the licence: that is what made me so anxious to find—"

A noise in the passage cut short her excuses: a woman's laugh. Hetty knew of two women only in the house—the landlady who had opened the door last night and a pert-looking slatternly servant she had passed at the foot of the stairs on her way to the cathedral. She could not tell to which of these the voice belonged: but the laugh and the jest it followed—though she had not caught it—were plainly at John Romley's expense, and the laugh was horrible.

It rang on her ears like a street-door bell. It seemed to tear down the mystery of the house and scream out its secret. The young man at the window turned against his will and met Hetty's eyes. They were strained and staring.

She put out her hand. "Where is the licence?" she asked. "Give it to me."

The change in her voice and manner confused him. "My dear child, don't be silly," he blundered.

"Give me the licence."

"Tut, tut—let us understand one another like sensible folks. You must not treat me like a boy, to be bounced in this fashion by John Romley." He began to whip up his temper again. "Nasty tippling parson! I've more than a mind to kick him into the street."

Her eyes widened on his with growing knowledge, growing pain: but faith lived in them yet.

"I thought you had given him the licence, to be ready for us. Yes, yes—you did say it!" Her hand went up to her bosom for his last letter, which she had worn there until last night. Then she remembered: she had left it upstairs. Having him, she had no more need to wear it.

He read the gesture. "You are right, dear, and I forgot. I did say so, because I believed by the time the words reached you—or thereabouts, at any rate—"

"Then you have it. Give it to me, please," she commanded.

He stepped to the fire-place, unable to meet her eye. "You hurried me," he muttered: "there was not time."

For a moment she spread out both hands as one groping in the dark: then the veil fell from her eyes and she saw. The truth spoke to her senses first—in the sordid disarray of breakfast, in the fusty smell of the room with its soiled curtains, its fly-blown mirror, its outlook on the blank court. A whiff of air crept in at the open window—flat, with a scullery odour which sickened her soul. In her ears rang the laugh of the woman in the passage.

"What have you done? What have you done to me?"

She crouched, shivering, like some beautiful wild creature entrapped. He faced her again. Her eyes were on his, but fastened there now by a shrinking terror.

"Hetty!"

She put up a hand and turned her face to the wall, as if to shut out him and the light. He stepped to her, caught her by the wrist and forced her round towards him. At the first touch he felt her wince. So will you see a young she-panther wince and cower from her tamer's whip.

Yet, although she shuddered, she could not drag her hand away. He was her tamer now: and as he spoke soothingly and she grew quieter, a new faith awoke in her, yet a faith as old as woman; the false imperishable faith that by giving all she binds a man as he has bound her.

With a cry she let her brow sink till it touched his breast. Then, straightening herself, she gripped him by both shoulders and stared close into his eyes—clinging to him as she had clung that evening on the frozen canal, but with a face how different!

"But you mean no harm? You told me a falsehood"—here he blinked, but she went on, her eyes devouring his—"but you told it in kindness? Say you mean no harm to me—you will get this licence soon. How soon? Do not be angry—ah, see how I humble myself to you! You mean honestly: yes, yes, but say it! how soon?"

"Hetty, I'll be honest with you. One cannot get a licence in a day."

"And I will be patient—so patient! Only we must leave this horrible house: you must find me a lodging where I can be alone."

"Why, what's the matter with this house?" He tried a laugh, and the result betrayed him.

Her body stiffened again. "When did you apply for the licence?" she demanded. "How long since?"

He tried to shuffle. "But answer me!" she insisted, thrusting him away. And then, after a pause and very slowly, "You have not applied at all," she said. "You are lying again. . . . God forgive you." She drew herself up and for an instant he thought she was going to strike him; but she only shivered. "I must go home."

"Home!" he echoed.

"And whither but home?"—with a loathing look around her.

"You will not dare."

In all this pitiful scene was nothing so pitiful as the pride in which she drew herself up and towered over the man who had abased her. Yet her voice was quiet. "That you cannot understand is worst of all. I feared sin too little: but I can face the consequences. I fear them less than—than—"

A look around her completed the sentence eloquently enough. As she stood with her hand on the door-latch that look travelled around the sordid room and rested finally on him as a piece of it. Then the latch clicked, and she was gone.

She stood in the passage by the foot of the staircase. Half-way up the servant girl was stooping over a stair-rod, pretending to clean it. Hetty's wits were clear. She reflected a moment, and mounted steadily to her room, crammed her poor trifles into her satchel, and came down again with a face of ice.

The girl drew aside, watching her intently. But—on a sudden impulse—"Miss—" she said.

"I beg your pardon!" Hetty paused.

"I wouldn't be in a hurry, miss. You can master him, if you try—you and the parson: and the worst of 'em's better than none. And you that pretty, too!"

"I don't understand you," answered Hetty coldly, and passed on.

John Romley was patrolling the pavement outside. She forced up a smile to meet him. "There has been some difficulty with the licence," said she, and marvelled at her own calmness. "I am sorry, John, to have brought you here for nothing. He hid it from me—in kindness: but meanwhile I am going back." With this brave falsehood she turned to leave him, knowing that he believed it as little as she.

He too marvelled. "Is it necessary to go back?"

"It is necessary."

"Then let me find you some conveyance." But he saw that she wished only to be rid of him, and so shook hands and watched her down the street.

"The infernal hound!" he said to himself; and as she passed out of sight he turned to the lodging-house door and entered without knocking.

He emerged, twenty minutes later, with his white bands twisted, his hat awry, and a smear of blood on the surplice he carried—altogether a very unclerical-looking figure. On the way back to his inn he kept looking at his cut knuckles, and, arriving, called for a noggin of brandy. By midday he was drunk, and at one o'clock he was due to appear at the Chapter House. The hour struck: but John Romley sat on in the coffee-room staring stupidly at his knuckles.

And all this while in the lodging-house parlour sat or paced the man who has no name in this book. He also was drinking: but the brandy-and-water, though he gulped it fiercely, neither unsteadied his legs nor confused his brain. Only it deadened by degrees the ruddy colour in his face to a gray shining pallor, showing up one angry spot on the cheek-bone. Though he frowned as he paced and muttered now and again to himself, he was not thinking of John Romley.

Some men are born to be the curse of women and, through women, of the world. Despicable in themselves they inherit a dreadful secret before which, as in a fortress betrayed to a false password, the proudest virtue hauls down its flag, and kneeling, proffers its keys. Doubtless they move under fate to an end appointed, though to us they appear but as sightseers, obscure and irresponsible, who passing through a temple defile its holies and go their casual ways. We wonder that this should be. But so it is, and such was this man. Let his name perish.



CHAPTER III.

Late that evening and a little after moonrise, Johnny Whitelamb, going out to the woodstack for a faggot, stood still for a moment at sight of a figure half-blotted in the shadow.

"Miss Hetty—oh, Miss Hetty!" he called softly.

Hetty did not run; but as he stepped to her, let him take her hands and lifted her face to the moonlight.

"What are they doing?" she whispered.

Johnny was never eloquent. "They are sitting by the fire, just as usual," he answered her, but his voice shook over the words.

"Just as usual?" she echoed dully. "Mother and the girls, you mean?"

"Yes: the Rector is in his study. I have not seen him to-day: only the mistress has seen him." He paused: Hetty shivered. She was weak and woefully tired: for, excepting a lift at Marton and a second in a wagon from Gainsborough to Haxey, she had walked from Lincoln and had been walking all day.

"I cannot tell what mistress thinks," Johnny went on: "the others talk to each other—a word now and then—but she sits looking at the fire and says nothing. I think she means to sit up late to-night. Else why did she send me out for another faggot?" he asked, in his simple, puzzled way. "But oh, Miss Hetty, she will be glad you've come back, and now we can all be happy again!"

She waved a hand feebly. "Fetch Molly to me."

By the pallor of her brow in the moonlight he made sure she was near to fainting: and, indeed she was not far from it. He ran and burst in at the kitchen-door impetuously; but meeting the eyes of the family, surprised—as well they might be—by the violence of his entry and his scared face, he became suddenly and absurdly diplomatic, crossed to Molly and whispered, as Mrs. Wesley turned her eyes from the fire.

"But where is the faggot?" she demanded.

"I—I forgot it," stammered Johnny and was for returning to fetch it. Molly rose.

"Hetty is outside," she announced.

For a second or two there was silence. Mrs. Wesley turned to her crippled daughter. "You had best bring her in. The rest of you, go to bed."

They obeyed at once and in silence. Johnny, too, stole off to his mattress in the glass-doored cupboard under the stairs.

When Molly returned, leading in her sister, Mrs. Wesley was seated by the fire alone. Mother and daughter looked into each other's eyes. In silence Hetty stepped forward and dropped into the chair a minute ago vacated by Kezzy. But for the ticking of the tall clock there was no sound in the kitchen.

Mrs. Wesley read Hetty's eyes; read the truth in them, and something else which tied her tongue. She made no offer to rise and kiss her.

"You are hungry?" she asked after a while, and Molly pushed forward a plate of biscuits. Hetty ate ravenously for a minute (for twenty-four hours not a morsel of food had passed her lips and she had walked close on thirty miles) and then pushed away the plate in disgust. Her eyes still sought her mother's; they neither pleaded nor reproached.

Yet Mrs. Wesley spoke, when next she spoke, as if choosing to answer a plea. "Your father does not know of your return. You may sleep with Molly to-night." She bent over the hearth and raked its embers together. Molly laid a hand lightly on Hetty's shoulder, then slipped it under the crook of her arm, and lifted and led her from the kitchen.

Hetty went unresisting. When they reached the bedroom she halted and stared around as one who had lost her bearings. She winced once and shook as Molly's gentle fingers began to unfasten her bodice, but afterwards stood quite passive and suffered herself to be undressed as a little child. Molly unlaced her shoes. Molly brought cool water in a basin, bathed her face and hands, braided her hair—the masses of red-brown hair she had been used to admire and caress, passing a hand over them as tenderly as of old; then knelt and washed the tired feet, and wiped them, feeling the arch of the instep with her bare hand and chafing them to make sure they were dry—so cold they were.

"Won't you say your prayers, dear?"

Hetty shook her head.

"Then at least you shall kneel by me, and I will pray for both."

Molly's arm was about her. She obeyed and with her waist so encircled knelt by the bed. And twice Molly, not interrupting her prayer, pressed the waist close to her side, and once lifted her lips and kissed the side of the brow.

They arose at length, the one confirmed now and made almost fearless by saintliness and love. But the other, creeping first into the narrow bed, shrank away towards the wall and lay with her eyes fixed on it and staring.

"No, darling," whispered Molly, "when you were strong and I was weak you used to comfort me. I am the strong one now, and you shall not escape me so!"

And so it was. Her feeble arms had suddenly become strong. They slid, the one beneath Hetty's shoulder, the other across and below her bosom, and straining, not to be denied, they forced her round. Wide-eyed still, Hetty gazed up into eyes dark in the moonlight, but conquering her, piercing through all secrets. Her own brimmed suddenly with tears and she lay quiet, her soul naked beneath Molly's soul.

"Ay, let them come—let them come while I hold you!"

While Hetty lay, neither winking nor moving, the big drops overbrimmed at the corners of each eye and trickled on the pillow. As one fell, another gathered. Silent, unchecked, they flowed, and Molly bent and watched them flowing.

"A little while—a little while!" moaned Hetty.

"I will hold you so for ever."

"No—yet a little while, though you know not what you are holding."

"Were it a thousand times worse than I think, I am holding my sister."

"To-morrow—"

"We will bear it together." Molly smiled, but very faintly. "You forget that I shall never marry—that I shall always need you to care for. All my life till now you have protected me: now I shall pay back what I owe."

"Ah, you think I fear father? Molly, I do not fear father at all. I fear myself—what I am." And still staring up Hetty whispered a horrible word.

"Oh hush, hush!" Molly laid a swift hand over her lips, and for a while there was silence in the room.

"So make the most of me now," Hetty murmured, "while you have me to hold, dear; for what I am is not mine to give."

"Hetty!" Molly drew back. "You will not go—to him—again?"

"If he will marry me. I do not think he will, dear: I do not think he has the courage. But if he calls me, I will go humbly, thankfully."

"And if not—"

Hetty turned her face aside: but after a moment she looked up, staring, as before. There were no tears in her eyes now.

"I do not know." She was silent awhile, then went on slowly. "But if any honest man will have me, I vow before God to marry him. Yes, and I would take his hand and bless it for so much honour, were he the lowest hind in the fields."

Molly choked down a cry and held her breath. Her arms slipped from around the dear body she could have saved from fire, from drowning, from anything but this. This pair had loved and honoured each other from babyhood: the heart of each had been a shrine for the other, daily decked with pretty thoughts as a shrine with flowers in season. All that was best they had brought each other: how much at need they were ready to give God alone knew. And now, by the law which in Eden divided woman from man, the basest stranger among the millions of men held the power denied to Molly, the only salvation for Hetty's need. "What I am is not mine to give"—for a minute Molly bowed over her sister, helpless.

"But no," she cried suddenly, "that is wicked! It would be a thousand times worse than the other, however bad. You shall take no such oath! You did not know what it meant. Hetty, Hetty, take it back!"

She flung herself forward sobbing.

"I have said it," Hetty answered quietly. The two lay shuddering, breast to breast.

Downstairs a sad-eyed woman sat over the dead fire. She heard a chair pushed back in the next room, and trembled. By and by she heard her husband trying the bolts of the doors and window-shutters. He looked into the kitchen and, finding her there seated with the lamp beside her, withdrew without a word. She had not raised her head. His footsteps went up the stair slowly.

For another hour, almost, she sat on, staring at the gray ashes: then took the lamp and went shivering to her room.



CHAPTER IV.

The worst (or perhaps the best) of a temper so choleric as Mr. Wesley's is that by constant daily expenditure on trifles it fatigues itself, and is apt to betray its possessor by an unexpected lassitude when a really serious occasion calls. A temper thoroughly cruel (which his was not) steadily increases its appetite: but a temper less than cruel, or cruel only by accident, will run itself to a standstill and either cry for a strong whip or yield to the temptation to defer the crisis.

On this Mrs. Wesley was building when she broke to her husband the news of Hetty's return. He lifted himself in his chair, clutching its arms. His face was gray with spent passion.

"Where is she?"

"She has gone for a walk, alone," she answered. She had, in truth, packed Hetty off and watched her across the yard before venturing to her husband's door.

"So best." He dropped back in his chair with a sigh that was more than half composed of relief. "So best, perhaps. I will speak to her later."

He looked at his wife with hopeless inquiry. She bowed her head for sign that it was indeed hopeless.

Now Molly had sought her mother early and spoken up. But Molly (who intended nothing so little) had not only made herself felt, for the first time in her life, as a person to be reckoned with, but had also done the most fatally foolish thing in her life by winding up with: "And we—you and father and all of us, but father especially—have driven her to it! God knows to what you will drive her yet: for she has taken an oath under heaven to marry the first man who offers, and she is capable of it, if you will not be sensible."

—Which was just the last thing Hetty would have forbidden her to tell, yet just the last thing Hetty would have told, had she been pleading for Molly. For Hetty had long since gauged her mother and knew that, while her instinct for her sons' interests was well-nigh impeccable, on any question that concerned her daughters she would blunder nine times out of ten.

So now Mrs. Wesley, meaning no harm and foreseeing none, answered her husband gravely, "She has told me nothing. But she swears she will marry the first man who offers."

The Rector shut his mouth firmly. "That decides it," he answered. "Has she gone in search of the fool?"

But this was merely a cry of bitterness. As Mrs. Wesley stole from the room, he opened a drawer in his table, pulled out some sheets of manuscript, and gazed at them for a while without fixing his thoughts. He seldom considered his daughters. Women had their place in the world: that place was to obey and bear children: to carry on the line for men. It was a father's duty to take care that their husbands should be good men, worthy of the admixture of good blood. The family which yielded its daughters to this office yielded them as its surplus. They did not carry on its name, which depended on its sons. . . . He had three sons: but of all his daughters Hetty had come nearest to claim a son's esteem. Something masculine in her mind had encouraged him to teach her Latin and Greek. It had been an experiment, half seriously undertaken; it had come to be seriously pursued. Not even John had brought so flexible a sense of language. In accuracy she could not compare with John, nor in that masculine apprehension which seizes on logic even in the rudiments of grammar. Mr. Wesley—a poet himself, though by no means a great one—had sometimes found John too pragmatical in demanding reasons for this and that. "Child," he had once protested, "you think to carry everything by dint of argument; but you will find how little is ever done in the world by close reasoning": and, turning to his wife in a pet, "I profess, sweetheart, I think our Jack would not attend to the most pressing necessities of nature unless he could give a reason for it." To Hetty, on the other hand, beauty—beauty in language, in music, in all forms of art, no less than the beauty of a spring day— was an ultimate thing and lay beyond questions: and Mr. Wesley, though as a divine he checked her somewhat pagan impulses and recalled them to give account of their ground of choice, as a scholar could not help admiring them. For they seldom led her to choose wrongly. In Hetty dwelt something of the Attic instinct which, in days of literary artifice and literary fashions from which she could not wholly escape, kept her taste fresh and guided her at once to browse on what was natural and health-giving and to reject with delicate disgust what was rank and overblown. Himself a sardonic humorist, he could enjoy the bubbling mirth with which she discovered comedy in the objects of their common derision. Himself a hoplite in study, laborious, without sense of proportion, he could look on and smile while she, a woman, walked more nimbly, picking and choosing as she went.

The manuscript he held was a poem of hers, scored with additions and alterations of his own, by which (though mistakenly) he believed he had improved it: a song of praise put in the mouth of a disciple of Plato: its name, "Eupolis, his Hymn to the Creator." As he turned the pages, his eyes paused and fastened themselves on a passage here and there:

"Sole from sole Thou mak'st the sun On his burning axles run: The stars like dust around him fly, And strew the area of the sky: He drives so swift his race above, Mortals can't perceive him move: So smooth his course, oblique or straight, Olympus shakes not with his weight. As the Queen of solemn Night Fills at his vase her orb of light— Imparted lustre—thus we see The solar virtue shines by Thee. EIRESIONE! we'll no more For its fancied aid implore, Since bright oil and wool and wine And life-sustaining bread are Thine; Wine that sprightly mirth supplies, Noble wine for sacrifice. . . ."

The verses, though he repeated them, had no meaning for him. He remembered her sitting at the table by the window (now surrendered to Johnny Whitelamb) and transcribing them into a fair copy, sitting with head bent and the sunlight playing on her red-brown hair: he remembered her standing by his chair with a flushed face, waiting for his verdict. But though his memory retained these visions, they carried no sentiment. He only thought of the young, almost boyish, promise in the lines:

"Omen, monster, prodigy! Or nothing is, or Jove, from thee. Whether various Nature's play, Or she, renversed, thy will obey, And to rebel man declare Famine, plague or wasteful war . . . No evil can from Thee proceed; 'Tis only suffered, not decreed. . . ."

He gazed from the careful handwriting to the horizon beyond his window. Why had he fished out the poem from its drawer? She, the writer—his child—was a wanton.



CHAPTER V.

Hetty had found a patch of ragged turf and mallow where the woodstack hid her from the parsonage windows; and sat there in the morning sun—unconsciously, as usual, courting its full rays. Between her and the stack the ground was bare, strewn with straw and broken twigs. She supposed that her father would send for her soon: but she was preparing no defence, no excuses. She hoped, indeed, that the interview would be short, but simply because the account she must render to him seemed trivial beside that which she must render to herself. Her eyes watched the hens as they scratched pits in the warm dust, snuggled down and adjusted and readjusted their wing-feathers. But her brain was busied over and over with the same thought—"I am now a bad woman. Is there yet any way for me to be good?"

Yet her wits were alert enough. She heard her father's footstep on the path twenty yards away, guessed the moment which would bring him into sight of her. Though she did not look up, she knew that he had come to a halt. She waited. He turned and walked slowly away. She knew why he had faltered. Her mind ran back to the problem. "I am a bad woman. Is there any way for me to be good?"

Half an hour passed. Emilia came round the rick, talking to herself, holding a wooden bowl from which she had been feeding the chickens. She came upon Hetty unawares and stood still, with a face at first confused, but gradually hardening.

"Sit down, Emmy." Hetty pointed to a faggot lying a few paces off.

Emilia hesitated.

"You may sit down: near enough to listen—"

'Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, let Emmy bow to it.'

"You were reciting as you came along." She raised her eyes with a grave smile. "Shall I tell you your secret?"

"What secret?" asked Emilia, reddening in spite of herself.

"Oh, I have known it a long while! But if you want me to whisper it, you must come closer. Nay, my dear, I know very little of the stage—perhaps as little as you: but, from what I have read, it will bring you close to creatures worse than I."

Emilia was scared now. "Who told you? Have you heard from Jacky?— no, he couldn't, because—"

"—Because you never told him, although you may have hinted at it. And if you told him, he would laugh and call it the ambition of a girl who knows nothing of the world."

"I will not starve here. And now that this—this disgrace—"

"Father would think it no less disgrace to see you an actress. Listen: a little while ago he came this way, meaning to curse me, but he turned back and did not. And now you come, and are confused, and I read you just as plainly. While my wits are so clear I want to say one or two things to you. Yesterday—only yesterday—I left home for ever, and here I am back again. I have been wicked, you say, and there is nothing sinful in becoming an actress. Perhaps not: yet I am sure father would think it sinful—even more selfishly sinful than my fault, because it would hurt the careers of Jacky and Charles; and that, as you know, he would never forgive."

"Who are you, to be lecturing me?"

"I am your sister, who has done wrong: I have tasted bitter fruit and must go eating it all my life. But it is fruit of knowledge—ah, listen, Emmy! If you do this and become famous, the greater your fame, the greater the injury; or so father would hold it, and perhaps our brothers too. Hetty can be hidden and forgotten in a far country parish. But can Jacky become a bishop, having an actress for sister?"

"You are sudden in this thought for your brothers."

"It is not of them I am thinking. I say that if you succeed you will lose father's forgiveness and always carry with you this sorrowful knowledge. Yet I would bid you go and do it; for to be great is worth much cost of sorrow, and sorrow might even increase your greatness. But have you that strength? And if you should not succeed?—We know nothing of the world: all our thoughts of it come out of books and dreaming. You imagine yourself treading the boards and holding all hearts captive with your voice. So I used to imagine myself slaying dragons. So, only yesterday, I believed—"

She sat erect with a shiver. "To wake and find all your dreams changed to squalor, and for you no turning back! Have you the strength, Emmy—to go forward and change that squalor back again by sheer force into beautiful dreams? Have you the strength?" She gazed at Emilia and added musingly, "No, you have not the strength. You will stay on here in the cage, an obedient woman, your talent repressed to feed the future of those grand brothers of ours who take all we give, yet cannot help us one whit. They take it innocently; they do not know; and they are dear good fellows. But they cannot help. I only have done what may injure them—though I do not think it will: and when father came along the path just now, he was thinking of them rather than of me—of me only as I might injure them."

She was right indeed. Mr. Wesley had left the house thinking of her: but a few steps had called up the faces of his sons, and by habit, since he thought of them always on his walks. His studies put aside, to think of them was his one recreation. Coming upon Hetty, he had felt himself taken at unawares, and retreated.

"—And when he turned away," Hetty went on, "I understood. And I felt sorry for him; because all of a sudden it came to me that he may be wiser than any of us, and one day it will be made plain to us, what we have helped to do—or to spoil."

"Here is someone you had better be sorry for," said Emilia, glancing along the path at the sound of footsteps and catching sight of Nancy. "She has made up her mind that John Lambert will have no more to do with us now; and the wedding not a month away!"

Sure enough, Nancy's eyes were red, and she gazed at Hetty less with reprobation than with lugubrious reproach.

"Then she knows less of John Lambert than I do," said Hetty; "and still less how deep he is in love with her. Nancy dear," she asked, "was he to have walked over this morning?"

"He was coming from Haxey way," wailed Nancy. "He was to have been here at ten o'clock and it is past that now. Of course he has heard, and does not mean to come."

Hetty choked down an exceeding bitter sob.

"Anne—sister Anne," she answered in her old light manner, though she desired to be alone and to weep: "go, look along the road and say if you see anyone coming!"

Nancy turned away, too generous to upbraid her sister, but hotly ashamed of her and her lack of contrition, and indignantly sorry for herself. Nevertheless she went towards the gate whence she could see along the road.

"It seems to me," said Emilia, "that you are scarcely awake yet to your—your situation."

She was trying to recover her superiority, which Hetty had shaken by guessing her secret.

"Oh, yes I am," Hetty answered. "But my time may be short for talking: so I use what ways I can to make my sisters listen. Hark!"

"He is coming!" Nancy announced, running towards them from the gate. Honest love shone in her eyes. "He is coming—and there is someone with him!"

"Who?" asked Emilia. Hetty's eyes put the same question, far more eagerly. She rose up: her face was white.

"I don't know. He—they—are half a mile away. Yet I seem to know the figure. It is odd now—"

Hetty put out a hand and leaned it against the wood-stack to steady herself. The sharpened end of a stake pierced her palm, but she did not feel it.

"Is it—is it—" Her lips worked and formed the words, inaudibly.

"Run and look again," commanded Emilia.

But Hetty turned and walked swiftly away. Could it be he? No—and yet why not? Until this moment she had not known how much she built upon that chance. She loved him still: at the bottom of her heart most tenderly. She had reproached herself, saying that her desire for him had nothing to do with love—was no genuine impulse to forgive, but a selfish cowardly longing to be saved, as only he could save her. She was wrong. She desired to be saved: but she desired far more wildly that he should play the man, justify her love and earn forgiveness. She had—and was, alas! to prove it—an almost infinite capacity to forgive. She, Hetty, of the reckless wit and tongue—she would meet him humbly—as one whose sin had been as deep as his . . .

Was it he? If so, she would beg his pardon for thoughts which had accused him of cowardice. . . .

She could not wait for the truth. So much joy it would bring, or so deep anguish. She walked away blindly towards the fields, not once looking back.

"So there you're hiding!" cried John Lambert triumphantly, saluting Nancy with a smacking kiss on either cheek, and in no way disconcerted by Emilia's presence.

Nancy pushed him away, but half-heartedly.

"No, you mustn't!" she protested, and her face grew suddenly tragic.

"Oh, I forgot for the moment!" John Lambert tried to look doleful. He was an energetic young land-surveyor, with tow-coloured hair and a face incurably jolly.

"You have heard, then?" asked Emilia.

"Why, bless you, your father was around to see me at eight o'clock yesterday morning, or some such hour. He must have saddled at once. He's a stickler, is the Rector. 'Young Mr. Lambert,' says he, very formal, or some such words, 'I regret to say I must retract my permission that you should marry into my family, as doubtless you will wish to be released of your troth.' 'Hallo!' says I, a bit surprised, but knowing his crotchets: 'Why, what have I been doing?' 'Nothing,' says he. 'Then what has she been up to?'"—this with a wink at Emilia—"'Nothing,' says he again, and pours out the whole story, or so much of it as he knew and guessed, and winds up with 'I release you,' and a bow very formal and stiff. 'How about Miss Nancy?' I asked; 'does she release me too?' 'I haven't asked her,' he says, and goes on that he is not in the habit of being guided by his daughters. To which I replied: 'Well, I am—by one of 'em, anyhow—or hope to be. And, if you don't mind, I'll step round to-morrow at the hour she expects me. I'd do it this moment if I hadn't a job at Bawtry. And I'm sorry for you, Rector,' I said, 'but if you think it makes a penn'orth of difference to me apart from that, you're mistaken.' And so we parted."

"Have you thought of the consequences?" Nancy demanded, tearful, but obviously worshipping this very ordinary young man.

"No, I haven't."

"She is back again."

"Oh, is she? Then she found him out quick. Poor Hetty! She must be in a taking too!" His face expressed commiseration for a moment, but with an effort, and sprang back to jollity as a bow is released from its cord. "Curious, how quickly a bit of news like that gets about! I picked up with a man on the road—said his name was Wright and he comes from Lincoln—a decent fellow—tradesman—plumber, I think. At all events he knows a deal about you, and began, after a while, pumping me about your sister. I saw in a moment that he had heard something, and gave him precious little change for his money. Talked as if he knew more than I did, if only he cared to tell: but of course I didn't encourage him."

"Wright?—a plumber from Lincoln?" Emilia faltered, and her eyes met Nancy's.

"That's it. He had business with your father, he said. In fact I left him on his way to knock at the door."

The two sisters remembered the man on the knoll, and his bill. They were used to duns.

Emilia's eye signalled that John Lambert was to be kept away from the house at all costs; nor did she breathe freely until she saw the lovers crossing the fields arm-in-arm.



CHAPTER VI.

"And my business is important. William Wright is the name, and you'd better say that I come from Lincoln direct."

The answer came back that Mr. Wesley would see Mr. Wright in his study; and thither accordingly Mr. Wright lurched, after pulling out a red handkerchief and dusting his boots on the front doorstep. At his entrance Johnny Whitelamb rose, gathered up some papers and retired. The Rector looked up from his writing-table, at the same moment pushing back and shutting the drawer upon Hetty's manuscript, which he had again been studying.

"Good morning, Mr. Wright. You have come about your bill, I suspect: the amount of which, if I remember—"

"Twelve-seventeen-six."

The Rector sighed. "It is extremely awkward for me to pay you just now. Still, no doubt you find it no less awkward to wait: and since you have come all the way from Lincoln to collect it—"

"Steady a bit," Mr. Wright interrupted; "I never said that. I said I'd come direct from Lincoln."

Mr. Wesley looked puzzled. "Pardon me, is not that the same thing?"

"No, it ain't. I'd be glad enough of my little bit of money to be sure: but there's more things than money in this world, Mr. Wesley."

"So I have sometimes endeavoured to teach."

"There's more things than money," repeated Mr. Wright, not to be denied: for it struck him as a really fine utterance, with a touch of the epigrammatic too, of which he had not believed himself capable. In the stir of his feelings he was conscious of an unfamiliar loftiness, and conscious also that it did him credit. He paused and added, "There's darters, for instance."

"Daughters?" Mr. Wesley opened his eyes wide.

"Darters." Mr. Wright nodded his head slowly and took a step nearer to the table. "Has Missy come back?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"If you mean my daughter Mehetabel—yes, she has returned."

"I saw her in Lincoln only yesterday morning. She didn't see me; but having (as you might say) my suspicions, I follered her: and I saw enough to make a man feel sore—leastways when he takes an interest in a young lady as I do in Miss Hetty. For, saving your presence, sir, you've a good-looking bunch, but she's the pick. 'Tis a bad business—a very bad business, Mr. Wesley. What, may I ask, are you going to do about it?"

"You certainly may not ask, Mr. Wright." The danger-signal twinkled for a moment under the Rector's brows; but he repressed it and turned towards a cupboard in the wall, where in a drawer lay fifteen pounds, ten of which he had designed to send to Oxford. "Twelve pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence, I think you said?"

"Never mind the bill, sir, for a moment. And about Miss Hetty I'll ask ye no questions if you forbid it: but something I came to say, and it'll have to be said. First of all I want to be clear with you that I had no hand in this affair. On the contrary, I saw it coming and warned her against the fellow."

"I have not the least need of your assurance. I did not even know you were acquainted—"

"No, you don't need it; but I need to give it. Very well: now comes my point. Here's a young lady beautiful as roses, and that accomplished, and that thoroughbred she makes an honest tradesman feel like dirt to look upon her. Oh, you needn't to stare, sir! William Wright knows breeding when he sees it, in man or beast; and as for feeling like dirt, why there's a sort of pleasure in it, if you understand me."

"I do not."

"No: I don't suppose you do. You're not the sort of man to feel like dirt before anyone—not before King George on his throne. But you may take my word for it there's a kind of man that likes it: when he looks at a woman, I mean. 'Take care, my lady,' I said; 'you're delicate and proud now, and as dainty as a bit of china. But once you fall off the shelf—well, down you go, and 'tis all over but the broom and the dust-heap. There you'll lie, with no man to look at you; worse than the coarsest pint-pot a man will drink out of.' You understand me now, Mr. Wesley?"

"I do, sir, to my sorrow, but—"

"But that's just where you're wrong—you don't!" Mr. Wright cried triumphantly, and pursued with an earnestness which held Mr. Wesley still in his chair. "I'll swear to you, sir, that if I could have stopped this, I would: ay, though it killed my only chance. But I couldn't. The thing's done. And I tell you, sir"—his face was flushed now, and his voice shaking—"broken as she is, I do worship Miss Hetty beyond any woman in the world. I do worship her as if she had tumbled slap out of heaven. I—I—there you have it, any way: so if you'll leave talking about the little account between us—"

Mr. Wesley stood up, drew out his keys, opened the cupboard and began counting the sum out upon the table.

"You misunderstand me, sir: indeed you do!" Mr. Wright protested.

"Maybe," answered the Rector grimly. "But I happen to be consulting my own choice. Twelve pounds seventeen and sixpence, I think you said? You had best sit down and write out a receipt."

"But why interrupt a man, sir, when he's thinking of higher things, and with his hand 'most too shaky to hold a pen?"

The Rector walked to the window and stood waiting while the receipt was made out: then took the paper, went to the cupboard and filed it, locked the door and resumed his seat.

"Now, sir, let me understand your further business. You desire, I gather, to marry my daughter Mehetabel?"

Mr. Wright gasped and swallowed something in his throat. Put into words, his audacity frightened him. "That's so, sir," he managed to answer.

"Knowing her late conduct?"

"If I didn't," Mr. Wright answered frankly, "I shouldn't ha' been fool enough to come."

"You are a convinced Christian?"

"I go to church off and on, if that's what you mean, sir."

"'Tis not in the least what I mean, Mr. Wright."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't go oftener."

"There is every reason why you should. You are able to maintain my daughter?"

"I pay my way, sir; though hard enough it is for an honest tradesman in these times." Insensibly he dropped into the tone of one pressing for payment. The Rector regarded him with brows drawn down and the angry light half-veiled, but awake in his eyes now and growing. Mr. Wright, looking up, read danger and misread it as threatening him. "Indeed, sir," he broke out, courageously enough, "I feel for you: I do, indeed. It seems strange enough to me to be standing here and asking you for such a thing. But when a man feels as I do t'ards Miss Hetty he don't know himself: he'll go and do that for which he'd call another man a fool. Kick me to doors if you want to: I can't help it. All I tell you is, I worship her from the top of her pretty head to her shoe-strings; and if she were wife of mine she should neither wash nor scrub, cook nor mend; but a room I would make for her, and chairs and cushions she should have to sit on, and books to read, and pens and paper to write down her pretty thoughts; and not a word of the past, but me looking up to her and proud all the days of my life, and studying to make her comfortable, like the lady she is!"

During this remarkable speech Mr. Wesley sat without a smile. At the end of it, he lifted a small handbell from the writing-table and rang it twice.

Mr. Wright made sure that this was a signal for his dismissal. He mopped his face. "Well, it can't be helped. I've been a fool, no doubt: but you've had it straight from me, as between man and man."

He picked up his hat and was turning to go, when the door opened and Mrs. Wesley appeared.

"My dear," said the Rector, "the name of this honest man is Wright— Mr. William Wright, a plumber, of Lincoln. To my surprise he has just done me the honour of offering to marry Mehetabel."

Mrs. Wesley turned from the bowing Mr. Wright and fastened on her husband a look incredulous but scared.

"I need scarcely say he is aware of—of the event which makes his offer an extremely generous one."

The signal in the Rector's eyes was blazing now. His wife rested her hand on a chair-back to gain strength against she knew not what. Mr. Wright smiled, vaguely apologetic; and the smile made him look exceedingly foolish; but she saw that the man was in earnest.

"I think," pursued Mr. Wesley, aware of her terror, aware of the pain he took from his own words, but now for the moment fiercely enjoying both—"I think," he pursued slowly, "there can be no question of our answer. I must, of course, make inquiry into your circumstances, and assure myself that I am not bestowing Mehetabel on an evil-liver. Worthless as she is, I owe her this precaution, which you must pardon. I will be prompt, sir. In two days, if you return, you shall have my decision; and if my inquiries have satisfied me—as I make no doubt they will—my wife and I can only accept your offer and express our high sense of your condescension."

Mr. Wright gazed, open-mouthed, from husband to wife. He saw that Mrs. Wesley was trembling, but her eyes held no answer for him. He was trembling too.

"You mean that I'm to come along?" he managed to stammer.

"I do, sir. On the day after to-morrow you may come for my answer. Meanwhile—"

Mr. Wright never knew what words the Rector choked down. They would have surprised him considerably. As it was, reading his dismissal in a slight motion of Mrs. Wesley's hand, he made his escape; but had to pull himself up on the front doorstep to take his bearings and assure himself that he stood on his feet.



CHAPTER VII.

"She graced my humble roof and blest my life, Blest me by a far greater name than wife; Yet still I bore an undisputed sway, Nor was't her task, but pleasure, to obey; Scarce thought, much less could act, what I denied. In our low house there was no room for pride:" etc. The Rev. Samuel Wesley's Verses of his Wife.

"It is an unhappiness almost peculiar to our family that your father and I seldom think alike. . . ."

"I am, I believe, got on the right side of fifty, infirm and weak; yet, old as I am, since I have taken my husband 'for better, for worse,' I'll take my residence with him: where he lives, I will live: and where he dies, will I die: and there will I be buried. God do so unto me and more also, if aught but death part him and me." Mrs. Wesley's Letters.

Mrs. Wesley guessed well enough what manner of words her husband had choked down. She stood and watched his face, waiting for him to lift his eyes. But he refused obstinately to lift them, and went on rearranging with aimless fingers the pens and papers on his writing-table. At length she plucked up her courage. "Husband," she said, "let us take counsel together. We are in a plight that wrath will not cure: but, be angry as you will, we cannot give Hetty to this man."

It needed but this. He fixed his eyes on hers now, and the light in them first quivered, then grew steady as a beam. "Did you hear me give my promise?" he demanded.

"You had no right to promise it."

"I do not break promises. And I take others at their word. Has she, or has she not, vowed herself ready to marry the first honest man who will take her; ay, and to thank him?"

"She was beside herself. We cannot take advantage of such a vow."

"You are stripping her of the last rag of honour. I prefer to credit her with courage at least: to believe that she hands me the knife and says, 'cut out this sore.' But wittingly or no she has handed it to me, and by heaven, ma'am, I will use it!"

"It will kill her."

"There are worse things than death."

"But if—if the other should seek her and offer atonement—"

Mr. Wesley pacing the room with his hands beneath his coat-tails, halted suddenly and flung up both arms, as a man lifts a stone to dash it down.

"What! Accept a favour from him! Have you lived with me these years and know me so little? And can you fear God and think to save your daughter out of hell by giving her back her sin, to rut in it?"

Mrs. Wesley shook her head helplessly. "Let her be punished, then, in God's natural way! Vengeance is His, dear: ah, do not take it out of His hands in your anger, I beseech you!"

"God for my sins made me her father, and gave me authority to punish." He halted again and cried suddenly, "Do you think this is not hurting me!"

"Pause then, for it is His warning. Who is this man? What do you know of him? To think of him and Hetty together makes my flesh creep!"

"Would you rather, then, see her—" But at sound of a sobbing cry from her, he checked the terrible question. "You are trying to unnerve me. 'Who is he?' you ask. That is just what I am going to find out." At the door he turned. "We have other children to think of, pray you remember. I will harbour no wantons in my house."



CHAPTER VIII.

At first Hetty walked swiftly across the fields, not daring to look back. "Is it he?" she kept asking herself, and as often cried out against the hope. She had no right to pray as she was praying: it was suing God to make Himself an accomplice in sin. She ought to hate the man, yet—God forgive her!—she loved him still. Was it possible to love and despise together? If he should come. . . . She caught herself picturing their meeting. He would follow across the fields in search of her. She would hear his footstep. Yet she would not turn at once—he should not see how her heart leapt. He would overtake her, call her by name. . . . She must not be proud: just proud enough to let him see how deep the wrong had been. But she would be humble too. . . .

She heard no footsteps. No voice called her. Unable to endure it longer, she came to a standstill and looked back. Between her and the parsonage buildings the wide fields were empty. She could see the corner of the woodstack. No one stood there. Away to the left two figures diminished by distance followed a footpath arm-in-arm— John Lambert and Nancy.

A great blackness fell on her. She had no pride now; she turned and went slowly back, not to the parsonage, but aslant by the bank of a dyke leading to the highroad along which, a few hours ago, she had returned so wearily. She must watch and discover what man it was who had come with John Lambert.

Before she reached the low bridge by the road, she heard a tune whistled and a man's footfall approaching—not his. She supposed it to be one of the labourers, and in a sudden terror hid herself behind an ash-bole on the brink.

The man went by, still whistling cheerfully. She peered around the tree and watched him as he retreated—a broad-shouldered man, swinging a cudgel. A hundred yards or less beyond her tree he halted, with his back to her, in the middle of the road, and stayed his whistling while he made two or three ludicrous cuts with his cudgel at the empty air. This pantomime over, he resumed his way.

She recognised him by so much of his back as showed over the dwarf hedge. It was William Wright.

Was it he, then, who had come with John Lambert? Hetty sat down by the tree, and, with her eyes on the slow water in the dyke, began to think.

To be sure, this man might have come to Wroote merely for his money. Yet (as she firmly believed) it was he who had written the letter which in effect had led to her running away. He might have used the debt to-day as a pretext. His motive, she felt certain, was curiosity to learn what his letter had brought about.

She bore him no grudge. He had fired the train—oh, no doubt! But she was clear-sighted now, saw that the true fault after all was hers, and would waste no time in accusing others. Very soon she dismissed him from her mind. In all the blank hopelessness of her fall from hope she put aside self-pity, and tasked herself to face the worst. To Emilia and Nancy she had spoken lightly, as if scarcely alive to her dreadful position, still less alive to her sin. They had misunderstood her: but in truth she had spoken so on the instinct of self-defence. Real defence she had none.

She knew she had none. And let it be said here that she saw no comfortable hope in religion. She had listened to a plenty of doctrine from her early childhood: but somehow the mysteries of God had seldom occupied her thoughts, never as bearing directly on the questions of daily life. If asked, for example, "did she believe in the Trinity?" or "did she believe in justification by faith?" she would have answered "yes," without hesitating for a moment. But in fact these high teachings lay outside her private religion, which amounted to this—"God is all-seeing and omnipotent. To please Him I must be good; and being good gives me pleasure in turn, for I feel that His eye is upon me and He approves. He is terribly stern: but all-merciful too. If, having done wrong, I go to Him contritely, and repent, He will give me a chance to amend my ways, and if I honestly strive to amend them, He will forgive." In short—and perhaps because the word "Father" helped to mislead—she had made for herself an image of God by exalting and magnifying all that she saw best in her parents. And this view of Him her parents had confirmed insensibly, in a thousand trifles, by laying constant daily stress upon good conduct, and by dictating it and judging her lapses with an air of calm authority, which took for granted that what pleased them was exactly what would please God.

So now, having done that which her mother and father could not forgive, at first she hardly dared to hope that God could by any means forgive it. In the warm sunlight of loving she had seen for a while that her father and mother were not always wise; nay, long beforehand in her discontent she had been groping towards this discovery. But now that the sunshine had proved a cruel cheat, she ran back in dismay upon the old guide-posts, and they pointed to a hell indeed.

She had been wicked. She craved to be good. She remembered Mary Magdalene, whom Christ had forgiven, and caught at a hope for herself. But why had Christ forgiven Mary? Because she had been sorry, and turned and walked the rest of her life in goodness? Because He had foreseen her long atonement? So Hetty believed. For her, too, then the way back to forgiveness lay through conduct— always through conduct; and for her the road stretched long, for not until death could she reach assurance. Of a way to forgiveness through faith (though she must have heard of it a hundred times) she scarcely thought; still less of a way through faith to instant assurance. To those who have not travelled by that road its end— though promised on the honour of God and proclaimed incessantly by those who have travelled and found it—seems merely incredible. Hardly can man or woman, taught from infancy to suspect false guides, trust these reports of a country where to believe and to have are one.

Hetty sat by the tree and saw the road beyond her, that it was steep and full of suffering. But for this she did not refuse it: she desired it rather. She saw also, that along it was no well of forgiveness to refresh her; the thirst must endure till she reached the end and went down in darkness to the river. This, too, she must endure, God in mercy helping her. What daunted her was conscience whispering that she had as yet no right to that mercy, no right even to tread the road. For though her sin was abhorrent, in her heart she loved her fellow-sinner yet. A sound of hoofs aroused her. Still screened by her tree, she saw her father trot by on the filly. In spite of the warm settled weather he carried his cloak before him strapped across the holsters. His ride, therefore, would be a long one; to Gainsborough at least—or to Lincoln?

She lifted her head and sat erect in a sharp terror. Was her father going to seek him? She had not thought of this as possible. And if so—

Leaping up she ran into the open and gazed after him, as though the sight of his bobbing figure could resolve her crowding surmises. For a minute and more she stood, gazing so; and then, turning, was aware of her mother coming slowly towards her across the wide field.

A number of shallow ditches, dry at this season, crossed the fields in parallels; and at each of these Mrs. Wesley picked up her skirts. "How young she is!" was Hetty's thought as she came nearer, and it rose—purely from habit—above her own misery. Hetty was one of those women who admire other women ungrudgingly. She knew herself to be beautiful, yet in her eyes her mother had always the mien of a goddess.

For her mother's character, too, she had the deepest, tenderest respect. But it was the respect of a critic rather than of a child, and touched with humorous wonder. She knew her firmness of judgment, her self-control, her courage in poverty, the secret ardent piety illuminating her commonest daily actions; she knew how perfectly designed that character was for masculine needs, how strong for guidance the will even in yielding—but alas! how feeble to help a daughter!

"Your father is riding to Lincoln," said Mrs. Wesley as she drew near. Hetty scanned her closely, but read no encouragement in her face. She fell back on the tone she had used with Emilia and Nancy; knowing, however, that this time it would not be misunderstood. "I saw that he had taken his cloak with him," she answered. "Be frank with me, mother. You would be frank, you know, with Jacky or Charles, if they were in trouble; whereas now you are not looking me in the face, and your own is white."

Mrs. Wesley did not answer, but walked with Hetty back to the tree and, at a sign, seated herself on the bank beside her, with her eyes on the road.

"I have been sitting here for quite a long time," began Hetty, after a pause, and went on lightly. "Before father passed a tradesman went by—a man called Wright." She paused again as Mrs. Wesley's hands made an involuntary movement in her lap. "He has a bill against father; he called with it on the evening you came back from London. Is father riding after him to pay it?"

"What do you know of that man?" Mrs. Wesley muttered, with her head turned aside and her hands working.

"Very little; yet enough to suspect more than you guess," said Hetty calmly.

But her mother showed her now a face she had not looked to see.

"You know, then?—but no, you cannot!"

It was Hetty's turn to show a face of alarm. "What is it, dear? I thought—indeed I know—he had a notion about me—how I was behaving—and wrote a letter to father. But that cannot matter now. Is there anything worse? I understood he had merely an account against father; an ordinary bill. It is something worse—oh, tell me! Father is riding after him! I see it in your face. What is this trouble which I have added to?"

"The debt is paid, I believe," answered Mrs. Wesley; but she shook as she said it.

"Yet father is riding after him. What is the matter? Let me see your eyes!"

But her mother would not. In the long silence, looking at her, slowly—very slowly—Hetty understood. After understanding there followed another long silence, until Hetty drew herself up against the bole of the tree and shivered.

"Come back to the house, mother. You had best take my arm."



CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Wesley slept that night at Lincoln, and rode back the next afternoon, reaching Wroote a little before nightfall. After stabling the filly he went straight to his study. Thither, a few minutes later, Mrs. Wesley carried his supper on a tray. He kissed her, but she saw at once from his manner that he would not talk, that he wished to be alone.

Hetty and Molly sat upstairs in the dusk of the garret, speaking little. Molly had exhausted her strength for the while and argued no more, but leaned back in her chair with a hand laid on Hetty's forehead, who—crouching on the floor against her knee—drew down the nerveless fingers, fondled them one by one against her cheek, and kissed them, thinking her own thoughts.

Downstairs a gloom, a breathless terror almost, brooded over the circle by the kitchen hearth. They knew of Hetty's probable fate— the sentence to be pronounced to-morrow; they had whispered it one to another, and while they condemned her it awed them.