Part 24 (1/2)

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 G.o.d and think to save your daughter out of h.e.l.l by giving her back her sin, to rut in it?”

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

”G.o.d 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 G.o.d to make Himself an accomplice in sin. She ought to hate the man, yet--G.o.d 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 d.y.k.e 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 d.y.k.e, 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.