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.