John remained at Epworth until Thursday evening. Dark was falling
when he set out to tramp back to Wroote, but the guns of a few late
partridge-shooters yet echoed across the common. A little beyond
Scawsit Bridge a figure came over the fields towards him, walking
swiftly in the twilight--a woman. He drew aside to let her pass; but
in that instant she stretched out both hands to him and he recognised
her.
"Hetty!"
She dropped her arms. "Are you not going to kiss me, Jack? Do you,
too, cast me off?"
"God forbid!" he said, and lifted his face; for she was the taller by
two inches. With a sob of joy she put out both hands again and drew
his lips to hers, a palm pressed on either cheek.
"But what are you doing here?" he asked.
"My husband has business at Haxey. We came from Lincoln this
morning, and just before sunset I crept over for a look at the house,
hoping for a glimpse of you and Charles. They will not have me
inside, Jack: father will not see me, and has forbidden the others.
But I saw Johnny Whitelamb. He told me that Charles was indoors, at
work transcribing for father, and not easily fetched out; but that
you were expected home from Epworth to-night. So I came to meet you.
Was I running? I dare say. I was thirsty to see your face, dear,
and hear your voice."
"We have all dealt hardly with you, Hetty."
"Ah, let that be! I must not pity myself, you understand? Indeed,
dear, I was not thinking of myself. If only I could be invisible,
and steal into the house at times and sit me down in a corner and
watch their faces and listen! That would be enough, brother: I
don't ask to join in that life again--only to stand apart and feed my
eyes on it."
"You are not happy, then?"
"Happy?" She mused for a while. "My man is kind to me: kinder than I
deserve. If God gives us a child--" She broke off, lowered her eyes
and stammered, "You heard that I had--that one was born! Dead.
He never breathed, the doctor told me. I ought to be glad, for _his_
sake--and for William's--but I cannot be."
"It was God's goodness. Look at Sukey, now; how much of her time her
children take up."
She drew back sharply and peered at him through the dusk.
"Now that time is restored to you," he went on, "you have nothing to
do but to serve God without distraction, till you are sanctified in
body, soul and spirit."
"Jacky, dear," she asked hoarsely, "have they taught you at Oxford to
speak like that?"
He was offended, and showed it. "I have been speaking up for you;
too warmly for my comfort. Father and mother, and indeed all but
Molly, will have it that you talked lightly to them; that your
penitence was feigned. I would not believe this, but that, as by
marriage you redeemed your conduct, so now you must be striving to
redeem your soul. If you deny this, I have been in error and must
tell them so."
For a while she stood considering. "Brother," she said, "I will be
plain with you. Since this marriage was forced upon me, I have
tried--and, please God, I will go on trying--to redeem my conduct.
But of my soul I scarcely think at all."
"Hetty, this is monstrous."
"I pray," she went on, "for help to be good. With tears I pray for
it, and all day long I am trying to be good and do my duty. As for
my soul, sometimes I wake and see the need to be anxious for it, and
resolve to think of it anxiously: but when the morning comes, I have
no time--the day is too full. And sometimes I grow rebellious and
vow that it is no affair of mine: let them answer for it who took it
in charge and drove me to tread this path. And sometimes I tell
myself that once I had a soul, and it was sinful; but that God was
merciful and destroyed it, with its record, when He destroyed my
baby. The doctor swore to me that it never drew a separate breath;
no, not one. Tell me, Jack! A child that has never breathed can
know neither heaven nor hell--questions of baptism do not touch it--
it goes out of darkness into darkness and is annihilated. Is that
not so? So I assure myself, and sometimes I think that by the same
stroke God wiped out the immortal part of me with its sins, that my
body and brain go on living, but that the soul of your Hetty will
never come up for judgment, for it has ceased to be."
"Monstrous!"
"You understand," she went on wearily, "that this is but one of my
thoughts. My heart denies it whenever I long to creep back to Wroote
and listen to the old voices and be a child once more. But I am
showing you what is the truth--that upon one plea or another I put my
soul aside and excuse myself from troubling about it."
"Sadder hearing there could not be. You have an imperishable soul,
and owe it a care which should come before your duty even to your
husband."
"Ah, Jack, you may be a very great man: but you do not understand
women! I wonder if you ever will? For now you do not even begin to
understand."
He would have answered in hot anger, but a noise on the path
prevented him. Four sportsmen came wending homeward in the dusk,
shouldering their guns and laughing boisterously. In the loudest of
the guffaws he recognised the voice of Dick Ellison.
"Hallo!" The leader pulled himself up with a chuckle.
"Here's pretty goings-on--the little parson colloguing with a wench!
Dick, Dick, aren't you ashamed of your relatives?"
"Ashamed of them long ago," stuttered Dick, lurching forward. He had
been making free with the flask all day. "Who is it?" he demanded.
"Come, my lass--no need to be shy with me! Let's have a look at your
pretty face." The fellow plucked at Hetty's hood. John gripped his
arm, was flung off with an indecent oath, and gripped him again.
"This lady, sir, is my sister."
"Eh?" Dick Ellison peered into Hetty's face. "So it is, by Jove!
How d'ye do, Hetty?" He turned to his companion. "Well, you've made
a nice mistake," he chuckled.
The man guffawed and slouched on. In two strides John was after him
and had gripped him once more, this time by the collar.
"Not so fast, my friend!"
"Here, hands off! This gun's loaded. What the devil d'you want?"
"I want an apology," said John calmly. "Or rather, a couple of
apologies." He faced the quartette: they could scarcely see his
face, but his voice had a ring in it no less cheerful than firm.
"So far as I can make out in this light, gentlemen, you are all
drunk. You have made one of those foolish and disgusting mistakes to
which men in liquor are liable: but I should suppose you can muster
up sense enough between you to see that this man owes an apology."
"What if I refuse?"
"Why then, sir, I shall give myself the trouble to walk beside you
until your sense of decency is happily restored. If that should not
happen between this and your own door, I must leave you for the night
and call upon you to-morrow."
"This is no tone to take among gentlemen."
"It is the tone you oblige me to take."
"Come away, Jack!" Hetty besought him in a whisper: but she knew
that he would not.
"Surely," he said, "after so gross an offence you will lose no more
time in begging my sister's pardon?"
"Look you now, master parson," growled the offender, "you are thin in
the legs, but I am not too drunk to shoot snipe." With his gun he
menaced John, who did not flinch.
But here Dick Ellison interposed. "Don't be a fool, Congdon! Put up
your gun and say you're sorry, like a gentleman. Damme"--Dick in his
cups was notoriously quarrelsome and capricious as to the grounds of
quarrel--"she's my sister, too, for that matter. And Jack's my
brother: and begad, he has the right of it. He's a pragmatical
fellow, but as plucky as ginger, and I love him for it. Fight him,
you'll have to fight me--understand? So up and say you're sorry,
like a man."
"Oh, if you're going to take that line, I'm willing enough."
Mr. Congdon shuffled out an apology.
"_That's_ right," Dick Ellison announced. "Now shake hands on it,
like good fellows. Jack's as good a man as any of us for all his
long coat."
"Excuse me," John interrupted coldly, "I have no wish to shake hands
with any of you. I accept for my sister Mr. Congdon's assurance that
he is ashamed of himself, and now you are at liberty to go your way."
"At liberty!" grumbled one: but, to Hetty's surprise, they went.
Jack might not understand women: he could master men. For her part
she thought he might have shaken hands and parted in good-fellowship.
She listened to the sportsmen's unsteady retreat. At a little
distance they broke into defiant laughter, but discomfiture was in
the sound.
"Come," said John. She took his arm and they walked on together
towards Wroote.
For a while neither spoke. Hetty was thinking of a story once told
her by her mother: how that once the Rector, then a young man, had
been sitting in Smith's Coffee House in the City and discussing the
_Athenian Gazette_ with his fellow-contributors, when an officer of
the Guards, in a box at the far end of the room, kept interrupting
them with the foulest swearing. Mr. Wesley called to the waiter to
bring a glass of water. It was brought. "Carry this," he said
aloud, "to that gentleman in the red coat, and desire him to rinse
his mouth after his oaths." The officer rose up in a fury, with hand
on sword, but the gentlemen in his box pulled him down. "Nay,
colonel, you gave the first offence. You know it is an affront to
swear before a clergyman." The officer was restrained. Mr. Wesley
resumed his talk. And her mother went on to tell that, years after,
when the Rector was in London attending Convocation, a gentleman
stopped him one day as he crossed St. James's Park. "Do you know me,
Mr. Wesley?" "Sir, I have not that pleasure." "Will you know me,
then, if I remind you that once, in Smith's Coffee House, you taught
me a lesson? Since that time, sir, I thank God I have feared an oath
and everything that is offensive to the Divine Majesty. I rejoiced,
just now, to catch sight of you, and could not refrain from
expressing my gratitude."
And John inherited this gift of mastery. He could not understand
women, nor could she ever understand him: but she felt that the arm
she held was one of steel. To what end she and her sisters and her
mother had been sacrificed she could not yet divine: but the
encounter by the bridge had reawakened the Wesley pride in her, and
she walked acquiescent in a fate beyond her ken. She knew, too, that
he had dismissed the squabble from his mind and was thinking of her
confession and her soul's danger. But here she would not help him.
"You have heard," she asked, "that we are leaving Lincoln?"
This was news to him.
"Yes; my husband thinks of opening a business in London: but first he
must sell the shop and effects and pension off his father into
lodgings at Louth. That is the old man's native home, and he wishes
to end his days there. He is loth to leave the business; but truly
he has brought it low, and we must move if William is to make his
fortune."
"Moving to London will be a risk, and a heavy expense."
"Uncle Matthew is helping us, and it is settled that we move in the
autumn. We go into lodgings at first, and shall live in the humblest
way while we look about us for a good workshop and premises."
"Do you and your husband's father agree?"
"I at least try to please him. You would not call him a pleasant old
man: and of course he charges this new adventure down to my
influence, whereas it is entirely William's notion. I have had
nothing to do with it beyond enlisting Uncle Matthew's help."
John glanced at her as though to read her face in the darkness.
"Was that also William's notion?" he asked.
But here again he betrayed his ignorance. True woman, though she may
have ceased to love her husband, or may never have loved him, will
cover his weakness. "We have our ambitions, Jack, although to you
they seem petty enough. You must make William's acquaintance.
He has a great opinion of you. I believe, indeed, he thinks more of
you than of me. And if he wishes to leave Lincoln for London, it is
partly for my sake, that I may be happier in a great city where my
fault is not known."
"If, as it seems, he thinks of your earthly comfort but neglects your
soul's health, I shall not easily be friends with him."
By this time they were close to the garden gate.
"Is that you, Jack?" Charles's voice hailed over the dark hedge of
privet.
The pair came to a halt. Hetty's eyes were fastened imploringly on
her brother. He did not see them. If he had, it would have made no
difference. He pitied her, but in his belief her repentance was not
thorough: he had no right to invite her past the gate.
"Good-bye," he whispered.
She understood. With a sob she bent her face and kissed him and was
gone like a ghost back into the darkness.
Charles met him at the gate. "Hallo," said he, "surely I heard
voices? With whom were you talking?"
"With Hetty."
"Hetty?" Charles let out a whistle. "But it is about her I wanted to
speak, here, before you go indoors. I say--where is she? Cannot we
call her back?"
"No: we have no right. To some extent I have changed my mind about
her: or rather, she has forced me to change it. Her soul is
hardened."
"By whose fault?"
"No matter by whose fault: she must learn her responsibility to God.
Father has been talking with you, I suppose."
"Yes: he is bitterly wroth--the more bitterly, I believe, because he
loves you better than any of us. He says you have him at open
defiance. 'Every day,' he cried out on me, 'you hear how he
contradicts me, and takes your sister's part before my face. And now
comes this sermon! He rebukes me in the face of my parish.'
Mind you, I am not taking his part: if you stand firm, so will I.
But I wanted to tell you this, that you may know how to meet him."
For a while the brothers paced the dark walls in silence. Under the
falling dew the scent of honeysuckle lay heavy in the garden.
Years later, in his country rides, a whiff from the hedgerow would
arrest Charles as he pondered a hymn to the beat of his horse's
hoofs, and would carry him back to this hour. John's senses were
less acute, and all his thoughts for the moment turned inward.
"I have done wrong," he announced at length and walked hastily
towards the house.
In the hall he met his father coming out. "Sir," he said, "I have
behaved undutifully. I have neglected you and set myself to
contradict you. I was seeking you to beg your forgiveness."
To his amazement the Rector put a hand on either shoulder, stooped
and kissed him.
"It was a heavy sorrow to me, Jack. Now I see that you are good at
bottom; and to-morrow, if you wish, you shall write for me.
Nay, come into the study now, and see the work that is ready for
you."
In the light of the study lamp John saw that his father's eyes were
wet.