Hetty Wesley Part 22

"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 wors.h.i.+pping 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 pus.h.i.+ng back and shutting the drawer upon Hetty's ma.n.u.script, 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.