She pulled the f.a.ggot towards her, broke up the sticks, and built the fragments daintily into a heap, with a handful of dry leaves as basis. The twilight deepened around them as she built. Next she struck flint on steel, caught the spark on tinder, and blew.
Johnny watched the glow on her cheeks wakening and fading, and, watching, fell into a brown study.
"There!" she exclaimed, straightening herself upon her knees as the blaze caught. "Is that a good omen for Kelstein?"
Her eyes were on the sticks, and in their crackling she did not listen for his answer, but commanded him to take a pitcher of water and pour, while she mixed and kneaded the meal. To the making of bread, cakes, pastry, Hetty brought a born gift; a hand so light, quick, and cool, that Johnny could have groaned for his own fumbling fingers. A dozen cakes were finished and banked in the wood-ashes as the fire died down to a steadily glowing ma.s.s. By this time the landscape about them lay flat to the eye and gray, touched with the faint gold of moonrise, and just then Emilia called down from the mound that the travellers were in sight on the Bawtry road.
The others ran to meet them: but Hetty remained by her task, silent, and Johnny silent beside her. Together they spread the two meals, one beside the fire for the family, the other some fifty yards off for the harvesters, now moving towards the rick-yard with the last load.
Hetty was not her mother"s favourite. Emilia and Patty divided that honour by consent, though the balance appeared now and then to incline towards Patty. But between Mrs. Wesley and her fairest daughter there rested always a shadow of restraint, curious enough in its origin, which was that they knew each other better than the rest.
Often and quite casually Hetty would guess some thought in her mother"s mind hidden from her sisters. She made no parade of this insight, set up no claim upon it; merely gave proof of it in pa.s.sing, and fell back on her att.i.tude of guarded affection. And Mrs. Wesley seemed to draw back uneasily from these reflections of herself, and take refuge in Patty, who, of all her children, understood her the least.
So now when the others brought their mother to the feast in triumph, Hetty swept her a curtsey with skirt held wide, then went straight and kissed her on both cheeks.
"Ah, what a dear truant "tis! and how good "tis to have her home again!"
She did not ask (as Nancy or Patty would a.s.suredly have asked) what had become of her father. She noted, even in the half-light, a flush on her mother"s temples, and guessed at once that there had been a duel of tempers on the road, and that, likely enough, papa had bounced into the house in a huff. The others had, in fact, witnessed this exit. Hetty, who divined it, went the swiftest way to efface the memory. She alone, on occasion, could treat her mother playfully, as an equal in years; and she did so now, taking her by the hand, and conducting her with mock solemnity to the seat of honour.
"It _is_ good to be home," Mrs. Wesley admitted as they seated her, dusted her worn shoes, and plied her with milk and hot griddle-cakes, potatoes slit and sprinkled with salt upon appetising lumps of b.u.t.ter. She forgot her vexation. Even the Wroote labourers seemed less surly than usual. One or two, as they gathered, stepped forward to welcome her and wish her health before ranging themselves at their separate meal: and soon a pleasant murmur of voices went up from either group at supper in the broad meadow under the moon.
"But where have you left uncle Annesley?" asked Kezzy. "And are we all to be rich and live in comfort at last?"
Mrs. Wesley shook her head. "He was not on board the _Albemarle_."
She told of her visit to the ship and the captain"s story; adding that their uncle"s boxes, when handed over and examined, contained no papers at all, no will, no bonds, not so much as a sc.r.a.p to throw light on the mystery. And as they sat silent in dismay, she went on to tell of Garrett Wesley and the fortune unexpectedly laid at Charles"s feet.
Emilia was the first to find speech. "So," she commented bitterly "yet another of our brothers is in luck"s way. Always our brothers!
Westminster and Oxford for them, and afterwards, it seems, a fortune: while we sit at home in rags, or drudge and eat the bread of service.
Oh, why, mother? You and we suffer together--do you believe it can be G.o.d"s will?"
Hetty drew a long breath. "Perhaps," she said drearily, "Charles will clothe us when he gets this money. Perhaps he will even find us wooers in place of those to whom papa has shown the door."
"I am not sure your father will allow Charles to accept," said Mrs.
Wesley gently; "though I may persuade him to let the lad decide for himself when he comes of age. Until then the offer stands open."
"I sometimes wonder," Emilia mused, "if our father be not staring mad."
"Hush, child! That is neither for you to say nor for me to hear.
You know it has been almost a vow with him to dedicate your three brothers to G.o.d"s service."
"Charles might inherit Dangan Castle and serve G.o.d too. There is no law that an Irish squire must spend all his time c.o.c.k-fighting."
"These vows!" murmured Hetty, flinging herself back in her favourite att.i.tude and nursing her knee. "If folks will not obey Christ"s command and swear not at all, they might at least choose a vow which only hurts themselves. Now, papa"--Hetty shot a glance at her mother, who felt it, even in the dusk, and bent her eyes on the smouldering fire. The girl had heard (for it was kitchen gossip) that Mr. Wesley had once quarrelled with his wife over politics, and left Epworth rectory vowing never to return to her until she acknowledged William III. for her rightful king; nor indeed had returned until William"s death made the vow idle and released him.
"Now, papa"--after a pause--"has an unfortunate habit, like Jephthah, of swearing to another"s hurt. For instance, since Sukey married d.i.c.k Ellison, he seems to have vowed that none of us shall have a lover; and, so, dear mother, you might have found us just now, like six daughters of Jephthah, bewailing our fates upon a hill."
"He has no fault to find with my John Lambert," put in Nancy.
Hetty did not heed. "I have no patience with these swearers. A man, or a woman for that matter, should have the courage to outbrave an oath when it hurts the innocent. Did G.o.d require the blood of Jephthah"s daughter? or of the sons of Rizpah? Think, mother, if this fire were lit in the fields here, and you sitting by it to scare the beasts from your three sons! I cannot like that David.
Saul, now, was a man and a king, every inch of him, even in his dark hours. David had no breeding--a pretty, florid man, with his curls and pink cheeks; one moment dancing and singing, and the next weeping on his bed. Some women like that kind of man: but his complexion wears off. In the end he grows nasty, and from the first he is disgustingly underbred."
"Hetty!"
"I cannot help it, mother. Had I been Michal, and Saul"s daughter, and had seen that man capering before the ark, I should have scorned him as she did."
And Hetty stood up and strode away into the darkness.
In the darkness, almost an hour later, Molly found her by the edge of a d.y.k.e. She had a handkerchief twisted between her fingers, and kept wringing it as she paced to and fro. Why had she given way to pa.s.sion? Why, on this night of all nights, had she saddened her mother? And why by an outburst against David, of all people in the world?
She could not tell. When the temper is overcharged it overflows, nine times out of ten, into a channel absurdly irrelevant.
What on earth had David to do with it? She halted and laughed while Molly entreated her. In the d.y.k.e the black water crawled at her feet, and upon it a star shone.
"Star Mary--_stella maris_, if only you will shine steadily and guide me! Kiss me now, and hear that I am sorry."
But it was Molly who, later that night, put out both arms in the bed where they slept together: and with a wail which lasted until Hetty enfolded her and held her close.
"I was dreaming," she muttered. "I dreamt--of that man."
CHAPTER VI.
For six months of the year, sometimes for longer, the thatched parsonage at Wroote rose out of a world of waters, forlorn as a cornstack in a flood, and the Rector of Epworth journeyed between his two parishes by boat, often in soaked breeches, and sometimes with a napkin tied over his hat and wig. But in this harvest weather, while the sun shone and the meadow-breezes overcame the odours of damp walls and woodwork, of the pig-sty at the back and of rotting weed beyond, the Wesley household lived cheerfully enough, albeit pinched for room; more cheerfully than at Epworth, where the more s.p.a.cious rectory, rebuilt by Mr. Wesley at a cost of 400 pounds, remained half-furnished after fourteen years--a perpetual reminder of debt.
Here at any rate, although Wroote t.i.the brought in a bare 50 pounds a year, they could manage to live and pay their way, and feel meanwhile that they were lessening the burden. For d.i.c.k Ellison, Sukey"s husband, had undertaken to finance Epworth t.i.the, and was renting the rectory for a while with the purpose of bringing his father-in-law"s affairs to order--a filial offer which Mr. Wesley perforce accepted while hating d.i.c.k from the bottom of his heart, and the deeper because of this necessity.
d.i.c.k was his "wen," "more unpleasant to him than all his physic"--a red-faced, uneducated squireen, with money in his pockets (as yet), a swaggering manner due to want of sense rather than deliberate offensiveness, and a loud patronising laugh which drove the Rector mad. Comedy presided over their encounters; but such comedy as only the ill-natured can enjoy. And the Rector, splenetic, exacting, jealous of authority, after writhing for a time under d.i.c.k"s candid treatment of him as a child, usually cut short the scene by bouncing off to his library and slamming the door behind him.
Even Mrs. Wesley detested her son-in-law, and called him "a coa.r.s.e, vulgar, immoral man "; but confessed (in his absence) that they were all the better off for his help. Ease from debt she had never known; but here at Wroote the clouds seemed to be breaking. Duns had been fewer of late. With her poultry-yard and small dairy she was earning a few pounds, and this gave her a sense of helpfulness she had not known at Epworth; a pound saved may be a pound gained, but a pound earned can be held in the hand, and the touch makes a wonderful difference. The girls had flung themselves heartily into the farm-work: they talked of it, at night, around the kitchen hearth (for of the two sitting-rooms one had been given up to their father for his library, and the other Hetty vowed to be "too grand for the likes of dairy-women." Also the marsh-vapours in the Isle of Axholme can be agueish after sunset, even in summer, and they found the fire a comfort). Hetty had described these rural economies in a long letter to Samuel at Westminster, and been answered by an "Heroick Poem," pleasantly facetious:
"The s.p.a.cious glebe around the house Affords full pasture to the cows, Whence largely milky nectar flows, O sweet and cleanly dairy!"
"Unless or Moll, or Anne, or you, Your duty should neglect to do, And then "ware haunches black and blue By pinching of a fairy."
--With much in the same easy vein about "sows and pigs and porkets,"
and the sisters" housewifely duties:
"Or l.u.s.ty Anne, or feeble Moll, Sage Pat or sober Hetty."
And the sisters were amused by the lines and committed them to heart.
They had learnt of the pleasures of life mainly through books; and now their simple enjoyment was, as it were, more real to them because it could be translated into verse. In circ.u.mstances, then, they were happier than they had been for many years: nor was poverty the real reason for Hetty"s going into service at Kelstein; since Emilia had been fetched home from Lincoln (where for five years she had been earning her livelihood as teacher in a boarding-school) expressly to enjoy the family"s easier fortune, and with a promise of pleasant company to be met in Bawtry, Doncaster and the country around Wroote.
This promise had not been fulfilled, and Emilia"s temper had soured in consequence. Nor had the Rector"s debts melted at the rate expected. The weight of them still oppressed him and all the household: but Mrs. Wesley knew in her heart that, were poverty the only reason, Hetty need not go. Hetty knew it, too, and rebelled.
She was happy at Wroote; happier at least than she would be at Kelstein. She did not wish to be selfish: she would go, if one of the sisters must. But why need any of them go?
She asked her mother this, and Mrs. Wesley fenced with the question while hardening her heart. In truth she feared what might happen if Hetty stayed. They had made some new acquaintances at Wroote and at Bawtry there was a lover, a young lawyer . . . a personable young man, reputed to be clever in his profession. . . . Mrs. Wesley knew nothing to his discredit . . . and sure, Hetty"s face might attract any lover. So her thoughts ran, without blaming the girl, whose heart she believed to be engaged, though she could not tell how deeply. But the Rector must be considered, and he had taken an instant and almost frantic dislike for the youth. There was nothing unusual in this: for, like many another uxorious man (with all his faults of temper he was uxorious), Mr. Wesley hated that anyone should offer love to his daughters. This antipathy of his had been a nuisance for ten years past; since the girls were, when all was said, honest healthy girls with an instinct for mating, and not to be blamed for making their best of the suitors which Epworth and its neighbourhood provided. But since Sukey"s marriage it had deepened into something like a mania, and now, in Hetty"s case, flared up with a pa.s.sion incomprehensible if not quite insane. He declared his hatred of lawyers--and certainly he had suffered at their hands: he forbade the young man to visit the house, to correspond with Hetty, even to see her.
Mrs. Wesley watched her daughter and was troubled. The Rector"s veto had been effective enough once or twice with Hetty"s sisters.