Hetty Wesley

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

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 God to make Himself an accomplice in sin. She ought to hate the man, yet—God 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 dyke 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 dyke, 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. They had misunderstood her: but in truth she had spoken so on the instinct of self-defence. Real defence she had none.

She knew she had none. And let it be said here that she saw no comfortable hope in religion. She had listened to a plenty of doctrine from her early childhood: but somehow the mysteries of God had seldom occupied her thoughts, never as bearing directly on the questions of daily life. If asked, for example, "did she believe in the Trinity?" or "did she believe in justification by faith?" she would have answered "yes," without hesitating for a moment. But in fact these high teachings lay outside her private religion, which amounted to this—"God is all-seeing and omnipotent. To please Him I must be good; and being good gives me pleasure in turn, for I feel that His eye is upon me and He approves. He is terribly stern: but all-merciful too. If, having done wrong, I go to Him contritely, and repent, He will give me a chance to amend my ways, and if I honestly strive to amend them, He will forgive." In short—and perhaps because the word "Father" helped to mislead—she had made for herself an image of God by exalting and magnifying all that she saw best in her parents. And this view of Him her parents had confirmed insensibly, in a thousand trifles, by laying constant daily stress upon good conduct, and by dictating it and judging her lapses with an air of calm authority, which took for granted that what pleased them was exactly what would please God.

So now, having done that which her mother and father could not forgive, at first she hardly dared to hope that God could by any means forgive it. In the warm sunlight of loving she had seen for a while that her father and mother were not always wise; nay, long beforehand in her discontent she had been groping towards this discovery. But now that the sunshine had proved a cruel cheat, she ran back in dismay upon the old guide-posts, and they pointed to a hell indeed.

She had been wicked. She craved to be good. She remembered Mary Magdalene, whom Christ had forgiven, and caught at a hope for herself. But why had Christ forgiven Mary? Because she had been sorry, and turned and walked the rest of her life in goodness? Because He had foreseen her long atonement? So Hetty believed. For her, too, then the way back to forgiveness lay through conduct— always through conduct; and for her the road stretched long, for not until death could she reach assurance. Of a way to forgiveness through faith (though she must have heard of it a hundred times) she scarcely thought; still less of a way through faith to instant assurance. To those who have not travelled by that road its end— though promised on the honour of God and proclaimed incessantly by those who have travelled and found it—seems merely incredible. Hardly can man or woman, taught from infancy to suspect false guides, trust these reports of a country where to believe and to have are one.

Hetty sat by the tree and saw the road beyond her, that it was steep and full of suffering. But for this she did not refuse it: she desired it rather. She saw also, that along it was no well of forgiveness to refresh her; the thirst must endure till she reached the end and went down in darkness to the river. This, too, she must endure, God in mercy helping her. What daunted her was conscience whispering that she had as yet no right to that mercy, no right even to tread the road. For though her sin was abhorrent, in her heart she loved her fellow-sinner yet. A sound of hoofs aroused her. Still screened by her tree, she saw her father trot by on the filly. In spite of the warm settled weather he carried his cloak before him strapped across the holsters. His ride, therefore, would be a long one; to Gainsborough at least—or to Lincoln?

She lifted her head and sat erect in a sharp terror. Was her father going to seek him? She had not thought of this as possible. And if so—

Leaping up she ran into the open and gazed after him, as though the sight of his bobbing figure could resolve her crowding surmises. For a minute and more she stood, gazing so; and then, turning, was aware of her mother coming slowly towards her across the wide field.

A number of shallow ditches, dry at this season, crossed the fields in parallels; and at each of these Mrs. Wesley picked up her skirts. "How young she is!" was Hetty's thought as she came nearer, and it rose—purely from habit—above her own misery. Hetty was one of those women who admire other women ungrudgingly. She knew herself to be beautiful, yet in her eyes her mother had always the mien of a goddess.

For her mother's character, too, she had the deepest, tenderest respect. But it was the respect of a critic rather than of a child, and touched with humorous wonder. She knew her firmness of judgment, her self-control, her courage in poverty, the secret ardent piety illuminating her commonest daily actions; she knew how perfectly designed that character was for masculine needs, how strong for guidance the will even in yielding—but alas! how feeble to help a daughter!

"Your father is riding to Lincoln," said Mrs. Wesley as she drew near. Hetty scanned her closely, but read no encouragement in her face. She fell back on the tone she had used with Emilia and Nancy; knowing, however, that this time it would not be misunderstood. "I saw that he had taken his cloak with him," she answered. "Be frank with me, mother. You would be frank, you know, with Jacky or Charles, if they were in trouble; whereas now you are not looking me in the face, and your own is white."

Mrs. Wesley did not answer, but walked with Hetty back to the tree and, at a sign, seated herself on the bank beside her, with her eyes on the road.

"I have been sitting here for quite a long time," began Hetty, after a pause, and went on lightly. "Before father passed a tradesman went by—a man called Wright." She paused again as Mrs. Wesley's hands made an involuntary movement in her lap. "He has a bill against father; he called with it on the evening you came back from London. Is father riding after him to pay it?"

"What do you know of that man?" Mrs. Wesley muttered, with her head turned aside and her hands working.

"Very little; yet enough to suspect more than you guess," said Hetty calmly.

But her mother showed her now a face she had not looked to see.

"You know, then?—but no, you cannot!"

It was Hetty's turn to show a face of alarm. "What is it, dear? I thought—indeed I know—he had a notion about me—how I was behaving—and wrote a letter to father. But that cannot matter now. Is there anything worse? I understood he had merely an account against father; an ordinary bill. It is something worse—oh, tell me! Father is riding after him! I see it in your face. What is this trouble which I have added to?"

"The debt is paid, I believe," answered Mrs. Wesley; but she shook as she said it.

"Yet father is riding after him. What is the matter? Let me see your eyes!"

But her mother would not. In the long silence, looking at her, slowly—very slowly—Hetty understood. After understanding there followed another long silence, until Hetty drew herself up against the bole of the tree and shivered.

"Come back to the house, mother. You had best take my arm."

CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Wesley slept that night at Lincoln, and rode back the next afternoon, reaching Wroote a little before nightfall. After stabling the filly he went straight to his study. Thither, a few minutes later, Mrs. Wesley carried his supper on a tray. He kissed her, but she saw at once from his manner that he would not talk, that he wished to be alone.

Hetty and Molly sat upstairs in the dusk of the garret, speaking little. Molly had exhausted her strength for the while and argued no more, but leaned back in her chair with a hand laid on Hetty's forehead, who—crouching on the floor against her knee—drew down the nerveless fingers, fondled them one by one against her cheek, and kissed them, thinking her own thoughts.

Downstairs a gloom, a breathless terror almost, brooded over the circle by the kitchen hearth. They knew of Hetty's probable fate— the sentence to be pronounced to-morrow; they had whispered it one to another, and while they condemned her it awed them.

Soon after nine Johnny Whitelamb came in from the fields where for two hours he had been walking fiercely but quite aimlessly. Great drops of sweat stood out on his temples, over which his hair fell lank and clammy. His shoes and stockings were dusted over with fine earth. He did not speak, but lit his candle and went off to his bed-cupboard under the stairs.

Before ten o'clock the rest of the family crept away to bed. Mr. Wesley sat on in his study. This was the night of the week on which he composed his Sunday morning's sermon. He wrote at it steadily until midnight.

Next morning, about an hour after breakfast, Mrs. Wesley heard the hand-bell rung in the study—the sound for which (it seemed to her) she had been listening in affright for two long days. She went at once. In the passage she met Johnny Whitelamb coming out.

"I am to fetch Miss Hetty," he whispered with a world of dreadful meaning.

But for once Johnny was not strictly obedient. Instead of seeking Hetty he went first across the farmyard and through a small gate whence a path took him to a duck-pond at an angle of the kitchen garden, and just outside its hedge. A pace or two from the brink stood a grindstone in a wooden frame; and here, on the grindstone handle, sat Molly watching the ducks.

"He has sent for her," announced Johnny, and glanced towards the kitchen-garden. "Is she there?"

Molly rose with a set face. She did not answer his question.

"You must give me ten minutes," she said. "Ten minutes; on no account must you bring her sooner."

She limped off towards the house.

So it happened that as Mr. and Mrs. Wesley stood and faced each other across the writing-table they heard a gentle knock, and, turning with a start, saw the door open and Molly walk boldly into the room.

"We are busy," said the Rector sharply, recovering himself. "I did not send for you."

"I know it," Molly answered; "but I am come first to explain."

"If you are here to speak for your sister, I wish to hear no explanations."

"I know it," Molly answered again; "but I need to give them; and, please you, father, you will listen to me."

Mr. Wesley gasped. Of all his daughters this deformed one had rendered him the most absolute obedience; of her alone he could say that, apart from her bodily weakness, she had never given him a moment's distress. In a family where high courage was the rule her timidity was a by-word; she would turn pale at the least word of anger. But she was brave now, as a dove to defend her brood.

"You are using a secret"—her voice trembled, but almost at once grew steady again—"a secret between me and Hetty which I had no right to betray. If I told it to mother, it was because she seemed to doubt of Hetty's despair; because I believed, if only she knew, she would come to Hetty and help her—the more eagerly the worse the need. Mother will tell you that was my only reason. I was very foolish. Mother would not help: or perhaps she could not. She went straight to you with the tale—this poor pitiful tale of an oath taken in passion by the unhappiest girl on earth. Yes, and the dearest, and the noblest! . . . But why do I tell you this? You are her father and her mother, and it is nothing to you; you prefer to be her judges. Only I say that you have no right to my secret. Give it back to me! You shall not use it to do this wickedness!"

"Molly!" The last word fairly took Mrs. Wesley's breath away; she glanced at the Rector; but the explosion she expected hung fire, although he was breathing hard.

Molly, too, was panting, but she went on recklessly. "Yes; a wickedness! She swore it, but she did not mean it. Even had she meant it, she was not responsible. . . . No, mother, you need not look at me so. I have been thinking, and father shall hear the truth for once. Had he been kind—had he even been just—Hetty had never run away. Oh, sir, you are a good man! but you are seldom kind, and you are rarely just. You plan what seems best to you—best for Sam and Jacky and Charles—best for us too, maybe. But of us, apart from your wishes, you never think at all. Oh, yes again, you are good; but your temper makes life a torture—"

"Silence!" Mr. Wesley thundered out suddenly.

But the thunder did not affect Molly one whit.

"You may do what you will to me, sir; but you have heard the truth. You are a tyrant to those you love: and now in your tyranny you are going to do what even in your tyranny you have never done before—a downright wickedness. Thwarted abroad, you have drunk of power at home till you have come to persuade yourself that our souls are yours. They are not. You may condemn Hetty to misery as you have driven—yes, driven—her to sin: but her soul is not yours and this secret of hers is mine not yours!"

But here standing beside the table she began to sway, then to sob and laugh unnaturally. Mrs. Wesley, instantly composed at sight of a physical breakdown, stepped to her and caught her by both wrists, but not before she had pointed a finger point-blank at her father's gray face.

"But—but—he is ridiculous!" she gasped between her short outcries.
"Look at him! A ridiculous little man!"

Her mother took her by both shoulders and forced her from the room, almost carried her upstairs, dashed cold water over her face and left her to sob out her hysterics on her bed. It had been a weak, undignified exit: but those last words, which she never remembered to have uttered, her father never forgot. In all the rest of her short life Molly never had a sign from him that he remembered her outbreak. Also he never again spoke a harsh word to her.

While her mother bent over her, waiting for the attack to subside, a knock sounded below stairs. Molly heard it, raised herself on the bed for a moment, staring wildly, then sank back helpless, and her moaning began afresh.

Mrs. Wesley turned her face away quickly; and with that her gaze, passing out through the garret window, fell on a figure crossing the yard towards the house.

It was Hetty, moving to the sacrifice. And below, on the other side of the house, the man was knocking to claim her.

For a moment Mrs. Wesley felt as one in a closing trap. It was she, not Hetty, upon whom these iron teeth of fate were meeting; and Hetty, the true victim, had become part of the machine of punishment. The illusion passed almost as quickly as it had come, and with a glance at the figure on the bed she hurried downstairs, in time to meet Hetty at the back door.

As she opened it she heard William Wright's footstep in the passage behind, and his shuffling halt outside the study door, while Jane, the servant, rapped for admittance.

Hetty, too, heard it, and bent her head.

"We had best go in at once," Mrs. Wesley suggested, desperately anxious now to come to the worst and get it over.

Hetty bent her head again and followed without a word. The two men were standing—the Rector by his writing-table, Mr. Wright a little inside the door. He drew aside to let the two ladies pass and waited, fumbling with his hat and stick and eyeing the pattern of the carpet. There was no boldness about him. It seemed he dared not look at Hetty.

"Ah!" Mr. Wesley cleared his throat. "There is no reason, Mr. Wright, why we should protract a business which (as you may guess) must needs be extremely painful to some of us here. I have made inquiries about you and find that, though not well-to-do, you bear the reputation of an honest man, even a kind one. It appears that at great cost to yourself you have made provision for an aged father, going (I am told) well beyond the strict limits of a son's duty. Filial obedience—" The Rector's eyes here fell upon Hetty and he checked himself. "But I will not enlarge upon that. You ask to marry my daughter. She is in no position to decline your offer, but must rather accept it and with thanks, in humility. As her father I commend her to your love and forbearance."

There was silence for a while. Mr. Wright lifted his head: and now his culprit's look had vanished and in its place was one of genuine earnestness.

"I thank ye, sir," he said; "but, if 'tis no liberty, I'd like to hear what Miss Hetty says." Hetty, too, lifted her eyes and for the first time since entering rested them on the man who was to be her husband. Mrs. Wesley saw how they blenched and how she compelled them to steadiness; and turned her own away.

"Sir," said Hetty, "you have heard my father. Although he has not chosen to tell you, I am bound; and must answer under my bond unless he release me."

"For your salvation, as I most firmly believe, I refuse to release you," said the Rector.

"Then, sir," she continued, still with her eyes on William Wright, "under my bond I will answer you. If, as I think, those who marry without love sin against God and themselves, my father is driving out sin by sin. I cannot love you: but what I do under force I will do with an honest wish to please. I thank you for stooping to one whom her parents cast out. I shall remember my unworthiness all the more because you have overlooked it. You are all strange to me. Just now I shrink from you. But you at least see something left in me to value. Noble or base your feeling may be: it is something which these two, my parents who begat me, have not. I will try to think it noble—to thank you for it all my days—to be a good wife."

She held out her hand. As Mr. Wright extended his, coarse and not too clean, she touched it with her finger-tips and faced her father, waiting his word of dismissal.

But the Rector was looking at his wife. For a moment he hesitated; then, stepping forward, drew her arm within his, and the pair left the room together.

CHAPTER X.

William Wright stared at the door as it closed upon them. Hetty did not stir. To reach it she must pass him. She stood by the writing-table, her profile turned to him, her body bent with a great shame; suffering anguish, yet with an indignant pride holding it down and driving it inward as she repressed her bosom's rise and fall. Even a callous man must have pitied her; and William Wright, though a vulgar man, was by no means a callous one.

"Miss Hetty—" he managed to say, and was not ashamed that his voice shook.

She did not seem to hear.

"Miss Hetty—" His voice was louder and he saw that she heard. "There's a deal I'd like to say, but the things that come uppermost are all foolish. F'r instance, what I most want to say is that I'm desperate sorry for you. And—and here's another thing, though 'tis even foolisher. When I came to speak to your father, day before yestiddy, the first thing he did was to pay me down every penny he owed me—not that I was thinking of it for one moment—"

She had turned her head away at first, yet not as if refusing to listen: but now from a sudden stiffening of her shoulders, he saw that he was offending.

"Nay, now," he persisted, "but you must hear me finish. I want you to know what I did with it. I went home with it jingling in my pocket, and called out my father and spread it on the counter before him. 'Look at it,' I said, and his eyes fairly glistened. 'And now,' I said, 'hear me tell you that neither you nor I touches a penny of it.' I took him up the hill to the cathedral and crammed it into a box there. For the touch of it burned my fingers till I got rid of it, same as it burned your father's. The old man fairly capered to see me and cried out that I must be mad. 'Think so?' said I, 'then there's worse to come.' I led him home again, went to my drawerful of savings, and counted out the like sum to a penny. 'That's towards a chair for her,' said I; 'and that's towards a sofy; and there's for this, and there's for that. If she will condescend to the likes of me, like a queen she shall be treated while I have fingers to work.' That's what I said, Miss Hetty: and that's what I want to tell you, foolish as you'll think it, and rough belike."

She turned suddenly upon him with swimming eyes.

"'Condescend'?" she echoed.

He nodded. "That's so: and like dirt you may treat me. You did once, you know. I'd like it to go on."

She spread her hands vaguely. "Why will you be kind to me? When— when—"

"When you'd far liefer have every excuse to hate the sight of me. Oh, I understand! Well, I'd even give you that, if it pleased you, and I could."

She looked at him now, long and earnestly. Her next question was a strange one and had little connection with her thoughts.

"Did you sign that letter?"

"What letter?"

"The one you sent to father."

He fingered his jaw in a puzzled way. "I never sent any letter to your father. Writing's none so easy to me, though sorry I am to say it."

"Then it must have been—" Light broke on her, but she paused and suppressed Patty's name.

"I like you," she went on, "because you speak honestly with me."

"Come, that's better."

"No: I want you to understand. It's because your honesty makes me able to be honest with you." She drew herself up to the height of her superb beauty and touched her breast. "You see me?" she asked in a low, hurried voice. "I am yours. My father has said it, and I repeat it, adding this: I make no bargain, except that you will be honest. I am to be your wife: use me as you will. All that life with you calls to be undergone, I will undergo: as his drudge to the hind in the fields I offer myself. Nothing less than that shall satisfy me, since through it—can you not see?—I must save myself. But oh, sir! since something in me makes you prize me above other women, even as I am, let that compel you to be open with me always! When, as it will, a thought makes you turn from me—though but for a moment—do not hide it. I would drink all the cup. I must atone— let me atone!"

She walked straight up to him in her urgency, but suddenly dropped her arms. He stared at her, bewildered.

"I shall have no such thoughts, Miss Hetty."

CHAPTER XI.

Beyond the kitchen-garden a raised causeway led into the Bawtry road, between an old drain of the Tome River and a narrower ditch running down to the parsonage duck-pond. The ditch as a rule was dry, or almost dry, being fed through a sluice in the embankment from time to time when the waters of the duck-pond needed replenishing.

Half an hour later, as William Wright—who had business at Bawtry— left the yard by the small gate and came stepping briskly by the pond, Johnny Whitelamb pushed through the hedge at the end of the kitchen-garden, attempted a flying leap across the ditch and scrambled—with one leg plastered in mud to the knee—up to the causeway, where he stood waving his arms like a windmill and uttering sounds as rapid as they were incoherent.

The plumber, catching sight of this agitated figure on the path ahead, stood still for a moment. He understood neither the noises nor the uncouth gestures, but made sure that some accident had happened.

"Here, what's wrong?" he demanded, moving on and coming to a halt again in front of Johnny.

But still Johnny gurgled and choked. "You—you mustn't come here!"

"Eh, why not? What's doing?"

"You mustn't come here. You sha'n't—it's worse than murder!
P-promise me you won't come here again!"

Mr. Wright began to understand, and his eye twinkled. "Who's to prevent it, now?"

"I will, if you w-won't listen to reason. You are killing her, between you: you don't know w-what wickedness you're doing. She's—she's an angel."

"Bravo, my lad! So she is, every inch of her." The plumber held out his hand.

Johnny drew his away indignantly and began to choke again.
"She's not for you. It'll all come right if you stay away.
P-promise me you'll stay away!

"There I don't agree with you."

"C-can you fight?"

"A bit. Here, keep on your coat, boy, and don't be a fool.
Hands off, you young dolt!"

There was barely room on the causeway for two to pass. As Mr. Wright thrust by, Johnny snatched furiously at his arm and with just enough force to slew him round. Letting go, he struck for his face.

The plumber had no wish to hurt the lad. Being a quick man with his fists, he parried the blow easily enough.

"No more of this!" he shouted, and as Johnny leapt again, hurled him off with a backward sweep of his wrist.

He must have put more weight into it than he intended. Johnny, flung to the very edge of the causeway, floundered twice to recover his balance; his feet slipped on the mud, and with hands clutching the air he soused into the water at Mr. Wright's feet.

"Hallo!" called out a cheerful voice. "Whar you two up to?"

Dick Ellison was coming down the causeway towards the house, somewhat advanced in liquor, though it wanted an hour of noon. Wright, who knew him only by sight, did not observe this at once. "Come and help," he answered, dropping on his knees by the brink and offering Johnny a hand.

Johnny declined it. He was a strong swimmer, and in a couple of strokes regained the bank and scrambled to firm ground again, dripping from head to heel and looking excessively foolish.

"Wha's matter?" demanded Mr. Ellison again.

"Nothing he need be ashamed of," answered Mr. Wright. "Here, shake hands, my boy!"

But Johnny dropped his head and walked away, hiding tears of rage and shame.

"Sulky young pig," commented Mr. Ellison, staring blearily after him. A thought appeared to strike him.—"Blesh me, you're the new son-'law!"

"Yes, sir: Miss Hetty has just honoured me with her consent."

"Consent? I'll lay she had to! Sukey—tha's my wife—told me you were in the wind. I said the old man's wrong—all right, patching it up—Shtill—" He paused and corrected himself painfully. "Still, duty to c'nsult family; 'stead of which, he takes law in's own hands. Now list'n this, Mr.—"

"Wright."

"Qui-so." He pulled himself together again. "Quite so. Now I say, it's hard on the jade. You say, 'Nothing of the sort: she's made her bed and must lie on it.'"

"No, I don't."

"I—er—beg your pardon? You must allow me finish my argument. I say, 'Look here, I'm a gentleman: feelings of a gentleman'— You're not a gentleman, eh?"

"Not a bit like one," the plumber agreed cheerfully.

"Tha's what I thought. Allow me to say so, I respect you for it—for speaking out, I mean. Now what I say is, wench kicks over the traces—serve her right wharrever happens: but there's family to consider—"

Here Mr. Wright interrupted firmly. "Bless your heart, Mr. Ellison,
I quite see. I've made a mistake this morning."

"No offence, you understand."

"No offence at all. It turns out I've given the wrong man a ducking."

"Eh?"

"It can easily be set right. Some day when you're sober. Good morning!"

William Wright went his way whistling. Dick Ellison stared along the causeway after him.

"Low brute!" he said musingly. "If she's to marry a fellow like that, Sukey shan't visit her. I'm sorry for the girl too."

Beyond the hedge, in a corner of the kitchen-garden, Johnny Whitelamb lay in his wet clothes with his face buried in a heap of mown grass. He had failed, and shamefully, after preparing himself for the interview by pacing (it seemed to him, for hours) the box-bordered walks which Molly had planted with lilies and hollyhocks, pinks and sweet-williams and mignonette. It was high June now, and the garden breaking into glory. He had tasted all its mingled odours this morning while he followed the paths in search of Hetty; and when at length he had found her under the great filbert-tree, they seemed to float about her and hedge her as with the aura of a goddess. He had delivered his message, trembling: had watched her go with firm step to the sacrifice. And then—poor boy—wild adoration had filled him with all the courage of all the knights in Christendom. He alone would champion her against the dragon. . . . And the dragon had flung him into the ditch like a rat! He hid his face in the sweet-smelling hillock.

For years after, the scent of a garden in June, or of new-mown hay, caused him misery, recalling this the most abject hour of his life.

CHAPTER XII.

Six weeks later Mr. Wesley married William Wright and Hetty in the bare little church of Wroote. Her sisters (among them Patty, newly returned from Kelstein) sat at home: their father had forbidden them to attend. A fortnight before they had stood as bridesmaids at Nancy's wedding with John Lambert, and all but Molly had contrived to be mirthful and forget for a day the shadow on the household and the miserable woman upstairs. Hetty had no bridesmaids, no ringing of bells. The church would have been empty, but for a steady downpour which soaked the new-mown hay, and turned the fields into swamps, driving the labourers and their wives, who else had been too busy, to take recreation in a ceremony of scandal. For of course the whole story had been whispered abroad. It was to keep them away that the Rector had chosen a date in the very middle of the hay-harvest, and they knew it and enjoyed his discomfiture. He, on his part, when the morning broke with black and low-lying clouds, had been tempted to read the service in the parlour at home; but his old obstinacy had asserted itself. Hetty's feelings he did not consider.

The congregation pitied Hetty. She, with Molly to help, had been the parish alms-giver, here and at Epworth; and though the alms had been small, kind words had gone with the giving. Of gratitude—active gratitude—they were by race incapable: also they were shrewd enough to detect the Wesley habit of condescending to be kind. She belonged to another world than theirs: she was a lady, blood and bone. But they were proud of her beauty, and talked of it, and forgave her for the sake of it.

They hated the Rector; yet with so much of fear as kept them huddled to-day at the west end under the dark gallery. A space of empty pews divided them from Mrs. Wesley, standing solitary behind her daughter at the chancel step.

"O God, who hast consecrated the state of Matrimony to such an excellent mystery that in it is signified and represented the spiritual marriage and unity betwixt Christ and his Church: look mercifully upon these thy servants. . . ."

A squall of rain burst upon the south windows, darkening the nave. Mrs. Wesley started, and involuntarily her hands went up towards her ears. Then she remembered, dropped them and stood listening with her arms rigid.

Under a penthouse in the parsonage yard, Molly and Johnny Whitelamb watched the downpour, and the cocks and hens dismally ruffling under shelter of the eaves.

"She was the best of us all, the bravest and the cleverest."

"She was like no one in the world," said Johnny.

"And the most loyal. She loved me best, and I have done nothing for her."

"You did what you could, Miss Molly."

"If I were a man—Oh, Johnny, of what use are my brothers to me?"

Johnny was silent.

"The others were jealous of her. She could no more help excelling them in wit and spirits than she could in looks. None of them understood her, but I only—and you, I think, a little."

"It was an honour to know her and serve her. I shall never forget her, Miss Molly."

"We will never forget her—we two. When the others are not listening we will talk about her together and say, She did this or that; or, Just so she looked; or, At such a time she was happy. We will recollect her sayings and remind each other. Oh, Hetty! dear, dear Hetty!"

Johnny was fairly blubbering. "But she will visit us sometimes.
Lincoln is no great distance."

Molly shook her head disconsolately. "I do not think she will come. Father will refuse to see her. For my part, after the wickedness he has committed this day—"

"Hush, Miss Molly!"

"Is it not wrong he is doing? Is it not a wicked wrong? Answer me, John Whitelamb, if we two are ever to speak of her again." She glanced at his face and read how terribly old fidelity and new distrust were tearing him between them. "Ah, I understand!" she said, and laid a hand on his coat-sleeve.

The service over and the names signed in the vestry, Mr. Wesley marched out to the porch for a view of the weather. Half a score of gossips were gathered there among the sodden graves awaiting the bridal party. They gave back a little, nudging and plucking one another by the arm. For all the notice he took of them they might have been tombstones.

The rain had ceased to fall, and though leaden clouds rolled up from the south-west, threatening more, a pale gleam, almost of sunshine, rested on the dreary landscape. The Rector nodded his head and strode briskly down the muddy path. The newly married pair followed at a respectful distance, Mrs. Wesley close behind. Hetty showed no sign of emotion. She had given her responses clearly and audibly before the altar, and she bore herself as bravely now.

As they entered the house the Rector turned and held out his hand to the bridegroom. "You will not find us hospitable, I fear. But there are some refreshments laid in the parlour: and my wife will see that you are served while I order the gig. Your wife will have time to say farewell to her sisters if she chooses. As I may not see her again, I commit her to your kindness and God's forgiveness."

"At least you will bless her, husband!" entreated Mrs. Wesley.
But he turned away.

Twenty minutes later bridegroom and bride drove southward towards
Lincoln, under a lashing shower and with the wind in their faces.

CHAPTER XIII.

A few words will tie together the following letters or extracts from letters. John was ordained on September 19th. A few weeks later he preached his first sermon at South Leigh, a village near Witney and but a few miles out of Oxford. He and Charles visited Wroote that Christmas, and on January 11th he preached a funeral sermon at Epworth for John Griffith, a hopeful young man, the son of one of his father's parishioners, taking for his theme 2 Samuel xii. 23, "But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me "—a text obvious enough. He returned for the beginning of the Oxford Lent Term, having had no sight of Hetty. His chances of a fellowship at Lincoln College had long been debated, and on March 17th he was elected. Meanwhile Charles had passed out of Westminster with a studentship to support him at Christ Church, the college his brother was leaving.

The first letter—from Patty—bears no date, but was written from
Wroote about the time of John's ordination.

From Martha (Patty) Wesley to her brother John

Dear Brother,—I believe it is above half a year since I wrote to you, and yet, though it is so long since, you never were so good as to write to me again; and you have written several times since to my sisters, but have perfectly neglected your loving sister Martha, as if you had not known there was such a person in the world; at which I pretended to be so angry that I resolved I would never write to you more. Yet my anger soon gave way to my love, as it always does whenever I chance to be angry with you. But you only confirm me in the truth of an observation I have since made; which is, that if ever I love any person very well, and desire to be loved by them in return—as, to be sure, whoever loves desires to be loved—I always meet with unkind returns. I shall be exceedingly glad if you get the Fellowship you stand for; which if you do, I shall hope that one of the family besides my brother Sam will be provided for. I believe you very well deserve to be happy, and I sincerely wish you may be so both in this life and the next.

For my own particular I have long looked upon myself to be what the world calls ruined—that is, I believe there will never be any provision made for me, but when my father dies I shall have my choice of three things—starving, going to a common service, or marrying meanly as my sisters have done: none of which I like, nor do I think it possible for a woman to be happy with a man that is not a gentleman, for he whose mind is virtuous is alone of noble kind. Yet what can a woman expect but misery? My brother Ellison wants all but riches; my brother Lambert, I hope, has a little religion; poor brother Wright has abundance of good-nature, and, I hope, is religious; and yet sister Hetty is, I fear, entirely ruined, though it is not her husband's fault.

If you would be so good as to let me hear from you, you would
add much to my satisfaction. But nothing can make me more than
I am already, dear brother, your sincere friend and loving
sister
Martha Wesley.

P.S.—I hope you will be so kind as to pardon the many faults in my letter. You must not expect I can write like sister Emily or sister Hetty. I hope, too, that when I have the pleasure of seeing you at Wroote you will set me some more copies, that I may not write so miserably.

From Samuel Wesley to his son John

Wroote, March 21, 1726.

Dear Mr. Fellow-Elect of Lincoln,—I have done more than I could
for you. On your waiting on Dr. Morley with this he will pay
you 12 pounds. You are inexpressibly obliged to that generous
man. We are all as well as can be expected. Your loving
father,
Samuel Wesley.

From the same to the same

Wroote, April I, 1726.

Dear son John,—I had both yours since the election. The last
12 pounds pinched me so hard that I am forced to beg time of
your brother Sam till after harvest to pay him the 10 pounds
that you say he lent you. Nor shall I have so much as that
(perhaps not 5 pounds) to keep my family till after harvest; and
I do not expect that I shall be able to do anything for Charles
when he goes to the University. What will be my own fate before
the summer is over God only knows. Sed passi graviora.
Wherever I am, my Jack is Fellow of Lincoln. All at present
from your loving father,
Samuel Wesley.

From John Wesley to his brother Samuel

Lincoln College, Oxon.,
April 4, 1726.

Dear Brother,—My father very unexpectedly, a week ago, sent me a bill on Dr. Morley for 12 pounds, which he had paid to the Rector's use at Gainsborough; so that now all my debts are paid, and I have still above 10 pounds remaining. If I could have leave to stay in the country till my college allowance commences, this money would abundantly suffice me till then.

I never knew a college besides ours whereof the members were so
perfectly well satisfied with one another, and so inoffensive to
the other part of the University. All the Fellows I have yet
seen are both well-natured and well-bred; men admirably disposed
as well to preserve peace and good neighbourhood among
themselves as to preserve it wherever else they have any
acquaintance. I am, etc.
John Wesley.

The next, addressed also to Sam, shows him making provision for
Charles's entrance at Christ Church:

My mother's reason for my cutting off my hair is because she fancies it prejudices my health. As to my looks, it would doubtless mend my complexion to have it off, by letting me get a little more colour, and perhaps it might contribute to my making a more genteel appearance. But these, till ill health is added to them, I cannot persuade myself to be sufficient grounds for losing two or three pounds a year. I am ill enough able to spare them.

Mr. Sherman says there are garrets, somewhere in Peckwater, to be let for fifty shillings a year; that there are some honest fellows in college who would be willing to chum in one of them; and that, could my brother but find one of these garrets, and get acquainted with one of these honest fellows, he might possibly prevail on him to join in taking it; and then if he could but prevail upon some one else to give him 7 pounds a year for his own room, he would gain almost 6 pounds a year clear, if his rent were well paid. He appealed to me whether the proposal was not exceedingly reasonable? But as I could not give him such an answer as he desired, I did not choose to give him any at all.

Leisure and I have taken leave of one another. I propose to be
busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged me.
In health and sickness I hope I shall ever continue with the
same sincerity, your loving brother,
John Wesley.

From Samuel Wesley to his son John

April 17, 1726. Dear Son,—I hope Sander will be with you on Wednesday morn, with the horses, books, bags, and this. I got your mother to write the inclosed (for you see I can hardly scrawl), because it was possible it might come to hand on Tuesday; but my head was so full of cares that I forgot on Saturday last to put it into the post-house. I shall be very glad to see you, though but for a day, but much more for a quarter of a year. I think you will make what haste you can. I design to be at the "Crown," in Bawtry, on Saturday night. God bless and send you a prosperous journey to your affectionate father, Samuel Wesley.

The day after receiving this John and Charles set out and rode down to Lincolnshire together.

CHAPTER XIV.

"For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

John Wesley laid his Bible down beside him on the rustic seat under the filbert-tree, and leaned back against the trunk with half-closed eyes. By and by he frowned, and the frown, instead of passing, grew deeper. His sermons, as a rule, arranged themselves neatly and rapidly, when once the text was chosen: but to-day his thoughts ran by fits and starts, and confusedly—a thing he abhorred.

In truth they kept harking back to the text, "For if ye forgive men their trespasses. . . ." He had chosen it with many searchings of heart, for he knew that if he preached this sermon it would exasperate his father. Had he any right, knowing this, to preach it from his father's pulpit? After balancing the pro's and contra's, he decided that this was a scruple which his Christian duty outweighed. He was not used to look back upon a decision once taken: he had no thought now of changing his mind, but the prospect of a breach with his father unsettled him.

While he pondered, stabbing the turf with his heel, Molly came limping along the garden-path. Her face was white and drawn. She had been writing for two hours at her father's dictation, and came now for rest to the seat which she and Hetty had in former days made their favourite resort.

Seeing it occupied, she paused in the outer shade of the great branches.

"You are thinking out your sermon?" she asked, smiling.

He nodded. "You seem tired," he remarked, eyeing her; but he did not rise or pick up his Bible to make room for her.

"A little," she confessed; "and my ears are hot. But Charles very good-naturedly left his De Oratore—on which I heard him say he was engaged—to relieve me. Johnny Whitelamb had to finish colouring a map."

"I don't think Charles needs much persuasion just now to leave his studies."

"He will not require them if he is to be an Irish squire."

"You count upon his choosing that?" John's frown grew deeper.

"Not if you dissuade him, Jack."

"I have not even discussed it with him. Once or twice on our way down he seemed to be feeling his way to a confidence and at the last moment to fight shy. No doubt he knows my opinion well enough. 'What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' But why should my opinion have so much weight with him?"

For a moment Molly considered her brother's cold and handsome young face. She put out a hand, plucked a twig from a low drooping bough, and peeling the gummy rind, quoted softly:

"'Why do you cross me in this exigent?'
'I do not cross you; but I will do so.'"

"If I remember," mused John, "that is what Shakespeare makes Octavius say to Mark Antony before Pharsalia."

She nodded. "Do you know that you always put me in mind of Octavius. You are so good-looking, and have the same bloodless way of following your own path as if you carried all our fates. Sometimes I think you do carry them."

"I thank you." He made her a mock bow.

"And I still think it was kind of Charles to come to my rescue; for I was tired." She glanced at the seat and he picked up his book. "No; you are composing a sermon and I will not interrupt you. But you must know that father expected you to help him this morning, and was put out at hearing that you had walked off."

"He and I have not agreed of late, and are likely to agree still less if I preach this sermon—as I shall."

"What is the subject?"

"I have not thought of a title yet; but you may call it 'Universal
Charity,' or (better perhaps) 'The Charity due to wicked persons.'"

"You mean Hetty?" She limped close to him. "Hetty may have done wickedly, but she is not a wicked person, as you might have discovered had you let Universal Charity alone and practised it in particular, for once, by going to visit her. It is now close on four months that you and Charles have been home, and from here to Lincoln is no such great distance."

"You are a sturdy champion," he answered, eyeing her up and down.
"As a matter of fact you are right, though you assert it rashly.
How are you sure that I have not visited Hetty, seeing that three
times I have been absent from home and for some days together?"

Molly winced. "The worse reproach to all of us, that her only champion was the weakling whom you all scorn! You do not understand weakness, Jack. As for my knowing that you had not visited her, Johnny Whitelamb took his holiday a fortnight ago and trudged to Lincoln to see her. She is living behind a dingy little shop with her husband, and his horrible old father, who drinks whatever he can filch from the till. They wink at it so long as he does not go too far; but William is trying to find him lodgings at Louth, which was his old home, and hopes to sell up the business and move to London with Hetty, to try his fortune. Uncle Matthew has written to her, and will help them to move, I believe. And there was a baby coming, but mercifully something went wrong, poor mite! All this news she sent by Johnny, who reports that she is brave and cheerful and as beautiful as ever—more beautiful than ever, he said—but she talked long of you and Charles, and is said to have seen neither of you."

"So Whitelamb is in the conspiracy? Since you have so much of his confidence, you might warn him to be careful. Doubts of our father's wisdom must unsettle him woefully. I do not ask to join the alliance, but it may please you to know that in my belief Hetty has been treated too fiercely for her deserts, and in my sermon I intend to hint at this pretty plainly."

Molly stared. "Dear Jack, it—it is good to have you on our side.
But what good can a sermon do?"

"Not much, I fear. Still a testimony is a testimony."

"But the folks will know you are speaking of her."

"I mean them to."

"But—but—" Molly cast about, bewildered.

"I am venturing something," John interrupted coldly, "by testifying against my father. It is not over-pleasant to stand up and admit that in our own family we have sinned against Christ's injunction to judge not."

"I should think not, indeed!"

"Then you might reasonably show a little more pleasure at finding me prepared, to that extent, to take your side."

Molly gasped. His misunderstanding seemed to her too colossal to be coped with. "It will be a public reproach to father," she managed to say.

"I fear he may consider it so; and that is just my difficulty."

"But what good can it do to Hetty?"

"I was not, in the first instance, thinking of Hetty, but rather using her case as an example which would be fresh in the minds of all in the building. Nevertheless, since you put the question, I will answer, that my argument should induce our mother and sisters, as well as the parish, to judge her more leniently."

"The parish!" murmured Molly. "I was not thinking of its judgment, And I doubt if Hetty does."

"You are right. The particular case—though unhappily we cannot help dwelling on it—is merely an illustration. We, who have duties under Christ to all souls in our care, must neglect no means of showing them the light, though it involve mortifying our own private feelings."

Molly, who had been plucking and twisting all this while the twig between her fingers, suddenly cast it on the ground and hobbled away.

John gazed after her, picked up the book and set it down again.
The sermon came easily now.

Having thought it out and arranged the headings in his mind, he returned to the house and wrote rapidly for two hours in his bedroom. He then collected his manuscript, folded it neatly, scribbled a note, and called down the passage to the servant, Jane, whom he heard bustling about the parlour and laying dinner. To her he gave the note and the sermon, to be carried to his father; picked up a crust of bread from the table; and a minute later left the house for a long walk.

Returning a little before supper-time, he found the manuscript on the table by his bedside. No note accompanied it; there were none of the usual pencil-marks and comments in the margin. The Rector had restored it without a word.

For a moment he was minded to go and seek an interview; but decided that, his resolution being fixed, an interview would but increase pain to no purpose. He washed and went down to the parlour, walking past the door of the study, in which his father supped alone.

Next morning being Saturday, Mr. Wesley walked over to Epworth, to a room above a chandler's shop, where he and John lodged in turn as they took Epworth duty on alternate Sundays. The Rectory there was closed for the time and untenanted, the Ellisons having returned some months before to their own enlarged and newly furnished house. There, to be sure, a lodging might have been had at no cost, and Sukey offered it as in duty bound. She knew very well, however, that neither her father nor John could stomach being a guest of Dick's. The invitation was declined, and she did not press it.

So on Sunday, August 28th, Mr. Wesley took the services at Epworth while John stayed at home and preached his sermon in Wroote church.

From the pulpit he looked straight down into the tall Rectory pew, and once or twice his eyes involuntarily sought its occupants. Once, indeed, he paused in his discourse. It was after the words— "We are totally mistaken if we persuade ourselves that Christ was lenient towards sin. He made no hesitation in driving the money-changers from His Father's temple even with a whip. But He discriminated between the sin and the sinner. The fig-tree He blasted was one which, bearing no fruit, yet made a false show of health: the Pharisees He denounced were men who covered rottenness with a pretence of religion; the sinners He consorted with had a saving knowledge of their vileness. Sin He knew to be human and bound up in our nature: all was pardonable save the refusal to acknowledge it and repent, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost testifying within us. If we confess our sins not only is He faithful and just to forgive them, but He promises more joy in Heaven over our repentance than over ninety-and-nine just persons which need no repentance. And why? Because, as David foretold, a broken spirit is God's peculiar sacrifice: 'a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' Yet we in this parish have despised it. With sorrow I admit before you that in the household to which you should reasonably look for example and guidance, it has been despised. What then? Are we wiser than Christ, or more absolute?"

He paused. His mother sat stiff and upright with her eyes bent on the ground. Only Charles and Molly looked up—she with a spot of red on either cheek, he with his bright pugnacious look, his nostrils slightly distended scenting battle with delight. Emilia and Patty were frowning; Kezzy, who hated all family jars, fidgeted with her prayer-book.

The sermon ended and the benediction pronounced, he fetched from the vestry the white surplice in which he had read the prayers, and came back to the pew in which the family waited as usual for the rest of the congregation to leave the church. Mrs. Wesley took the surplice, as she invariably took her husband's, to carry it home and hang it in the wardrobe. They walked out. A fortnight before, his sisters had begun to discuss his sermon and rally him upon it as soon as they found themselves in the porch. To-day they were silent: and again at dinner, though John and his mother made an effort to talk of trivial matters, the girls scarcely spoke. Charles only seemed in good spirits and chattered away at ease, glancing at his brother from time to time with a droll twinkle in his eye.

Early next morning John set out for Epworth, having promised to relieve his father and visit the sick and poor there during the week. At Scawsit Bridge he met the Rector returning. The two shook hands and stood for a minute discussing some details of parish work: then each continued on his way. Not a word was said of the sermon.

CHAPTER XV.

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.

CHAPTER XVI.

Late in September, having been chosen to preach on St. Michael's Day in St. Michael's Church the sermon annually delivered by a Fellow of Lincoln, John travelled up to Oxford, whither Charles followed him a week or two later, to take up his residence in Christ Church, and be matriculated on the first day of the October term.

John had deferred his journey to the last moment, in order to stand godfather to Nancy's healthy firstborn. John Lambert—honest man and proud father—had honoured the event with a dinner, and very nearly wrecked his own domestic peace by sending out the invitations in his own hand and including Mr. and Mrs. Wright. For weeks after, Nancy shuddered to think what might have happened if Hetty and her father had come face to face at the ceremony or the feast. By good luck—or rather by using her common sense and divining the mistake—Hetty refused. Her husband, however, insisted on attending, and she let him go. With his presence the Rector could not decently quarrel.

"But look here," said he, "I am getting tired of the line the old man takes. It wasn't in our bond: he waited to spring it on me after the wedding. If I can overlook things, he should be able to, and I've a mind to tell him so." He urged her to come. But Hetty pleaded that she could not; it was now past the middle of September, and her baby would be born early in the new year. "Well, well," he grumbled, "but 'tis hard to have married a lady, and a beauty to boot, and never a chance to show her." The speech was gracious after his fashion, as well as honest: but she shivered inwardly. For as time wore on, she perceived this desire growing in him, to take her abroad and display her with pride. Failing this, he had once or twice brought his own cronies home, to sit and smoke with him while he watched their uneasy admiration and enjoyed the tribute. She blamed herself that she had not been more genial on those occasions; but in truth she dreaded them horribly. By sheer force of will she had managed hitherto, and with fair success, to view her husband as a good honest man, and overlook his defects of breeding. In her happiest moods she almost believed in the colours with which (poor soul, how eagerly!) she decked him. But she could not extend the illusion to his friends. "You shall show him off," she pleaded, meaning the unborn babe. "We will show him off together." But her face was white.

So William Wright had gone alone to the christening feast, and there John Wesley had met him for the first time, and talked with him, and afterwards walked home full of thought. For, in truth, Hetty's husband had drunk more of John Lambert's wine than agreed with him, and had asserted himself huskily, if not aggressively, under the cold eye of Mr. Wesley senior. John, as godfather, had been called upon for a speech, and his brother-in-law's "Hear, hear" had been so vociferous that while his kinsfolk stole glances at one another as who should say, "But what can one expect?" the Rector put out a hand with grim mock apprehension and felt the leaded window casements. "I'll mend all I break, and for nothing," shouted Mr. Wright heartily: and amid a scandalised silence Charles exploded in merry laughter, and saved the situation.

For a fortnight after his return to Oxford, college work absorbed all John's leisure: but he found time as a matter of course to meet Charles on his arrival at the Angel Inn, and took him straight off to Christ Church to present him to the Senior Censor. Next day he called to find his brother installed in Peckwater, on the topmost floor, but in rooms very much more cheerful than the garret suggested by Mr. Sherman. Charles, at any rate, was delighted with them and his sticks of furniture, and elated—as thousands of undergraduates have been before his day and since—at exchanging school for college and qualified liberty and the dignity of housekeeping on one's own account.

"Est aliquid quocunque loco, quocunque recessu," he quoted, and showed John with triumph the window seat which, lifted, disclosed a cupboard to contain his wine, if ever he should possess any.

"Are you proposing to become a wine-bibber in your enthusiasm?" asked
John.

Charles closed the lid, seated himself upon it, drew up his legs, and gazed out across the quadrangle. He had made a friend or two already among the freshmen, and this life seemed to him very good.

"My dear Jack, you would not have me be a saint all at once!"

John frowned. "You do not forget, I hope, in what hope you have been helped to Christ Church?"

Charles sat nursing his knees. A small frown puckered his forehead, but scarcely interfered with the good-tempered smile about his mouth.

"Others beside my father have helped or are willing to help.
See that letter?"—he nodded towards one lying open on the table—
"It is from Ireland. It has been lying in the porter's lodge for a
week, and my scout brought it up this morning."

John picked it up, smiling at his boyish air of importance. "Am I to read it?"

Charles nodded, and while his brother read, gazed out of window.
The smile still played about his mouth, but queerly.

"It is a handsome offer," said John slowly, and laid the letter down.
"Have you taken any decision?"

"Father leaves it to me, as you know," Charles answered and paused, musing. "I suppose, now, ninety-nine out of a hundred would jump at it."

"Assuredly."

"Somehow our family seems to be made up of odd hundredths. You, for example, do not wish me to accept."

"I have said nothing to influence your choice."

"No, my dear Jack, you have not. Yet I know what you think, fast enough."

John picked up the letter again and folded it carefully.

"An estate in Ireland; a safe seat in the Irish Parliament; and money. Jack, that money might help to make many happy. Think of our mother, often without enough to eat; think of father's debts. He knows I would pay them," said Charles.

"And yet he has not tried to influence your choice."

"He's a Trojan, Jack; an old warhorse. You have cause to love him, for he loves you so much above all of us—and you know it—that, had the choice been offered you, he'd have moved heaven and earth to prevent your accepting a fortune."

He swung round, dropping his feet to the floor, and eyed his brother quizzically.

"Upon my word," he went on, "this thing annoys me. I've a mind to—"
Here he dived a hand into his breeches pocket and fished out a
shilling. "We'll settle it here and now, and you shall be witness.
Heads for Dangan Castle and Parliament House; tails for poverty!"

He spun the coin and slapped it down on his knee. His hand still covered it.

—"Come Jack, stand up and be properly excited."

"Nay," said John; "would you jest with God's purpose for you?"

"I have seen you open the Bible at random and take your omen from the first words your eyes light on. Yet I never accused you of jesting with Holy Writ. Cannot God as easily determine the fall of a coin?"

He withdrew his hand, and drew a deep breath. "Tails!" he announced, and faced his brother, smiling. "I am in earnest," he said. "But if you prefer the other way—"

He stepped to the shelf, took down his Bible and opened it, not looking himself, but holding the page under his brother's eyes.

"Well, what does it say?" he asked.

"It says," John answered, "'Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand.'"

Charles closed the Bible and restored it to its shelf; then faced his brother again, still with his inscrutable smile.

BOOK IV.