“Not pouting, are you?”
“No, I’m not pouting.”
“Of course you aren’t. Well, come down when you get hungry, then,” Mrs. Marchbanks said finally. “I’ll leave something on the table for you.” And she went away.
Sounds of the household at supper down there; then people moving about, talking. After a while, they began to come upstairs, the children first, Mrs. Marchbanks with them, stopping to tap at the door and ask if Hilda was all right.
“Yes. All right, thank you, Mrs. Marchbanks.”
The crispness of her tone seemed to send Mrs. Marchbanks away pretty promptly. Later Miss Ferguson’s slow, precise tread, its hesitation at her door, then the going on. Hilda was glad of that. Miss Ferguson was a good sort, she meant well; but Hilda didn’t want to see her now. Maybelle in her room again, moving about softly; the colonel’s heavy step; sounds of him locking up; he and Fayte on the stair, quarreling as usual, but in low tones.
And then the house grew still, except for those light, almost stealthy movements in the next room. Finally they, too, ceased. It was after ten o’clock, and Hilda’s work was done, when she suddenly realized that she should have taken off her riding clothes and packed them in the trunk. Well, it was locked, and strapped; they’d have to go in the bag now. She gave one last look around, to be sure she had forgotten nothing, then went to the window. That resurrection plant Maybelle had said she’d give her when she went home; she wanted it; the queer things didn’t grow over on the plains of Lame Jones County. Yet—she didn’t like to open the door and ask. Probably Maybelle was already asleep. She leaned out and looked; that other window beside hers was dark, and there sat the little plant in its bowl. Hilda made a long arm, reached around and transferred it to her own sill. She emptied the water in which it had grown green, and left it to dry out so that it would be ready to carry away in the morning.
Through all the flame and rush of her, the thought of Pearse had never been absent from her a moment. At first there was a desperate, irrational idea that she would see him before she left. Then, as the mere physical work began to clear her mind, she knew that she couldn’t do this. She’d have to write. After that, as she moved quietly, swiftly to and fro, her eyes went continually to the little table where pens and paper lay, her letter to Pearse forming itself in her mind. She wanted him to know that, if it had seemed possible, she would have stayed here as he asked her to. She must beg him to come over to the Sorrows. No—she shook her head above the dress she was folding—hadn’t been able to do a thing with him any of the times when he was right there. It—crowding paper into slipper toes—it was different now. She’d say—she’d say—
Everything done, she went over and sat down. The sheet before her, the pencil in her hand, she sat a long time staring, not seeing it. The furious activity of her moments of packing and getting ready, the hot anger that had sustained them, were gone. Cold doubts huddled around the edge of her mind; they clamored for attention. Suppose Pearse wouldn’t come over to the Sorrows? Suppose he changed back into that old Pearse she had known, who could be hard and indifferent? If she was here— When she could see him— But she was risking all in going away and trusting to a letter—
She finally began, wrote rapidly for a while, stopped, frowned at what she had written, tore it up, and sat thinking. This whole round of action she repeated several times. Then in desperation she dashed down a few lines, signed, folded them, got them into an envelope—put her head down on the table and began to cry.