At last her mother came upstairs, and put her head in angrily:—"Why ben't you in bed, girl? sitting up this way?"
"I was praying, mother," says Grace, looking up as she knelt.
"Praying! What's the use of praying? and who'll hear you if you pray? What you want's a husband, to keep you out of the workhouse; and you won't get that by kneeling here. Get to bed, I say, or I'll pull you up?"
Grace obeyed uncomplaining, but utterly shocked; though she was not unacquainted with those frightful fits of morose unbelief, even of fierce blasphemy, to which the excitable West-country mind is liable, after having been over-strained by superstitious self-inspection, and by the desperate attempt to prove itself right and safe from frames and feelings, while fact and conscience proclaim it wrong.
The West-country people are apt to attribute these paroxysms to the possession of a devil; and so did Grace that night.
Trembling with terror and loving pity, she lay down, and began to pray afresh for that poor wild mother.
At last the fear crossed her that her mother might make away with herself. But a few years before, another class-leader in Aberalva had attempted to do so, and had all but succeeded. The thought was intolerable. She must go to her; face reproaches, blows, anything. She rose from her bed, and went to the door. It was fastened on the outside.
A cold perspiration stood on her forehead. She opened her lips to shriek to her mother: but checked herself when she heard her stirring gently in the outer room. Her pulses throbbed too loudly at first for her to hear distinctly: but she felt that it was no moment for giving way to emotion; by a strong effort of will, she conquered herself; and then, with that preternatural acuteness of sense which some women possess, she could hear everything her mother was doing. She heard her put on her shawl, her bonnet; she heard her open the front door gently. It was now long past midnight. Whither could she be going at that hour?
She heard her go gently to the left, past the window; and yet her footfall was all but inaudible. No rain had fallen, and her shoes ought to have sounded on the hard earth. She must have taken them off. There, she was stopping, just by the school-door. Now she moved again. She must have stopped to put on her shoes; for now Grace could hear her steps distinctly, down the earth bank, and over the rattling shingle of the beach. Where was she going? Grace must follow!
The door was fast: but in a moment she had removed the table, opened the shutter and the window.