Bet saw once more the little room in Sparrow Street, and the smile, the look so full of satisfaction, on her dead mother's face.
"Oh, mother, mother!" she sobbed.
She fell on her knees, and the tears streamed through the fingers which covered her face. "Oh mother! life ha' gone hard—bitter, bitter hard—for poor Bet. I ha' broke my word to you—and the lads, I dunno where they are. Oh, I'm good for nought—I'm good for nought—I wish I were lying dead beside my mother!"
She sobbed and sobbed; and her tears, while they seemed to rend her heart, brough a certain sense of lightness and relief.
"Mother, you was a good woman-you believed in religion and all that. I didn't. I were allers a hard 'un—allers, and allers; but I'd give the world,—mother, mother, hear me, hear me, ef you can, up in heaven with God!—I'd give all the wide world to be good, GOOD, to-night!"
Again Bet seemed to hear Will and Hester singing to her—
"And I know that at last my message
Has passed through the golden gate,
And my heart is no longer restless,
And I am content to wait."
She rose to her feet. Her tears were over, her great grief was lightened, but now a curious and inexplicable desire took possession of her. She would not fail Isaac Dent. If she had broken every other promise she would at least keep this one. She would marry him tomorrow, and perhaps her mother's God would help her to be a good wife to him. But she would—she must—go to Liverpool tonight. She had money enough in her pocket to take her there; she looked at the coins, going close to the window to see them the better in the moonlight, and saw that she had sufficient to purchase a single third-class fare. How was she to get back to Warrington in the morning? How was she to meet Dent at the registrar's office? She did not know; she felt also that she did not care. Already her marriage with Dent seemed to be removed into a dim and intangible future. She would marry him,—oh, yes—but when and how she did not know, she did not care. She could scarcely bring her thoughts to bear on the great and terrible subject which an hour ago had filled her whole horizon. Liverpool, the great city, was drawing her, as though it was the voice of Will himself. She rose, brushed out her hair, plaited it, and wound it in a great coronet round her beautiful head, washed her face and hands, wrapped her mother's shawl tidily round her, and ran downstairs.
At the door she met Jenny.
"Good-bye, dear," she said in a gentle tone. And she stooped and kissed the little round-faced girl.