Hester said not a word. As she looked up at the sick moon her eyes showed large and dark; her face was corpselike in the wan radiance. She was weary, and she had been indiscreet. She could not sleep without confessing to Hetty her lapse of temper and tongue, and Hetty had enough to bear already. She had not been so strong and bright as was her wont for a month past. It might be only excessive drudgery over sewing machine and household duties, but she looked fagged and sad at times. The phaëton and horse would benefit mamma and the children—when the vacant place beside the mistress of the Manse was not occupied by their lord and master. He got the lion’s share of every luxury. Poor Hester’s conscience and heart were raw, and the heat of the wounds inflamed her imagination. The evening at the judge’s had not rested her. That was strange, or would have been had not the long, black shadow of her father lain across the memory of it.
The back door of the parsonage stood wide open, and the house was so still that, as March stooped to lift Hester from her carriage at the foot of the steps, he caught the sound of what was scarcely louder than an intermittent sigh in the upper story, but continuous as a violent fit of weeping. The arm that lay over his shoulder twitched convulsively; Hester shuddered sharply, then laughed aloud:
“Oh, Mr. Gilchrist! I thought I was falling! It is too bad to put you to all this trouble. I hope Tony hasn’t blown himself up. He ought to have come for me.”
“Didn’t I promise your mother to bring you home safely?” said March reassuringly. And, as they reached the hall—“May I carry you upstairs?”
The offer seemed to terrify her.
“Oh, no, no! Just lay me on the settee there! Somebody will be down directly. Don’t trouble yourself to bring the chair in. Tony will attend to that. Thank you! Good-night, Mr. Gilchrist! Good-night, Miss May!”
While she hurried all this out, a stumble on the back stairs was the precursor of Homer’s appearance in the dim recesses of the hall. He alighted at the bottom of the flight on all-fours, picked himself up and shambled forward, one hand on his head, the other on his elbow, an imbecile grin spreading his jaws.
“Now, I a’most broke me nake on them stairs!”
March had deposited Hester upon the hall lounge, and although perceiving her anxiety to get rid of him, hesitated to commit her to the keeping of a man who was, apparently, but half awake.
“Let me carry you up!” he insisted to Hester. “He may fall again.”