“Couldn’t you get him to leave the paper with me, Cathy?” she whispered, insane ideas of getting up the money somehow floating into her brain.
“He won’t,” answered Cathy. “He means to give that to father personally, he says, if he stays till night.”
Just as many another has felt, in some apparently insurmountable obstacle, that seemed to be turning their hair grey in the little space of time that you can peel an apple, felt Mrs. Reed. Light seemed to be closing, shame and misery and blackness to be opening. Her hands seemed powerless to put the bacon into the Dutch oven.
But there ensued a respite. A very short one, but still a respite. While the summons-server was loitering outside, Reed came in through the back-garden, having got over the stile in Piefinch Lane. It was not often he chose that way; accident caused him to do it to-day. Mrs. Reed, really not knowing what she did or said, told Cathy there’d be a morsel of dinner for her if she liked to stop and eat it. As Cathy was not in the luck of such offers every day, she remained: and in her good-nature talked and laughed to divert any suspicion.
But the man at the gate began to smell a rat; perhaps the bacon as well. Dinner-hour almost over, and no George Reed had come home! He suddenly thought of the back-entrance, and walked up the front-path to see. Paper in hand, he gave a thump at the house-door. Reed was about to leave then: and he went down the path by the man’s side, opening the paper. Mrs. Reed, more like a ghost than a woman, took a glance through the window.
“I can’t face it, Catherine. When I’m gone, you’d better come home here and do what you can for the children. Tell him all; it’s of no good trying to hide it any longer.”
She took her worn old shawl from a press and put her bonnet on; and then stooped to kiss her children, saying good-bye with a burst of grief.
“But where are you going?” cried the wondering Cathy.
“Anywhere. If I am tempted to do anything desperate, Cathy, tell father not to think too bad of me, as he might if I was living.”
She escaped by the back-door. Catherine let her go, uncertain what to be at for the best. Her father was striding back to the house up the garden-path, and the storm was coming. As a preliminary van-guard, Cathy snatched up the youngest girl and held her on her lap. The summons-server was calling after Reed, apparently giving some instructions, and that took up another minute or two; but he came in at last.