“Now that you’re getting your own servants here, Miss,” she began, “you’ll likely not be wanting me any longer, and I just want to say I’ll go without any telling, if you like.”
“I am not getting my own servants here,” said Miss Moffat, bewildered at the sudden turn affairs had taken. “I do not want to meddle with the arrangements of any other person’s house; but I cannot nurse Mrs. Brady alone, you must know that, and I want to have some one with me I can trust.”
“You might have trusted me, Miss,” said the woman, with a smouldering fire in her dark eyes. “The Lord knows you might. Even though you have done this thing and brought a stranger to this sorrowful house, man nor woman shouldn’t wring from me what I know, nor—” she added after a pause, devoted possibly to conjuring up an effective finish to her sentence, “wild horses shouldn’t tear it. I never did like the mistress, for all her pretty face and quiet ways; but I came nearer liking her the other morning than ever I did before, when I found out how the trouble had been eating in like rust, when I heard her letting out everything she would have bitten her tongue off before she would have spoken in her right mind. It was her silence always beat me; but I’d have nursed her better than that slip of a thing can do, and I’d have died, Miss, before I let on she had been talking of anything beyond the common.”
Miss Moffat stood silent for a moment, then she said,—
“I think open speaking is always a good thing. So far as I am concerned I should be quite willing to trust you. I have been so sure of your good faith, I never asked whether Mrs. Brady had been talking strangely after I left her and went down to Doctor Girvan, but—I do not want to hurt your feelings—how was it possible for me to let you nurse her? Do not imagine I am setting myself up as a judge of you or anybody else; all I ask is, if you had been in her place should you have liked such an arrangement yourself?”
The woman did not answer direct, but she broke forth,—
“Do you want me to leave? I was fond of the children. I did my best by them, I am doing all I know how now.”
“No,” Miss Moffat replied; “I do not want you to leave; at present, I may tell you, it would inconvenience me beyond expression if you were to do so. When Mrs. Brady is better, no doubt she will wish you to go. I say this frankly, but when that day comes, if you want a chance for the future, if you want to wipe out the past and try to make a better thing of the rest of your life, I will help you.”
This time the answer came quick and sharp. “If there were more ladies like you, there would be fewer women like me,” said the poor sinful creature; her assurance vanquished, her insolence gone,—and, throwing her apron over her head, she went along the stone passage leading to the kitchen, sobbing—sobbing every step of the way.
Which evidence of contrition touched Miss Moffat beyond expression, and gave her much hope concerning Susan’s future. She had learned many things during the previous twelve months, but she had still to be taught that repentance for past errors is not by any means a guarantee for future good behaviour; that the tears wept over a crime committed and irrevocable, dry up almost as soon as shed, and form no lake of bitterness across which humanity finds almost insuperable difficulty in steering to another sin.