CHAPTER XXX.
YES!
Honor could not rest in her bed that night. Oliver Luxmore in the adjoining room groaned and sighed, he was sleepless. Kate, who shared her bed, was awake and tossed from side to side. Poor Kate knew that the disgrace would separate her from Sam. She was too generous to urge her sister to make the costly sacrifice. Oliver felt that words would be unavailing, the matter must be left to Honor; his best advocate was in her own conscience. The resolution one way or the other must be come to by Honor unresisted, unswayed. She lay still in her bed, but Kate knew she did not sleep. She lay with her hands clasped as in prayer on her heaving bosom. Her eyes were on the little latticed window, and on a moth dancing dreamily up and down the panes, a large black moth that made the little diamonds of glass click at the stroke of its wings. Her hair over her brow was curled with the heat of her brain, the light short hair that would not be brushed back and lie with the copper-gold strands. Great drops rolled off her forehead upon the pillow. Afterwards, Kate felt that the cover was wet, and thought it was with Honor's tears, but she was not crying. Her eyes were dry and burning, but the moisture poured off her brow. Her feet were like ice. She might have been dead, she lay so still. Kate hardly heard her breathe. She held her breath and listened once, as she feared Honor was in a swoon. She did not speak to her sister. An indefinable consciousness that Honor must not be disturbed, must be left alone, restrained her. Once she stole her hand under the bedclothes round her sister, and laid it on her heart. Then she knew for certain what a raging storm was awake in that still, hardly breathing form.
That touch, unattended by word, was more than Honor could bear. She said nothing, but stole from bed, and put on some of her clothes. Kate watched her through her half-closed lids, and dared not speak or otherwise interfere. Honor went softly, barefooted down the stairs, that creaked beneath her tread. Her father heard the step. He knew whose it was. He also would not interfere. It was best for all—for Kate, for Charles, for himself, for Joe, and Pattie, and Willie, and Martha, and Charity, and little Temperance—that Honor should be wholly undisturbed.
The girl unfastened the back door, took up the little bench, cast a potato-sack over her head, and went forth, shutting the door gently behind her.
She carried the seat under the hedge in the paddock, where she had watched with Larry, and placed herself on it, then rested her elbow on her knee, and her head in her hand. Her feet were bare, dipped in the dewy grass; a seeded dandelion, stirred by them, shed its ripe down over them. She thrust the sack from her head. She could not endure the weight and the heat, and laid it across her shoulders; from them it slipped unheeded. Her arms were bare from the elbow. The cold night wind stroked the arm that stayed up her scorched brain. She had prayed that God would guide her, and the guidance had led into a way of sorrows. 'It is expedient that one man should die for the people,' those words of the High Priest recurred to Honor, and she thought how that He to whom they referred had accepted the decision. She would have died—died! O how willingly, how eagerly!—for the dear ones under the thatched roof; she would have leaped into fire, not for all, but for any one of them, for little Temperance, for dear Charity, for Martha, for Willie, for darling Pattie, for good, true Joe, for Kate, for her father of course—yes, even for Charles—but this that was demanded of her was worse than a brief spasm of pain in fire; it was a lifelong martyrdom, a sacrifice infinitely more dreadful than of life. The thrushes were singing. There was no night in the midst of June, and the birds did without sleep, or slept in the glare of midday. The only night was within the girl's soul. There was no singing or piping there, but the groaning of a crushed spirit.
She started. She was touched. She put out her hand and sighed. The horse that Langford had let them have was in the paddock; it had become much attached to Honor, and the beast had come over to her, unperceived, and was resting his head on her shoulder and rubbing it against her ear and cheek. She stroked the nose of the beast with her left hand without altering her position, mechanically, and without much diversion of her thoughts. When poor Diamond was dying in the gravel pit, Honor had sat by him and caressed him; now Diamond's successor had come to comfort Honor, as best he could, when her girlhood was dying in anguish, passing into a womanhood of sorrow.
Chink! chink! chink! a finch was perched on the topmost twig of an alder that swayed under its light weight in the wind, repeating its monotonous cry, chink! chink! chink!
The cold about Honor's feet became stronger, the dew looked whiter, as if it were passing into frost, the breath of the horse was as steam. High, far aloft, in the dusky sky some large bird was winging its way from sea to sea, from the Atlantic boisterous barren coast about Bude, to the summer, luxuriant bays of the Channel. What bird it was Honor could not tell. She would not have seen it but that the winking of its wings as they caught the light from the north attracted her attention. Strange as it may seem, though engrossed in her own sorrows, she watched the flap of the wings till they passed beyond range of vision.
Not a cloud was in the sky. The stars were but dimly seen in the silvery haze of summer twilight. One glowworm in the hedge opposite her shone brighter than any star, for it shone out of darkness deeper than the depths of heaven.