But Michieson looked elsewhere. He was listening, he was shivering with anticipation. If that cry reached her! Tom, however, failed to notice this; innocent and unconscious, he opened the gate and passed through; and, thinking of his sister and his last parting from her, went slowly across the sunlit grass until the low-hanging boughs of the apple-trees hid him.
The parson looked up and down the road with a hunted eye. The position was terrible. Should he go to his wife, confess and prepare her? Or should he wait until his unwelcome guests returned to share the brunt. Or--or should he go? Go about his business--was there not sad, pressing business at Beamond's farm?--until the storm was overpast.
He was a good man, but he was weak. A few seconds of hesitation, and he skulked down the road, his head bent, his eyes glancing backwards. He fancied that he heard his wife's voice, and hurried faster and faster from the dreaded sound. At length he reached the main road and stood, his face hot with shame. He considered what he should do.
Beamond's? Yes, he must go about that. He must, to save his self-respect, go about business of some kind. At a large farm two miles away his churchwarden lived; there he could get help. The farmer and his wife had had the disease, and were in less terror of it than some. At any rate he could consult them: in a Christian parish people could not lie unburied. In vital matters he was no coward, and he knew that if no one would help him--which was possible, so great was the panic--he would do all himself, if his strength held out.
In turning this over he tried to forget the foolish imbroglio of the morning; yet now and again he winced, pricked in his conscience and his manhood. After all, they had come to him for help, for food and shelter; and who so proper to afford these as God's minister in that place. At worst he should have sent them to one of the farms, and allowed it out of the tithe, and taken the chance when Easter came, and Peg discovered it. Passing the branch-road on his left, which Tom and Betty had taken in the night, he had a distant view of a horseman riding that way at speed: and he wondered a little, the sight being unusual. Three minutes later he came to the roadside ale-house which Betty had visited. The goodwife was at the door, and watched him come up. As he passed she cried out, to learn if his reverence had news.
"None that's good, Nanny," he answered; never doubting but she had the illness at Beamond's on her mind. And declining her offer of a mug of ale he went on, and half a mile farther turned off the road by a lane that led to the churchwarden's farm. He crossed the farmyard, and found Mrs. Benacre sitting within the kitchen door, picking over gooseberries. He begged her not to move, and asked if the goodman was at home.
"No, your reverence, he's at the Hall," she answered. "He was leaving hay in the Furlongs, and was fetched all in a minute this hour past, and took the team with him. The little lad came home and told me."
The vicar started, and looked a little odd. "I wanted to see him about poor Beamond," he said.
"'Tis true, then, your reverence?"
"Too true. There's nothing like it happened in the parish in my time."