Hetty Wesley Part 18

For a moment in her earnestness she met his stare. Then her hands went up to her face. "You? You?" he repeated slowly. His eyes shrank from her face and wandered helplessly over the smoke, over the red roofs of the town below them.

"But we came to get married!" She plucked her hands away from her face and stepped close to him, forcing his reluctant eyes to meet hers. Her cheeks flamed: he groaned at the sight of her beauty.

"But we came to get married! John, there is nothing--surely nothing?--that with your help cannot be set right? Ah, I forget--by marrying us you will offend father, and you find now that you want this favour of him. John, it cannot be _that_--you cannot be playing so cruel a trick for _that_--and after your promise? Forgive me if I am selfish: but think what I am fighting for!"

"It will cost me the precentorship," answered he slowly, "but I hadn't given a thought to that."

"It shall cost you nothing of the kind. After all, father is juster to others than to me. I will write--we will both write: I will tell him what you risked to save his daughter. Or, stay: any clergyman will do, will he not? We need only the licence. You shall risk nothing: give me only the licence and I will run and find one."

"Dear Miss Hetty, I made no promise. I have no licence. None has reached me, nor word of one."

"Then he must have it! He told me--that is, I understood--"

She broke off with a laugh most pitiful in John's ears, though it seemed to rea.s.sure her. "But how foolish of me! Of _course_ he must have it. And you will come with me, at once? At the least you are willing to come?"

"Surely I will come." John's face was gloomy. "Where are the lodgings?"

"I cannot tell you the name of the street, but I can find them.

John, you are an angel! And afterwards I will sit and tell you about Patty to your heart's content. We can be married in the parlour, I suppose? Or must it be in church? I had rather--far rather--it were in church if you could manage that for us: but not to lose time.

Perhaps we can find a church later in the day and get permission to go through the service again. I daresay, though, he has it all arranged--he said I might leave it to him. You won't tell him, John, what a fright I have given myself?"

So her tongue ran on as they descended the hill together.

John Romley walked beside her stupidly, wondering if she were in truth rea.s.sured or chattering thus to keep up her hopes. They might, after all, be justified: but his forebodings weighed on his tongue.

Also the shock had stunned him and all his wits seemed to be buzzing loose in his head.

They did not notice, although they pa.s.sed it close, a certain signboard over a low-browed shop half-way down the street.

Afterwards Hetty remembered pa.s.sing the shop, and that its one window was caked with mud and grimed with dust on top of the mud. She did not see a broad-shouldered man in a dirty baize ap.r.o.n seated at his work-bench behind the pane. Nor after pa.s.sing the shop did she turn her head: but walked on unaware of an ill-shaven face thrust out of its doorway and staring after her.

William Wright sat at his bench that morning, fitting a leather washer in a leaky bra.s.s tap. In the darkest corner at the back of the shop his father--a peevish old man, well past seventy--stooped over a desk, engaged as usual in calculating his book-debts, an occupation which brought him no comfort but merely ingrained his bad opinion of mankind. Having drunk his trade into a decline, and being now superannuated, he nagged over his ledgers from morning to night and s.n.a.t.c.hed a fearful joy in goading William to the last limit of forbearance. William, who had made himself responsible for the old man's debts, endured him on the whole very creditably. "Here's a bad 'un," "Here's a bad 'un," piped the voice from time to time.

William trimmed away at his washer.

"h.e.l.lo! Who's been putting this in the ledger?" The old man held up a thin strip of leather. "Oh, Willum, here's a very bad 'un!"

"What name?" asked William indifferently, without turning his head.

"Wesley, Reverend Samuel--Wroote and Epworth Rectory-- twelve-seventeen-six. Two years owing, and not a stiver on account.

Oh, a poisonous bad 'un!"

"That's all right!"

"Not a stiver on account!"

"All right, I tell you. There won't be any paying on account with that bill: it'll be all or nothing. All, perhaps; and, if so, something more than all"--he laid down his clasp-knife and almost involuntarily put a hand up to his cheek--"but nothing, most like.

I put that slip of leather there to remind me, but I don't need it.

'Twelve-seventeen-six'--better scratch it off."

"'Scratch it off'? Scratch off twelve-seventeen-six!" Old Wright spun round on his stool. But William sat gazing out of the window.

He had picked up his knife again, but did not at once resume work.

The next thing old Wright heard was the clatter of a knife on the bench. William sprang up as it dropped, crept swiftly to the shop door, and stood there craning his head into the street and fumbling with his ap.r.o.n.

"What's the matter? Cut yourself? It don't want a doctor, do it?"

William did not answer: suddenly he plucked off his ap.r.o.n, flung it backwards into the shop, and disappeared into the street. The old man tottered forward, picked it off the floor and stood examining it, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish's.

CHAPTER II.

"'Brought him'! Who told you to bring him?"

Hetty's lover faced her across the round table in the lodging-house parlour. The table was spread for two, and Hetty's knife and plate stood ready for her with a covered dish before it. He had breakfasted, and their entrance surprised him with an empty pewter in his hand, his chair thrust back sideways from the table, his legs extended towards the empty fire-place, and his eyes bent on his handsome calves with a somewhat moody frown.

"Who told you to bring him?"

John Romley stood in the doorway behind Hetty's shoulder. She turned to him bravely and quietly, albeit with the scare in her face.

"I ought not to have brought you in like this. You will not mind waiting outside, will you?--a minute only--while I explain--"

Romley bent his head and walked out, closing the door.

"Dear"--Hetty turned--"you must forgive me, but I could not rest until I had brought him."

He had risen, and stood now with his face averted, gazing out of the window where a row of clouts and linen garments on a clothes-line blocked the view of an untidy back-yard. He had known that this moment must come, but not that it would take him so soon and at unawares. He let his anger rise while he considered what to answer; for a man in the wrong will miss no excuse for losing his temper.

Hetty waited for a moment, then went on--"And I thought you had given him the licence: that is what made me so anxious to find--"

A noise in the pa.s.sage cut short her excuses: a woman's laugh.

Hetty knew of two women only in the house--the landlady who had opened the door last night and a pert-looking slatternly servant she had pa.s.sed at the foot of the stairs on her way to the cathedral.

She could not tell to which of these the voice belonged: but the laugh and the jest it followed--though she had not caught it--were plainly at John Romley's expense, and the laugh was horrible.

It rang on her ears like a street-door bell. It seemed to tear down the mystery of the house and scream out its secret. The young man at the window turned against his will and met Hetty's eyes. They were strained and staring.

She put out her hand. "Where is the licence?" she asked. "Give it to me."

The change in her voice and manner confused him. "My dear child, don't be silly," he blundered.

"Give me the licence."

"Tut, tut--let us understand one another like sensible folks.

You must not treat me like a boy, to be bounced in this fashion by John Romley." He began to whip up his temper again. "Nasty tippling parson! I've more than a mind to kick him into the street."

Her eyes widened on his with growing knowledge, growing pain: but faith lived in them yet.

"I thought you had given him the licence, to be ready for us.

Yes, yes--you did say it!" Her hand went up to her bosom for his last letter, which she had worn there until last night. Then she remembered: she had left it upstairs. Having him, she had no more need to wear it.

He read the gesture. "You are right, dear, and I forgot. I _did_ say so, because I believed by the time the words reached you--or thereabouts, at any rate--"