Where Highways Cross/Part 1/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
PARTIAL CONFIDENCES
Hepworth pushed open the door and looked in.
During the afternoon of the next day Hepworth was passing through the upper fold when he heard the sound of a woman's voice singing in one of the buildings. He stopped and listened wonderingly. The voice was clear and high—the tune a merry one. Everything about the farmstead at that moment was quiet and hushed—the day had reached that mystic point where the afternoon begins to melt towards evening. The men were working in the Ten-Acre; there was nobody about the place but Mally and Elisabeth and himself; therefore it must be from Elisabeth that the song came. He walked across the fold in the direction of the barn and pushed open the door and looked in. After the first glance he remained standing at the open door in some surprise and astonishment.
The barn had two doors, that at which Hepworth stood, Opening from the fold, and one, exactly opposite, which gave access to the orchard. Between these doors the floor-space was covered with boards that in former days had been used as a threshing-floor. In the centre of this stood Elisabeth. She was dressed for the afternoon in a neat black dress, relieved from any suspicion of sombreness by a white muslin apron and cap. In one hand she held a measure full of grain, and she threw handfuls of this to the fowls which had followed her into the barn and now grouped themselves, feeding and clucking, at her feet. Now and then she threw a handful with wider sweep to the pigeons who strutted at the entrance to the orchard, or to the sparrows that had flown down from the bare-branched apple-trees and came timidly towards the barn-door. As she thus occupied herself she sang, but after he had caught sight of her Hepworth was not so much interested in her singing as in her face. For the first time since he had seen it the expression of grief and sorrow was gone and in its place there was life and animation. Elisabeth's cheeks were full of colour; her eyes danced with pleasure, smiles curved her lips as she flung the grain amongst the birds at her feet: Hepworth suddenly recognised that she was a pretty and even fascinating woman. He pushed open the door and advanced into the barn: Elisabeth turned and caught sight of him. She stopped singing, and at the same moment the pigeons and sparrows, frightened by Hepworth's entrance, flew away above the trees outside. The fowls stayed there and pecked at the stray grains with undisturbed industry. Elisabeth gave a little laugh and flung the grain which remained in the measure amongst them in a heap.
"You are busy, Elisabeth," said Hepworth.
He stood close by and looked at her curiously. There was something new in her whole appearance, even in the way in which her colour slightly increased as she turned to him.
"I am only feeding the fowls, sir," she answered.
"And singing," he said.
"There's no work in that, sir," she replied.
"No, but I never heard you sing before—as you were going about the house, I mean," he said, scarcely knowing what was in his mind.
"I haven't sung for a long time," she said.
"Then I suppose you sing to-day because you feel light-hearted," said Hepworth. "Your song was a merry one, at any rate."
Elisabeth laughed. There was something in the sound that seemed to jar on Hepworth's mind; he looked more attentively at her, and found that over her face had come something of the hard expression with which he was already familiar.
"I don't know about light-hearted, sir," she said. "It's such a long time since I knew what light-heartedness meant. But I've felt glad since yesterday—and I'm hopeful of something—and so I suppose I began singing."
"What made you glad?" he asked, leaning against the door of the barn and watching her more intently.
Elisabeth gave him a quick look.
"What you said at the chapel, sir," she replied. "I thought about it, and I think you're right, and so I was pleased, because I wanted to think it before, only I never could bring my mind to it."
"Oh," said Hepworth. "And what was it that I said—about forgiving those who sin against us?"
Elisabeth shook her head with a decided activity.
"No, sir, no! It's no use preaching that to me—saints might do it, but I can't. No—it was what you said about those who do wrong in secret, thinking that they will never be found out and that they will escape punishment. You said that punishment would come to them. I wanted to believe that a long time, but I never could, and I shouldn't now, only you seemed so certain about it."
"Elisabeth," said Hepworth, "why didn't you believe it? Your ideas are new to me—I never met with them."
Elisabeth looked at him with an air of doubtfulness.
"Perhaps, sir," she answered, with evident simplicity, "you don't know much of the world?"
"I am a man of middle age," he said.
She shook her head and smiled.
"I don't think that's got much to do with it, sir. It all depends, doesn't it, on how much a person's seen of life?"
"Have you seen so much that you know these things better than I do?" he enquired.
"Oh no, sir; I don't say that. I only say that from what I've seen during my life I've never been able to see that all you preached yesterday is true."
Hepworth reflected. He was always curiously interested in these matters, and had an almost morbid curiosity in any question affecting the relation of the human soul to belief.
"You mean," he said, "that you can't reconcile your own experiences of life with the teachings of religion?"
"Yes, sir, I suppose that is how you would put it."
"But why, Elisabeth?"
"Oh, for many reasons, sir. Now you say that God is good, and that He's the Father of all, don't you?"
Hepworth nodded his head.
"I suppose you believe that," said Elisabeth, "and so did I, once, because I was never taught anything else. But afterwards I didn't, because I couldn't. If God was Father of everybody, couldn't He protect those that never did anyone any harm? Wouldn't He act like a father?"
"Yes."
"Then why doesn't He?" she asked with sudden fierceness. "Why, why? Why do wicked people flourish and go free, and become prosperous, and those who are innocent suffer for their wickedness? Why, sir?"
Hepworth shook his head. He was neither prepared nor able to answer such a question.
"That's why I couldn't believe those things," said Elisabeth. "I heard them preached and talked about, but it wasn't so in real life."
"We don't know all that God knows," said Hepworth. "It may be that what we call evil is working for good."
Elisabeth made an involuntary gesture of impatient dissent.
"I'm not clever enough to see that, sir," she said. "But if you'd known what I've known, you'd know how I feel about it. Supposing you saw an innocent man suffer for a guilty one, and knew what pain and anguish he must suffer, and had to suffer yourself because of it, and prayed to God, oh, night and day, to make things right, and there was no answer, no answer, nothing but silence and helplessness—what then, sir?"
Hepworth stared at her in amazement. She spoke with vehemence, her bosom rose and fell as if under the influence of strong emotion, her mouth quivered pathetically as she spoke of suffering and helplessness.
"Elisabeth?" he exclaimed, forgetting his usual reserve. "You've been through all that yourself! What was it?"
But Elisabeth suddenly regained her composure. She had laid down the grain-measure on a sack of corn close by, while she spoke—she now picked it up and made for the barn-door.
"I beg your pardon, sir," she said, her tone implying the recognition of the position which she occupied in Hepworth's household. "I've been forgetting myself, I'm afraid, and talking too much. But you spoke kindly, and—and I've no friend to talk to now."
"You can look on me as a friend," said Hepworth. "And if you are in trouble—"
"I've no trouble now, sir, that can be shared or mended. It's only the memory of one, and I shall tell it to nobody," she said, with decision. "I've taken it to heart badly so far, but I'm feeling better since I heard what you said yesterday. I've thought that over, and I believe one thing—the wicked shall be found out."
She uttered these words with such an expression of fervent hope, not unmixed with something like hate, that Hepworth could only remain silent and wondering. She went out of the barn, and in another moment he heard her singing as she crossed the fold.
Hepworth sat up late that night reading in his parlour, and when he went to bed the house was silent and dark. As he gained the head of the staircase and turned into the long passage that ran the length of the house, he was attracted by a gleam of light that came from a doorway. He walked down the passage towards it, thinking that someone had forgotten to turn out a lamp. He came to the open door and suddenly found that he was looking into Elisabeth's room.
The door stood slightly ajar: Elisabeth had forgotten to secure it before retiring. By arrangement with old Mally she burned a lamp through the night. The lamp stood on a bracket just within the door, its light faint and low, but sufficiently clear to give Hepworth a partial view of the room. Without knowing it he had looked in and his eyes fell upon Elisabeth asleep, with the faint light full upon her face.
Hepworth stood still for a moment. She was sleeping quietly, her dark hair strewn about the pillow, her bosom rising and falling in regular movements, one arm thrown upward above her head. Whatever her trouble, she had lost it in sleep.
He stood and looked, and as he looked a sudden consciousness came over him. There was a new interest within him; he loved this woman whom he had met so strangely. For some days he had felt an unknown influence coming into his life; now at the sight of that innocent sleep, it suddenly burnt up within him. into strong flame, and for the first time in his life Hepworth recognised the influence of passionate desire to love and to be loved. He looked and looked again, and suddenly closed the door with a gentle movement and went to his own room, full of new thoughts.