to get closer to her. As the ground grew level again, he could hear the gurgle of a small burn crossing their road at a place where a hamlet of thatched mud houses had once stood. There was but one ruin of a cottage left, a little way from the country road, and he was near enough to see Margaret strike off towards it. He went round the roofless hovel till he came to its door, which was still standing. She had entered and closed it after her.
There was a gleam of light inside, and, putting his eye to a gaping crack in the wood, he could see what took place within the walls. A man was sitting on a bundle of straw covered with sacking and a battered lantern beside him shed its light on him and on the woman. As it flickered in the draught, the shadows, ghastly and fantastic, played among the broken beams and the tufts of dried vegetation, springing up where rain had fallen in upon the floor.
Rob held his breath as Margaret unfolded her apron and laid a loaf with a large piece of cheese upon the straw. It was just such a loaf as he had seen her buy from the baker’s cart at his father’s doorstep. The idea that she might have paid for it herself did not enter his mind, for it was of a type to which such ideas are foreign. It was not easy to distinguish what they said. He pressed nearer in his eagerness, and a brick on which he trod turning under his foot, he slipped, lurching heavily against the rotten panel. The immediate silence which followed told him that the blow had startled Margaret and her companion, so, regaining his balance, he fled towards the road and made his way home in the darkness. He had seen all that he needed for his purpose.
The grieve was out when he reached the house and his disappointment was keen; he had hoped, his tale once told, to make his father confront the ill-doer as she entered fresh from her errand. But he had to keep his discovery till the morrow, for it was nearing ten o’clock when Hedderwick came home and went to bed in silence with the uncommunicativeness of a weary man. Rob followed his example sulkily. The next day as the two men strolled down the road after their midday dinner, he embarked on the story of what he had seen and done overnight.
Rob Hedderwick drove his words home with the straight precision of a man assured of the convincing power of his case. He could reason well, and the education which the grieve lacked, but had given to his son, clothed his opinions with a certain force. Hedderwick’s mind was turned up as by a ploughshare. His anger at the long chain of petty thefts, which seemed to have been effectively proved before the young man’s eyes, lay on him like a weight of lead; and that the one who had been forging that chain these many months sat at his hearth and ate of his food made it all the heavier. Treachery was what he could not bear. He was honest himself and dishonesty was a fault to which he was pitiless. The thing, unendurable in an enemy, was doubly so in the woman who had come to be, to him, indispensable. But, as he pictured the house without Margaret, his heart sank. Now, and only now, was he to realise what she had been – what she was – to him. He stood leaning his arms on a gate; Rob, having done his duty, had gone off to spend the afternoon with some neighbours; and he remained, sore at heart, where he was – looking towards his own house and drawn this way and that by resentment, disillusion and another feeling which was perhaps more painful than either. Rob had been right, no doubt, but that did not prevent his father from hating him because he had destroyed his peace, and he was glad that he would be leaving early next morning. What steps he might take in consequence of his hateful discovery should be taken after he had gone; for he suspected a touch of malicious satisfaction in his son that he would be careful not to gratify. He turned grimly from the gate and went home.
The two following days went by and he remained silent. At times he had almost made up his mind to ignore everything he had heard, so great was his dread of parting with Margaret. On the evening after Rob left he opened his mouth to speak, but it was as though an unseen hand closed his lips. He could not do it. He desired and yet feared to be alone with her; and when, on the second day of his torment, he saw her start for the farm on some business of domestic supply, he stood in the patch of garden and watched her go with a feeling of relief.
The days were lengthening now, and the wistful notes of blackbirds told their perpetual spring story of the fragility of youth and the pathos of coming pain; but Margaret took time to do her business and the light was beginning to fall as she came out of the farm-gate. Somehow, the heavy load she had carried for so many months seemed to press less cruelly in the alluring quiet of the outdoor world. Instead of going back to the house she turned into a rough way that circled westward and would bring her home by the manse.
She wandered on; behind her, at a little distance, a boy was carrying a milk-can, whistling as he went. The road took her past a disused quarry, a place where steep angles of ragged stone struck out, like headlands, into the garment of weed and bush with which the years were clothing it. It was deep, and, through the dusk, she could just see its bottom and a dark object which lay among the pieces of fallen rock. She peered down – for the remnant of a crazy rail was all that protected unwary passengers from the chasm – and then held up her hand to stop the boy’s whistle. From the heap below came a sound like a human voice.
Margaret was an active woman. At the point where she stood the earth had slipped in an outward incline, and a few young ashes that had seeded themselves in the thick tangle of wood offered a comparatively easy descent. She began to go down, waist-deep in the dried thistle-fluff, keeping her foothold in the sliding soil by clinging to the undergrowth.
Among the roots and boulders lay a man, face downwards. From the helpless huddle in which he lay, and the moans which struck her ear as she scrambled towards him, she knew that he must be desperately hurt. At sight of the blood on the surrounding stones she paused and cried to the boy who watched her from above to run for help. Then she sat down and raised the unhappy creature to lie with his head on her knee, and saw, through the growing dusk, that she was looking into the face of her husband.
How long she sat with her half-conscious burden she never knew; but the moments till the return of her messenger were double their length to her. The shadow fell deeper about them and bats began to come out of their fastnesses in the creeks and holes of the stone. It was chilly cold. A tuft of thistle, half-way up the slope she had descended, was catching the remaining light, and the cluster of its blurred, sere head stared on her like a face, with the fantastic attraction that irrelevant things will take on for humanity in its hours of horror.
Weir stirred a little and his eyes opened for a moment.
‘It’s me,’ she whispered, bending lower; but she could not tell whether he knew her or not, for he had slipped back into unconsciousness.
Just before the boy came back he looked up once more; this time with comprehension; it seemed to her that he had grown heavier in her arms.
‘Ye’ll no gang?’ he asked feebly.
‘No; a’ll no gang,’ replied Margaret.
A minute later the voices of the boy and the men he had brought came to her from above. Her arms tightened protectingly, for the thought of the transport made her shudder. Then she gazed down at Weir and saw that she need fear pain for him no more.
IT WAS THE DAY of the inquiry. Parish details were not so complete forty years ago as they are now and communication with towns was more difficult; so Tom Weir’s body lay in an outhouse of the farm. The ‘fiscal’ was summoned, and Margaret, the whistling boy, and the handful of men who had carried the vagrant from his rough deathbed were on their way to attend at the place appointed.
Margaret Weir walked alone, her face set in the hard-won peace of a resolution long dreaded, but accomplished at last. The time spent in the quarry had merged her dumb patience, her rebellion against the wreck of her content and growing love, into a vast, steadfast pity. The dead man had been thief, jail-bird, destroyer of her youth; but the old, broken bond had been drawn together again by his appeal as he died in her arms among the nettles. ‘Ye’ll no gang?’ he had said. ‘No, a’ll no gang,’ she had replied, And she was not going now; not till all was done. She was on her way to identify his body and to declare herself his widow; and what money he had not taken from her was to buy him the decent ‘burying’ which, with her kind, stands for so much.
The shadow of disrespectability lying on Hedderwick’s household was a thing she would not contemplate, and she was sure that the answer to all difficulties