rise, at times, to her mind and make her sigh. She wished, as she sat with her eyes on her book and the clean pocket-handkerchief folded beside it, that she had told Hedderwick. She was so much preoccupied that she never looked up, nor settled herself against the pewback, as did her neighbours, when the sermon began. It was a few minutes before she shook herself from her abstraction and composed herself to listen to the minister’s voice.
The kirk was a plain square place with a gallery, supported on thin pillars, running round all but its western side where the tall pulpit stood between high windows. The minister, under the umbrella-like sounding-board poised over him, was far above the heads of the congregation and on a level with the occupants of the upstair pews, looking across the intervening chasm into the faces of the laird and his family. The north wall, by which Hedderwick sat, was unbroken, but on the farther side of the kirk two small windows under the gallery floor looked out upon the little kirkyard surrounding the building. There were not many tombstones on that side of it, and the light, chilly autumn wind rippled the long grass till it looked like grey waves.
Margaret never knew what made her turn her head sharply and glance across to the diamond-shaped panes. Between her and one of the windows the seats were almost empty, and there was nothing to interrupt her view of a shambling figure that moved among the graves. While she watched, the leaded panes darkened, as a man approached and looked through; the sill was cut so deep in the wall that few of the congregation could see him, and the two or three whose positions would allow them to do so had their attention fixed upon the pulpit. The man’s eyes searched as much of the interior of the kirk as he could command, and, stopping at Margaret, became centred upon her.
She looked down at her knee, faint with the suggestion shot into her terror-struck heart by the face staring in at her from outside. Hedderwick, who could have seen what she saw, was drowsy, and his closed lids shut out from him the new act of that long-buried tragedy that was being revived for the woman at his side. When she raised her head again the figure had retreated a few paces from the pane, and its outlines turned her apprehension into certainty.
The preacher’s voice ran on through the silence, but it seemed to Margaret as though her heartbeats drowned it; she forced herself to overcome the mental dizziness that wrapped her like the shawl whose fringes lay spread on the slippery wood of the pew. Its warmth was turned to a chill mockery. She closed her eyes that she might shut out the familiar things about her; the accustomed faces, the high pulpit, the red cushion on its ledge, the long, pendent tassels swinging into space; the grieve’s bulky shoulders and Sunday clothes, his brown leather Bible with its corners frayed by its weekly sojourns in his pocket. All these things had become immeasurably dear; and now, this Sunday morning might be – probably would be – the last time she should ever see them.
When the congregation dispersed she sat still. Hedderwick would have waited for her, but she motioned him dumbly to go on. After the last shuffle of feet had retreated over the threshold and the beadle came in to shut the doors, she rose and went out.
The man was waiting there for her among the gravestones as she rounded the angle of the wall. Though he was a few years younger than herself he looked much older; there was white on his unshaven chin, and she saw, as she approached, that he was almost in rags. Whether he were a beggar or not, he had the unmistakable shifting look of mendicancy. But his features were unchanged and she would have known the set of his eyebrows anywhere. She opened her lips to speak, but the pounding of her heart choked her breath.
‘A’ve been seekin’ ye,’ he said, in the thick voice that told of long drinking. ‘A speired at Netherside an’ they tellt me ye was here.’
Netherside was Margaret’s old home; a village over the county border.
‘We got word ye was deid after ye cam’ oot o’ jail,’ said she, ‘but a didna ken whether tae believe it. But when sic a time gaed by—’
‘Heuch!’ rejoined he, with a flicker of grim humour, ‘a was fine an’ pleased tae be deid; a grave’s a bonnie safe place. They canna catch ye there, ye ken.’
‘And what way was it ye didna send me word? A micht hae gi’ed ye a hand, Tam.’
‘A tell ye a was deid. An’ a wasna needin’ ye in Ameriky.’
A throb of pity came to her as she saw his shaking hands, and the way he drew his ragged coat together as the wind played in gusts over the grass. It is terrible to see the professional attitudes of the beggar in one we have once loved, no matter how far life may have drifted him from us. Margaret had not a spark of affection left for the wretched creature before her, but she had a long memory.
‘Ye’re gey an’ braw,’ he said, with a sidelong glance at her tidy clothes and the rich colouring of her fine shawl. ‘Ye bide wi’ the grieve, a’m tellt. Maybe ye’ve pit by a bittie.’
Margaret’s lips shook, and, for a moment, her eyes looked on beyond him into space.
‘Tam, we’ll need to do oor best,’ she began tremulously, brought back to the present by the mention of Hedderwick. ‘A’ve a bit saved. Maybe we micht gang to Dundee an’ get work i’ the mills—’
‘An’ wha tellt ye a was seekin’ work? A’m no needin’ work an’ a’m no needin’ you. Bide you wi’ the grieve – I’ll no tak’ ye frae him; but a’ll be here-about till the new year an’ a’ll come tae the hoose the nicht. Ye can gie me a piece an’ a wheen siller tae gang on wi’.’
‘A’ll no let ye near the hoose,’ said Margaret firmly.
‘An’ a’m no askin’ ye. A’m tae come.’
‘But Hedderwick’ll see ye, Tam.’
‘Dod, a’m no carin’ for Hedderwick.’
‘But a’ll come oot-by an’ bring ye a piece!’ she exclaimed in terror. ‘Ye’ll no need tae come then.’
They parted a few minutes later and she returned home. Her world had indeed grown complicated in the last hour, and the light of duty, for which, in all her troubled life, she had been wont to look, seemed to have gone out, extinguished by some diabolical hand. It was plain that her husband would have none of her, and had no desire that she should throw in her lot with his; he feared respectability as she feared sin, and, while she was in a position to minister to his wants, his present way of living would suit him well. She had promised, before leaving him, to bring him a little money, if he would wait after dusk, where the larch-wood hid the road from the kirk. She refused to bring him food, for though her small savings were her own, every crumb in the house was the grieve’s and she would sooner have died than take so much as a crust. Whosoever might suffer for what had happened that day, it should not be Hedderwick.
It was almost dark that evening as she slipped out of the house and went towards the larches; she had a little money in her hand, taken out of the box in which she kept her savings. The owls were beginning to call and hoot from the wood by the manse, and she hurried along among the eerie voices floating in shrill mockery over the plough-land. Tom Weir was lurking like a shadow at the appointed place, and when she had given him her dole he departed towards the farm on the hill; a deserted cottage which stood in a field over the crest would shelter him that night, he said, and be a place to which he could come back in the intervals of tramping. He was going off on the morrow and would expect her to meet him on his return with a further pittance. Her hesitation brought down a shower of abuse.
Margaret knew well to what slavery she was condemning herself when she put the money into his dirty palm; but she dared not tell Hedderwick, for, besides her dismay at the thought of confessing what she had kept from him
