that the law, were her case known, would force her to return to Weir. Weir did not want her, but she had known of old that his spite was a thing to be reckoned with, and it might be gratified by her downfall, when her savings came to an end. That knowledge and the fear that he might make a public claim on her, were she to refuse him help, bound her hand and foot. She had not the courage to turn her back on all she had grown to love, and she quieted her scruples by vowing that, while keeping the grieve in ignorance, she would not bestow on her tormentor one crust that she had not paid for herself; but she was prepared, were it necessary, to threaten her own departure from her employment and the consequent stoppage of her means of supply, should he approach the grey house. She was prepared, also, to keep her word. It should be her last resource.
And so the final, dying month of autumn went by and winter fell on the land, crisping the edges of the long furrows and setting a tracery of bare boughs against the diminished light. Weir came and went, haunting the towns within reach, and coming back every seven days to take his tithe of her dwindling purse; and winter fell, too, upon Margaret’s heart. Saturday brought a sinister end to her week; and her troubles, as dusk set in, were intensified by the presence of Rob Hedderwick, who now returned by the midday train on that day to spend Sunday at his father’s house. It was difficult to escape his sharp eye and restless mind – made, perhaps, more intrusive by perpetual prying into the workings of complicated things. It did not take the young man long to notice her absences. In the evenings by the fireside he would look covertly at her from behind his paper, or over the top of his book, as she sat at her knitting; his thoughts were busy with the mystery he scented. Once or twice he had left the kitchen before dark, and, from the shadow of the wash-house door, watched her go silently towards the road with something in her apron. He did not like Margaret. Once, too, he had mentioned his suspicions to the grieve, bidding him look to his money-box; and, angered by the scant encouragement that he got, and by the scathing definitions of the limits of his own business, he determined to justify himself; for his growing suspicion that his father’s housekeeper sold the food, or disposed of it in some way profitable to herself, could, he believed, be proved. He was bent upon proving it, for, in addition to his dislike, he had the thirsty rabidness of the would-be detective.
There was a cessation of his visits through January and February, as the master watchmaker was called away and his assistant left for a two months’ charge of the shop; therefore it was on a moonless March evening that Rob Hedderwick hid himself in the manse wood. It touched the road just where the path to the grieve’s house joined it, and in its shelter he waited till he heard a woman’s step come down the track. Margaret passed within a few yards of him, her head muffled in a woollen wrapper and her apron gathered into a bag and bulging with what she carried in it. He had never yet followed her, but he meant to do so now, for there was just enough of hidden starlight behind the thin clouds to enable him to keep her in sight from a little distance.
Her figure disappeared among the larches by the kirk; he almost came upon her, for the road between them made a bend, and she had stopped, apparently expecting to be joined by someone. Her back was to him and he retreated softly. The cold was considerable and Rob had forgotten to put on his greatcoat; so when, after what seemed to him nearer to half an hour than a quarter, she went swiftly up the hill towards the farm on its summit, he followed again, thankful to be moving.
She never slackened her pace till she had reached the top. Led more by sound than by sight, he trod in her wake; the desolation of night was wide around them, and from the ridge the land was as though falling away into nothingness before and behind. The farm was quiet as they passed it and began to descend, he taking advantage of a scanty cover of hedge 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
