that he had not. That weight in his pocket was after all a joyous one, and to have been conscious of Emily as he now was, might—would—have made him by so much a poorer man.
She, as usual, was at the door to meet him, her face even ladder than its wont, for this morning there had been at the post-office a letter from Switzerland. How she loved that old name of Helvetia, printed on the stamps! Wilfrid wrote with ever fuller assurance that his father’s mind was growing well-disposed, and Emily knew that he would not tell her other than the honest truth. For Wilfrid’s scrupulous honesty she would have vouched as—for her father’s.
‘You look dreadfully worn out,’ she said, as Hood bent his head in entering.
‘I am, dear. I have been to Hebsworth, among other things.’
‘Then I hope you had dinner there?’
He laughed.
‘I should think I had!’
It was one of Mrs. Hood’s bad days; she refused to leave the kitchen. Emily had tried to cheer her during the afternoon, but in vain. There had been a misunderstanding with the next-door neighbour, that lady having expressed herself rather decidedly with regard to an incursion made into her premises by the Hoods’ cat.
‘She speaks to me as if I was a mere working-woman,’ Mrs. Hood exclaimed, when Emily endeavoured to soothe her. ‘Well, and what else am I, indeed? There was a time when no one would have ventured to speak so.’
‘Mother, how can you be troubled by what such a woman says?’
‘Yes, I know I am in the wrong, Emily; you always make me see that.’
So Emily had retreated to the upper room, and Mrs. Hood, resenting neglect more even than contradiction, was resolved to sit in the kitchen till bedtime.
Hood was glad when he heard of this.
‘If you’ll pour out my tea, Emily,’ he said in an undertone, ‘I’ll go and speak to mother for a few moments. I have news that will please her.’
He went into the kitchen and, in silence, began to count sovereigns down upon the table, just behind his wife, who sat over some sewing and had not yet spoken. At the ring of each coin his heart throbbed painfully. He fully realised, for the first time, what he had done.
At the ring of the fifth sovereign Mrs. Hood turned her head.
‘What’s that?’ she asked snappishly.
He went on counting till the nine were displayed.
‘What is it?’ she repeated. ‘Why do you fidget me so?’
‘You’d never guess,’ Hood answered, laughing hoarsely. ‘I had to go to Hebsworth to-day, and who ever do you think I met there? Why, old Cheeseman.’
He paused.
‘And he—no, I’ll never believe he paid his debt!’ said his wife, with bitter congratulation. For years the name of Cheeseman had been gall upon her tongue; even now she had not entirely ceased to allude to him, when she wished to throw especial force of sarcasm into a reminiscence of her earlier days. A woman’s powers in the direction of envenomed memory are terrible.
‘You have said it,’ was Hood’s reply under his breath. ‘It was providential. What did I do, but go and lose my hat out of the window of the train—had it knocked off by a drunken fellow, in fact. But for this money I should have gone about Hebsworth bareheaded, and come home so, too.’
‘A new hat! There’s a pretty penny gone! Well, it’s too much to hope that any good luck should come without bad at the same time.’
‘Well, now you won’t fret so much about the rent, Jane?’
He laid his hand upon her shoulder. It was a movement of tenderness such as had not come to him for years; he felt the need of sympathy; he could have begged her to give him a kind look. But she had resumed her sewing; her fingers were not quite steady, that was all.
He left the money on the table and went to Emily in the sitting-room. She was sitting at the table waiting for him with her kindly eyes.
‘And what has the wise woman been doing all day?’ he asked, trying in vain to overcome that terrible fluttering at his side which caught his breath and made him feel weak.
They talked for some minutes, then footsteps were heard approaching from the kitchen. Mrs. Hood entered with her sewing—she always took the very coarsest for such days as this—and sat at a little distance from the table. As the conversation had nothing to do with Cheeseman’s debt, she grew impatient.
‘Have you told Emily?’ she asked.
‘No, I haven’t. You shall do that.’
Hood tried to eat the while; the morsels became like sawdust in his mouth, and all but choked him. He tried to laugh; the silence which followed his effort was ghastly to him.
‘You see, it never does to believe too ill of a man,’ he said, when he found Emily’s look upon him.
Mrs. Hood grew mere at her ease, and, to his relief, began to talk freely. Emily tortured him by observing that he had no appetite. He excused himself by telling of his dinner in Hebsworth, and, as soon as possible, left the table. He went upstairs and hoped to find solitude for a time in the garret.
Emily joined him, however, before long. At her entrance he caught up the first bottle his hand fell upon, and seemed to be examining it.
