Part 40 (1/2)

”Hurt?” she echoed half defiantly, stooping and raking at the cinders.

”Why, of course, you hurt,” he insisted. ”'Tis so queer to me you can't see it. Just reckon up all the harm this Rosewarne have a-done and is doing: Mother Butson's school closed, and the poor soul bedridden with rheumatics, all through being forced to seek field-work, at her time o'

life and in this autumn's weather! My old mother driven into a charity-house. Nicky Vro dead in Bodmin gaol. Where was the fair play?

Master Clem, I hear, parted from his sister and packed off this very day to a home in London--lucky if 'tis better'n a gaol--”

”Do you accuse _me_ of all these wrongs?”

”No, I don't. But in most of 'em you've been mixed up, and in all of 'em you might have used power over the man. Where have you put in an oar except to make matters worse?”

It was on her lips to tell him that she had resigned the teachers.h.i.+p; but she forbore.

”Do you know,” she answered quietly, ”that half-truths may be worse than lies, and a charge which is half-true the most cruelly unjust? We will agree that I have done more harm here than good. But do you accuse me of doing it wilfully, selfishly?”

”That's where I can't make you out,” he said. ”I can't even make out your doing wrong at all. Thinks I sometimes, ''Tis all a mistake. Go, look at her face, all made for goodness if ever a face was; try her once more, an'

you'll be sorry for thinkin' ill of her.' That's the way of it. But then I come and find you mixed up in this miserable business, and all that's kind in you seems to harden, and all that's straight to run crooked.

There's times I think you couldn't do wrong if you weren't so sure of doing right; and there's times, when I hear of your being kind to the school-children, I think it must be some curst ill-luck of my own that brings us always ath'art-hawse.”

Beneath the lamplight his eyes searched hers appealingly, as a child's might; yet Hester wondered rather at the note of manliness in his voice--a new note to her, but an a.s.sured one. Whatever the cause, Tom Trevarthen was a lad no longer.

”Why should you suppose,” she asked, ”that I have power over Mr.

Rosewarne?”

”Haven't you?”

The simple question confounded her, and she blushed again, as one detected in an untruth. It was as Tom said; some perverse fate impelled her at every turn to show at her worst before him.

”Good Lord!” he said slowly, watching her face. ”You don't tell me you're going to marry him!”

She should have obeyed her first impulse and said 'No' hotly. The word was on her lips when a second wave of indignation swelled within her and swept over the first, drowning it, and, with it, her speech. What right had he to question her, or what concern with her affairs? She threw back her head proudly, to look him in the face and ask him this. But he had turned from her.

His disgust angered her, and once more she changed her impulse for the worse.

”It seems,” said she contemptuously, ”that you reserve the right of making terms with Mr. Rosewarne.”

He turned at the door of the inner office and regarded her for a moment with a dark frown.

”What do you mean by that?” His voice betrayed the strain on his self-command.

”Mr. Rosewarne owns the _One-and-All_, does he not? If, after what has happened, you accept his wages, you might well be a little less censorious of other folk's conduct.”

If the shaft hit, he made no sign for the moment. ”I reckon,” he answered, with queer deliberateness, ”your knowledge of s.h.i.+ps and s.h.i.+powners don't amount to much, else you wouldn't talk of Rosewarne's doing me a favour.” He paused and laughed, not aloud but grimly.

”The _One-and-All's_ insured, Miss Marvin, and pretty heavily over her value. I'd take it as a kindness if you found someone fool enough to insure _me_ for a trip in her.”

”I don't understand.”

”No, I reckon you don't. They finished loading her last night, and we moored her out in the channel, ready for the tug this morning.