As soon as Hetty had determined on this scheme, she
rose from the grassy bank of the pool, took up her
basket, and went on her way to Treddleston, for she
must buy the wedding things she had come out for,
though she would never want them. She must be
careful not to raise any suspicion that she was going
to run away.
Mrs. Poyser was quite agreeably surprised that Hetty
wished to go and see Dinah and try to bring her back
to stay over the wedding. The sooner she went
the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and
Adam, when he came in the evening, said, if Hetty
could set off to-morrow, he would make time to go
with her to Treddleston and see her safe into the
Stoniton coach.
“I wish I could go with you and take care of
you, Hetty,” he said, the next morning, leaning
in at the coach door; “but you won’t stay
much beyond a week—the time ’ull
seem long.”
He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand
held hers in its grasp. Hetty felt a sense of
protection in his presence—she was used
to it now: if she could have had the past undone
and known no other love than her quiet liking for
Adam! The tears rose as she gave him the last
look.
“God bless her for loving me,” said Adam,
as he went on his way to work again, with Gyp at his
heels.
But Hetty’s tears were not for Adam—not
for the anguish that would come upon him when he found
she was gone from him for ever. They were for
the misery of her own lot, which took her away from
this brave tender man who offered up his whole life
to her, and threw her, a poor helpless suppliant,
on the man who would think it a misfortune that she
was obliged to cling to him.
At three o’clock that day, when Hetty was on
the coach that was to take her, they said, to Leicester—part
of the long, long way to Windsor—she felt
dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey
towards the beginning of new misery.
Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be
angry with her. If he did not mind about her
as he used to do, he had promised to be good to her.
A long, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart;
away from the familiar to the strange: that is
a hard and dreary thing even to the rich, the strong,
the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called
by duty, not urged by dread.
What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow
thoughts, no longer melting into vague hopes, but
pressed upon by the chill of definite fear, repeating
again and again the same small round of memories—shaping
again and again the same childish, doubtful images
of what was to come—seeing nothing in this
wide world but the little history of her own pleasures
and pains; with so little money in her pocket, and
the way so long and difficult. Unless she could
afford always to go in the coaches—and
