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It broke into ejaculations of praise "Friends, I be too happy to ask for anything Glory, glory! The blood! The precious blood! O deliverance! O streams of redemption running!" The farmer and his wife began to chime in "Hallelujah!" "Glory!" and Lizzie Pezzack to sob. Taffy, kneeling before a kitchen chair, peeped between his palms, and saw her shoulders heaving.
"Aw, that's too tame," one of the girls called out, and pitched her voice to the true beggar's whine: "Spare a copper! My only child, dear kind lady, and its only father broke his tender neck in a blasting accident, and left me twelve to maintain!" All the girls began laughing again. Honoria did not laugh. She was feeling in her pocket. "What is your name?" she asked. "Lizzie Pezzack.
Sir Harry's face fell. He hated disagreeable business. He flipped a piece of biscuit at his spaniel's nose and sat back, crossing his legs. "Won't it keep?" "To me it's important." "Oh, fire away then: only help yourself to the claret first." "A girl Lizzie Pezzack, living over at Langona has had a child born " "Stop a moment. Do I know her?
"I suppose you don't remember me, now?" "No," said Taffy truthfully. "My name's Lizzie Pezzack. You was with the young lady, that day, when she bought my doll. I mind you quite well. But I put my hair up last Easter, and that makes a difference." "Why, you were only a child!" "I was seventeen last week. And I say, do you know the Bryanite, over to St. Ann's Preacher Jacky Pascoe?"
"Who was that I saw leaving as I came up?" "You saw someone?" "Yes." She nodded, looking him straight in the face. "It looked like a woman. Who was she?" "That was Lizzie Pezzack, the girl who sold you her doll, once. She's a servant down at the farm where I lodge."
"Bless the child!" exclaimed old Pezzack. "Who says you have a father?" "Everybody has a father. Dicky Tregenza has one; they both work down at the rock. I asked Dicky, and he told me." "Told 'ee what?" "That everybody has a father. I asked him if mine was out in one of those ships, and he said very likely. I asked mother, too, but she was washing-up and wouldn't listen."
No, no" this to the Bryanite "we'll go back. I'll show 'ee sport we'll hunt th' old Divvle by scent and view to-night. I'm Squire Moyle, ain't I? And I've a pack o' hounds, ha'n't I? Back, boys back, I tell 'ee!" Lizzie Pezzack swung her torch. "Back back to Tredinnis!" The crowd took up the cry, "Back to Tredinnis!"
Ah, to be sure daughter of old Pezzack, the light-keeper a brown-coloured girl with her hair over her eyes. Well, I'm not surprised. Wants money, I suppose? Who's the father?" "I don't know." "Well, but damn it all! somebody knows." Sir Harry reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. "The one thing I know is that Honoria Mrs. George, I mean has heard about it, and suspects me."
She sat up; sat up with both hands pressed to her ears to shut out a sudden voice clamouring through them "And why not? A son's a son curse you! though he was your man!" Lizzie Pezzack had put Joey to bed and was smoothing his coverlet when she heard someone knocking. She passed out into the front room and opened to the visitor. On the doorstep stood a lady in deep black Honoria.
In that minute he saw Honoria and George, himself and Lizzie Pezzack as figures travelling on a road that stretched back to childhood; saw behind them the anxious eyes of his parents, Sir Harry's debonair smile, the sinister face of old Squire Moyle, malevolent yet terribly afraid; saw that the moving figures could not control their steps, that the watching faces were impotent to warn; saw finally beside the road other ways branching to left and right, and down these undestined and neglected avenues the ghosts of ambitions unattempted, lives not lived, all that might have been.
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