PART IIELIZAIIt was two o'clock and after before the old folks left Witham. Simon had gone to his dinner on quitting the agent, and at his favourite eating-house he encountered others who wanted the hearse-story at first hand. He was not at all averse to talking about it by now, and after a good dinner it improved with the telling every time. Once more he forgot the interview of the morning as well as the coming one in the afternoon, and stayed smoking and talking and sunning himself in the fine atmosphere of success.Sarah, however, had neither pipe nor admiring circle to soothe or enliven the heavy, dragging hours. She went into the inn after the 'Ship' dog-cart had rattled off, and tried to gather a little comfort from the parlour fire; but the glamour of the morning had departed with May, and now that she was alone she felt depressed and tired. The doctor's verdict, which had passed her by at the time, rushed back upon her, shaking her nerves and chilling her heart. She began to wonder what it would be like to be really blind, and in a sudden panic she made a strained attempt to discern the pictures and almanacks in the room, tracing the patterns of the antimacassars with a shaking finger, and the shapes of the chair-backs and table-legs. When she was really blind, Simon would have to do for her instead of her doing for him, but he would only make a poorish job of it, she felt sure. There would still be plenty for both of them to do, in spite of the fact that 'things had come to an end.' There were the long winter months to be got through before they left, as well as the work and worry of changing house. May would help her, no doubt; she could always count on May; but she knew that she did not want to owe her more than she could help. It was partly a new uprising of dead jealousy, of course, as well as pride refusing dependence upon one who did not belong. But at the back of all there was a more just and generous motive than either of these,--the consciousness that May had given too much already, and should not be called upon for more. Months ahead though it lay, she began presently to think a woman's thoughts about the breaking-up of the home. Little as they possessed of any value in itself, there would be many things, she knew, that they would want to keep. There were certain things, expensive to renew, which still had a flicker of useful life, and others, useless to others as well as themselves, which were yet bone of their bone and flesh of their ancient flesh. She began to make a list in her head, and to value the furniture as well as she knew how. She had been to many a sale in her time, and had a sufficiently good memory of what the things had fetched, as well as of whose house had eventually raked them in. She saw Sandholes full of peering and poking folk, a chattering crowd stretching into the garden and yard, and forming a black procession along the roads of the marsh. She saw traps and heavy carts and laden human beings slowly departing with the stuff of her human life, while the shreds that were left to her, piled and roped on a waiting lorry, looked poorer than ever in the light of day. She saw the garden gravel printed by many boots, and the yard trenched and crossed by wheels. She saw the windows open in a house from which nobody looked, and scrubbed, bare floors which seemed to have forsworn the touch of feet. She saw the lorry pass reluctantly away into the great, homeless place that was the world. And last of all she saw herself and Simon shutting the door that finally shut them out. There was all the difference in ten thousand worlds between the sound of a door that was shutting you in and the sound of the same door shutting you out....She had always been a still woman, when she had had time to be still, but she found it impossible to be still to-day. She began to walk up and down, listening for Simon's voice, and in the strange room she hurt herself against the furniture, and received little shocks from the cold surface of strange objects and the violent closing-up of the walls. She gave it up after a while, forcing herself to a stand, and it was so that Simon found her when he opened the door at last.She had a further wait, however, when he found that the trap had managed to oust the car from the coveted place. At first he was rather afraid that the hearse-story had earned him too many drinks, but even to marketing eyes the fact was plain. He chuckled as he walked from one to the other, saying "Gox!" and "Did ye ever now?" and "Losh save us!" and "Wha'd ha' thowt it!" The driver was not to be seen, or the wait might have been longer still, but as it was they were mounted presently on the emaciated seats, and Simon jerked up the horse in a last spasm of victorious glee.For some miles he talked of nothing but the sensation that he had caused in Witham, and how he had found the hearse-story everywhere in the town."I'd nobbut to turn a corner," he announced proudly, though pretending disgust, "but sure an' certain there'd be somebody waiting to tax me on t'far side! There was Burton, and Wilson, and Danny Allen and a deal more, all on 'em ready wi'--'Well, Simon, and what about yon hearse?' I could see 'em oppenin' their mouths half a street off!" he chuckled loudly. "Folk clipped me by t'arm and begged me tell 'em how it was, and t'others rushed out o' shops and fair fell on me as I ganged by!""They mun ha' been terble hard set for summat to do," Sarah answered unkindly. "What did you make out wi' Mr. Dent?"At once the shadow fell again on the fine sun of Simon's success."Nay, you may well ax," he growled, "but I'm danged if I rightly know! He was that queer there was no doing owt wi' him at all. Seemed to be thinking o' summat else most o' the time,--gaping out at winder and smiling at nowt. He was a deal queerer nor me, hearse or no hearse, and so I tell ye!""But you give notice in, didn't you? You likely got that fixed?""Well, I did and I didn't, after a manner o' speaking. I kept handing it in like, and he kept handing it back. He said we'd best take a bit more time to think.""We've had time and plenty, I'm sure!" Sarah sighed,--"ay, that we have! ... I reckon you tellt him about my eyes?"Simon stirred uneasily when she mentioned her eyes, remembering how they had played in and out of his mind, but never once managed to come to the front."Nay, then, I didn't, if you want to know, because I never gitten chanst. I didn't rightly know what to say, neither, come to that. You catched doctor right enough, I suppose?""Ay, we hadn't to wait or owt. And he was right kind, he was that!""Happen he hadn't a deal to say, after all?" Simon enquired hopefully, and she gave a faint laugh."Nobbut that if I didn't have an operation right off, I'd be as blind as a barn-door owl by next year!"Simon said "Gox!" and jerked the horse so violently that it nearly went through the hedge. "Losh, missis, that's bad!" he went on dismally, when he had straightened out. "It's worse than I looked for, by a deal. I've always been terble feared of operations and such-like. What's to be done about it, d'ye think?""Nowt.""Nay, but dang it!" he cried sharply,--"we can't leave it like yon! If there's owt they can do for you, we mun let them try. They say some folk come out right enough, wi' a bit o' luck.""Luck isn't much in our way, I doubt," she said, with a sigh, "and it'd mean begging o' somebody, I reckon, and I've had enough o' that. May says there's free spots for such as us, but there's not that much free in this world as I've ever seen. I doubt it'd mean somebody's brass or other going to pay for it in the end.""I could ax Will----" Simon began hurriedly, without pausing to think, but she stopped him before the well-known formula was out."Nay, then, master, you'll do nowt o' the sort, so that's all there is about it! You're his brother, and you've a right to do as you choose, but I'll never take a penny piece from him if it's nobbut for myself.""He'd have his hand in his pocket for you right off. He's never been close about brass and suchlike, hasn't Will.""Ay, but it's Eliza's brass as well, you'll think on, and she's close, right enough! She'd see me blind and on t'streets afore she'd lift a hand, and if happen she did lift it, I'd strike it down! Nay, master, you can ax what you like for yourself, but you'll ax nowt for me. As for the farm and Mr. Dent, we're bound to get shot of it now, whatever happens. The sooner things is fixed the better I'll be suited, so I'll thank you to get 'em seen to as soon as you can.""'Tisn't my fault they're not fixed this very minute!" Simon grumbled, feeling hardly used.... "Did you happen across Eliza in Witham?" he asked her suddenly, after a while.Sarah laughed faintly again, though this time it was an echo of triumph."We'd a few words together in t'caif," she answered tranquilly, "and wi' a few folks looking on an' all. She was setting it round we were broke, and had gitten the sack, and a deal more; but I reckon I give her summat to bite on afore I was through.... Seems as if you an' me had been having a sort o' side-show," she finished, with a grim smile. "Ay, well, we've given Witham summat to crack about, if we've never done nowt else...."Their minds had been full of Eliza as they drove to market, and now they were busy turning her over in their minds again. Sarah's account of her splendid effort cheered and uplifted them for a while, but they knew only too well that their sense of superiority would not last. Even their victories, ever so dearly bought, turned to Eliza's advantage in the end. Life was on the side of Eliza, for whom all things were certain to work out well. Heaven was on the side of Eliza, whose face had never registered a single memory of pain. The Simon Thornthwaites never got over the feeling that somehow she had played them false, had wheedled by undue influence the balance of justice off the straight. Alone, they were able to see some dignity in their tragic lives, but once with Eliza they were suddenly cheap,--mere poor relations fawning at her skirts. They saw themselves framed as such in her mocking eyes, and felt for the moment the shameful thing they seemed.She mocked them,--that was the evil thing she did; that petty, insidious crime which human nature finds so difficult to forgive. Mockery by comparison was her method, and one which was almost impossible to fight. In all that Eliza said and did, by her attitude and her dress, she invited the world to mark the incredible gulf that yawned between the Simon Thornthwaites and the Wills. She had made her opening point on the double wedding-day, though the actual cause of the enmity lay further back than that. Eliza, indeed, had intended to marry Simon and not Will,--Simon, the elder, the better-looking, and even the smarter in those far-off days. But in this, at least, Sarah had won the fall, and Eliza had never recovered from her surprise. From that moment the spoilt beauty had seen in the other's plain person an opponent worthy of her steel, an antagonist whom it would take her all her life to down. Sneer and strike as she might, she could never be quite sure that she had finally got home, and in mingled inquisitiveness and wrath she sneered and struck again. There must be an end sometime to this spirit that would not break, but even after forty years there was little sign. Something deathless in Sarah rose up again after every stroke, and was always left standing erect when her world was in the dust.Sarah thought of her wedding-day as they drove through the torpid afternoon, and under the low sky that was shut over the earth like a parsimonious hand. The wedding-day had been soft and sunny and sweet, with a high blue sky that looked empty from zone to zone, until, looking up until you were almost blind, you saw that you stared through layer upon layer of tender-coloured air. The mountains had been like that, too, clear yet vapour-veiled, and even the blue of the sea had been just breathed upon as well. It was a real bridal day, with its hint of beauty only just withheld, its lovely actual presences that still dropped curtains between. The earth-veils had had nothing in common with Eliza's flaunting mockery of a veil, nor was there anything in common between the mysteries behind. The strong mountain was more subtle and shy than Eliza, the terrible sea more tender, the great sky with its hidden storms more delicate and remote. Eliza's bold and confident beauty had clashed with them as a brass band clashes with a stretching, moonlit shore. It was for Sarah in her stiff straw bonnet and brown gown that the bridal veils of the world had been sweetly worn.She had thought herself neat and suitable when she looked in the glass, and had found it enough, because all her instincts were neat and plain. It was a cruel irony of fate that had forced her into a morbid, passionate groove. In those days she had never as much as heard of obsessions of the mind, and would not have believed they could touch her, if she had. She had asked nothing of life but that it should be clean and straight, and still found it hard to believe in the shadowed, twisted thing which it had proved.Her parents had died before Simon had made her a home, so she had gone out to service and had been married from her 'place.' She found him waiting when she went downstairs, in clothes as neat and suitable as her own, and he had given her a bunch of lilies of the valley, and a little Prayer Book with a brown back. They had always been matter-of-fact as lovers, and they were very matter-of-fact now, but Sarah, from this far-off distance, knew that, after all, they had not missed the thrill. Even in the small-windowed, silent house that had a maiden lady for tenant there was a touch of the exquisite thing,--the same delicate rapture that was spreading its diaphanous wings over the coloured sea and land....They walked to church by the path across the fields, and the cattle raised their heads to look at Simon's suitable clothes, and the inch of escaped ribbon frisking on Sarah's suitable bonnet. They went arm-in-arm through the still churchyard, where their forefathers, lying together, saw nothing strange in this new conjunction of old names; and arm-in-arm up the empty aisle towards the cave of the chancel that had the flower of its rose window set in it like a jewelled eye. Their boots sounded terribly loud on the uncarpeted tiles, and they trod on tiptoe when they crossed the stones of the vaults, because the names looking up seemed somehow to turn into the uplifted faces of the prostrate dead. And presently the stone of the chancel-steps had stopped them as with a bar, bidding them think, in that last moment, whether the feet of their purpose had been rightly set.They felt very small as they waited among the climbing pillars and under the spring of the groined roof, smaller and smaller as the unmarked minutes passed and nobody came. A shaft of light from the clerestory touched them like the point of a sacrificial knife, showing their faces humble and patient and a little too anxious to be glad. A bird flashed in through the open chancel-door, sat for a moment on the altar-rail and sang, and then caught sight of the sunlit country and flashed out again. It had not even seen the waiting couple who were so very quiet and so terribly small. And then, just as they were at their smallest, the Pageant of Eliza had swept in.There were many to tell them afterwards of the sensation in the village when Eliza in gorgeous apparel had come driving with trampling horses to the old lych-gate. At the sound of the horses' hoofs and the first flash of the veil the houses had emptied themselves as a teapot empties itself when you tilt the spout. Veils were the prerogative of the 'quality' in those days, and that in itself was sufficient to make a stir. In a moment there were groups on the green, children running up the street and folk pressing into the churchyard, and in a moment more the veiled yet flaunting figure had passed into the church, an over-rigged ship up the straight estuary of the aisle.Behind Simon and Sarah the place was suddenly full of noise, whispering and shuffling and treading of heavy feet, and the ringing of nailed boots on the smooth tiles. Presently all that had been inside the church had gone out as if swept by a broom, and all that had been outside had come in with a blatant rush, filling it with curious faces and crowded bodies and suppressed laughter and muttered speech. Into the quiet hour that had been meant for Simon and Sarah alone, Eliza came full tilt with a tumult of sight-seers in her train. Not for her was the peace between the springing pillars which rent before her like a curtain rent by hands. She trod with bold, self-satisfied strides over the dead faces which to her were only names. She created a vulgar raree-show out of the simple blessing of a tranquil God.Only outside the sea and the mountains kept their mystery till the knot was tied. The sacred hour of Simon and Sarah was withdrawn silently into higher courts.All that was human in Sarah, however, remained at the mercy of the broken hour below. Now and then she caught a glimpse of Eliza's face through the veil, or a gleam of her shining gown as she twisted and turned. She thought to herself savagely that Eliza looked a fool, but that did not prevent her from feeling, by contrast, a fool, too. Even Will, shy and ashamed, but tricked out in unaccustomed gauds, helped to point the comparison between the pairs. She remembered how her cheeks had burned and her heart battered and her knees shook, while she strained her ears for the least sign of mirth from the crowded pews behind. The whole parody of her precious hour was bitter beyond words, but it was the mocking distinction in clothes that went furthest home. For the rest of her life Sarah was sharply conscious of all that Eliza wore, and hated it right to the sheep that had carried the wool on its innocent back, and the harmless cotton-plant that had grown for her unaware.Eliza sailed down the aisle again amid giggles and loud asides, but Simon and Sarah crept quietly out of the church by the door through which the singing-bird had flown. They stood in the grass among the rose-bushes on the graves, and watched Eliza drive triumphantly away. The parson followed them out to make a kindly speech, which they were far too angry and humiliated to hear. He wanted to tell them that God had certainly liked them best, but he knew they would not believe him if he did. They were so certain that it was Eliza who had had the beautiful hour. They were too simple to know that it was only they who had any of the beauty to carry home....IIAll their lives Simon and Sarah had been the victims of Eliza's Method. Nothing they had, horse, cow or cart, but was sooner or later measured by Blindbeck standards and condemned. Their furniture figured in Eliza's talk as often as her own,--their humble horsehair abased by her proud plush, her stout mahogany lording it over their painted deal. They had scarcely a cup or plate, hay-crop, dog or friend, but it was flung in the scale and instantly kicked the beam. People grew tired of Eliza's Method after a while, but long before they had ceased to enjoy it its work was done. By that time they knew to the last inch exactly how the Simon Thornthwaites had fallen behind the Wills. The Simons were stamped in their eyes as poor relations to the end of time, and they treated them differently, spoke to them casually, and as often as not forgot that they were there. But Simon and Sarah did not forget, or cease to notice, or cease to be hurt. Always they felt pilloried by Eliza's blatant cry,--"Look here, upon this picture, and on this!"Only in one respect had Sandholes and the Simons ever managed to hold their own. Simon's son had been every whit as fine as Will's, for all the wooden spoon that was hanging over his cradle. It was true that more and more children came to Blindbeck, passing Sandholes by, but that was nothing to Sarah as long as Geordie was at hand. Geordie alone seemed more than sufficient to right them in the eyes of an Eliza-magicked world. He was a rattlehorn and a limb, but he had stuff in him, all the same, and sooner or later he would prove that stuff to the world and the lordly Wills. All the working and scraping of those years went to the one passionate purpose of doing Eliza down. Those were the happiest years of Sarah's life, because for the time being she had a weapon against her foe.Yet even here she found herself mocked by the amazing likeness between the brothers' sons. It had an uncanny effect upon her, as of something not quite human, even, indeed, as if there were something evil at its back. She had an uneasy feeling that, in some mysterious way, this was still another expression of Eliza's malice. The pride of stock in Simon and Will was stirred by this double evidence of breed, but Sarah, when people mistook the lads, was fretted to fierce tears. There were times when she even hated the smile on Geordie's lips, because of its exact similitude on Jim's. Most of all she hated herself when the wrong lad called and she answered before she knew, or waved to a figure over the sands, and it came laughing and was not her son....She had much the same sense of something not quite canny about Jim's extraordinary passion for Sandholes and herself. It was almost, indeed, as if she feared it, as if she knew that in the future it might do her harm. Even she was not always proof against his laughing, kindly ways, and nothing but some such fear of a clutching love could have made her steel her heart. Through all her absorption in her splendid Geordie she could not help guessing at the greater depths in Jim. Geordie had yet to learn in exile what Jim had learned on the very threshold of his home. She remembered nursing him through an illness much against her will, and even now she could not shed that clinging memory and its appeal....It was perhaps because of this hidden terror that she never used his affection for her against his mother. She was often tempted to do so, for Eliza was sore in spite of her loud denials, and when the Method was hard at work on the furniture or the crops it would have been pleasant to give her news--and generally none too pleasing news--of Jim. Often enough the words were on her tongue, but she never spoke them. Always something held her back from taking this easy means to strike.Her ironic reward, however, was such as might well have made her think herself bewitched, for even out of her self-denial it was Eliza who gathered triumph. As time went on, and more and more lads appeared at Blindbeck, she deftly changed her tactics by a single twist of the wheel. She handed over to Sandholes, as it were, the one member of the Blindbeck family that did not come up to Blindbeck standards. Not that she ever said as much in words, or relinquished any claim that was likely to be of use. She merely contrived to convey the impression that he belonged by nature more to the Have-Nots than the Haves, to the penniless Simons rather than the wealthy Wills. The impression hardened, however, after the lads had run away, and Jim had finally nailed his sympathies to the mast. His father, indeed, did not give him up without a struggle, but Eliza became ever more detached from the wastrel who was her son. Smilingly, so to speak, she dropped her thumbs and let him go. It was not long before strangers were thinking him Simon's son instead of Will's, and presently even Sarah awoke to the fact that she was saddled with the Blindbeck failure as well as her own.It was a smug young cousin of Eliza's who finally opened her eyes, at one of those family feasts which Simon and Sarah were always expected to attend. Eliza was never at her brightest and best without them, as she very rightly said,--the organ-grinder without his necessary monkey, the circus-master without his jumping clown. As usual, the Simon Thornthwaites heard their belongings catalogued and found utterly wanting, and, as usual, for the time being, shared the general sentiment that they were beneath scorn. The comparisons, passing in and out of shippon and parlour, leaping from feather-bed to sofa, and over root-crops and stacks of hay, arrived finally at the missing sons."Our Harry's for learning the violin," Eliza informed the tea-party, swelling with conscious pride. "Master wouldn't hear tell o' such a thing at first, but me and the girls talked him round between us. I reckon he'll be suited all right, though, when he hears our Harry play. Ah, now, Sarah, but wouldn't that ha' been just the thing for Geordie-an'-Jim? They were that fond o' music, the poor lads, though they'd no more tune to the pair on 'em than a steam-whistle. Eh, well, poor things, fiddle-playing and suchlike wouldn't ha' been no use to 'em where they're at. Brass wasted, that's what it would ha' been, so it's just as well...."Harry, also swelling with pride, looked for some sign of admiration from his aunt, but did not get it. Eliza soothed him with a meaning glance."The trouble is you've got to keep your hands terble nice for the violin. Our Harry's terble set on keeping his hands nice.... Geordie-an'-Jim would never ha' come to such-like quality ways, would they, Sarah? I never see such hands as the two on 'em used to show at meals! I mind you said they got sent home that often from school, at last the folks took to washing 'em on the spot! I used to be right sorry for you, Sarah, I was that, wi' their gert finger-marks all over the walls and the chair-backs. It's queer how different folk shape, I'm sure, even when they're as you might say near-bred. Our Harry frames rarely at folding tablecloths and the like, and no more dirt to 'em when he's finished than if he was a lass!"The town-bred cousin gazed complacently at his hands, and observed that, if Geordie-an'-Jim were in Canada, as he understood, from all accounts it was much the best place for them. Eliza nodded lugubriously, the tail of her eye on Sarah's unstirred face."Ay, they're in Canada right enough, and like to be,--aren't they, Sarah?--for a goodish while yet. They wrote home as they'd sworn to make their fortunes afore they crossed the pond again, but fortunes isn't as easy come by as some folk seem to think. Me and Will likely know as much about it as most, having managed middlin' well, but even for the best o' folk it isn't as simple as it sounds. There's always somebody at you one way or another, wanting to share what you've earned wi' your own hands. You've just got to keep lifting your feet right high off the ground, or you'll have folk hanging on to your shoe-wangs all the time. Ay, Geordie-an'-Jim'll find as fortunes don't come that slape off the reel! 'Tisn't as if it was our Harry and Tom here, ay, and Bill and Fred an' all, as'll find everything ready for 'em when they want to start on their own. They'll step into good farms as if it was stepping out o' bed, and they'll have Blindbeck behind them and its brass as well. They'll have a bit o' their own, come to that; I started 'em saving-books myself. Eh, yes, they'll do right well, but I doubt there's never farm nor Post Office book as'll come to Geordie-an'-Jim!"Later in the day, the smug cousin, trying to be kind, had enquired of Sarah whether Geordie-an'-Jim were twins. She was too angry at first to answer him at all, and by the time she managed to get her breath her mood had changed. They were alone at the time, and even Sarah could sometimes laugh at herself when Eliza was out of sight. The touch of humour freed her heart for an instant, and at once it rose up and stood by the lad whose mother had cast him off. Jim was suddenly before her, with his tricks of affection and his borrowed face, his constant cry that he had only been born at Blindbeck by mistake. "I'm your lad, really, Aunt Sarah," she heard him saying, as of old. "I'm your lad really, same as Geordie is!" Jim was forty by now, but it was a child's voice that she heard speaking and couldn't deny. The cousin repeated his question, and she smiled grimly."Twins? Ay ... and as like as a couple o' peas. As like as a couple o' gulls on the edge o' the tide...."It was the only time in her life that she ever stood openly by Eliza's hated son. But perhaps even that one occasion may count in the final sum of things....IIINow they had left the high-road and were making south-east through the winding lanes. Their shoulders were turned to the sea, though in that lost world of the mist only the native could tell where the bay was supposed to lie. It was one of the dead hours, too, when even the salt goes out of the marsh-air, and no pulse in it warns you subconsciously of the miracle coming. Between the high-mounted hedges it was still and close, and beyond them the land rose until its dank green surface stood soft against the sky. All the way Simon looked at the land with a critical eye, the eye of the lover which loves and asks at the same time. He looked at the ploughland and knew the rotation through which it had run and would have to run again; at rich grass-land which seemed never to have known the steel, and fields which, at rest for a hundred years, still spoke to some long-rusted share. He loved it, but he thought of it first and foremost as good material for the good workman engaged on the only job in the world. It was always the land that he coveted when he came to Blindbeck, never the house. Eliza had made of the house a temple to the god of Blessed Self-Satisfaction, but even Eliza could not spoil the honest, workable land.The farm kept showing itself to them as they drove, a quadrangle of long, well-kept buildings backed by trees. When the sun shone, the white faces of house and shippon looked silver through the peeping-holes of the hedge, but to-day they were wan and ghostly in the deadening mist. The turned beeches and chestnuts were merely rusty, instead of glowing, and seemed to droop as if with the weight of moisture on their boughs. The Scotch firs on a mound alone, stark, straight, aloof, had more than ever that air of wild freedom which they carry into the tamest country; and the pearly shadow misting their green alike in wet weather or in dry, was to-day the real mist, of which always they wear the other in remembrance.The farm had its back well into the grassy hill, and the blind river which gave it its name wound its way down to it in a hidden channel and went away from it in a hidden dip in a field below. There was water laid on at Blindbeck, as Sarah knew, with a copper cylinder in a special linen-room, and a hot towel-rail and a porcelain bath. Simon's particular envy was the electric light, that marvel of marvels on a northern farm. He never got over the wonder of putting his hand to the switch, and seeing the light flash out on the second to his call. Once he had sneaked out of the house on a winter's night, and in the great shippon had turned the lights on full. Eliza, of course, had been nasty about it when she heard, but Will had understood him and had only laughed. Later, swinging a lantern in his own dark shippon, Simon had thought of those switches with envious longing. He did not know that they had taken the warm glamour out of the place, and slain in a blow the long tradition of its beauty. The lantern went with him like a descended star as he moved about, and out of the cattle's breath wove for itself gold-dusted halos. There had been something precious about it all before, some sense of mystery and long-garnered peace, but to-night he could only remember Blindbeck and its modern toy. For the time being he ceased to feel the pull of the sweetest chain in the world, which runs straight back through all the ages to the Child in the Bethlehem Stall.... There was a billiard-table at Blindbeck, too, with more switches to tempt Simon, and a well-laid tennis-lawn in the neat garden by the stream. On the far side of the farm was a great highway running north and south, as well as a main-line station over the drop of the hill. It seemed as if everything was made easy for those who lived at Blindbeck, from the washing of pots and the moving of stock to the amusement and education of the bairns.Folk who came to Blindbeck for the first time believed that at last they had found the farm of all their dreams. They called it an Earthly Paradise, a model miniature village, a moral object-lesson, a True Home. They came to it between well-cropped fields, marked by trim hedges and neat stone walls, and through uniformly painted gates secure in hinge and hasp into a tidy yard. They looked with pleasure at the shining knocker on the green house-door and the fruit tree lustily climbing the warm south wall. They looked with delight at the healthy, handsome family, the well-placed buildings and the show of pedigree stock. They looked at Will as he went shyly by, and said that his wife was undoubtedly the better horse. They looked at Eliza and said that she was the Housewife of Romance. When they went away they told others of this Paradise which was Blindbeck, and the others came in their turn and looked and said the same. But to Simon and Sarah it was plain Purgatory and nothing else, and with each gate that they loosed they unloosed a devil as well.There was a party at Blindbeck this afternoon, as long custom might have led them to expect. It was part of Eliza's Method to gather a party together when the poor relations were due. There was always a noisy crowd, it seemed to the Simons, when they were tired, or when they had any particular business to transact. On the day after the lads had flown there had been an unusually large crowd, with faces that looked like masks to the parents' tired eyes.... Will was fond of young folk, and made no objection to the stream of 'company' passing beneath his roof. His shy, quiet eyes watched the young tide of life surging ahead, with Eliza floundering like a porpoise in its midst. He was content only to watch, but he was not stranded, like the thirsty Simons; the waves still lapped about his feet. He could see youth and the pride of youth without the sense of desolation which embittered his brother and took his brother's wife by the throat. Simon was always surly when he came to Blindbeck, while Sarah was like a bomb in the hand which any unconscious soul might throw. Will did not know that for them every lad that they looked at should have been Geordie, and each lass a lass of their own with Geordie's face. He was sorry and sympathetic, but he did not know those things. It was Eliza who knew, and used the knowledge for her private ends. You could always be sure that Eliza knew where your hidden things were kept.To-day, tired as they were with the hours in town, and already reacting from their great decision, a jovial party seemed more than they could stand. Signs of it reached them as they came to the last gate, making Sarah draw in her lips and Simon scowl. The sounds seemed intensified by the stillness of the day, crossing and jarring the mood of Nature as well as that of the approaching guests. Faces were pressed to panes as they rattled up, but nobody came out to give Sarah a hand down, or to offer to help Simon with the horse. They were too common a sight to arouse any interest or even courtesy in that house.She climbed down gropingly, and he led the horse away, leaving her standing, waiting, in the empty yard. She stood with her back turned to the kitchen window, conscious, though she could not see them, of the eyes that were raking her shabby figure through the glass. The sounds of merriment burst out afresh, and she winced a little, though she did not move. They were laughing at her, she felt sure, but there was nothing new to that. They often laughed, she knew, since she had ceased to be able to stop them with a glance. She shivered, standing there, and her bones ached with the damp, but she was in no hurry to enter the warm, crowded room. It was better to shiver in the coldest spaces of earth than to be shut into Heaven itself with Eliza and her tongue.The green house-door with its brass knocker was close at her left hand, but she did not attempt to open it and go in. That was a privilege only accorded to the rich and proud, not to a poor relation come to beg. Nevertheless, it was one of her hidden dreams that someday she would enter by that grand front-door. In the Great Dream Geordie came home with a fortune in his hands, so that all doors, even the Door of Blindbeck, instantly stood wide. They would drive up to it in a smart cart behind a fast young horse, with Geordie, a pattern of fashion, holding the reins. His mother would be beside him, of course, in crackling silk, with a velvet mantle and a bonnet of plumes and jet. Simon, the lesser glory, would have to sit behind, but even Simon would be a sight for Blindbeck eyes. When the Dream came true, the house could be as full of pryers as it chose, with crushed noses and faces green with envy set like bottle-ends in every pane. The farm-men would come to the doors and gape, and even the dogs would stop to sniff at so much that was new. Geordie would jump down, reins in hand, and bang the brass knocker until it shook the house, while Sarah, secure in the presence of her golden lad, would sit aloft and aloof like any other silken queen. Soon they would hear Eliza's step along the sacred, oil-clothed passage; and she, when she opened the door, would see their glory framed beyond. Sarah would throw her a graceful word, asking leave to step inside, and climb down with a rustle of silk on the arms of her husband and son. She would set her feet on the snowy steps and never as much as trouble to look for a mat. With a smile she would offer her hostess a kindly, kid-gloved hand. In the whole armour of the successful mother she would bear down upon her foe....It was one of those things that seem as if they might happen so easily, and never do,--never do. Simon returned presently, accompanied by Will, and they entered the house as usual through the old stone porch. No dog even looked aside at them as they crossed to the kitchen door. No portent of coming wonder shed a sudden sunlight on the day. The old trap was tipped on its shafts behind a sheltering wall. The old horse, himself mere waiting food for the nearest hounds, munched his way happily through his feed of Blindbeck corn.Will talked shyly as he led the way, trying to brighten the melancholy pair."You must have a sup o' tea before we get to business," he said to his brother, "and Sarah can rest herself while we have our crack. We're over soon wi' tea to-day, but I reckon you won't mind that. You'll be tired likely, and it's none so warm. I'll be bound Simon'll have a thirst on him anyway!" he smiled to Sarah. "He's done a deal o' tattling, Simon has, to-day!"He could not get any response from them, however; indeed, they scarcely seemed to hear. The fear of Eliza was upon them, that was always so strong until they were actually in her presence, the same fear that had sent them scuttling like scared rabbits out of the Witham inn. Sarah was struggling with the usual jealous ache as they entered the spacious, cleanly place, with the kindly smell of new-baked bread filling the whole house. She knew as well as the mistress where the kitchen things were kept, the special glories such as the bread-maker, the fruit-bottler, and the aluminium pans. The Blindbeck motto had always been that nothing beats the best. Half her own tools at home were either broken or gone, and there was only a blind woman to make shift with the rest as well as she could. Little need, indeed, for a great array, with the little they had to cook; and little heart in either cooking or eating since Geordie had gone away....Will opened the door of the main kitchen, and at once the warmth and jollity sweeping out of it smote the shrinking visitors like an actual blast. The party were already at table, as he had said, and met the late-comers with a single, focussed stare. It was one of their chief bitternesses, indeed, that they always seemed to arrive late. Eliza was at the back of it, they felt almost sure, but they had never been able to discover how. No matter how they hurried the old horse, asked the hour of passers-by, or had Simon's old watch put as right as it would allow, they never seemed to arrive at the right time. They could not be certain, of course, that she had watched for them from upstairs, and at the first sign of their coming had hustled the party into tea, but somehow or other they knew it in their bones. Things happened like that, they would have told you, when you were up against Mrs. Will; things that never by any chance would have happened with anybody else.The room was cloudy to Sarah as she went in, but jealousy had long ago printed its details on her mind. She knew what the vivid wall-paper was like, the modern furniture and the slow-combustion grate. Once it had been a beautiful old houseplace with a great fire-spot and a crane, an ingle-nook, a bacon-loft, and a chimney down which both sun and moon could slant a way. Eliza, however, had soon seen to it that these absurdities were changed, and Sarah, though she affected contempt, approved of the changes in her heart. It was true that she always returned to Sandholes with a great relief, but she did not know that its bare austerity soothed her finer taste. She only knew that her mind expanded and her nerves eased, and, though grief went with her over every flag and board, a cool hand reached to her forehead as she went in.Simon included in one surly glance the faces round the loaded table, the bright flowers, the china with the gilded rim, and the new window-curtains which he would never even have seen in any house but this. "Plush, by the look on 'em, and the price of a five pun note!" he thought resentfully, as he stood waiting to be given a place, and wondering which of the people present he disliked the most. There were the two Swainson lasses from the nearest farm, with their young duke of a brother, who was in a Witham bank. There was a Lancashire youth whom Will had taken as pupil, and Stephen Addison and his missis, who were both of them preaching-mad. He held forth at chapel and she at Institute meetings and the like, and folk said they kept each other awake at nights, practising which of them could do it best. There was Sam Battersby of Kitty Fold, who never knew where his own heaf ended and other people's began, and the familiar smug cousin, long since formally pledged to Eliza's eldest lass. There was a grandchild or two, and of course the Blindbeck brood, with the exception of a couple of married daughters and the obliterated Jim.... It was small wonder, indeed, that, after all those years, nobody missed him in that upcoming crowd.Eliza's hearty voice, that was never hearty at core, rose like a strong-winged, evil bird at the unwanted guests. The sight of them seemed to surprise her so much that she dropped a gold-rimmed cup."Surely to goodness, Simon and Sarah, yon's never you! I'd give you up an hour back or more, I had indeed. You've been a terble while on t'road, surely,--a terble while after us? But there,--I always forget how fast yon grand little mare of ours gets over t'ground! You'd need to start sooner than most folk wi' your poor old crock."She broke off to throw a remonstrance at Will, who was bundling two of his daughters out of their seats to make room for their uncle and aunt."Nay, now, Will," she called vexedly down the table. "What d'ye think you're at? Leave t'lasses alone, can't you? Let the poor things be! If it's a chair you're wanting, there's one here by me as'll suit Sarah just grand. Sarah can't abide a chair wi' a cane bottom,--says it rubs her gown. It's right enough, too, I'm sure, wi' velvet and the like,--(I made a bonny mess o' yon grand gown I had when Annie Belle was wed),--but I can't see as it'll do any harm to a bit o' poorish serge. Anyway, Sarah can have the best plush to set on, if she sets here, and, as for Simon, you're for ever sticking him where I can't so much as see the end of his nose! You're never thinking I'm still sweet on him, surely," she added, laughing, "or that happen he'll be making sheep's eyes at me, as he used to do?"She looked at the young folk, and chuckled and winked, and they nudged each other and laughed, too. But Sarah did not laugh as she waited behind the chairs, or Simon, red to the ears, and recalling the machinations of Eliza's youth. He pushed one of his nieces roughly out of his way and took her place, while Sarah went slowly to seat herself on the red plush chair that was warranted not to hurt her poor patched gown."I hope there's summat for you, I'm sure!" Eliza went on, when the giggling and whispering had died down, and Simon's thin cheeks had lost their furious red. She cast an anxious glance down the well-filled table, but her tone was complacency itself. "Folks as come late can't expect to find everything just so.... Ay, I give you up a long while back. Sally here'll tell you I give you up. 'Sally,' I says to her, 'likely yon old horse'll be put to it to do the extra bit, and so they've happen thought better on't, and gone straight home. You're that used to good horses, Sally,' I says, 'you don't rightly know how poor folks has to shift. Not but what they'll get a deal better tea here than they will at home, Sally,' I says, 'and though I says it as shouldn't, that's the truth! Ay, they'll come to tea, I'll be bound, Sally,' I says, but I changed my mind when I thought on the old horse."Sarah said nothing in reply to this, partly because her brain was swimming with the heat of the room, but chiefly because she never did say anything until Eliza was well ahead in the race for speech. This particular method helped her to reserve her strength, but at the same time it deepened the bitterness in her heart. It would have been better for both of them if they could have got the inevitable tussle over at the start; exhaustion on both sides might have brought at least a pretence at amity in its train. But it had always been Sarah's instinct to hold herself back, and time had turned the instinct into a fixed need. For the moment, at least, her strength was certainly to sit still."I doubt there's no tea for you just this minute, Sarah," Eliza said, affecting great concern as she lifted the tea-pot lid. "Sally, my lass, you'd best see about mashing another pot. There'll be a deal o' folk sending up for more in a brace o' shakes, and we can't have them saying they're not as well-tret at Blindbeck as they're used. Not as anybody's ever said it yet as I've heard tell, though you never know what folks'll do for spite. Most on 'em get through their three cups afore they're done, and me like as not just barely through my first. Eh, but I used to be terble bothered, just at the start, keeping folks filled and their mugs as they rightly should! You bairns wasn't up then, of course, but we'd farm-lads in the house, and wi' a rare twist to 'em an' all! Yon's a thing you've never been bothered with, Sarah, wi' such a small spot and lile or nowt in the way o' work. You'd nobbut a couple o' hands at any time, had you, and not them when you'd Geordie-an'-Jim? You've a deal to be thankful for, I'm sure, you have that! You've always been able to set down comfortable to your meat, instead o' fretting yourself to skin and bone seeing as other folk had their wants."Here Mrs. Addison offered to pass her cup, and then thought better of it, remembering the new brew. Eliza, however, urged it forward. Apparently she had discovered concealed virtue under the tea-pot lid."Nay, now, Mrs. Addison, there's a sup in the pot yet! You've no call to look shy about it,--I wasn't talking at you! ... Pass Mrs. Addison the cream, Mary Phyllis, and waken up and look sharp about it! Blindbeck tea's none the worse, I reckon, for a drop o' Blindbeck cream...." She returned the cup, smiling benignly, and then pretended to have lost Sarah and suddenly found her again. "Losh, Mrs. Simon, you're that whyet I'd clean forgot you were there! You'll not want to be waiting on Sally and the fresh brew. I'll wet leaves again for you just to be going on with!"So Sarah got the bottom of the pot after a little more talk, a hunt for a clean cup and an address on the value of the spoons. Half a cup--consisting chiefly of tea-leaves--was passed to Simon, but was intercepted on its way by Will. Simon did not notice the manoeuvre, being busy glowering at a niece's shoulder turned sulkily on him from the left; but Eliza saw it from her end of the table and turned an angry red. She never forgot Simon's indifference to her as a girl, and would have made him pay for the insult if she could. She could not always reach him, however, because of the family tie which nothing seemed able to break. But Sarah, at least, it was always consoling to think, could be made to pay. There were times when all her reserve could not hide from a gleeful Eliza that she paid....So Simon got the new brew without even knowing that it was new, while Sarah drank the unpleasant concoction that was weak at the top and bitter as sea-water at the bottom. Sally came in with another great brown pot, and sat down languidly at her aunt's side. She and the smug cousin had been engaged for years, but there seemed little prospect of the wedding taking place. She had been a handsome girl, and was good to look at still, but there were handsomer Thornthwaites growing and grown up, as apparently the cousin was quick enough to perceive. To-day he had found a seat for himself beside Mary Phyllis, who kept glancing across at her sister with defiant pride. Sally had a cheap town-look nowadays, the cousin thought, not knowing that she had assumed it long ago to please himself. Now that he was more mature, he preferred the purer country type of Mary Phyllis, as well as the fresher atmosphere of her youth. Sally talked to young Swainson, and pretended not to care, but she was too unhappy to bother about her aunt. The Simon Thornthwaites were boring at any time, like most permanently unlucky people, and to-day she was too worried even to try to be kind. So Sarah, after whom she was called, and who was her godmother to boot, got very little to eat and only the dregs of things to drink; and nobody at all rose up to deliver her from Eliza.Mrs. Addison had opened her mouth very impressively more than once, but it was only now that she got a chance to speak. In spite of their boasted fluency, both she and her husband had always to yield the palm to Mrs. Will. Mrs. Addison, however, always watched her chance, while Stephen was simply flabby, and did not try. She and Eliza in the same room were like firmly opposing currents, flowing strongly in the same stream."Mr. Addison's to preach at this mission they're having, next week," she announced proudly. "There's to be a Service for men only, and our Stephen's to give 'em a talk. I won't say but what he'll do as well as a real minister, even though I do happen to be his wife. Likely you'll think on about it, and send some of your lads along, Mrs. Will?"Eliza was quite unable to conceal her disgust at a distinction achieved by somebody not her own."I'll do my best, I'm sure," she assented casually and without looking at her, "though I doubt they'll want coaxing a bit wi' a broom-handle or a clout!" She disliked being called Mrs. Will, and knew that Mrs. Addison did it with fell intent. It was galling to be reminded that, in spite of his success, Will had still not managed to make himself into the elder son.... "I can't say they're that set on either church or chapel unless it's to see a lass," she went on, busy with the cups, "and I doubt they don't reckon much o' sermons unless they're good. They've been better eddicated than most folk, you'll think on, so they're hard to suit. 'Tisn't likely they could do wi' second-hand preaching from some as happen never went to school at all."Mr. A'ddison made a sudden attempt to speak, but choked instead, while Eliza looked as innocent as a large-sized lamb."Ay, I've heard a deal o' sermons as was just waste breath," she went on kindly, "and that's the truth. All the same, I'll likely look in at Mission myself, one o' these days, if I can get away. I'm always glad to set still after a hard week, and to get a look at other folks' jackets and hats. Not that there's much to crack on at chapel, that way.... I'm a deal fonder o' church. I was wed at St. Michael's, you'll think on,--ay, and Sarah an' all. Eh, I could laugh even yet at yon march we stole on her, me an' Will!"Sally moved impatiently at her aunt's elbow, and muttered something under her breath. She was tired of the old story, and disapproved of it as well. Sarah had lifted her cup to her lips, but now she set it down....Mary Phyllis stopped giggling a moment, and leaned forward to speak."I was telling Cousin Elliman about it only this morning," she said noisily, "and he says it's the funniest thing he ever heard! I thought everybody knew about it, but he says he didn't. He said it was real smart of you, Mother, and he wished he could have been there....""I'll be bound Sarah didn't think it smart!" Eliza chuckled, but without glancing at her victim's face. She had a trick of discussing people when they were present, as Sarah knew. She could tell by the trend of Eliza's voice that she spoke without turning her head."Smart? Nay! Sarah was real wild, you take my word! I spoke to her in t'vestry when the show was through, and she give me a look as was more like a dog's bite. Eh, well, I reckon poor Sarah was jealous o' my gown, seeing her own was nowt to crack on,--and nowt then! I'd always settled to be real smart when I got wed, and my own lasses was just the same. None o' my folk can do wi' owt as isn't first-class and happen a bit over. Yon's the photo we had took at Annie Belle's wedding," she added, turning to point, "and there's another of Alice Evelyn's in the parlour."The cousin and Mary Phyllis left their seats to giggle together over the stiff figures, and presently the girl turned to her sister with a malicious taunt."I say, our Sally, you'd best look out when youdoget wed, or happen I'll play a trick on you, same as mother did Aunt Sarah! You'll be rarely riled if I come marching up the aisle with a fine young man, taking all the shine out of you and Elliman!"The cousin said something in a low tone which made her flush and laugh, and Sally guessed at it quickly enough, though it did not reach her ears. The tears came into her eyes, and on an impulse of fellow-feeling she turned towards her aunt. She was asking after May Fleming when her mother broke across her talk."Eh, now, Sarah, yon was never May, was it, along wi' you in Witham? I'll be bound I'd never have known her if she hadn't been with you, but there's not that many you're seen about with nowadays at market. 'Tisn't like me, as can't stir a step without somebody wanting a crack or hanging on to my gown. But May's changed out of all knowledge,--I was fair bothered to see her look so old! I'll swear our Annie Belle looks as young again, for all she's been wed a dozen year at least. Ay, I thought May terble old, and terble unmannerly as well. I'd be shammed to think as any lass o' mine had suchlike ways. You weren't over-pleasant spoken yourself, Sarah, if it comes to that. The folk in the caif were laughing a deal after you'd gone out, and saying you must be wrong in the garrets to act so queer."Sarah had regained her spirit a little, in spite of her poor tea. She straightened herself on the plush chair and answered calmly."They can say what suits 'em and welcome, as long as they let me be. You know what put me about, Eliza, and nobody to thank for it but yourself. As for folks laughing and making game o' me and suchlike, it was you they was sniggering at plain enough when I come out."Eliza's colour rose, but she struggled to keep her virtuous air. She looked at Sarah with a sorrowful eye."I wouldn't get telling lies about it, Sarah," she observed kindly, "I wouldn't indeed! Mrs. Addison's listening, think on, and she'll be rarely shocked at suchlike ways. Caif-folk were shocked more than a deal, an' me just having a friendly talk an' all!""It's a queer sort o' friendliness as puts folk to open shame!" Sarah's colour was flying a flag, too. "It's nobbut a queer sort o' friend as goes shouting your private business at the end of a bell!""There isn't a deal that's private, surely, about the mess o' things you've made on the marsh?..." The fight was really begun now, and Eliza turned in her seat, fixing her adversary with merciless eyes. Sarah could see very little but a monstrous blur, but she felt her malignant atmosphere in every nerve. She could hear the big, solid presence creaking with malice as it breathed, and had an impression of strained whalebone and stretching cloth. But it was always Eliza's most cherished garments that she visioned when they fought,--the velvet gown that was folded away upstairs ... gloves, furs, and a feathered hat; furthest of all, the wedding-gown and the flaunting veil...."Private!" Eliza repeated the sneered word as if it were something too precious to let go. "There can't be that much private about things as we've all on us known for years. What, folks has puzzled no end why you've never ended in t'bankruptcy court long since! Will and me could likely ha' tellt them about it, though, couldn't we, Sarah? Will an' me could easy ha' tellt 'em why! Will and me could ha' tellt where brass come from as was keeping you on t'rails----"Will had been lending a careful ear to Simon's surly talk, but he lifted his head at the sound of his name."Now, missis, just you let Mrs. Simon be!" he admonished, with a troubled frown. "You're over fond of other folks' business by a deal.""I'll let her be and welcome, if she'll keep a civil tongue in her head!" Eliza cried. She went redder than ever, and slapped a tea-spoon angrily on the cloth. "But if our brass isn't our business, I'd like to know what is, and as for this stir about quitting Sandholes, it's nothing fresh, I'm sure! We all on us know it's a marvel landlord didn't get shot on 'em long ago."The last remark galvanised Battersby into lively speech. Hitherto he had been busily concentrated on his food, but now his mean little features sharpened and his mean little eyes shone. He bent eagerly forward, leaning on the cloth, knife and fork erect like stakes in a snatched plot."What's yon about quitting Sandholes?" he asked, in a thin voice. "Are you thinking o' leaving, Simon? Is it true?""I don't see as it's any affair o' yours if it is," Simon answered him, with a sulky stare."Nay, it was nobbut a friendly question between man and man. If you're quitting the farm it would only be neighbourly just to give me a hint. There's a lad o' mine talking o' getting wed, and I thought as how Sandholes'd likely be going cheap. Has anybody put in for it yet wi' t'agent, do ye think?""Nay, nor like to do, yet awhile," Simon answered glumly, full of sullen hurt. All his love for his tiresome dwelling-place rose to the surface at this greed. "I don't mind telling you, Mr. Battersby, as you ax so kind, that I give in my notice but it wasn't took. Mr. Dent would have it I mun think it over a bit more. Your lad'll just have to bide or look out for somebody else's shoes."This dreadful exhibition of meanness aggrieved Battersby almost to the verge of tears."Well, now, if yon isn't dog-in-the-manger and nowt else!" he appealed to the company at large. "What, you're late wi' your notice already, and yet you're for sitting tight to the farm like a hen on a pot egg! I shouldn't ha' thought it of you, Simon, I shouldn't indeed. Here's a farmer wanting to quit and my lad wanting a farm, and yet the moment I ax a decent question I get sneck-posset geyly sharp. You're jealous, that's what it is, Simon; you're acting jealous-mean. You've nobbut made a terble poor job o' things yourself, and you want to keep others from getting on an' all!"Simon gave vent to an ironic laugh."Nay, now, Sam, never fret yourself!" he jeered. "You and your lad'll get on right enough, I'll be bound, what wi' your heaf-snatching and your sheep-grabbing and the rest o' your bonny ways! What, man, one o' your breed'd be fair lost on a marsh farm, wi' nowt to lay hands on barrin' other folks' turmuts, and never a lile chance of an overlap!"Battersby's reputation was well known, and an irrepressible laugh greeted Simon's speech, but was instantly cut short by the terrible spectacle of the victim's face. Only the smug cousin went on laughing, because he was ignorant as well as smug, and did not know what a heaf meant, let alone how it was possible to add to it by Sam's skilful if unlawful ways. Battersby jumped to his feet and thumped the table, so that the blue and gold china danced like dervishes from end to end. Mrs. Addison's tea made a waterfall down her second-best bodice, and Sarah's heart, not being prepared for the thump, leaped violently into her mouth."I'll not be insulted in your spot nor nobody else's," he stormed at Will; "nay, and I'll not take telling from yon wastrel you call brother, neither! All on us know what a bonny mess o' things he's made at Sandholes. All on us know it'll be right fain to see his back.... As for you, you gomeless half-thick," he added, swinging round so suddenly on the smug cousin that he was left gaping, "you can just shut yon calf's head o' yours and mighty sharp or I'll shut it for you! Them as knows nowt'd do best to say nowt, and look as lile like gawping jackasses as Nature'll let 'em!" ... He sent a final glare round the stifled table, and let Eliza have the sting in his tail. "I'd been looking to be real friendly wi' Blindbeck," he finished nastily, "and my lad an' all, but I don't know as we'll either on us be fain for it after this. Nay, I wain't set down agen, missis, and that's flat, so you needn't ax me! I'm off home and glad to be going, and no thanks to none o' you for nowt!"He glanced at his plate to make certain there was nothing left, snatched at his cup and hastily swallowed the dregs; then, thrusting his chair backward so violently that it fell to the floor, he clapped his hat on his head and marched rudely out. Eliza, catching a glance from a tearful daughter, got to her feet, too. They swam from the room in a torrent of loud apologies and bitter, snarled replies.Will leaned back in his chair with a fretted expression on his gentle face. The cousin, slowly turning from red to mottled mauve, observed to Mary Phyllis that the old man's language was 'really remarkably like my chief's!' Some of the younger end started to giggle afresh, but Sarah was still trembling from the unexpected shock, and Simon felt gloomy again after his public effort. He could see that he had upset Will, and that was the last thing he wanted to do, to-day. Will did not like Battersby, but he liked peace, and there were other reasons for friendly relations at present. Will's youngest daughter had a direct interest in Battersby's lad and his hopes of a farm, and now the father had shaken the Blindbeck dust from his proud feet. She looked across at the cause of the trouble with tear-filled, indignant eyes."Seems to me things is always wrong when you come to Blindbeck, Uncle Simon!" she exclaimed hotly. "Nobody wants your old farm, I'm sure! I wouldn't have it at a gift! But you might have spoken him fair about it, all the same. I never see such folks as you and Aunt Sarah for setting other folk by the ears!"Will said "Whisht, lass, whisht!" in as cross a tone as he ever used to his girls, and Simon glowered at her sulkily, but he did not speak. She was a fair, pretty thing, with Geordie-an'-Jim's eyes, and he did not wish to injure her happiness in any way. It was true enough, as she said, that there was generally something in the shape of a row as soon as he and Sarah set foot in the house, but he could not tell for the life of him how it came about. It could not be altogether their fault, he thought resentfully, yet with a sort of despair. To-day, for instance, he had every reason for keeping the peace, and yet that fool of a Battersby must come jumping down his throat! Nobody could be expected to stand such manners and such nasty greed,--grabbing a man's homestead before his notice was well in! There was nothing surprising, of course, in the fact that the women had already come to blows. He had expected it from the start, and, with the resignation of custom, thought it as well over soon as late. They had had one scrap, as it was, from what Sarah had said, and the dregs of that pot of passion would still be hot enough to stir."It's a shame, that's what it is!" the girl was saying, over and over again. Tears dropped from the Geordie-an'-Jim eyes, and Simon felt furious with everybody, but particularly with himself."You needn't bother yourself," he growled across at last, making a rough attempt to put the trouble right. "Young Battersby's over much sense to go taking a spot like ourn, and as for his dad, he'll be back afore you can speak. 'Tisn't Sam Battersby, I'll be bound, if he isn't as pleased as punch to be running in double harness wi' Blindbeck and its brass!""Ay, like other folk!" Eliza dropped on him from the clouds, reappearing panting from her chase. "Like other folk a deal nearer home, Simon Thornthet, as you don't need telling! Battersby wanted nowt wi' the farm,--he tellt me so outside. 'Tisn't good enough for the likes of him, nor for our Emily Marion, neither! He was that stamping mad he was for breaking it all off, but I got him promised to look in again next week. I'd a deal o' work wi' him, all the same," she added, flushing angrily at her brother-in-law's ironic smile, "and no thanks to you, neither, if I come out top, after all! Anyway, I'll thank you to speak folk civilly at my table, if you can, whatever-like hired man's ways you keep for your own!"She would have hectored him longer if Will had not got to his feet and taken himself and his brother out of the room, so instead she went back to her seat and drank a large cup of tea in angry gulps. Between drinks, however, she managed to say to the wife the things she had wanted to say to the man, though Sarah was silent and paid little or no heed. She wished she could have gone outside with the men, and helped to decide what her future was to be. But it was not for her to advise, who would soon be no better than a helpless log. It was her part to wait patiently until Simon fetched her away.But it was not easy to wait at all in that atmosphere of critical dislike. The successive passages of arms had had their natural effect, and the party which had been so merry at the start was now in a state of boredom and constraint. The thoughts of most of those present were unfriendly towards the folk of the marsh, and Sarah could feel the thoughts winding about her in the air. Emily Marion was right, so they were saying in their minds; trouble always followed the Thornthwaites the moment they appeared. Storms arose out of nowhere and destroyed some festive occasion with a rush. Even to look at them, dowdy and disapproving, was to take the heart out of any happy day. It was certainly hard on the poor Will Thornthwaites that the tiresome Simons should dare to exist.Sarah, bringing her mind back from the absent brothers with an effort, found the Method working again at top speed. The tea had soothed Eliza's nerves and stimulated her brain. She was now at her very best for behaving her very worst."And so Mr. Addison's preaching next week, is he?" she reverted suddenly, making even that supreme egotist blink and start. Her Voice, furred and soft, reminded Sarah of a paw reaching out for someone to scratch. "Eh, now, but I should be in a rare twitter if it was Will as was setting up to preach! But there, we're none of us much of a hand at talking at our spot, and Will's summat better to do than just wagging a loose tongue. I'll see the lads come along, though, as it's you, Mrs. Addison, and an old friend, unless there's summat useful they're happen wanted for at home. Eh, Sarah, but wouldn't they talks to young men ha' done a sight o' good to Geordie-an'-Jim? It's a sad pity you didn't start preaching before they went, Mr. Addison,--it is that! Like enough, if you had, they'd be at Sandholes yet."The preacher's brow had been thunderous during the early part of this speech, but now he looked suddenly coy. Sally, dropping her glance to her aunt's lap, saw her fingers clench and unclench on a fold of her own black gown."Any news of the prodigals?" Elliman Wilkinson suddenly enquired. He looked at Eliza as he spoke, and smiled as at a well-known joke. "I'm always in hopes to find one of them eating the fatted calf.""Nay, you must ask Sarah, not me!" Eliza answered, with an affected laugh. She despised Elliman in her heart, but she was grateful for the cue. "Sarah knows what they're at, if there's anybody does at all. Like enough they'll turn up one o' these days, but I don't know as we'll run to calves. They'll be terble rough in their ways, I doubt, after all this time. Out at elbows an' all, as like as not, and wi' happen a toe or two keeking through their boots!"There was a ripple of laughter at this show of wit, and then Elliman, urged by a nudge and a whisper from Mary Phyllis, repeated the question in the proper quarter. He raised his voice when he spoke to Sarah, as if she were deaf as well as blind, and when she paused a moment before replying, he apostrophised her again. The whole table had pricked its ears and was listening by the time the answer came.Sarah felt the giggles and the impertinent voice striking like arrows through the misty ring in which she sat. Sharpest of all was Eliza's laugh, introducing the question and afterwards punctuating it when it was put. She was achingly conscious of the antipathetic audience hanging on her lips. They were baiting her, and she knew it, and her heart swelled with helpless rage. A passionate longing seized her to be lord of them all for once,--just for once to fling back an answer that would slay their smiles, put respect into their mocking voices and change their sneers into awed surprise. If only for once the Dream and the glory might be true,--the trap and the new clothes and Geordie and the green front door! But nothing could be further from what they expected, as she knew too well. They were waiting merely to hear her say what she had often said before,--for news that there was no news or news that was worse than none. She had faced more than one trial that day, and had come out of them with her self-respect intact, but this unexpected humiliation was more than she could bear. She was telling herself in the pause that she would not answer at all, when something that she took for the total revolt of pride spoke to the mockers through her lips.
PART II
ELIZA
I
It was two o'clock and after before the old folks left Witham. Simon had gone to his dinner on quitting the agent, and at his favourite eating-house he encountered others who wanted the hearse-story at first hand. He was not at all averse to talking about it by now, and after a good dinner it improved with the telling every time. Once more he forgot the interview of the morning as well as the coming one in the afternoon, and stayed smoking and talking and sunning himself in the fine atmosphere of success.
Sarah, however, had neither pipe nor admiring circle to soothe or enliven the heavy, dragging hours. She went into the inn after the 'Ship' dog-cart had rattled off, and tried to gather a little comfort from the parlour fire; but the glamour of the morning had departed with May, and now that she was alone she felt depressed and tired. The doctor's verdict, which had passed her by at the time, rushed back upon her, shaking her nerves and chilling her heart. She began to wonder what it would be like to be really blind, and in a sudden panic she made a strained attempt to discern the pictures and almanacks in the room, tracing the patterns of the antimacassars with a shaking finger, and the shapes of the chair-backs and table-legs. When she was really blind, Simon would have to do for her instead of her doing for him, but he would only make a poorish job of it, she felt sure. There would still be plenty for both of them to do, in spite of the fact that 'things had come to an end.' There were the long winter months to be got through before they left, as well as the work and worry of changing house. May would help her, no doubt; she could always count on May; but she knew that she did not want to owe her more than she could help. It was partly a new uprising of dead jealousy, of course, as well as pride refusing dependence upon one who did not belong. But at the back of all there was a more just and generous motive than either of these,--the consciousness that May had given too much already, and should not be called upon for more. Months ahead though it lay, she began presently to think a woman's thoughts about the breaking-up of the home. Little as they possessed of any value in itself, there would be many things, she knew, that they would want to keep. There were certain things, expensive to renew, which still had a flicker of useful life, and others, useless to others as well as themselves, which were yet bone of their bone and flesh of their ancient flesh. She began to make a list in her head, and to value the furniture as well as she knew how. She had been to many a sale in her time, and had a sufficiently good memory of what the things had fetched, as well as of whose house had eventually raked them in. She saw Sandholes full of peering and poking folk, a chattering crowd stretching into the garden and yard, and forming a black procession along the roads of the marsh. She saw traps and heavy carts and laden human beings slowly departing with the stuff of her human life, while the shreds that were left to her, piled and roped on a waiting lorry, looked poorer than ever in the light of day. She saw the garden gravel printed by many boots, and the yard trenched and crossed by wheels. She saw the windows open in a house from which nobody looked, and scrubbed, bare floors which seemed to have forsworn the touch of feet. She saw the lorry pass reluctantly away into the great, homeless place that was the world. And last of all she saw herself and Simon shutting the door that finally shut them out. There was all the difference in ten thousand worlds between the sound of a door that was shutting you in and the sound of the same door shutting you out....
She had always been a still woman, when she had had time to be still, but she found it impossible to be still to-day. She began to walk up and down, listening for Simon's voice, and in the strange room she hurt herself against the furniture, and received little shocks from the cold surface of strange objects and the violent closing-up of the walls. She gave it up after a while, forcing herself to a stand, and it was so that Simon found her when he opened the door at last.
She had a further wait, however, when he found that the trap had managed to oust the car from the coveted place. At first he was rather afraid that the hearse-story had earned him too many drinks, but even to marketing eyes the fact was plain. He chuckled as he walked from one to the other, saying "Gox!" and "Did ye ever now?" and "Losh save us!" and "Wha'd ha' thowt it!" The driver was not to be seen, or the wait might have been longer still, but as it was they were mounted presently on the emaciated seats, and Simon jerked up the horse in a last spasm of victorious glee.
For some miles he talked of nothing but the sensation that he had caused in Witham, and how he had found the hearse-story everywhere in the town.
"I'd nobbut to turn a corner," he announced proudly, though pretending disgust, "but sure an' certain there'd be somebody waiting to tax me on t'far side! There was Burton, and Wilson, and Danny Allen and a deal more, all on 'em ready wi'--'Well, Simon, and what about yon hearse?' I could see 'em oppenin' their mouths half a street off!" he chuckled loudly. "Folk clipped me by t'arm and begged me tell 'em how it was, and t'others rushed out o' shops and fair fell on me as I ganged by!"
"They mun ha' been terble hard set for summat to do," Sarah answered unkindly. "What did you make out wi' Mr. Dent?"
At once the shadow fell again on the fine sun of Simon's success.
"Nay, you may well ax," he growled, "but I'm danged if I rightly know! He was that queer there was no doing owt wi' him at all. Seemed to be thinking o' summat else most o' the time,--gaping out at winder and smiling at nowt. He was a deal queerer nor me, hearse or no hearse, and so I tell ye!"
"But you give notice in, didn't you? You likely got that fixed?"
"Well, I did and I didn't, after a manner o' speaking. I kept handing it in like, and he kept handing it back. He said we'd best take a bit more time to think."
"We've had time and plenty, I'm sure!" Sarah sighed,--"ay, that we have! ... I reckon you tellt him about my eyes?"
Simon stirred uneasily when she mentioned her eyes, remembering how they had played in and out of his mind, but never once managed to come to the front.
"Nay, then, I didn't, if you want to know, because I never gitten chanst. I didn't rightly know what to say, neither, come to that. You catched doctor right enough, I suppose?"
"Ay, we hadn't to wait or owt. And he was right kind, he was that!"
"Happen he hadn't a deal to say, after all?" Simon enquired hopefully, and she gave a faint laugh.
"Nobbut that if I didn't have an operation right off, I'd be as blind as a barn-door owl by next year!"
Simon said "Gox!" and jerked the horse so violently that it nearly went through the hedge. "Losh, missis, that's bad!" he went on dismally, when he had straightened out. "It's worse than I looked for, by a deal. I've always been terble feared of operations and such-like. What's to be done about it, d'ye think?"
"Nowt."
"Nay, but dang it!" he cried sharply,--"we can't leave it like yon! If there's owt they can do for you, we mun let them try. They say some folk come out right enough, wi' a bit o' luck."
"Luck isn't much in our way, I doubt," she said, with a sigh, "and it'd mean begging o' somebody, I reckon, and I've had enough o' that. May says there's free spots for such as us, but there's not that much free in this world as I've ever seen. I doubt it'd mean somebody's brass or other going to pay for it in the end."
"I could ax Will----" Simon began hurriedly, without pausing to think, but she stopped him before the well-known formula was out.
"Nay, then, master, you'll do nowt o' the sort, so that's all there is about it! You're his brother, and you've a right to do as you choose, but I'll never take a penny piece from him if it's nobbut for myself."
"He'd have his hand in his pocket for you right off. He's never been close about brass and suchlike, hasn't Will."
"Ay, but it's Eliza's brass as well, you'll think on, and she's close, right enough! She'd see me blind and on t'streets afore she'd lift a hand, and if happen she did lift it, I'd strike it down! Nay, master, you can ax what you like for yourself, but you'll ax nowt for me. As for the farm and Mr. Dent, we're bound to get shot of it now, whatever happens. The sooner things is fixed the better I'll be suited, so I'll thank you to get 'em seen to as soon as you can."
"'Tisn't my fault they're not fixed this very minute!" Simon grumbled, feeling hardly used.... "Did you happen across Eliza in Witham?" he asked her suddenly, after a while.
Sarah laughed faintly again, though this time it was an echo of triumph.
"We'd a few words together in t'caif," she answered tranquilly, "and wi' a few folks looking on an' all. She was setting it round we were broke, and had gitten the sack, and a deal more; but I reckon I give her summat to bite on afore I was through.... Seems as if you an' me had been having a sort o' side-show," she finished, with a grim smile. "Ay, well, we've given Witham summat to crack about, if we've never done nowt else...."
Their minds had been full of Eliza as they drove to market, and now they were busy turning her over in their minds again. Sarah's account of her splendid effort cheered and uplifted them for a while, but they knew only too well that their sense of superiority would not last. Even their victories, ever so dearly bought, turned to Eliza's advantage in the end. Life was on the side of Eliza, for whom all things were certain to work out well. Heaven was on the side of Eliza, whose face had never registered a single memory of pain. The Simon Thornthwaites never got over the feeling that somehow she had played them false, had wheedled by undue influence the balance of justice off the straight. Alone, they were able to see some dignity in their tragic lives, but once with Eliza they were suddenly cheap,--mere poor relations fawning at her skirts. They saw themselves framed as such in her mocking eyes, and felt for the moment the shameful thing they seemed.
She mocked them,--that was the evil thing she did; that petty, insidious crime which human nature finds so difficult to forgive. Mockery by comparison was her method, and one which was almost impossible to fight. In all that Eliza said and did, by her attitude and her dress, she invited the world to mark the incredible gulf that yawned between the Simon Thornthwaites and the Wills. She had made her opening point on the double wedding-day, though the actual cause of the enmity lay further back than that. Eliza, indeed, had intended to marry Simon and not Will,--Simon, the elder, the better-looking, and even the smarter in those far-off days. But in this, at least, Sarah had won the fall, and Eliza had never recovered from her surprise. From that moment the spoilt beauty had seen in the other's plain person an opponent worthy of her steel, an antagonist whom it would take her all her life to down. Sneer and strike as she might, she could never be quite sure that she had finally got home, and in mingled inquisitiveness and wrath she sneered and struck again. There must be an end sometime to this spirit that would not break, but even after forty years there was little sign. Something deathless in Sarah rose up again after every stroke, and was always left standing erect when her world was in the dust.
Sarah thought of her wedding-day as they drove through the torpid afternoon, and under the low sky that was shut over the earth like a parsimonious hand. The wedding-day had been soft and sunny and sweet, with a high blue sky that looked empty from zone to zone, until, looking up until you were almost blind, you saw that you stared through layer upon layer of tender-coloured air. The mountains had been like that, too, clear yet vapour-veiled, and even the blue of the sea had been just breathed upon as well. It was a real bridal day, with its hint of beauty only just withheld, its lovely actual presences that still dropped curtains between. The earth-veils had had nothing in common with Eliza's flaunting mockery of a veil, nor was there anything in common between the mysteries behind. The strong mountain was more subtle and shy than Eliza, the terrible sea more tender, the great sky with its hidden storms more delicate and remote. Eliza's bold and confident beauty had clashed with them as a brass band clashes with a stretching, moonlit shore. It was for Sarah in her stiff straw bonnet and brown gown that the bridal veils of the world had been sweetly worn.
She had thought herself neat and suitable when she looked in the glass, and had found it enough, because all her instincts were neat and plain. It was a cruel irony of fate that had forced her into a morbid, passionate groove. In those days she had never as much as heard of obsessions of the mind, and would not have believed they could touch her, if she had. She had asked nothing of life but that it should be clean and straight, and still found it hard to believe in the shadowed, twisted thing which it had proved.
Her parents had died before Simon had made her a home, so she had gone out to service and had been married from her 'place.' She found him waiting when she went downstairs, in clothes as neat and suitable as her own, and he had given her a bunch of lilies of the valley, and a little Prayer Book with a brown back. They had always been matter-of-fact as lovers, and they were very matter-of-fact now, but Sarah, from this far-off distance, knew that, after all, they had not missed the thrill. Even in the small-windowed, silent house that had a maiden lady for tenant there was a touch of the exquisite thing,--the same delicate rapture that was spreading its diaphanous wings over the coloured sea and land....
They walked to church by the path across the fields, and the cattle raised their heads to look at Simon's suitable clothes, and the inch of escaped ribbon frisking on Sarah's suitable bonnet. They went arm-in-arm through the still churchyard, where their forefathers, lying together, saw nothing strange in this new conjunction of old names; and arm-in-arm up the empty aisle towards the cave of the chancel that had the flower of its rose window set in it like a jewelled eye. Their boots sounded terribly loud on the uncarpeted tiles, and they trod on tiptoe when they crossed the stones of the vaults, because the names looking up seemed somehow to turn into the uplifted faces of the prostrate dead. And presently the stone of the chancel-steps had stopped them as with a bar, bidding them think, in that last moment, whether the feet of their purpose had been rightly set.
They felt very small as they waited among the climbing pillars and under the spring of the groined roof, smaller and smaller as the unmarked minutes passed and nobody came. A shaft of light from the clerestory touched them like the point of a sacrificial knife, showing their faces humble and patient and a little too anxious to be glad. A bird flashed in through the open chancel-door, sat for a moment on the altar-rail and sang, and then caught sight of the sunlit country and flashed out again. It had not even seen the waiting couple who were so very quiet and so terribly small. And then, just as they were at their smallest, the Pageant of Eliza had swept in.
There were many to tell them afterwards of the sensation in the village when Eliza in gorgeous apparel had come driving with trampling horses to the old lych-gate. At the sound of the horses' hoofs and the first flash of the veil the houses had emptied themselves as a teapot empties itself when you tilt the spout. Veils were the prerogative of the 'quality' in those days, and that in itself was sufficient to make a stir. In a moment there were groups on the green, children running up the street and folk pressing into the churchyard, and in a moment more the veiled yet flaunting figure had passed into the church, an over-rigged ship up the straight estuary of the aisle.
Behind Simon and Sarah the place was suddenly full of noise, whispering and shuffling and treading of heavy feet, and the ringing of nailed boots on the smooth tiles. Presently all that had been inside the church had gone out as if swept by a broom, and all that had been outside had come in with a blatant rush, filling it with curious faces and crowded bodies and suppressed laughter and muttered speech. Into the quiet hour that had been meant for Simon and Sarah alone, Eliza came full tilt with a tumult of sight-seers in her train. Not for her was the peace between the springing pillars which rent before her like a curtain rent by hands. She trod with bold, self-satisfied strides over the dead faces which to her were only names. She created a vulgar raree-show out of the simple blessing of a tranquil God.
Only outside the sea and the mountains kept their mystery till the knot was tied. The sacred hour of Simon and Sarah was withdrawn silently into higher courts.
All that was human in Sarah, however, remained at the mercy of the broken hour below. Now and then she caught a glimpse of Eliza's face through the veil, or a gleam of her shining gown as she twisted and turned. She thought to herself savagely that Eliza looked a fool, but that did not prevent her from feeling, by contrast, a fool, too. Even Will, shy and ashamed, but tricked out in unaccustomed gauds, helped to point the comparison between the pairs. She remembered how her cheeks had burned and her heart battered and her knees shook, while she strained her ears for the least sign of mirth from the crowded pews behind. The whole parody of her precious hour was bitter beyond words, but it was the mocking distinction in clothes that went furthest home. For the rest of her life Sarah was sharply conscious of all that Eliza wore, and hated it right to the sheep that had carried the wool on its innocent back, and the harmless cotton-plant that had grown for her unaware.
Eliza sailed down the aisle again amid giggles and loud asides, but Simon and Sarah crept quietly out of the church by the door through which the singing-bird had flown. They stood in the grass among the rose-bushes on the graves, and watched Eliza drive triumphantly away. The parson followed them out to make a kindly speech, which they were far too angry and humiliated to hear. He wanted to tell them that God had certainly liked them best, but he knew they would not believe him if he did. They were so certain that it was Eliza who had had the beautiful hour. They were too simple to know that it was only they who had any of the beauty to carry home....
II
All their lives Simon and Sarah had been the victims of Eliza's Method. Nothing they had, horse, cow or cart, but was sooner or later measured by Blindbeck standards and condemned. Their furniture figured in Eliza's talk as often as her own,--their humble horsehair abased by her proud plush, her stout mahogany lording it over their painted deal. They had scarcely a cup or plate, hay-crop, dog or friend, but it was flung in the scale and instantly kicked the beam. People grew tired of Eliza's Method after a while, but long before they had ceased to enjoy it its work was done. By that time they knew to the last inch exactly how the Simon Thornthwaites had fallen behind the Wills. The Simons were stamped in their eyes as poor relations to the end of time, and they treated them differently, spoke to them casually, and as often as not forgot that they were there. But Simon and Sarah did not forget, or cease to notice, or cease to be hurt. Always they felt pilloried by Eliza's blatant cry,--"Look here, upon this picture, and on this!"
Only in one respect had Sandholes and the Simons ever managed to hold their own. Simon's son had been every whit as fine as Will's, for all the wooden spoon that was hanging over his cradle. It was true that more and more children came to Blindbeck, passing Sandholes by, but that was nothing to Sarah as long as Geordie was at hand. Geordie alone seemed more than sufficient to right them in the eyes of an Eliza-magicked world. He was a rattlehorn and a limb, but he had stuff in him, all the same, and sooner or later he would prove that stuff to the world and the lordly Wills. All the working and scraping of those years went to the one passionate purpose of doing Eliza down. Those were the happiest years of Sarah's life, because for the time being she had a weapon against her foe.
Yet even here she found herself mocked by the amazing likeness between the brothers' sons. It had an uncanny effect upon her, as of something not quite human, even, indeed, as if there were something evil at its back. She had an uneasy feeling that, in some mysterious way, this was still another expression of Eliza's malice. The pride of stock in Simon and Will was stirred by this double evidence of breed, but Sarah, when people mistook the lads, was fretted to fierce tears. There were times when she even hated the smile on Geordie's lips, because of its exact similitude on Jim's. Most of all she hated herself when the wrong lad called and she answered before she knew, or waved to a figure over the sands, and it came laughing and was not her son....
She had much the same sense of something not quite canny about Jim's extraordinary passion for Sandholes and herself. It was almost, indeed, as if she feared it, as if she knew that in the future it might do her harm. Even she was not always proof against his laughing, kindly ways, and nothing but some such fear of a clutching love could have made her steel her heart. Through all her absorption in her splendid Geordie she could not help guessing at the greater depths in Jim. Geordie had yet to learn in exile what Jim had learned on the very threshold of his home. She remembered nursing him through an illness much against her will, and even now she could not shed that clinging memory and its appeal....
It was perhaps because of this hidden terror that she never used his affection for her against his mother. She was often tempted to do so, for Eliza was sore in spite of her loud denials, and when the Method was hard at work on the furniture or the crops it would have been pleasant to give her news--and generally none too pleasing news--of Jim. Often enough the words were on her tongue, but she never spoke them. Always something held her back from taking this easy means to strike.
Her ironic reward, however, was such as might well have made her think herself bewitched, for even out of her self-denial it was Eliza who gathered triumph. As time went on, and more and more lads appeared at Blindbeck, she deftly changed her tactics by a single twist of the wheel. She handed over to Sandholes, as it were, the one member of the Blindbeck family that did not come up to Blindbeck standards. Not that she ever said as much in words, or relinquished any claim that was likely to be of use. She merely contrived to convey the impression that he belonged by nature more to the Have-Nots than the Haves, to the penniless Simons rather than the wealthy Wills. The impression hardened, however, after the lads had run away, and Jim had finally nailed his sympathies to the mast. His father, indeed, did not give him up without a struggle, but Eliza became ever more detached from the wastrel who was her son. Smilingly, so to speak, she dropped her thumbs and let him go. It was not long before strangers were thinking him Simon's son instead of Will's, and presently even Sarah awoke to the fact that she was saddled with the Blindbeck failure as well as her own.
It was a smug young cousin of Eliza's who finally opened her eyes, at one of those family feasts which Simon and Sarah were always expected to attend. Eliza was never at her brightest and best without them, as she very rightly said,--the organ-grinder without his necessary monkey, the circus-master without his jumping clown. As usual, the Simon Thornthwaites heard their belongings catalogued and found utterly wanting, and, as usual, for the time being, shared the general sentiment that they were beneath scorn. The comparisons, passing in and out of shippon and parlour, leaping from feather-bed to sofa, and over root-crops and stacks of hay, arrived finally at the missing sons.
"Our Harry's for learning the violin," Eliza informed the tea-party, swelling with conscious pride. "Master wouldn't hear tell o' such a thing at first, but me and the girls talked him round between us. I reckon he'll be suited all right, though, when he hears our Harry play. Ah, now, Sarah, but wouldn't that ha' been just the thing for Geordie-an'-Jim? They were that fond o' music, the poor lads, though they'd no more tune to the pair on 'em than a steam-whistle. Eh, well, poor things, fiddle-playing and suchlike wouldn't ha' been no use to 'em where they're at. Brass wasted, that's what it would ha' been, so it's just as well...."
Harry, also swelling with pride, looked for some sign of admiration from his aunt, but did not get it. Eliza soothed him with a meaning glance.
"The trouble is you've got to keep your hands terble nice for the violin. Our Harry's terble set on keeping his hands nice.... Geordie-an'-Jim would never ha' come to such-like quality ways, would they, Sarah? I never see such hands as the two on 'em used to show at meals! I mind you said they got sent home that often from school, at last the folks took to washing 'em on the spot! I used to be right sorry for you, Sarah, I was that, wi' their gert finger-marks all over the walls and the chair-backs. It's queer how different folk shape, I'm sure, even when they're as you might say near-bred. Our Harry frames rarely at folding tablecloths and the like, and no more dirt to 'em when he's finished than if he was a lass!"
The town-bred cousin gazed complacently at his hands, and observed that, if Geordie-an'-Jim were in Canada, as he understood, from all accounts it was much the best place for them. Eliza nodded lugubriously, the tail of her eye on Sarah's unstirred face.
"Ay, they're in Canada right enough, and like to be,--aren't they, Sarah?--for a goodish while yet. They wrote home as they'd sworn to make their fortunes afore they crossed the pond again, but fortunes isn't as easy come by as some folk seem to think. Me and Will likely know as much about it as most, having managed middlin' well, but even for the best o' folk it isn't as simple as it sounds. There's always somebody at you one way or another, wanting to share what you've earned wi' your own hands. You've just got to keep lifting your feet right high off the ground, or you'll have folk hanging on to your shoe-wangs all the time. Ay, Geordie-an'-Jim'll find as fortunes don't come that slape off the reel! 'Tisn't as if it was our Harry and Tom here, ay, and Bill and Fred an' all, as'll find everything ready for 'em when they want to start on their own. They'll step into good farms as if it was stepping out o' bed, and they'll have Blindbeck behind them and its brass as well. They'll have a bit o' their own, come to that; I started 'em saving-books myself. Eh, yes, they'll do right well, but I doubt there's never farm nor Post Office book as'll come to Geordie-an'-Jim!"
Later in the day, the smug cousin, trying to be kind, had enquired of Sarah whether Geordie-an'-Jim were twins. She was too angry at first to answer him at all, and by the time she managed to get her breath her mood had changed. They were alone at the time, and even Sarah could sometimes laugh at herself when Eliza was out of sight. The touch of humour freed her heart for an instant, and at once it rose up and stood by the lad whose mother had cast him off. Jim was suddenly before her, with his tricks of affection and his borrowed face, his constant cry that he had only been born at Blindbeck by mistake. "I'm your lad, really, Aunt Sarah," she heard him saying, as of old. "I'm your lad really, same as Geordie is!" Jim was forty by now, but it was a child's voice that she heard speaking and couldn't deny. The cousin repeated his question, and she smiled grimly.
"Twins? Ay ... and as like as a couple o' peas. As like as a couple o' gulls on the edge o' the tide...."
It was the only time in her life that she ever stood openly by Eliza's hated son. But perhaps even that one occasion may count in the final sum of things....
III
Now they had left the high-road and were making south-east through the winding lanes. Their shoulders were turned to the sea, though in that lost world of the mist only the native could tell where the bay was supposed to lie. It was one of the dead hours, too, when even the salt goes out of the marsh-air, and no pulse in it warns you subconsciously of the miracle coming. Between the high-mounted hedges it was still and close, and beyond them the land rose until its dank green surface stood soft against the sky. All the way Simon looked at the land with a critical eye, the eye of the lover which loves and asks at the same time. He looked at the ploughland and knew the rotation through which it had run and would have to run again; at rich grass-land which seemed never to have known the steel, and fields which, at rest for a hundred years, still spoke to some long-rusted share. He loved it, but he thought of it first and foremost as good material for the good workman engaged on the only job in the world. It was always the land that he coveted when he came to Blindbeck, never the house. Eliza had made of the house a temple to the god of Blessed Self-Satisfaction, but even Eliza could not spoil the honest, workable land.
The farm kept showing itself to them as they drove, a quadrangle of long, well-kept buildings backed by trees. When the sun shone, the white faces of house and shippon looked silver through the peeping-holes of the hedge, but to-day they were wan and ghostly in the deadening mist. The turned beeches and chestnuts were merely rusty, instead of glowing, and seemed to droop as if with the weight of moisture on their boughs. The Scotch firs on a mound alone, stark, straight, aloof, had more than ever that air of wild freedom which they carry into the tamest country; and the pearly shadow misting their green alike in wet weather or in dry, was to-day the real mist, of which always they wear the other in remembrance.
The farm had its back well into the grassy hill, and the blind river which gave it its name wound its way down to it in a hidden channel and went away from it in a hidden dip in a field below. There was water laid on at Blindbeck, as Sarah knew, with a copper cylinder in a special linen-room, and a hot towel-rail and a porcelain bath. Simon's particular envy was the electric light, that marvel of marvels on a northern farm. He never got over the wonder of putting his hand to the switch, and seeing the light flash out on the second to his call. Once he had sneaked out of the house on a winter's night, and in the great shippon had turned the lights on full. Eliza, of course, had been nasty about it when she heard, but Will had understood him and had only laughed. Later, swinging a lantern in his own dark shippon, Simon had thought of those switches with envious longing. He did not know that they had taken the warm glamour out of the place, and slain in a blow the long tradition of its beauty. The lantern went with him like a descended star as he moved about, and out of the cattle's breath wove for itself gold-dusted halos. There had been something precious about it all before, some sense of mystery and long-garnered peace, but to-night he could only remember Blindbeck and its modern toy. For the time being he ceased to feel the pull of the sweetest chain in the world, which runs straight back through all the ages to the Child in the Bethlehem Stall.... There was a billiard-table at Blindbeck, too, with more switches to tempt Simon, and a well-laid tennis-lawn in the neat garden by the stream. On the far side of the farm was a great highway running north and south, as well as a main-line station over the drop of the hill. It seemed as if everything was made easy for those who lived at Blindbeck, from the washing of pots and the moving of stock to the amusement and education of the bairns.
Folk who came to Blindbeck for the first time believed that at last they had found the farm of all their dreams. They called it an Earthly Paradise, a model miniature village, a moral object-lesson, a True Home. They came to it between well-cropped fields, marked by trim hedges and neat stone walls, and through uniformly painted gates secure in hinge and hasp into a tidy yard. They looked with pleasure at the shining knocker on the green house-door and the fruit tree lustily climbing the warm south wall. They looked with delight at the healthy, handsome family, the well-placed buildings and the show of pedigree stock. They looked at Will as he went shyly by, and said that his wife was undoubtedly the better horse. They looked at Eliza and said that she was the Housewife of Romance. When they went away they told others of this Paradise which was Blindbeck, and the others came in their turn and looked and said the same. But to Simon and Sarah it was plain Purgatory and nothing else, and with each gate that they loosed they unloosed a devil as well.
There was a party at Blindbeck this afternoon, as long custom might have led them to expect. It was part of Eliza's Method to gather a party together when the poor relations were due. There was always a noisy crowd, it seemed to the Simons, when they were tired, or when they had any particular business to transact. On the day after the lads had flown there had been an unusually large crowd, with faces that looked like masks to the parents' tired eyes.... Will was fond of young folk, and made no objection to the stream of 'company' passing beneath his roof. His shy, quiet eyes watched the young tide of life surging ahead, with Eliza floundering like a porpoise in its midst. He was content only to watch, but he was not stranded, like the thirsty Simons; the waves still lapped about his feet. He could see youth and the pride of youth without the sense of desolation which embittered his brother and took his brother's wife by the throat. Simon was always surly when he came to Blindbeck, while Sarah was like a bomb in the hand which any unconscious soul might throw. Will did not know that for them every lad that they looked at should have been Geordie, and each lass a lass of their own with Geordie's face. He was sorry and sympathetic, but he did not know those things. It was Eliza who knew, and used the knowledge for her private ends. You could always be sure that Eliza knew where your hidden things were kept.
To-day, tired as they were with the hours in town, and already reacting from their great decision, a jovial party seemed more than they could stand. Signs of it reached them as they came to the last gate, making Sarah draw in her lips and Simon scowl. The sounds seemed intensified by the stillness of the day, crossing and jarring the mood of Nature as well as that of the approaching guests. Faces were pressed to panes as they rattled up, but nobody came out to give Sarah a hand down, or to offer to help Simon with the horse. They were too common a sight to arouse any interest or even courtesy in that house.
She climbed down gropingly, and he led the horse away, leaving her standing, waiting, in the empty yard. She stood with her back turned to the kitchen window, conscious, though she could not see them, of the eyes that were raking her shabby figure through the glass. The sounds of merriment burst out afresh, and she winced a little, though she did not move. They were laughing at her, she felt sure, but there was nothing new to that. They often laughed, she knew, since she had ceased to be able to stop them with a glance. She shivered, standing there, and her bones ached with the damp, but she was in no hurry to enter the warm, crowded room. It was better to shiver in the coldest spaces of earth than to be shut into Heaven itself with Eliza and her tongue.
The green house-door with its brass knocker was close at her left hand, but she did not attempt to open it and go in. That was a privilege only accorded to the rich and proud, not to a poor relation come to beg. Nevertheless, it was one of her hidden dreams that someday she would enter by that grand front-door. In the Great Dream Geordie came home with a fortune in his hands, so that all doors, even the Door of Blindbeck, instantly stood wide. They would drive up to it in a smart cart behind a fast young horse, with Geordie, a pattern of fashion, holding the reins. His mother would be beside him, of course, in crackling silk, with a velvet mantle and a bonnet of plumes and jet. Simon, the lesser glory, would have to sit behind, but even Simon would be a sight for Blindbeck eyes. When the Dream came true, the house could be as full of pryers as it chose, with crushed noses and faces green with envy set like bottle-ends in every pane. The farm-men would come to the doors and gape, and even the dogs would stop to sniff at so much that was new. Geordie would jump down, reins in hand, and bang the brass knocker until it shook the house, while Sarah, secure in the presence of her golden lad, would sit aloft and aloof like any other silken queen. Soon they would hear Eliza's step along the sacred, oil-clothed passage; and she, when she opened the door, would see their glory framed beyond. Sarah would throw her a graceful word, asking leave to step inside, and climb down with a rustle of silk on the arms of her husband and son. She would set her feet on the snowy steps and never as much as trouble to look for a mat. With a smile she would offer her hostess a kindly, kid-gloved hand. In the whole armour of the successful mother she would bear down upon her foe....
It was one of those things that seem as if they might happen so easily, and never do,--never do. Simon returned presently, accompanied by Will, and they entered the house as usual through the old stone porch. No dog even looked aside at them as they crossed to the kitchen door. No portent of coming wonder shed a sudden sunlight on the day. The old trap was tipped on its shafts behind a sheltering wall. The old horse, himself mere waiting food for the nearest hounds, munched his way happily through his feed of Blindbeck corn.
Will talked shyly as he led the way, trying to brighten the melancholy pair.
"You must have a sup o' tea before we get to business," he said to his brother, "and Sarah can rest herself while we have our crack. We're over soon wi' tea to-day, but I reckon you won't mind that. You'll be tired likely, and it's none so warm. I'll be bound Simon'll have a thirst on him anyway!" he smiled to Sarah. "He's done a deal o' tattling, Simon has, to-day!"
He could not get any response from them, however; indeed, they scarcely seemed to hear. The fear of Eliza was upon them, that was always so strong until they were actually in her presence, the same fear that had sent them scuttling like scared rabbits out of the Witham inn. Sarah was struggling with the usual jealous ache as they entered the spacious, cleanly place, with the kindly smell of new-baked bread filling the whole house. She knew as well as the mistress where the kitchen things were kept, the special glories such as the bread-maker, the fruit-bottler, and the aluminium pans. The Blindbeck motto had always been that nothing beats the best. Half her own tools at home were either broken or gone, and there was only a blind woman to make shift with the rest as well as she could. Little need, indeed, for a great array, with the little they had to cook; and little heart in either cooking or eating since Geordie had gone away....
Will opened the door of the main kitchen, and at once the warmth and jollity sweeping out of it smote the shrinking visitors like an actual blast. The party were already at table, as he had said, and met the late-comers with a single, focussed stare. It was one of their chief bitternesses, indeed, that they always seemed to arrive late. Eliza was at the back of it, they felt almost sure, but they had never been able to discover how. No matter how they hurried the old horse, asked the hour of passers-by, or had Simon's old watch put as right as it would allow, they never seemed to arrive at the right time. They could not be certain, of course, that she had watched for them from upstairs, and at the first sign of their coming had hustled the party into tea, but somehow or other they knew it in their bones. Things happened like that, they would have told you, when you were up against Mrs. Will; things that never by any chance would have happened with anybody else.
The room was cloudy to Sarah as she went in, but jealousy had long ago printed its details on her mind. She knew what the vivid wall-paper was like, the modern furniture and the slow-combustion grate. Once it had been a beautiful old houseplace with a great fire-spot and a crane, an ingle-nook, a bacon-loft, and a chimney down which both sun and moon could slant a way. Eliza, however, had soon seen to it that these absurdities were changed, and Sarah, though she affected contempt, approved of the changes in her heart. It was true that she always returned to Sandholes with a great relief, but she did not know that its bare austerity soothed her finer taste. She only knew that her mind expanded and her nerves eased, and, though grief went with her over every flag and board, a cool hand reached to her forehead as she went in.
Simon included in one surly glance the faces round the loaded table, the bright flowers, the china with the gilded rim, and the new window-curtains which he would never even have seen in any house but this. "Plush, by the look on 'em, and the price of a five pun note!" he thought resentfully, as he stood waiting to be given a place, and wondering which of the people present he disliked the most. There were the two Swainson lasses from the nearest farm, with their young duke of a brother, who was in a Witham bank. There was a Lancashire youth whom Will had taken as pupil, and Stephen Addison and his missis, who were both of them preaching-mad. He held forth at chapel and she at Institute meetings and the like, and folk said they kept each other awake at nights, practising which of them could do it best. There was Sam Battersby of Kitty Fold, who never knew where his own heaf ended and other people's began, and the familiar smug cousin, long since formally pledged to Eliza's eldest lass. There was a grandchild or two, and of course the Blindbeck brood, with the exception of a couple of married daughters and the obliterated Jim.... It was small wonder, indeed, that, after all those years, nobody missed him in that upcoming crowd.
Eliza's hearty voice, that was never hearty at core, rose like a strong-winged, evil bird at the unwanted guests. The sight of them seemed to surprise her so much that she dropped a gold-rimmed cup.
"Surely to goodness, Simon and Sarah, yon's never you! I'd give you up an hour back or more, I had indeed. You've been a terble while on t'road, surely,--a terble while after us? But there,--I always forget how fast yon grand little mare of ours gets over t'ground! You'd need to start sooner than most folk wi' your poor old crock."
She broke off to throw a remonstrance at Will, who was bundling two of his daughters out of their seats to make room for their uncle and aunt.
"Nay, now, Will," she called vexedly down the table. "What d'ye think you're at? Leave t'lasses alone, can't you? Let the poor things be! If it's a chair you're wanting, there's one here by me as'll suit Sarah just grand. Sarah can't abide a chair wi' a cane bottom,--says it rubs her gown. It's right enough, too, I'm sure, wi' velvet and the like,--(I made a bonny mess o' yon grand gown I had when Annie Belle was wed),--but I can't see as it'll do any harm to a bit o' poorish serge. Anyway, Sarah can have the best plush to set on, if she sets here, and, as for Simon, you're for ever sticking him where I can't so much as see the end of his nose! You're never thinking I'm still sweet on him, surely," she added, laughing, "or that happen he'll be making sheep's eyes at me, as he used to do?"
She looked at the young folk, and chuckled and winked, and they nudged each other and laughed, too. But Sarah did not laugh as she waited behind the chairs, or Simon, red to the ears, and recalling the machinations of Eliza's youth. He pushed one of his nieces roughly out of his way and took her place, while Sarah went slowly to seat herself on the red plush chair that was warranted not to hurt her poor patched gown.
"I hope there's summat for you, I'm sure!" Eliza went on, when the giggling and whispering had died down, and Simon's thin cheeks had lost their furious red. She cast an anxious glance down the well-filled table, but her tone was complacency itself. "Folks as come late can't expect to find everything just so.... Ay, I give you up a long while back. Sally here'll tell you I give you up. 'Sally,' I says to her, 'likely yon old horse'll be put to it to do the extra bit, and so they've happen thought better on't, and gone straight home. You're that used to good horses, Sally,' I says, 'you don't rightly know how poor folks has to shift. Not but what they'll get a deal better tea here than they will at home, Sally,' I says, 'and though I says it as shouldn't, that's the truth! Ay, they'll come to tea, I'll be bound, Sally,' I says, but I changed my mind when I thought on the old horse."
Sarah said nothing in reply to this, partly because her brain was swimming with the heat of the room, but chiefly because she never did say anything until Eliza was well ahead in the race for speech. This particular method helped her to reserve her strength, but at the same time it deepened the bitterness in her heart. It would have been better for both of them if they could have got the inevitable tussle over at the start; exhaustion on both sides might have brought at least a pretence at amity in its train. But it had always been Sarah's instinct to hold herself back, and time had turned the instinct into a fixed need. For the moment, at least, her strength was certainly to sit still.
"I doubt there's no tea for you just this minute, Sarah," Eliza said, affecting great concern as she lifted the tea-pot lid. "Sally, my lass, you'd best see about mashing another pot. There'll be a deal o' folk sending up for more in a brace o' shakes, and we can't have them saying they're not as well-tret at Blindbeck as they're used. Not as anybody's ever said it yet as I've heard tell, though you never know what folks'll do for spite. Most on 'em get through their three cups afore they're done, and me like as not just barely through my first. Eh, but I used to be terble bothered, just at the start, keeping folks filled and their mugs as they rightly should! You bairns wasn't up then, of course, but we'd farm-lads in the house, and wi' a rare twist to 'em an' all! Yon's a thing you've never been bothered with, Sarah, wi' such a small spot and lile or nowt in the way o' work. You'd nobbut a couple o' hands at any time, had you, and not them when you'd Geordie-an'-Jim? You've a deal to be thankful for, I'm sure, you have that! You've always been able to set down comfortable to your meat, instead o' fretting yourself to skin and bone seeing as other folk had their wants."
Here Mrs. Addison offered to pass her cup, and then thought better of it, remembering the new brew. Eliza, however, urged it forward. Apparently she had discovered concealed virtue under the tea-pot lid.
"Nay, now, Mrs. Addison, there's a sup in the pot yet! You've no call to look shy about it,--I wasn't talking at you! ... Pass Mrs. Addison the cream, Mary Phyllis, and waken up and look sharp about it! Blindbeck tea's none the worse, I reckon, for a drop o' Blindbeck cream...." She returned the cup, smiling benignly, and then pretended to have lost Sarah and suddenly found her again. "Losh, Mrs. Simon, you're that whyet I'd clean forgot you were there! You'll not want to be waiting on Sally and the fresh brew. I'll wet leaves again for you just to be going on with!"
So Sarah got the bottom of the pot after a little more talk, a hunt for a clean cup and an address on the value of the spoons. Half a cup--consisting chiefly of tea-leaves--was passed to Simon, but was intercepted on its way by Will. Simon did not notice the manoeuvre, being busy glowering at a niece's shoulder turned sulkily on him from the left; but Eliza saw it from her end of the table and turned an angry red. She never forgot Simon's indifference to her as a girl, and would have made him pay for the insult if she could. She could not always reach him, however, because of the family tie which nothing seemed able to break. But Sarah, at least, it was always consoling to think, could be made to pay. There were times when all her reserve could not hide from a gleeful Eliza that she paid....
So Simon got the new brew without even knowing that it was new, while Sarah drank the unpleasant concoction that was weak at the top and bitter as sea-water at the bottom. Sally came in with another great brown pot, and sat down languidly at her aunt's side. She and the smug cousin had been engaged for years, but there seemed little prospect of the wedding taking place. She had been a handsome girl, and was good to look at still, but there were handsomer Thornthwaites growing and grown up, as apparently the cousin was quick enough to perceive. To-day he had found a seat for himself beside Mary Phyllis, who kept glancing across at her sister with defiant pride. Sally had a cheap town-look nowadays, the cousin thought, not knowing that she had assumed it long ago to please himself. Now that he was more mature, he preferred the purer country type of Mary Phyllis, as well as the fresher atmosphere of her youth. Sally talked to young Swainson, and pretended not to care, but she was too unhappy to bother about her aunt. The Simon Thornthwaites were boring at any time, like most permanently unlucky people, and to-day she was too worried even to try to be kind. So Sarah, after whom she was called, and who was her godmother to boot, got very little to eat and only the dregs of things to drink; and nobody at all rose up to deliver her from Eliza.
Mrs. Addison had opened her mouth very impressively more than once, but it was only now that she got a chance to speak. In spite of their boasted fluency, both she and her husband had always to yield the palm to Mrs. Will. Mrs. Addison, however, always watched her chance, while Stephen was simply flabby, and did not try. She and Eliza in the same room were like firmly opposing currents, flowing strongly in the same stream.
"Mr. Addison's to preach at this mission they're having, next week," she announced proudly. "There's to be a Service for men only, and our Stephen's to give 'em a talk. I won't say but what he'll do as well as a real minister, even though I do happen to be his wife. Likely you'll think on about it, and send some of your lads along, Mrs. Will?"
Eliza was quite unable to conceal her disgust at a distinction achieved by somebody not her own.
"I'll do my best, I'm sure," she assented casually and without looking at her, "though I doubt they'll want coaxing a bit wi' a broom-handle or a clout!" She disliked being called Mrs. Will, and knew that Mrs. Addison did it with fell intent. It was galling to be reminded that, in spite of his success, Will had still not managed to make himself into the elder son.... "I can't say they're that set on either church or chapel unless it's to see a lass," she went on, busy with the cups, "and I doubt they don't reckon much o' sermons unless they're good. They've been better eddicated than most folk, you'll think on, so they're hard to suit. 'Tisn't likely they could do wi' second-hand preaching from some as happen never went to school at all."
Mr. A'ddison made a sudden attempt to speak, but choked instead, while Eliza looked as innocent as a large-sized lamb.
"Ay, I've heard a deal o' sermons as was just waste breath," she went on kindly, "and that's the truth. All the same, I'll likely look in at Mission myself, one o' these days, if I can get away. I'm always glad to set still after a hard week, and to get a look at other folks' jackets and hats. Not that there's much to crack on at chapel, that way.... I'm a deal fonder o' church. I was wed at St. Michael's, you'll think on,--ay, and Sarah an' all. Eh, I could laugh even yet at yon march we stole on her, me an' Will!"
Sally moved impatiently at her aunt's elbow, and muttered something under her breath. She was tired of the old story, and disapproved of it as well. Sarah had lifted her cup to her lips, but now she set it down....
Mary Phyllis stopped giggling a moment, and leaned forward to speak.
"I was telling Cousin Elliman about it only this morning," she said noisily, "and he says it's the funniest thing he ever heard! I thought everybody knew about it, but he says he didn't. He said it was real smart of you, Mother, and he wished he could have been there...."
"I'll be bound Sarah didn't think it smart!" Eliza chuckled, but without glancing at her victim's face. She had a trick of discussing people when they were present, as Sarah knew. She could tell by the trend of Eliza's voice that she spoke without turning her head.
"Smart? Nay! Sarah was real wild, you take my word! I spoke to her in t'vestry when the show was through, and she give me a look as was more like a dog's bite. Eh, well, I reckon poor Sarah was jealous o' my gown, seeing her own was nowt to crack on,--and nowt then! I'd always settled to be real smart when I got wed, and my own lasses was just the same. None o' my folk can do wi' owt as isn't first-class and happen a bit over. Yon's the photo we had took at Annie Belle's wedding," she added, turning to point, "and there's another of Alice Evelyn's in the parlour."
The cousin and Mary Phyllis left their seats to giggle together over the stiff figures, and presently the girl turned to her sister with a malicious taunt.
"I say, our Sally, you'd best look out when youdoget wed, or happen I'll play a trick on you, same as mother did Aunt Sarah! You'll be rarely riled if I come marching up the aisle with a fine young man, taking all the shine out of you and Elliman!"
The cousin said something in a low tone which made her flush and laugh, and Sally guessed at it quickly enough, though it did not reach her ears. The tears came into her eyes, and on an impulse of fellow-feeling she turned towards her aunt. She was asking after May Fleming when her mother broke across her talk.
"Eh, now, Sarah, yon was never May, was it, along wi' you in Witham? I'll be bound I'd never have known her if she hadn't been with you, but there's not that many you're seen about with nowadays at market. 'Tisn't like me, as can't stir a step without somebody wanting a crack or hanging on to my gown. But May's changed out of all knowledge,--I was fair bothered to see her look so old! I'll swear our Annie Belle looks as young again, for all she's been wed a dozen year at least. Ay, I thought May terble old, and terble unmannerly as well. I'd be shammed to think as any lass o' mine had suchlike ways. You weren't over-pleasant spoken yourself, Sarah, if it comes to that. The folk in the caif were laughing a deal after you'd gone out, and saying you must be wrong in the garrets to act so queer."
Sarah had regained her spirit a little, in spite of her poor tea. She straightened herself on the plush chair and answered calmly.
"They can say what suits 'em and welcome, as long as they let me be. You know what put me about, Eliza, and nobody to thank for it but yourself. As for folks laughing and making game o' me and suchlike, it was you they was sniggering at plain enough when I come out."
Eliza's colour rose, but she struggled to keep her virtuous air. She looked at Sarah with a sorrowful eye.
"I wouldn't get telling lies about it, Sarah," she observed kindly, "I wouldn't indeed! Mrs. Addison's listening, think on, and she'll be rarely shocked at suchlike ways. Caif-folk were shocked more than a deal, an' me just having a friendly talk an' all!"
"It's a queer sort o' friendliness as puts folk to open shame!" Sarah's colour was flying a flag, too. "It's nobbut a queer sort o' friend as goes shouting your private business at the end of a bell!"
"There isn't a deal that's private, surely, about the mess o' things you've made on the marsh?..." The fight was really begun now, and Eliza turned in her seat, fixing her adversary with merciless eyes. Sarah could see very little but a monstrous blur, but she felt her malignant atmosphere in every nerve. She could hear the big, solid presence creaking with malice as it breathed, and had an impression of strained whalebone and stretching cloth. But it was always Eliza's most cherished garments that she visioned when they fought,--the velvet gown that was folded away upstairs ... gloves, furs, and a feathered hat; furthest of all, the wedding-gown and the flaunting veil....
"Private!" Eliza repeated the sneered word as if it were something too precious to let go. "There can't be that much private about things as we've all on us known for years. What, folks has puzzled no end why you've never ended in t'bankruptcy court long since! Will and me could likely ha' tellt them about it, though, couldn't we, Sarah? Will an' me could easy ha' tellt 'em why! Will and me could ha' tellt where brass come from as was keeping you on t'rails----"
Will had been lending a careful ear to Simon's surly talk, but he lifted his head at the sound of his name.
"Now, missis, just you let Mrs. Simon be!" he admonished, with a troubled frown. "You're over fond of other folks' business by a deal."
"I'll let her be and welcome, if she'll keep a civil tongue in her head!" Eliza cried. She went redder than ever, and slapped a tea-spoon angrily on the cloth. "But if our brass isn't our business, I'd like to know what is, and as for this stir about quitting Sandholes, it's nothing fresh, I'm sure! We all on us know it's a marvel landlord didn't get shot on 'em long ago."
The last remark galvanised Battersby into lively speech. Hitherto he had been busily concentrated on his food, but now his mean little features sharpened and his mean little eyes shone. He bent eagerly forward, leaning on the cloth, knife and fork erect like stakes in a snatched plot.
"What's yon about quitting Sandholes?" he asked, in a thin voice. "Are you thinking o' leaving, Simon? Is it true?"
"I don't see as it's any affair o' yours if it is," Simon answered him, with a sulky stare.
"Nay, it was nobbut a friendly question between man and man. If you're quitting the farm it would only be neighbourly just to give me a hint. There's a lad o' mine talking o' getting wed, and I thought as how Sandholes'd likely be going cheap. Has anybody put in for it yet wi' t'agent, do ye think?"
"Nay, nor like to do, yet awhile," Simon answered glumly, full of sullen hurt. All his love for his tiresome dwelling-place rose to the surface at this greed. "I don't mind telling you, Mr. Battersby, as you ax so kind, that I give in my notice but it wasn't took. Mr. Dent would have it I mun think it over a bit more. Your lad'll just have to bide or look out for somebody else's shoes."
This dreadful exhibition of meanness aggrieved Battersby almost to the verge of tears.
"Well, now, if yon isn't dog-in-the-manger and nowt else!" he appealed to the company at large. "What, you're late wi' your notice already, and yet you're for sitting tight to the farm like a hen on a pot egg! I shouldn't ha' thought it of you, Simon, I shouldn't indeed. Here's a farmer wanting to quit and my lad wanting a farm, and yet the moment I ax a decent question I get sneck-posset geyly sharp. You're jealous, that's what it is, Simon; you're acting jealous-mean. You've nobbut made a terble poor job o' things yourself, and you want to keep others from getting on an' all!"
Simon gave vent to an ironic laugh.
"Nay, now, Sam, never fret yourself!" he jeered. "You and your lad'll get on right enough, I'll be bound, what wi' your heaf-snatching and your sheep-grabbing and the rest o' your bonny ways! What, man, one o' your breed'd be fair lost on a marsh farm, wi' nowt to lay hands on barrin' other folks' turmuts, and never a lile chance of an overlap!"
Battersby's reputation was well known, and an irrepressible laugh greeted Simon's speech, but was instantly cut short by the terrible spectacle of the victim's face. Only the smug cousin went on laughing, because he was ignorant as well as smug, and did not know what a heaf meant, let alone how it was possible to add to it by Sam's skilful if unlawful ways. Battersby jumped to his feet and thumped the table, so that the blue and gold china danced like dervishes from end to end. Mrs. Addison's tea made a waterfall down her second-best bodice, and Sarah's heart, not being prepared for the thump, leaped violently into her mouth.
"I'll not be insulted in your spot nor nobody else's," he stormed at Will; "nay, and I'll not take telling from yon wastrel you call brother, neither! All on us know what a bonny mess o' things he's made at Sandholes. All on us know it'll be right fain to see his back.... As for you, you gomeless half-thick," he added, swinging round so suddenly on the smug cousin that he was left gaping, "you can just shut yon calf's head o' yours and mighty sharp or I'll shut it for you! Them as knows nowt'd do best to say nowt, and look as lile like gawping jackasses as Nature'll let 'em!" ... He sent a final glare round the stifled table, and let Eliza have the sting in his tail. "I'd been looking to be real friendly wi' Blindbeck," he finished nastily, "and my lad an' all, but I don't know as we'll either on us be fain for it after this. Nay, I wain't set down agen, missis, and that's flat, so you needn't ax me! I'm off home and glad to be going, and no thanks to none o' you for nowt!"
He glanced at his plate to make certain there was nothing left, snatched at his cup and hastily swallowed the dregs; then, thrusting his chair backward so violently that it fell to the floor, he clapped his hat on his head and marched rudely out. Eliza, catching a glance from a tearful daughter, got to her feet, too. They swam from the room in a torrent of loud apologies and bitter, snarled replies.
Will leaned back in his chair with a fretted expression on his gentle face. The cousin, slowly turning from red to mottled mauve, observed to Mary Phyllis that the old man's language was 'really remarkably like my chief's!' Some of the younger end started to giggle afresh, but Sarah was still trembling from the unexpected shock, and Simon felt gloomy again after his public effort. He could see that he had upset Will, and that was the last thing he wanted to do, to-day. Will did not like Battersby, but he liked peace, and there were other reasons for friendly relations at present. Will's youngest daughter had a direct interest in Battersby's lad and his hopes of a farm, and now the father had shaken the Blindbeck dust from his proud feet. She looked across at the cause of the trouble with tear-filled, indignant eyes.
"Seems to me things is always wrong when you come to Blindbeck, Uncle Simon!" she exclaimed hotly. "Nobody wants your old farm, I'm sure! I wouldn't have it at a gift! But you might have spoken him fair about it, all the same. I never see such folks as you and Aunt Sarah for setting other folk by the ears!"
Will said "Whisht, lass, whisht!" in as cross a tone as he ever used to his girls, and Simon glowered at her sulkily, but he did not speak. She was a fair, pretty thing, with Geordie-an'-Jim's eyes, and he did not wish to injure her happiness in any way. It was true enough, as she said, that there was generally something in the shape of a row as soon as he and Sarah set foot in the house, but he could not tell for the life of him how it came about. It could not be altogether their fault, he thought resentfully, yet with a sort of despair. To-day, for instance, he had every reason for keeping the peace, and yet that fool of a Battersby must come jumping down his throat! Nobody could be expected to stand such manners and such nasty greed,--grabbing a man's homestead before his notice was well in! There was nothing surprising, of course, in the fact that the women had already come to blows. He had expected it from the start, and, with the resignation of custom, thought it as well over soon as late. They had had one scrap, as it was, from what Sarah had said, and the dregs of that pot of passion would still be hot enough to stir.
"It's a shame, that's what it is!" the girl was saying, over and over again. Tears dropped from the Geordie-an'-Jim eyes, and Simon felt furious with everybody, but particularly with himself.
"You needn't bother yourself," he growled across at last, making a rough attempt to put the trouble right. "Young Battersby's over much sense to go taking a spot like ourn, and as for his dad, he'll be back afore you can speak. 'Tisn't Sam Battersby, I'll be bound, if he isn't as pleased as punch to be running in double harness wi' Blindbeck and its brass!"
"Ay, like other folk!" Eliza dropped on him from the clouds, reappearing panting from her chase. "Like other folk a deal nearer home, Simon Thornthet, as you don't need telling! Battersby wanted nowt wi' the farm,--he tellt me so outside. 'Tisn't good enough for the likes of him, nor for our Emily Marion, neither! He was that stamping mad he was for breaking it all off, but I got him promised to look in again next week. I'd a deal o' work wi' him, all the same," she added, flushing angrily at her brother-in-law's ironic smile, "and no thanks to you, neither, if I come out top, after all! Anyway, I'll thank you to speak folk civilly at my table, if you can, whatever-like hired man's ways you keep for your own!"
She would have hectored him longer if Will had not got to his feet and taken himself and his brother out of the room, so instead she went back to her seat and drank a large cup of tea in angry gulps. Between drinks, however, she managed to say to the wife the things she had wanted to say to the man, though Sarah was silent and paid little or no heed. She wished she could have gone outside with the men, and helped to decide what her future was to be. But it was not for her to advise, who would soon be no better than a helpless log. It was her part to wait patiently until Simon fetched her away.
But it was not easy to wait at all in that atmosphere of critical dislike. The successive passages of arms had had their natural effect, and the party which had been so merry at the start was now in a state of boredom and constraint. The thoughts of most of those present were unfriendly towards the folk of the marsh, and Sarah could feel the thoughts winding about her in the air. Emily Marion was right, so they were saying in their minds; trouble always followed the Thornthwaites the moment they appeared. Storms arose out of nowhere and destroyed some festive occasion with a rush. Even to look at them, dowdy and disapproving, was to take the heart out of any happy day. It was certainly hard on the poor Will Thornthwaites that the tiresome Simons should dare to exist.
Sarah, bringing her mind back from the absent brothers with an effort, found the Method working again at top speed. The tea had soothed Eliza's nerves and stimulated her brain. She was now at her very best for behaving her very worst.
"And so Mr. Addison's preaching next week, is he?" she reverted suddenly, making even that supreme egotist blink and start. Her Voice, furred and soft, reminded Sarah of a paw reaching out for someone to scratch. "Eh, now, but I should be in a rare twitter if it was Will as was setting up to preach! But there, we're none of us much of a hand at talking at our spot, and Will's summat better to do than just wagging a loose tongue. I'll see the lads come along, though, as it's you, Mrs. Addison, and an old friend, unless there's summat useful they're happen wanted for at home. Eh, Sarah, but wouldn't they talks to young men ha' done a sight o' good to Geordie-an'-Jim? It's a sad pity you didn't start preaching before they went, Mr. Addison,--it is that! Like enough, if you had, they'd be at Sandholes yet."
The preacher's brow had been thunderous during the early part of this speech, but now he looked suddenly coy. Sally, dropping her glance to her aunt's lap, saw her fingers clench and unclench on a fold of her own black gown.
"Any news of the prodigals?" Elliman Wilkinson suddenly enquired. He looked at Eliza as he spoke, and smiled as at a well-known joke. "I'm always in hopes to find one of them eating the fatted calf."
"Nay, you must ask Sarah, not me!" Eliza answered, with an affected laugh. She despised Elliman in her heart, but she was grateful for the cue. "Sarah knows what they're at, if there's anybody does at all. Like enough they'll turn up one o' these days, but I don't know as we'll run to calves. They'll be terble rough in their ways, I doubt, after all this time. Out at elbows an' all, as like as not, and wi' happen a toe or two keeking through their boots!"
There was a ripple of laughter at this show of wit, and then Elliman, urged by a nudge and a whisper from Mary Phyllis, repeated the question in the proper quarter. He raised his voice when he spoke to Sarah, as if she were deaf as well as blind, and when she paused a moment before replying, he apostrophised her again. The whole table had pricked its ears and was listening by the time the answer came.
Sarah felt the giggles and the impertinent voice striking like arrows through the misty ring in which she sat. Sharpest of all was Eliza's laugh, introducing the question and afterwards punctuating it when it was put. She was achingly conscious of the antipathetic audience hanging on her lips. They were baiting her, and she knew it, and her heart swelled with helpless rage. A passionate longing seized her to be lord of them all for once,--just for once to fling back an answer that would slay their smiles, put respect into their mocking voices and change their sneers into awed surprise. If only for once the Dream and the glory might be true,--the trap and the new clothes and Geordie and the green front door! But nothing could be further from what they expected, as she knew too well. They were waiting merely to hear her say what she had often said before,--for news that there was no news or news that was worse than none. She had faced more than one trial that day, and had come out of them with her self-respect intact, but this unexpected humiliation was more than she could bear. She was telling herself in the pause that she would not answer at all, when something that she took for the total revolt of pride spoke to the mockers through her lips.