"Ay, but there's rare good news!" she heard herself saying in a cheerful tone, and instantly felt her courage spring up and her heart lighten as the lie took shape. "I'd been saving it up, Eliza, for when we were by ourselves, but there's no sense, I reckon, in not saying it straight out. Geordie's on his way home to England at this very minute, and he says he's a rare good lining to his jacket an' all!"The air changed about her at once as she had always dreamed it would, and she heard the gasp of surprise pass from one to another like a quick-thrown ball. Eliza started so violently that she upset her cup and let it lie. She stared malevolently at the other's face, her own set suddenly into heavy lines."Nay, but that's news and no mistake!" she exclaimed, striving after her former tone, but without success. The note in her voice was clear to her blind hearer, sending triumphant shivers through her nerves.... "Tell us again, will you, Sarah?" she added sharply. "I doubt I heard you wrong.""I'll tell you and welcome till the cows come home!" Sarah said, with a sudden sprightliness that made the Wilkinson cousin open his eyes. It was almost as if another person had suddenly taken possession of Sarah's place. There was a vitality about her that seemed to change her in every feature, an easy dignity that transformed the shabbiest detail of her dress. Her voice, especially, had changed,--that grudging, dully defiant voice. This was the warm, human voice of one who rejoiced in secret knowledge, and possessed her soul in perfect security and content."He's coming, I tell you,--our Geordie's coming back!" The wonderful words seemed to fill her with strong courage every time she spoke. "I can't rightly tell you when it'll be, but he said we could look for him any minute now. Likely we'll find him waiting at Sandholes when we've gitten home. He's done well an' all, from what he says.... I'll be bound he's a rich man. He talks o' buying Sandholes, happen,--or happen a bigger spot. I make no doubt he's as much brass as'd buy Blindbeck out an' out!"She fell silent again after this comprehensive statement, merely returning brief ayes and noes to the questions showered upon her from every side. Her air of smiling dignity, however, remained intact, and even her blind eyes, moving from one to another eager face, impressed her audience with a sense of truth. And then above the excited chatter there rose Eliza's voice, with the mother-note sounding faintly through the jealous greed."Yon's all very fine and large, Sarah, but what about my Jim? Jim's made his pile an' all, I reckon, if Geordie's struck it rich. He's as smart as Geordie, is our Jim, any day o' the week! Hark ye, Sarah! What about my Jim?"Quite suddenly Sarah began to tremble, exactly as if the other had struck her a sharp blow. She shrank instantly in her chair, losing at once her dignity and ease. The fine wine of vitality ran out of her as out of a crushed grape, leaving only an empty skin for any malignant foot to stamp into the earth. She tried to speak, but could find no voice brave enough to meet the fierce rain of Eliza's words. A mist other than that of blindness came over her eyes, and with a lost movement she put out a groping, shaking hand. Sally, in a sudden access of pity, gathered it in her own.She slid her arm round her aunt, and drew her, tottering and trembling, to her feet."It's overmuch for her, that's what it is," she said kindly, but taking care to avoid her mother's angry glance. "It's knocked her over, coming that sudden, and no wonder, either. Come along, Aunt Sarah, and sit down for a few minutes in the parlour. You'll be as right as a bobbin after you've had a rest."She led her to the door, a lithe, upright figure supporting trembling age, and Elliman's eyes followed her, so that for once he was heedless of Mary Phyllis when she spoke. Most of the company, indeed, had fallen into a waiting silence, as if they knew that the act was not yet finished, and that the cue for the curtain still remained to be said. And the instinct that held them breathless was perfectly sound, for in the square of the door Sarah halted herself and turned. Her worn hands gripped her gown on either side, and if May had been there to see her, she would again have had her impression of shrouded flame. She paused for a moment just to be sure of her breath, and then her voice went straight with her blind glance to the point where Eliza sat."Jim's dead, I reckon!" she said, clearly and cruelly... "ay, I doubt he's dead. Geordie'd never be coming without him if he was over sod. You'd best make up your mind, Eliza, as he's dead and gone!"It was the voice of an oracle marking an open grave, of Cassandra, crying her knowledge in Troy streets. It held them all spellbound until she had gone out. Even Eliza was silent for once on her red plush chair....IVEach of the brothers Thornthwaite drew a breath of relief as soon as he got outside. They were at ease together at once as soon as they were alone. The contrast in their positions, so obvious to the world, made little or no difference to the men themselves. It would have made less still but for the ever-recurring problem of the women-folk, and even that they did their best to put away from them as soon as they were out of sight. Each could only plead what he could for the side he was bound to support, and pass on hurriedly to a less delicate theme. Alone they fell back easily into the relation which had been between them as lads, and forgot that the younger was now a man of substance and weight, while the elder had made an inordinate muddle of things. Will had always looked up to Simon and taken his word in much, and he still continued to take it when Eliza was not present to point to the fact that Simon's wonderful knowledge had not worked out in practice. To-day, as they wandered round the shippons, he listened respectfully while his brother criticised the herd, quarrelled with the quality of the food-stuffs, and snorted contempt at the new American method of tying cattle in the stall. Experience had taught him that Simon was not the first who had made a mess of his own affairs while remaining perfectly competent to hand out good advice to others. The well-arranged water-supply was Simon's idea, as well as the porcelain troughs which were so easy to keep clean, and the milking-machine which saved so much in labour. There were other innovations,--some, Eliza's pride,--which were due to Simon, if she had only known it. He was a good judge of a beast as well, and had a special faculty for doctoring stock, a gift which had certainly not been allowed to run to waste during those bewitched and disease-ridden years at Sandholes. Will was indebted to him for many valuable lives, and often said that Simon had saved him considerably more than he had ever lent him. It remained a perpetual mystery why so useful a man should have achieved so much for others and so little for himself. The answer could only lie in the curse that was glooming over Sandholes,--if there was a curse. Nature certainly plays strange tricks on those who do not exactly suit her book, but in any case the hate at the heart of things was enough to poison luck at the very source.While Sarah sat through her long torment in the kitchen, rising up at last for that great blow which at all events felled her adversary for the time being, Simon was enjoying himself airing his knowledge in the buildings, contradicting his brother on every possible occasion, and ending by feeling as if he actually owned the place. However, the reason of his visit came up at length, as it was bound to do, and his air of expert authority vanished as the position changed. One by one, as he had already done to Mr. Dent, he laid before his brother his difficulties and disappointments, much as a housewife lays out the chickens that some weasel has slain in the night. He wore the same air of disgust at such absurd accumulation of disaster, of incredulity at this overdone effort on the part of an inartistic fate. The story was not new to Will, any more than to the agent, but he listened to it patiently, nevertheless. He knew from experience that, unless you allow a man to recapitulate his woes, you cannot get him to the point from which a new effort may be made. He may seem to be following you along the fresh path which you are marking out, but in reality he will be looking back at the missed milestones of the past. And there were so many milestones in Simon's case,--so many behind him, and so few to come. After all, it could only be a short road and a bare into which even the kindest brotherly love had power to set his feet.So for the second time that day Simon lived his long chapter of accidents over again, his voice, by turns emphatic and indignant or monotonous and resigned, falling like slanting rain over the unheeding audience of the cattle. Will, listening and nodding and revolving the question of ways and means, had yet always a slice of attention for his immediate belongings. His eye, casual yet never careless, wandered over the warm roan and brown and creamy backs between the clean stone slabs which Simon had advocated in place of the ancient wooden stalls. The herd was indoors for the winter, but had not yet lost its summer freshness, and he had sufficient cause for pride in the straight-backed, clean-horned stuff, with its obvious gentle breeding and beautiful feminine lines. That part of his mind not given to his brother was running over a string of names, seeing in every animal a host of others whose characteristics had gone to its creation, and building upon them the stuff of the generations still to come,--turning over, in fact, that store of knowledge of past history and patient prophecy for the future which gives the study of breeding at once its dignity and its fascination. At the far end of the shippon, where the calf-pens were, he could see the soft bundles of calves, with soft eyes and twitching ears, in which always the last word in the faith of the stock-breeder was being either proved or forsworn. The daylight still dropping through skylights and windows seemed to enter through frosted glass, dimmed as it was by the warm cloud of breathing as well as the mist that lined the sky beyond. A bird flew in at intervals through the flung-back swinging panes, and perched for a bar of song on the big cross-beams supporting the pointed roof. A robin walked pertly but daintily down the central aisle, a brave little spot of colour on the concrete grey, pecking as it went at the scattered corn under the monster-noses thrust between the rails. Simon leaned against a somnolent white cow, with an arm flung lengthways down her back, his other hand fretting the ground with the worn remnant of a crooked stick. Will's dog, a bushy, silvered thing, whose every strong grey hair seemed separately alive, curled itself, with an eye on the robin, at its master's feet.He roused himself to greater attention when Simon reached the account of his interview with Mr. Dent. Accustomed as he was to more or less traditional behaviour under the traditional circumstances which govern such lives as his, he fastened at once on the puzzling attitude of the agent."It fair beats me what Mr. Dent could think he was at," he observed thoughtfully. "Once you'd settled to quit there was no sense in keeping you hanging on. Best make a job and ha' done wi' it, seems to me. 'Tisn't like Mr. Dent, neither, to carry on in such a fashion. I wonder what made him act so strange?"Simon wore his original air of injured dignity as he leaned against the cow."Nay, I don't know, I'm sure, but he was terble queer! You might ha' thought he was badly or summat, but he seemed all right. Come to that, he looked as fit as a fiddle and as pleased as a punch! You might ha' thought he'd had a fortune left him, or the King's Crown!""Happen it was some private business," Will said, "and nowt to do wi' you at all.... What did you think o' doing when you've quit the farm?"Simon poked the flags harder than ever, and from injured dignity sank to sulks. The sudden pressure of his arm moved the somnolent cow to a sharp kick. When he spoke it was in a surly tone, and with his eyes turned away from Will's."I'll have to get a job o' some sort, I reckon, to keep us going. I'm over old for most folk, but I could happen do odds and ends,--fetching milk and siding up, and a bit o' gardening and suchlike. The trouble is the missis won't be able to do for herself before so long. The doctor tellt her to-day she was going blind."His brother's face filled at once with sympathy and dismay. In that forbidden compartment of his mind where he sometimes ventured to criticise his wife, he saw in a flash how she would take the news. This latest trouble of Sarah's would indeed be the summit of Eliza's triumph. Poverty Sarah had withstood; blindness she might have mastered, given time; but poverty and blindness combined would deliver her finally into the enemy's hand."I never thought it would be as bad as that," he murmured pityingly. "It's a bad business, is that! ... Didn't doctor say there was anything could be done?""There was summat about an operation, but it'll get no forrarder," Simon said. "They fancy things is hardly in Sarah's line.""If it's brass that's wanted, you needn't fash over that...." He added more urgently as Simon shook his head, "It'd be queer if I grudged you brass for a thing like yon!""You're right kind," Simon said gratefully, "but it isn't no use. She's that proud, is Sarah, she'll never agree. I doubt she just means to let things slide.""She's no call, I'm sure, to be proud with me!" Will's voice was almost hot. "I've always been ready any time to stand her friend. Anyway, there's the offer, and she can take it or leave it as best suits her. If she changes her mind after a while, she won't find as I've altered mine.... But there's no sense in your taking a job and leaving a blind woman to fend for herself. There's nowt for it but Sarah'll have to come to us."Simon laughed when he said that, a grim, mirthless laugh which made the dog open his sleepless eyes and throw him a searching glance."Nay, nay, Will, my lad! It's right good of you, but it wouldn't do. A bonny time you'd have, to be sure, wi' the pair on 'em in t'house! And anyway your missis'd never hear tell o' such a thing, so that fixes it right off.""It's my own spot, I reckon!" Will spoke with unusual force. "I can do as suits me, I suppose. T'lasses hasn't that much to do they can't see to a blind body, and as for room and suchlike, there'll be plenty soon. Young Battersby's made it up with our Em, and it's more than time yon Elliman Wilkinson was thinking o' getting wed. He's been going with our Sally a terble long while, though he and Mary Phyllis seem mighty throng just now. Anyway, there'll be a corner for Sarah right enough,--ay, and for you an' all."But Simon shook his head again, and stood up straight and took his arm off the back of the cow."There'd be murder, I doubt," he said quite simply, and this time he did not laugh. "There's bad blood between they two women as nobbut death'll cure. Nay, I thank ye right enough, Will, but yon horse won't pull...."I mun get a job, that's all," he went on quickly, before Will could speak again, "and some sort of a spot where t'neighbours'll look to the missis while I'm off. I'll see t'agent agen and try to ram into him as I mean to gang, and if you hear of owt going to suit, you'll likely let me know?"Will nodded but did not answer because of approaching steps, and they stood silently waiting until the cowman showed at the door. At once the deep symphony of the hungry broke from the cattle at sight of their servant with his swill. The quiet picture, almost as still as if painted on the wall, upheaved suddenly into a chaos of rocking, bellowing beasts. The great heads tugged at their yokes, the great eyes pleaded and rolled. The big organ-notes of complaint and desire chorded and jarred, dropping into satisfied silence as the man passed from stall to stall. Will jerked his head after him as he went out at the far door, and said that he would be leaving before so long."Eh? Taylor, did ye say?" Simon stared, for the man had been at Blindbeck for years. "What's amiss?""Nay, there's nowt wrong between us, if you mean that. But his wife's father's had a stroke, and wants him to take over for him at Drigg. News didn't come till I was off this morning, or I might ha' looked round for somebody while I was in t'town."Simon began a fresh violent poking with his ancient stick. "You'll ha' somebody in your eye, likely?" he enquired. "There'll be plenty glad o' the job.""Oh, ay, but it's nobbut a weary business learning folk your ways." He glanced at his brother a moment, and then looked shyly away. "If you're really after a shop, Simon, what's wrong wi' it for yourself?"The painful colour came into the other's averted face. He poked so recklessly that he poked the dog, who arose with an offended growl."Nay, it's charity, that's what it is! I'm over old.... You know as well as me I'd never get such a spot anywheres else.""You know the place, and you're a rare hand wi' stock. I could trust you same as I could myself.""I'm over old," Simon demurred again, "and done to boot. I'd not be worth the brass.""We've plenty o' help on the place," Will said. "It'd be worth it just to have you about. Nigh the same as having a vet on t'spot!" he added jokingly, trying to flatter him into acquiescence. "I'd be main glad for my own sake," he went on, his face grave again and slightly wistful. "There's times I fair ache for a crack wi' somebody o' my own. Women is nobbut women, when all's said and done, and lads is like to think they know a deal better than their dad.... Ay, well, you can think it over and let me know," he finished, in a disappointed tone.Simon poked for a while longer, and succeeded in poking the cow as well as the dog. He was fighting hard with his pride as he scraped busily at the flags. The tie of blood pulled him, as well as the whole atmosphere of the prosperous place. He knew in his heart that he was never so happy as when he was with his brother, never so good a man as when he was preaching in Will's shippons. As for pride, that would have to go by the board sooner or later; indeed, who would say that he had any right to it, even now? He made up his mind at last on a sudden impulse, lifting his head with a hasty jerk."I've had enough o' thinking things over, thank ye all the same. I'll be main glad o' the job, Will, and that's the truth...." He sank back instantly, however, and fell to poking again. "Folk'll have plenty to say, though, I reckon," he added bitterly, "when they hear as I'm hired man to my younger brother!""They've always a deal to say, so what's the odds? As for younger and older, there isn't a deal to that when you get up in years.... There's a good cottage across t'road," he went on eagerly, bringing up reinforcements before Simon should retire. "It's handy for t'stock, and there's a garden and orchard as well. Lasses could see to Sarah, you'll think on, if she's that closer. There's berry-bushes in t'garden and a deal besides...."Simon was busy shaking his head and saying he wasn't worth it and that he was over old, but all the time he was listening with interest and even pleasure to Will's talk. Milking had now begun, and already, as the levers swung back and forwards over the cattle's heads, he found himself looking about the shippon with a possessive eye. Even in these few moments, life had taken a turn for the Thornthwaite of the desolate marsh farm. Already his back felt straighter, his eye brighter, his brain more alive. The drawbacks of the proposed position began to recede before the many advantages it had to offer. It was true, of course, that he would be his brother's hired man, but it was equally true that he was the master's brother, too. To all intents and purposes he would be master himself,--that is to say, when Eliza wasn't about! Will's cottages were good, like everything else of Will's, and the lasses could see to Sarah, as he said. For himself there would be the constant interest and stimulant of a big farm, as well as the mental relief of a steady weekly wage. He felt almost excited about it as they crossed the yard, making for Taylor's cottage over the road. He tried not to think of what Sarah might say when she heard the news, still less of what Mrs. Will would most certainly say. He felt equal to both of them in his present spirited mood, and even tried to convince himself that in time they would make friends.As they stood looking at Taylor's cottage and Taylor's gooseberry bushes and canes, Will suddenly asked his brother whether there was any news of Geordie. And Simon, when he had given the old answer that there was no news that was worth crossing the road to hear, turned his face away in the direction of Taylor's hens, and enquired whether there was any news of Jim."There's been none for a sight o' years now," Will answered sadly, leaning on the wall. "Eliza wrote him a letter as put his back up, and he's never sent us a line since. He always set a deal more by you and your missis than he ever did by us. I'd ha' stood his friend, poor lad, if he'd ha' let me, but he always took it I was agen him, too."There was silence between them for a while, and then,--"Eh, well, you've a mort of others to fill his place!" Simon sighed, watching a well-built lad swing whistling across the yard.Will raised himself from the wall, and watched him, too."Ay, but I'd nobbut the one eldest son!" was all he said.VSally led her aunt to the grand but unused parlour in which so many expensive and handsome things were doomed to spend their lives. There was a piano, of course, which none of the Blindbeck folk knew how to play, in spite of Eliza's conviction that the gift was included in the price. A Chippendale bookcase made a prison for strange books never opened and never named, and the shut doors of a cabinet kept watch and ward over some lovely china and glass. There was a satin-wood table with a velvet sheen, whose polished mirror never reflected a laughing human face. There was an American rocking-chair, poised like a floating bird, with cushions filled with the finest down ever drawn from an heirloom of a feather-bed. Sarah would not have taken the rocking-chair, as a rule; she would have thought herself either too humble or too proud. But to-day she went to it as a matter of course, because of the false pomp that she had drawn to herself like a stolen royal robe. With a sigh of relief that was half physical and half mental, she let herself gently down, dropped her rusty bonnet against the silk, and peacefully closed her eyes.Sally stood looking at her with an expression of mingled pity, curiosity and awe. She had pitied her often enough before, but she had never before seen her through the slightest veil of romance. Sometimes, indeed, the tale of the damaged wedding-day had touched her imagination like the scent of a bruised flower, but it was so faint and far-off that it passed again like a breath. To-day, however, she had that sudden sense of exquisite beauty in the old, which all must feel who see in them the fragile storehouses of life. The old woman had known so much that she would never know, looked on a different world with utterly different eyes. There was romance in the thought of the dead she had seen and spoken to and laughed with and touched and loved. And even now, with the flower of her life apparently over and withered back again to its earth, this sudden splendour of Geordie had blossomed for her at the end.The girl waited a moment, hoping for a word, and then, though rather reluctantly, turned towards the door. She wanted to hear still more about the marvellous news, but the old woman looked so tired that she did not like to ask. She was anxious, too, to get back to the kitchen to keep an eye on Mary Phyllis. Yet still she lingered, puzzled and curious, and still touched by that unusual sense of awe. An exotic beauty had passed swiftly into the musty air of Eliza's parlour, a sense of wonder from worlds beyond ... the strong power of a dream."You're over-tired, aren't you, Aunt Sarah?" she repeated, for want of something better to say. She spoke rather timidly, as if aware that the words only brushed the surface of deeper things below.Sarah answered her without opening her eyes."Ay, my lass. Just a bit.""You'd best stop here quietly till Uncle Simon's yoked up. I'll see nobody bothers you if you feel like a nap. I'd fetch you a drop of cowslip wine, but mother's got the key.""Nay, I want nowt wi' it, thank ye," Sarah said. "I'll do all right." She lifted her hands contentedly, and folded them in her lap. "Likely I'll drop off for a minute, as you say.""Ay, well, then, I'd best be getting back." She moved resolutely now, but paused with her hand on the latch. "Aunt Sarah," she asked rather breathlessly, "was all that about Cousin Geordie true?"Sarah's lids quivered a little, and then tightened over her eyes."Ay. True enough.""It's grand news, if it is! ... I'm right glad about it, I'm sure! I've always thought it hard lines, him going off like that. And you said he'd done well for himself, didn't you, Aunt Sarah? ... Eh, but I wish Elliman could make some brass an' all!""There's a deal o' power in brass." The words came as if of themselves from behind the mask-like face. "Folks say it don't mean happiness, but it means power. It's a stick to beat other folk wi', if it's nowt else.""I don't want to beat anybody, I'm sure!" Sally laughed, though with tears in her voice. "I only want what's my own.""Ay, we all on us want that," Sarah said, with a grim smile. "But it's only another fancy name for the whole world!"————She sat still for some time after the girl had gone out, as if she were afraid that she might betray herself before she was actually alone. Presently, however, she began to rock gently to and fro, still keeping her hands folded and her eyes closed. The good chair moved easily without creak or jar, and the good cushions adapted themselves to every demand of her weary bones. Geordie should buy her a chair like this, she told herself as she rocked, still maintaining the wonderful fiction even to herself. She would have cushions, too, of the very best, covered with silk and cool to a tired cheek. A footstool, also, ample and well stuffed, and exactly the right height for a pair of aching feet.But though one half of her brain continued to dally with these pleasant fancies, the other was standing amazed before her late stupendous act. She was half-aghast, half-proud at the ease with which she had suddenly flung forth her swift, gigantic lie. Never for a moment had she intended to affirm anything of the kind, never as much as imagined that she might hint at it even in joke. She had been angry, of course, bitter and deeply hurt, but there had been no racing thoughts in her mind eager to frame the princely tale. It had seemed vacant, indeed, paralysed by rage, unable to do little else but suffer and hate. And then suddenly the words had been said, had shaped themselves on her lips and taken flight, as if by an agency with which she had nothing to do. It was just as if somebody had taken her arm and used it to wave a banner in the enemy's face; as if she were merely an instrument on which an angry hand had suddenly played.So she was not ashamed, or even really alarmed, because of this inward conviction that the crime was not her own. Yet the voice had been hers, and most certainly the succeeding grim satisfaction and ironic joy had been hers! She allowed herself an occasional chuckle now that she was really alone, gloating freely over Eliza's abasement and acute dismay. For once at least, in the tourney of years, she had come away victor from the fray. No matter how she was made to pay for it in the end, she had had the whip-hand of Blindbeck just for once. Indeed, now that it was done,--and so easily done,--she marvelled that she had never done it before. At the back of her mind, however, was the vague knowledge that there is only one possible moment for tremendous happenings such as these. Perhaps the longing engendered by the Dream in the yard had suddenly grown strong enough to act of its own accord. Perhaps, as in the decision about the farm, a sentence lying long in the brain is spoken at length without the apparent assistance of the brain....She did not trouble herself even to speculate how she would feel when at last the truth was out. This was the truth, as long as she chose to keep it so, as long as she sat and rocked and shut the world from her dreaming eyes. From pretending that it was true she came very soon to believing that it might really be possible, after all. Such things had happened more than once, she knew, and who was to say that they were not happening now? She told herself that, if she could believe it with every part of herself just for a moment, it would be true. Up in Heaven, where, as they said, a star winked every time a child was born, they had only to move some lever or other, and it would be true.A clock ticked on the mantelpiece with a slow, rather hesitating sound, as if trying to warn the house that Sunday and the need of the winding-key were near. There was a close, secretive feeling in the room, the atmosphere of so many objects shut together in an almost terrible proximity for so many days of the week. She was so weary that she could have fallen asleep, but her brain was too excited to let her rest. The magnitude of her crime still held her breathlessly enthralled; the glamour of it made possible all impossible hopes. She dwelt again and again on the spontaneity of the lie, which seemed to give it the unmistakable stamp of truth.She had long since forgotten what it was like to be really happy or even at peace, but in some sort of fierce, gloating, heathenish way she was happy now. She was conscious, for instance, of a sense of importance beyond anything she had ever known. Even that half of her brain which insisted that the whole thing was pretence could not really chill the pervading glow of pride. She had caught the reflection of her state in Eliza's voice, as well as in others less familiar to her ear. She had read it even in Sally's kindly championship and support; through the sympathy she had not failed to hear the awe. The best proof,--if she needed proof,--was that she was actually here in the sacred parlour, and seated in the precious chair. Eliza would have turned her out of both long since, she knew, if she had not been clad in that new importance as in cloth of gold.The impossible lies nearer than mere probability to the actual fact; so near at times that the merest effort seems needed to cross the line. Desire, racking both soul and body with such powerful hands, must surely be strong enough to leap the slender pale. The peculiar mockery about ill-luck is always the trifling difference between the opposite sides of the shield. It is the difference between the full glass and the glass turned upside-down. But to-day at least this tired old woman had swung the buckler round, and laughed as she held the glass in her hand and saw the light strike through the wine.In this long day of Simon's and Sarah's nothing was stranger than the varying strata of glamour and gloom through which in turn they passed. Their days and weeks were, as a rule, mere grey blocks of blank, monotonous life, imperceptibly lightened or further shadowed by the subtle changes of the sky. But into these few hours so closely packed with dreadful humiliations and decisions, so much accumulated unkindness and insult and cold hate, there kept streaming upon them shafts of light from some centre quite unknown. For Simon there had been the unexpected stimulant of his Witham success, and later the new interest in life which Will's proposal had seemed to offer. For Sarah there was the wistful pleasure of her morning with May, as well as the unlawful but passionate pleasure of her present position. The speed of the changes kept them over-strung, so that each as it came found them more sensitive than the last. They were like falling bodies dropping by turn through cloud and sunlit air. They were like total wrecks on some darkened sea, catching and losing by turn the lights of an approaching vessel.The slow clock dragged the protesting minutes on, and still no one disturbed her and the dream widened and grew. Tea would be brought in soon, she told herself in the dream,--strong, expensive, visitor's tea, freshly boiled and brewed. The silver teapot would be queening it over the tray, flanked by steaming scones and an oven-new, home-made cake. Eliza herself would appear to entertain her guest, always with that new note of reverence in her voice. When the door opened they would hear another voice,--Geordie's, laughing and talking in some room beyond. All the happy young voices of the house would mingle with his, but always the youngest and happiest would be Geordie's own. Hearing that voice, she would make mock of herself for ever having feared Eliza's tongue, still more for ever having cared enough to honour her with hate. A small thing then would be the great Eliza, in spite of her size, beside the mother for whom the dead had been made alive. She would talk with Eliza as the gods talk when they speak with the humble human from invisible heights. So strong was the vision that she found herself framing the godlike sentences with gracious ease. The silver teaspoons clinked against the cups, and the visitor's tea was fragrant in the musty room. She spread a linen handkerchief across her knee ... a snowy softness against her silken knee.... And always, always, as the meal progressed, the voice of her ecstasy sang in her happy ear....She had that one moment of clear beauty unprofaned by hate, with Geordie's face swimming before her in a golden haze. Then her hand, going out to the silk and linen of the dream, encountered the darned and threadbare serge of dreary fact. The dream rent violently all around her, letting her out again into the unlovely world. Even her blindness had been forgotten for the time, for in the dream she was never blind. Now the touch of the darns under her hand brought back the long hours of mending by candlelight which had had their share in despoiling her of her sight. She would never be able to darn by candlelight again, and the loss of that drudgery seemed to her now an added grief, because into this and all similar work, as women know, goes the hope of the future to emerge again as the soul of the past.... Sarah knew that her hand would ache for her needle as the sailor's hand aches for the helm, or the crippled horseman's for the feel of the flat rein. She felt, too, a sudden desperate anger against the woman who would have the mending of Simon's clothes. Geordie's, she knew, she would simply have wrenched from any stranger's hands, but since there was no Geordie she need not think of that. The Dream had been merely the make-believe of the bitterly oppressed, who had taken to desperate lying as a last resort. Yet still the sweetness lingered, keeping her serene, like the last scent of a passed garden or the last light upon darkening hills.She smoothed her hands on the arms of the precious chair, and reached out and smoothed the satin of the table. Through the dimness the solid piano loomed, the rosewood coffin of a thousand songs. The carpet under her feet felt elastic yet softly deep. There were ornaments in the room, good stuff as well as trash, trifles pointing the passions of Eliza's curious soul. But for once, after all these years, Eliza's soul would be sorrowful in spite of her great possessions. Back in the kitchen she would be gritting her teeth on the fact that it was Sarah's son who was coming home, coming with money to burn and a great and splendid will to burn it. She would exact payment, of course, when the truth was known, but even the last ounce of payment could not give her back this hour. For this hour, at least, it was hers to suffer and Sarah's to reign. For this hour, at least, the heavily-weighted tables of destiny were turned.VIThat which had been the terrible Eliza sat still for a long moment after Sarah had gone out. There was silence about the table until Elliman Wilkinson took upon himself to speak."But Jim's never your son, Cousin Eliza?" he exclaimed, puzzled, rushing in where not only angels would have feared to tread, but where the opposite host also would have taken care to keep their distance. "It's very stupid of me, of course, but I've always made sure that Geordie-an'-Jim were twins."Eliza turned baleful eyes upon the eager, inquisitive face. Her mind, concentrated in sullen fury upon the enemy recently departed with banners, found a difficulty in focussing itself upon this insignificant shape. When it succeeded, however, she ground him into dust."Ay, well, next time you feel sure of anything, you can make certain you're dead wrong!" she told him cruelly, surveying his bland countenance with cold contempt. "Jim's my eldest, if you want to know, and as much the better o' Geordie as Blindbeck's the better o' yon mudhole down on the marsh! He was always the smarter lad o' the two,--'tisn't likely he'd ha' been left.... I'll lay what you like it's Jim as is really coming, after all!""But in that case you would surely have heard from him yourself?" Elliman was still disporting himself with the brazen folly of innocence upon the forbidden ground. "He'd have written to tell his mother, surely,--not his aunt?"A distinct thrill of apprehension ran through the company at this tactful speech. Mary Phyllis's nudge on this occasion was one of sharp reproof. The clouds thickened on Eliza's brow."Nay, then, he just wouldn't, Mr. Clever-Lad-Know-All, so that's that! I'm his mother right enough, as nobody but a fool would ha' needed telling, but he wouldn't ha' written me, all the same. Me and Jim got across a while back, and he's taken sulks with me ever since. He'd be like enough to write to Sarah, by way of giving me back a bit o' my own. She always cockered him fearful, did Sarah, and set him agen me whenever she could. And if there's brass about, as she says, she'll keep it warm for him, never fear! She'll take right good care it never gets past her to Blindbeck or any of his own!""Jim would ha' been right enough but for Geordie all along." Mrs. Addison shook a loose and agile bonnet with an impressive air. "He was a right-down nuisance, was Geordie Thornthet,--a bad lad as well as a reg'lar limb! Such tricks as he was up to, I'm sure,--turmut-lanterns and the like, booin' at folks' winders after dark, and hiding behind hedges when folk was courtin' about t'lanes! Stephen and me wasn't wed then, you'll think on, and I mind a terble fright as Geordie give us one summer night. Stephen was terble sweet on me, as you'll likely know, though he'd choke himself black in the face afore he'd own to it now. Well, yon night as I'm speaking of he had hold o' my hand, and was looking as near like a dying duck in a thunderstorm as ever I see. 'Jenny Sophia,' he was saying, as sweet as a field of clover, 'I'm that set on you, Jenny Sophia'--when up pops Geordie on t'far side o' the hedge, girning and making a hullaballoo like a donkey afore rain!""You've no call to go raking up yon d--d rubbish!" Mr. Addison burst out, crimson to the hair, and quite forgetting the obligations of his Christian mission. He had said the same thing to Eliza's eldest lass, and much about the same time, and knew that Eliza knew it as well as he. "Folks isn't right in their heads when they're courtin', as everybody knows, and it's real mean to bring it agen 'em after all these years. As for Geordie Thornthet, there was lile or nowt I could learn him, and that's sure! T'lasses was always after him like bees at a bottle o' rum.""Nay, now, you mean our Jim!" Jim's mother corrected him with an air of offence. "Nobody never reckoned nowt o' Geordie but May Fleming. He couldn't hold a candle to Jim, any day o' the week. Folk said they couldn't tell 'em apart, but I never see a scrap o' likeness myself." She glanced defiantly round the table, as if expecting opposition, and then swung round eagerly as Sally reappeared. "Well, my lass, well?" she rapped out,--"did she tell you anything more? You've taken your time about coming back, I'm sure!""Nay, she said nowt fresh," Sally answered evasively, without meeting her eyes. She advanced to the table and began to gather the china together, ready for clearing away. Her mother pushed back her chair with an angry scrape."Well, of all the gert, helpless gabies!" she exploded violently. "I made sure she'd talk when she'd gitten you by herself. Didn't she say when letter come, or how much brass there was, or owt? ... Eh, well, it's never Geordie as made it, that I'll swear!""She said it was Geordie." Sally went on mechanically with her task, collecting cups and plates from under the noses of the still-stupefied clan. "It's real nice, anyway, to see somebody happy," she added suddenly, raising her eyes to look at the smug cousin. Elliman met them unexpectedly and coloured furiously. On a sudden remorseful impulse he shuffled a couple of plates together, and handed them to her with a deprecating air."I can't say she looked very set up about it, anyhow!" Eliza sneered. "What, she was even more glumpy than usual, seemed to me!""More like a burying than a home-coming, by a deal!" Mary Phyllis finished for her, with a scornful laugh."As for Uncle Simon, he was as cross as a pair of shears!" Emily Marion added in a fretted tone. The Thornthwaites were making things awkward to-day for the bride-to-be. Simon had nearly queered the engagement at the start, and now the company's interest was all for a Thornthwaite whom she had never seen."Not howIshould take good news, certainly!" Elliman said, hoping that no one had noticed his menial act. "I should have something more to say for myself, I hope, than that."Eliza's eyes brightened considerably at this unanimous point of view."Nay, you're right there," she took them up eagerly, "you're right enough! 'Tisn't natural to be so quiet. I'll tell you what it is," she added impressively, "it's one o' two things, that's all. It's either a lie from beginning to end, or else--or else--well, it's our Jim!" She pushed her chair further still, and got hurriedly to her feet. "Ay, well, whichever it is, I'd best see for myself," she added quickly. "You'll not mind me leaving you, Mrs. Addison, just for a little while? I don't know as we're doing right to leave Sarah so long alone. She's getting a bit of an old body now, you know, and she was never that strong in her poor head."She departed noisily after this surprisingly sympathetic speech, and Sarah, hearing her heavy step along the passage, chuckled for the last time. Her mind braced itself for the coming contest with a grim excitement that was almost joy. Nothing could have been more unlike her attitude of the morning in the inn-yard. She lay back in her chair again and closed her eyes, and was rocking peacefully when Eliza opened the door.Just for the moment the sight of the tranquil figure gave her pause, but neither sleep nor its greater Counterpart could still Eliza for very long. "Feeling more like yourself, are you, Sarah?" she enquired cautiously, peering in, and then repeated the question when she got no answer. Finally, irritated by the other's immobility which was obviously not sleep, she entered the room heavily, shutting the door with a sharp click. "There's nowt amiss, from the look of you," she added loudly, as she advanced.Sarah exclaimed, "Eh now, whatever's yon!" at the sound of the harsh voice, and sat up stiffly, winking her blind eyes. She even turned her head and blinked behind, as if she thought the voice had come out of the grandfather's clock. "Nay, I'll do now, thank ye," she answered politely, discovering Eliza's whereabouts with a show of surprise. "It'll be about time we were thinking of getting off."Eliza, however, had no intention of parting with her just yet. She stopped her hastily when she tried to rise."Nay, now, there isn't that much hurry, is there?" she demanded sharply. "Yon old horse o' yourn'll barely have stretched his legs. Your master and mine'd have a deal to say to each other an' all." She paused a moment, creaking from foot to foot, and staring irresolutely at the mask-like face. "You talked a deal o' stuff in t'other room, Sarah," she broke out at last, "but I reckon you meant nowt by it, after all?"Sarah wanted to chuckle again, but was forced to deny herself the pleasure. For appearance' sake she stiffened her back, and bristled a little at Eliza's tone."Ay, but I did!" she retorted briskly, her voice firm. "Whatever else should I mean, I'd like to know?"The strong hope that had sprung in Eliza's heart died down again before this brazen show."You can't rightly know what you're saying, Sarah," she said coldly, "you can't, indeed! Geordie coming after all these years,--nay, now, yon isn't true!""Ay, but it is, I tell ye,--true enough! True as yon Sunday fringe o' yourn as you bought in Witham!""And wi' brass, you said?" Eliza let the flippant remark pass without notice, and Sarah nodded. "A deal o' brass?""Yon's what he says.""Eh, well, I never did!" The angry wind of her sigh passed over Sarah's head and rustled the honesty in a vase behind. She repeated "I never did!" and creaked away from the enemy towards the window. Behind her, Geordie's mother allowed the ghost of a smile to find a fleeting resting-place on her lips."And so he's on his road home, is he,--coming right back?" Mrs. Will kept her back turned, thinking hard as she spoke. There was no section of Sarah's statement but she intended to prove by the inch. "Ay, well, it's what they mostly do when they've made their brass.""He'll be over here, I reckon, afore you can say knife! Taking first boat, he says he is, or the fastest he can find." She turned her head towards the door through which his voice had come in the dream. "What, I shouldn't be that surprised if he was to open yon door now!"There was such conviction in her tone that Eliza, too, was startled into turning her head. There was nothing to see, of course, and she turned back, but her ears still thrilled with the thrill in Sarah's voice. The cowman, passing, saw her face behind the glass, and said to himself that the missis was out for trouble once again.She was silent for a while, trying vainly to grapple the situation in the pause. She saw well enough that there was nothing to be gained by dispute if the story were true. She still looked to be top-dog in that or any other case, because Blindbeck pride was founded on solid Blindbeck gold; but there was no denying that the enemy would lie in a totally different position, and would have to be met on totally different ground. If, on the other hand, the great statement was a lie, there would be plenty of time for vengeance when the facts were known. Her malicious soul argued that the real game was to give Sarah plenty of rope, but her evil temper stood in the way of the more subtle method. It got the upper hand of her at last, and she flung round with an angry swing."Nay, then, I can't believe it!" she exclaimed passionately,--"I just can't! It's a pack o' lies, that's what it is, Sarah,--a gert string o' senseless lies!"This coarse description of her effort hurt Sarah in her artistic pride. She stiffened still further."I reckoned you'd take it like that," she replied in a dignified tone. "'Tisn't decent nor Christian, but it's terble nat'ral.""I don't see how you could look for folks to take it different!" Eliza cried. "'Tisn't a likely sort o' story, any way round. Ne'er-do-weels don't make their fortunes every day o' the week, and your Geordie was a wastrel, if ever there was one yet. You don't look like good news, neither, come to that. They've just been saying so in t'other room.""Good news wants a bit o' getting used to," Sarah said quietly, "same as everything else. When you've never had no luck for years and years you don't seem at first as if you could rightly take it in.""More particular when you're making it up out o' your own head!" Eliza scoffed, but growing more and more unwillingly convinced. "Nay, now, Sarah!" she added impatiently, her hands twitching,--"what d'ye think ye're at? What about all yon talk o' giving up the farm? No need for such a to-do if Geordie's coming home!"For the first time, though only just for a second, Sarah quailed. For the first time she had a glimpse of the maze in which she had set her feet, and longed sharply for her physical sight as if it would help her mental vision. But her brain was still quick with the power of the dream, and it rose easily to the sudden need. "It's like this, d'ye see," she announced firmly. "Simon knows nowt about it yet. I didn't mean telling him till we'd gitten back."Eliza had followed the explanation with lowering brows, but now she burst into one of her great laughs."Losh, Sarah, woman! but I'd have a better tale than that! What, you'd never ha' let him give in his notice, and you wi' your tongue in your cheek all the time! ... When did you get yon precious letter o' yours?" she enquired swiftly, switching on to another track."Just last minute this morning as we was starting off." Sarah was thoroughly launched now on her wild career. Each detail as she required it rose triumphantly to her lips. "Simon was back in t'stable wi' t'horse when postman come, so I put it away in my pocket and settled to say nowt. I thought it was likely axing for money or summat like that, and Simon had more than enough to bother him as it was. I got May Fleming to read it for me at doctor's," she finished simply, with a supreme touch. "I'm terble bad wi' my eyes, Eliza, if you'll trouble to think on."Once again Eliza was forced to belief against her will, and then once again she leaped at the only discrepancy in the tale."You could ha' tellt Simon easy enough on the road out!" she threw at her in a swift taunt. "There's time for a deal o' telling at your rate o' speed!"But now, to her vexed surprise, it was Sarah who laughed, and with a society smoothness that would have been hard to beat. It was in matters like these that the dream lifted her into another sphere, puzzling her clumsy antagonist by the finer air she seemed to breathe."Eh, now, Eliza!" she said good-humouredly, and with something almost like kindliness in her voice, "whatever-like use is it telling a man owt when he's chock full o' summat else? Simon was fit to crack himself over some joke as he'd heard in Witham, talking a deal o' nonsense and laughing fit to shake the trap! Coming from market's no time any day for telling a man important news, and anyway I'd never ha' got a word in edgeways if I'd tried." She paused a moment, and then continued, aspiring to still greater heights. "I'd another reason an' all for wanting it kept quiet. I knew he'd be sure an' certain to go shouting it out here.""Ay, and why ever not, I'd like to know!" Eliza gasped, when she was able to speak. "Come to that, you were smart enough shoving it down our throats yourself!""Ay, but that was because I lost my temper," Sarah admitted, with a noble simplicity which again struck the other dumb. "If I hadn't ha' lost my temper," she added, "I should ha' said nowt,--nowt!"--a statement so perfectly true in itself that it needed nothing to make it tell. "I never meant you should hear it so sudden-like," she went on gently, the kindness growing in her voice. "It's hard lines our Geordie should ha' done so well for himself, and not your Jim. I never meant to crow over you about it, Eliza,--I didn't, indeed. I never thought o' such a thing!"Eliza was making a noise like a motor-car trying to start, but Sarah took up her tale before she could reply."As for letting Simon give in his notice as we'd fixed, I don't know as it'll make that much differ, after all. There's my eyes, for one thing, as I mentioned before. Blind folk is only a nuisance wherever they be, but they're a real, right-down nuisance on a farm. And Geordie'll want more nor a farm, I reckon, wi' all yon brass to splash. He'll want summat wi' stables and gardens and happen fishing an' all,--a grand gentleman's spot, likely, same as the Hall itself."Mrs. Will felt the world wheeling rapidly about her, and tried to clutch at it as it went. Her temples throbbed and her throat worked, and her staring eyes went blind. She groped her way to the window, and flung up the stiff sash; and, as she stood there, drawing panting breaths, Simon and Will came sauntering through the yard. Her eyes, clearing again in the rush of air, caught the incipient smile on Simon's face, the new signs of interest and life in his whole look. He could know nothing about the great news, if what Sarah said was true; the utmost that he could do was to sense it in the air. But his look of subtle contentment was a sufficient annoyance in itself. It was the last straw, indeed, which broke the back of Eliza's self-control. When she turned again her words and her breath came with the leap of a mountain stream."I wonder you're not afraid, Sarah Thornthet, to be setting there reeling off lies like hanks o' cotton off a bobbin! Happen you're just thinking you'll get a rise out o' me and mine, but if that's the best you can do by way of a joke, well, I think nowt on't, and so I tell you! Geordie coming home wi' brass! Geordie wanting the Hall and suchlike! Nay, Sarah, I might ha' believed the rest wi' a bit o' pulling and pushing, but yon last's taking it over far. Why, I'd as lief believe he was going to get the King's Crown right out, wi' mappen Witham Town Hall for a spot to live in! As for thinking o' me and my feelings and suchlike stuff, you've never troubled that much about 'em to start bothering now. There's only two ways about it, Sarah, and I reckon I know which it is. It's either a smart lie you've been telling from end to end, or else it's never Geordie that's coming, but our Jim!"She choked when she came to the last words, both from sudden nervousness, and lack of breath, and again Sarah gave her well-bred laugh."I wouldn't be as hard o' faith as you, Eliza," she said placidly,--"not for a deal! It's you, not me, would have heard if Jim was coming home. What's Jim to do wi' me?""He'd a deal to do wi' you when he was in England, as everybody knows! Nay, you hated the sight o' him,--that's true enough,--but you were right keen on trying to set him agen me, all the same. What, the last letter I had from him,--and terble saucy an' all,--was blacking me over summat I'd said of you as his lordship didn't like! Nay, if he come home, Sarah, he'd come to you, not me, and right glad you'd be to have him while he'd a penny before his teeth! Ay, and why shouldn't our lad ha' done as well as yours, and happen better, come to that? He was the smarter lad o' the two, and come o' smarter folk,--ay, but he did now, Sarah, so you'll kindly shut your mouth! You've only to look at the way we've done at Blindbeck, me and Will, and then at the mess o' things you've made at yon pig-hull on the marsh! It stands to reason our lad would be the likely one to make out, just as it isn't in reason to expect owt from yours!"She came a step nearer as she finished, twisting her plump hands, her voice, as it mounted higher, full of bewilderment and angry tears."Will you swear to it Jim isn't coming, Sarah?" she demanded,--"will you swear? Will you swear as it isn't my lad that's coming and not yours?"Sarah said, "Ay, I will that!" in a hearty tone, and with such absolute readiness that Eliza bit her lip. "If you've a Bible anywhere handy," she went on tranquilly, "I'll swear to it right off."But already Eliza had drawn back in order to follow a fresh trail. Quite suddenly she had perceived the only means of getting at the truth."Nay, I'll not trouble you," she sneered. "'Tisn't worth it, after all. I shouldn't like our grand Family Bible to turn yeller wi' false swearing! Geordie's letter'll be proof enough, Sarah, now I come to think on. I'll believe owt about Halls and suchlike, if you'll show me that!"She came a step nearer still, holding out her hand, and instantly Sarah's lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. She might have had a dozen sacred letters about her, from the look of her, at that moment. It might have been Geordie's face itself that she guarded from the touch of Eliza's hands."Ay, I'd be like to show you his letter, wouldn't I?" she answered, with a wicked smile. "You and me have been such terble friends all these years,--I'd be like to show you owt from my bonny lad! Nay, Eliza, you know I'd shove it in t'fire unread, afore I'd let you as much as clap eyes on a single word!"Eliza wheeled away from her with an angry oath, and began to walk to and fro, setting the loose planks jumping and creaking under her feet, and the china rattling and clinking on the shelves. Her hands worked in and out of each other with convulsive movements, and now and then she flung out her heavy arms. She was working herself into one of those storms which the folk at the farm knew only too well, but Sarah, who was the cause of it, did not seem to care. She, too, however, was breathing faster than before, and a faint colour had stayed in her waxen cheek. She still felt as if, in that last bout, she had protected something vital from Eliza's hands."I'll be bound it's Jim!" Eliza was saying senselessly, over and over again. "I'll swear it's Jim!" ... It was like a giant's voice, Sarah thought to herself, the voice of a cruel, clumsy giant-child. "You're telling a lie, Sarah,--a nasty lie! You're jealous, that's what it is,--jealous and mean!Geordiewi' brass? Not likely! ... Nay, it's Jim!""It's plain enough it's the brass you're after and nowt else," Sarah said in her cool tones. "You'd have no use for the poor lad if he come back without a cent!"But even while the words were on her lips, Eliza, creaking to and fro, was brought to a sudden halt. The thing that held her was a photograph of Jim, catching her eye in its frame of crimson plush. If he had been older when it was taken, it would have been banished long ago, but here he was only a mischievous baby, struggling in his mother's arms. Eliza stared at it as she stood in front of the mantelpiece, and quite suddenly she began to cry. The tears poured down her face, and her hands trembled and her body shook. Into the brutal voice came a note at which Sarah, unable to trace the cause, yet quivered in every nerve."Nay, then, Sarah, you're wrong, Sarah, you're dead wrong! I'd be glad to see him just for himself, I would that! He's been nowt but a trouble and disappointment all his life, but I'd be glad to see him, all the same." She put out the plump fingers which Sarah loathed, and drew them caressingly over the baby face. "I can't do wi' failures," she added brokenly; "they make me wild; and Jim was the only failure Blindbeck ever hatched. But for all that he was the bonniest baby of the lot, and there's times I never remember nowt but that. There's days I just ache for the sound of his voice, and fair break my heart to think he'll never come back."There was no doubting the sincerity of her grief, and the big sobs shaking their way through her shook Sarah, too. Her own lips trembled, and her eyes filled; her hands quivered on the arms of the chair. She could not see the pitiful fingers stroking the child's face, but she who had offered that worship herself needed little help to guess. She had her revenge in full as she sat and listened to the passion that never dies, forcing its way upward even through Eliza's leathern soul; but the revenge was a two-edged sword that wounded herself as well. All the generosity in her that was still alive and kind would have sprung to the surface instantly if the story had been true. She would have groped her way to Eliza's side in an effort to console, and perhaps the lifelong enemies might have drawn together for once. But the story was not true, and she had nothing to offer and no right of any sort to speak. She could only sit where she was and suffer and shake, hating herself more in this moment of absolute conquest than she had ever hated Eliza in her darkest hour.But, as a matter of fact, Eliza's grief would have passed before she could even have tottered to her feet. Her own lips were still shaking when Eliza's had hardened again; her own eyes were still wet when Eliza's were dry with hate. The passion which for a brief moment had been selfless and sincere was turned once again into the channel of jealous rage. She swung round so swiftly that her sleeve caught the little frame, and it fell forward unnoticed with a sharp tinkle of broken glass."There's summat wrong about it all," she cried venomously, "and I'll not rest till I find out what it is! What's Geordie mean by landing up so smart, and leaving our Jim a thousand mile behind? It's a nasty sort o' trick, if it's nothing worse, seeing how they were thick as thieves as lads. I'll tell you what it is, Sarah, and you may swallow it as you can,--if Geordie's gitten brass, it's because he's robbed it off our Jim! Like enough he's put an end to him for it, the poor, honest lad--knifed him ... finished him ... put him out o' the road...!"The fierce malice of the voice penetrated into the passage, and carried its message into the kitchen and the yard. Will and Simon heard it at the stable door and looked at each other and turned instantly towards the house. Passing the parlour window, they saw the women rigid on their feet, and felt the current of hate sweep strongly across their path. They had a glimpse of Sarah's face, white, blind and quiet: and Eliza's, vindictive, purple, and bathed with furious tears. Her heavy tone beat at the other's immobility as if with actual blows, and the glass in the cabinet rang and rang in sweet reply. Will quickened his pace as he neared the house, for he knew that Eliza did not always stop at words. Indeed, her hands were reaching out towards Sarah's throat at the very moment he stepped inside."Whisht, can't ye, Eliza!" he ordered roughly, his voice harsh with the swift reaction from the little space of content through which he and his brother had just passed. "What's taken you, missis, to be going on like yon?"He was now in the parlour, with Simon at his heels, while the company from the kitchen clustered round the door. Peering into the tiny arena round each other's heads, they giggled and whispered, curious and alarmed. Sarah could hear them stirring and gurgling just beyond her sight, and felt their rapacious glances fastened upon her face. Sally tried to push her way through to her aunt's side, but was stopped by the solid figure of Elliman, set in the very front. The lads had forsaken the milking to run to the window and peep in, and a dog lifted its bright head and planted its forefeet on the sill. All the life of the place seemed drawn to this little room, where at last the women were fighting things out to the very death."What's amiss, d'ye say?" Eliza echoed his speech. "Nay, what isn't amiss! Here's Sarah has it her Geordie's a-coming home, but never a word as I can hear about our Jim!"The eyes of the brothers met in a startled glance, and the red came painfully into Simon's face. Before they could speak, however, Eliza swept their intention from them like a western gale."What's come to Jim, I want to know? Why isn't it our Jim? Geordie's made his pile, so Sarah says, but I can't hear of a pile for Jim. He's dead, that's what it is! ... Geordie's finished him, I'll swear! He's robbed him! ... knifed him! ... given him a shove in t'beck...!"Again she made that threatening movement towards Sarah's throat, but Will put out his hand and caught her by the wrist. Both the giggles and whispers had died a sudden death, and the lads at the window pressed nearer and looked scared. Sally succeeded at last in forcing her way through, careless that Elliman suffered severely as she passed."For goodness' sake, stop it, mother!" she cried sharply. "You're fair daft! Can't you wait to make a stir till Geordie's landed back? He'll tell us right enough then what's happened to our Jim.""He'll tell us nowt--nowt----!" Eliza began again on a high note, but Simon threw up his hand with a sudden snarl."Whisht, can't ye! You fair deafen a body, Eliza!" he flung out. "What's all this stir about Geordie coming back?""It's a lie, that's what it is!" Eliza exploded again, and again he silenced her with an angry "Whisht!" He kept his eyes on her a moment longer, as if daring her to speak, and then let them travel slowly and almost reluctantly to his wife's face. He opened his lips to address her and then changed his mind, turning instead to the crew beyond the door."Tell me about it, can't you?" he demanded angrily. "One o' you speak up! Emily Marion--Addison--you wi' the fat face!" He jerked a contemptuous thumb at Elliman, who went crimson with extreme disgust. "One o' you tell me the meaning o' this precious hullaballoo!"Elliman looked across to Sally for help, but did not get it. Instead, she turned her eyes away, ignoring his appeal."It's hardly my place to enlighten you, sir," he said, with an offended shrug, "but I don't mind telling you the little I know. Apparently your son Geordie is expected soon, and with a fat purse in his pocket to buy him a welcome home.""Geordie's coming back, d'ye say?" Simon stared at him with bewildered eyes."So Mrs. Thornthwaite has given us to understand.""And wi' brass? Plenty o' brass?Geordiewi' brass?""Enough and to spare, if all we're told is true.""Ay, but that's just what it isn't!" Eliza broke out on a peacock scream, and this time Will actually shook her into silence. The poignancy of the moment had hushed the rest of the audience into complete quiet. There was no sound in the room but Eliza's breathing as Simon turned again to look at his wife."What's it all about, Sarah?" he asked quietly, though his voice shook. "You never said nowt about Geordie coming to me."In the pause that followed Sally drew away from her aunt's side, as if conscious that this moment was for the two of them alone. The silence waited for Sarah's answer, but she could not bring herself to speak. In the heat of her victory she had forgotten that Simon also would hear the lying tale. It was the only hitch in the splendid machinery of the lie, but it was enough in itself to bring the whole of it to the ground. Here was Simon in front of her, asking for the truth, and if a hundred Elizas had been present she could still have given him nothing but the truth. But indeed, at that moment, Eliza, and all that Eliza stood for, was swept away. In that hush and sudden confronting of souls Sarah and Simon were indeed alone."Geordie's never coming, is he, Sarah?" he asked anxiously. "Nay, you've dreamed it, my lass! And he's rich, d'ye say?--why, that settles it right out! Why, it was nobbut the other day he was writing home for brass!"Still she did not speak, and quite suddenly he was wroth, vexed by her mask-like face and the sudden diminishing of his hope."Losh, woman!" he cried angrily. "You look half daft! Is yon lad of ours coming, or is he not? Is it truth you're telling me, or a pack o' lies?"
"Ay, but there's rare good news!" she heard herself saying in a cheerful tone, and instantly felt her courage spring up and her heart lighten as the lie took shape. "I'd been saving it up, Eliza, for when we were by ourselves, but there's no sense, I reckon, in not saying it straight out. Geordie's on his way home to England at this very minute, and he says he's a rare good lining to his jacket an' all!"
The air changed about her at once as she had always dreamed it would, and she heard the gasp of surprise pass from one to another like a quick-thrown ball. Eliza started so violently that she upset her cup and let it lie. She stared malevolently at the other's face, her own set suddenly into heavy lines.
"Nay, but that's news and no mistake!" she exclaimed, striving after her former tone, but without success. The note in her voice was clear to her blind hearer, sending triumphant shivers through her nerves.... "Tell us again, will you, Sarah?" she added sharply. "I doubt I heard you wrong."
"I'll tell you and welcome till the cows come home!" Sarah said, with a sudden sprightliness that made the Wilkinson cousin open his eyes. It was almost as if another person had suddenly taken possession of Sarah's place. There was a vitality about her that seemed to change her in every feature, an easy dignity that transformed the shabbiest detail of her dress. Her voice, especially, had changed,--that grudging, dully defiant voice. This was the warm, human voice of one who rejoiced in secret knowledge, and possessed her soul in perfect security and content.
"He's coming, I tell you,--our Geordie's coming back!" The wonderful words seemed to fill her with strong courage every time she spoke. "I can't rightly tell you when it'll be, but he said we could look for him any minute now. Likely we'll find him waiting at Sandholes when we've gitten home. He's done well an' all, from what he says.... I'll be bound he's a rich man. He talks o' buying Sandholes, happen,--or happen a bigger spot. I make no doubt he's as much brass as'd buy Blindbeck out an' out!"
She fell silent again after this comprehensive statement, merely returning brief ayes and noes to the questions showered upon her from every side. Her air of smiling dignity, however, remained intact, and even her blind eyes, moving from one to another eager face, impressed her audience with a sense of truth. And then above the excited chatter there rose Eliza's voice, with the mother-note sounding faintly through the jealous greed.
"Yon's all very fine and large, Sarah, but what about my Jim? Jim's made his pile an' all, I reckon, if Geordie's struck it rich. He's as smart as Geordie, is our Jim, any day o' the week! Hark ye, Sarah! What about my Jim?"
Quite suddenly Sarah began to tremble, exactly as if the other had struck her a sharp blow. She shrank instantly in her chair, losing at once her dignity and ease. The fine wine of vitality ran out of her as out of a crushed grape, leaving only an empty skin for any malignant foot to stamp into the earth. She tried to speak, but could find no voice brave enough to meet the fierce rain of Eliza's words. A mist other than that of blindness came over her eyes, and with a lost movement she put out a groping, shaking hand. Sally, in a sudden access of pity, gathered it in her own.
She slid her arm round her aunt, and drew her, tottering and trembling, to her feet.
"It's overmuch for her, that's what it is," she said kindly, but taking care to avoid her mother's angry glance. "It's knocked her over, coming that sudden, and no wonder, either. Come along, Aunt Sarah, and sit down for a few minutes in the parlour. You'll be as right as a bobbin after you've had a rest."
She led her to the door, a lithe, upright figure supporting trembling age, and Elliman's eyes followed her, so that for once he was heedless of Mary Phyllis when she spoke. Most of the company, indeed, had fallen into a waiting silence, as if they knew that the act was not yet finished, and that the cue for the curtain still remained to be said. And the instinct that held them breathless was perfectly sound, for in the square of the door Sarah halted herself and turned. Her worn hands gripped her gown on either side, and if May had been there to see her, she would again have had her impression of shrouded flame. She paused for a moment just to be sure of her breath, and then her voice went straight with her blind glance to the point where Eliza sat.
"Jim's dead, I reckon!" she said, clearly and cruelly... "ay, I doubt he's dead. Geordie'd never be coming without him if he was over sod. You'd best make up your mind, Eliza, as he's dead and gone!"
It was the voice of an oracle marking an open grave, of Cassandra, crying her knowledge in Troy streets. It held them all spellbound until she had gone out. Even Eliza was silent for once on her red plush chair....
IV
Each of the brothers Thornthwaite drew a breath of relief as soon as he got outside. They were at ease together at once as soon as they were alone. The contrast in their positions, so obvious to the world, made little or no difference to the men themselves. It would have made less still but for the ever-recurring problem of the women-folk, and even that they did their best to put away from them as soon as they were out of sight. Each could only plead what he could for the side he was bound to support, and pass on hurriedly to a less delicate theme. Alone they fell back easily into the relation which had been between them as lads, and forgot that the younger was now a man of substance and weight, while the elder had made an inordinate muddle of things. Will had always looked up to Simon and taken his word in much, and he still continued to take it when Eliza was not present to point to the fact that Simon's wonderful knowledge had not worked out in practice. To-day, as they wandered round the shippons, he listened respectfully while his brother criticised the herd, quarrelled with the quality of the food-stuffs, and snorted contempt at the new American method of tying cattle in the stall. Experience had taught him that Simon was not the first who had made a mess of his own affairs while remaining perfectly competent to hand out good advice to others. The well-arranged water-supply was Simon's idea, as well as the porcelain troughs which were so easy to keep clean, and the milking-machine which saved so much in labour. There were other innovations,--some, Eliza's pride,--which were due to Simon, if she had only known it. He was a good judge of a beast as well, and had a special faculty for doctoring stock, a gift which had certainly not been allowed to run to waste during those bewitched and disease-ridden years at Sandholes. Will was indebted to him for many valuable lives, and often said that Simon had saved him considerably more than he had ever lent him. It remained a perpetual mystery why so useful a man should have achieved so much for others and so little for himself. The answer could only lie in the curse that was glooming over Sandholes,--if there was a curse. Nature certainly plays strange tricks on those who do not exactly suit her book, but in any case the hate at the heart of things was enough to poison luck at the very source.
While Sarah sat through her long torment in the kitchen, rising up at last for that great blow which at all events felled her adversary for the time being, Simon was enjoying himself airing his knowledge in the buildings, contradicting his brother on every possible occasion, and ending by feeling as if he actually owned the place. However, the reason of his visit came up at length, as it was bound to do, and his air of expert authority vanished as the position changed. One by one, as he had already done to Mr. Dent, he laid before his brother his difficulties and disappointments, much as a housewife lays out the chickens that some weasel has slain in the night. He wore the same air of disgust at such absurd accumulation of disaster, of incredulity at this overdone effort on the part of an inartistic fate. The story was not new to Will, any more than to the agent, but he listened to it patiently, nevertheless. He knew from experience that, unless you allow a man to recapitulate his woes, you cannot get him to the point from which a new effort may be made. He may seem to be following you along the fresh path which you are marking out, but in reality he will be looking back at the missed milestones of the past. And there were so many milestones in Simon's case,--so many behind him, and so few to come. After all, it could only be a short road and a bare into which even the kindest brotherly love had power to set his feet.
So for the second time that day Simon lived his long chapter of accidents over again, his voice, by turns emphatic and indignant or monotonous and resigned, falling like slanting rain over the unheeding audience of the cattle. Will, listening and nodding and revolving the question of ways and means, had yet always a slice of attention for his immediate belongings. His eye, casual yet never careless, wandered over the warm roan and brown and creamy backs between the clean stone slabs which Simon had advocated in place of the ancient wooden stalls. The herd was indoors for the winter, but had not yet lost its summer freshness, and he had sufficient cause for pride in the straight-backed, clean-horned stuff, with its obvious gentle breeding and beautiful feminine lines. That part of his mind not given to his brother was running over a string of names, seeing in every animal a host of others whose characteristics had gone to its creation, and building upon them the stuff of the generations still to come,--turning over, in fact, that store of knowledge of past history and patient prophecy for the future which gives the study of breeding at once its dignity and its fascination. At the far end of the shippon, where the calf-pens were, he could see the soft bundles of calves, with soft eyes and twitching ears, in which always the last word in the faith of the stock-breeder was being either proved or forsworn. The daylight still dropping through skylights and windows seemed to enter through frosted glass, dimmed as it was by the warm cloud of breathing as well as the mist that lined the sky beyond. A bird flew in at intervals through the flung-back swinging panes, and perched for a bar of song on the big cross-beams supporting the pointed roof. A robin walked pertly but daintily down the central aisle, a brave little spot of colour on the concrete grey, pecking as it went at the scattered corn under the monster-noses thrust between the rails. Simon leaned against a somnolent white cow, with an arm flung lengthways down her back, his other hand fretting the ground with the worn remnant of a crooked stick. Will's dog, a bushy, silvered thing, whose every strong grey hair seemed separately alive, curled itself, with an eye on the robin, at its master's feet.
He roused himself to greater attention when Simon reached the account of his interview with Mr. Dent. Accustomed as he was to more or less traditional behaviour under the traditional circumstances which govern such lives as his, he fastened at once on the puzzling attitude of the agent.
"It fair beats me what Mr. Dent could think he was at," he observed thoughtfully. "Once you'd settled to quit there was no sense in keeping you hanging on. Best make a job and ha' done wi' it, seems to me. 'Tisn't like Mr. Dent, neither, to carry on in such a fashion. I wonder what made him act so strange?"
Simon wore his original air of injured dignity as he leaned against the cow.
"Nay, I don't know, I'm sure, but he was terble queer! You might ha' thought he was badly or summat, but he seemed all right. Come to that, he looked as fit as a fiddle and as pleased as a punch! You might ha' thought he'd had a fortune left him, or the King's Crown!"
"Happen it was some private business," Will said, "and nowt to do wi' you at all.... What did you think o' doing when you've quit the farm?"
Simon poked the flags harder than ever, and from injured dignity sank to sulks. The sudden pressure of his arm moved the somnolent cow to a sharp kick. When he spoke it was in a surly tone, and with his eyes turned away from Will's.
"I'll have to get a job o' some sort, I reckon, to keep us going. I'm over old for most folk, but I could happen do odds and ends,--fetching milk and siding up, and a bit o' gardening and suchlike. The trouble is the missis won't be able to do for herself before so long. The doctor tellt her to-day she was going blind."
His brother's face filled at once with sympathy and dismay. In that forbidden compartment of his mind where he sometimes ventured to criticise his wife, he saw in a flash how she would take the news. This latest trouble of Sarah's would indeed be the summit of Eliza's triumph. Poverty Sarah had withstood; blindness she might have mastered, given time; but poverty and blindness combined would deliver her finally into the enemy's hand.
"I never thought it would be as bad as that," he murmured pityingly. "It's a bad business, is that! ... Didn't doctor say there was anything could be done?"
"There was summat about an operation, but it'll get no forrarder," Simon said. "They fancy things is hardly in Sarah's line."
"If it's brass that's wanted, you needn't fash over that...." He added more urgently as Simon shook his head, "It'd be queer if I grudged you brass for a thing like yon!"
"You're right kind," Simon said gratefully, "but it isn't no use. She's that proud, is Sarah, she'll never agree. I doubt she just means to let things slide."
"She's no call, I'm sure, to be proud with me!" Will's voice was almost hot. "I've always been ready any time to stand her friend. Anyway, there's the offer, and she can take it or leave it as best suits her. If she changes her mind after a while, she won't find as I've altered mine.... But there's no sense in your taking a job and leaving a blind woman to fend for herself. There's nowt for it but Sarah'll have to come to us."
Simon laughed when he said that, a grim, mirthless laugh which made the dog open his sleepless eyes and throw him a searching glance.
"Nay, nay, Will, my lad! It's right good of you, but it wouldn't do. A bonny time you'd have, to be sure, wi' the pair on 'em in t'house! And anyway your missis'd never hear tell o' such a thing, so that fixes it right off."
"It's my own spot, I reckon!" Will spoke with unusual force. "I can do as suits me, I suppose. T'lasses hasn't that much to do they can't see to a blind body, and as for room and suchlike, there'll be plenty soon. Young Battersby's made it up with our Em, and it's more than time yon Elliman Wilkinson was thinking o' getting wed. He's been going with our Sally a terble long while, though he and Mary Phyllis seem mighty throng just now. Anyway, there'll be a corner for Sarah right enough,--ay, and for you an' all."
But Simon shook his head again, and stood up straight and took his arm off the back of the cow.
"There'd be murder, I doubt," he said quite simply, and this time he did not laugh. "There's bad blood between they two women as nobbut death'll cure. Nay, I thank ye right enough, Will, but yon horse won't pull....
"I mun get a job, that's all," he went on quickly, before Will could speak again, "and some sort of a spot where t'neighbours'll look to the missis while I'm off. I'll see t'agent agen and try to ram into him as I mean to gang, and if you hear of owt going to suit, you'll likely let me know?"
Will nodded but did not answer because of approaching steps, and they stood silently waiting until the cowman showed at the door. At once the deep symphony of the hungry broke from the cattle at sight of their servant with his swill. The quiet picture, almost as still as if painted on the wall, upheaved suddenly into a chaos of rocking, bellowing beasts. The great heads tugged at their yokes, the great eyes pleaded and rolled. The big organ-notes of complaint and desire chorded and jarred, dropping into satisfied silence as the man passed from stall to stall. Will jerked his head after him as he went out at the far door, and said that he would be leaving before so long.
"Eh? Taylor, did ye say?" Simon stared, for the man had been at Blindbeck for years. "What's amiss?"
"Nay, there's nowt wrong between us, if you mean that. But his wife's father's had a stroke, and wants him to take over for him at Drigg. News didn't come till I was off this morning, or I might ha' looked round for somebody while I was in t'town."
Simon began a fresh violent poking with his ancient stick. "You'll ha' somebody in your eye, likely?" he enquired. "There'll be plenty glad o' the job."
"Oh, ay, but it's nobbut a weary business learning folk your ways." He glanced at his brother a moment, and then looked shyly away. "If you're really after a shop, Simon, what's wrong wi' it for yourself?"
The painful colour came into the other's averted face. He poked so recklessly that he poked the dog, who arose with an offended growl.
"Nay, it's charity, that's what it is! I'm over old.... You know as well as me I'd never get such a spot anywheres else."
"You know the place, and you're a rare hand wi' stock. I could trust you same as I could myself."
"I'm over old," Simon demurred again, "and done to boot. I'd not be worth the brass."
"We've plenty o' help on the place," Will said. "It'd be worth it just to have you about. Nigh the same as having a vet on t'spot!" he added jokingly, trying to flatter him into acquiescence. "I'd be main glad for my own sake," he went on, his face grave again and slightly wistful. "There's times I fair ache for a crack wi' somebody o' my own. Women is nobbut women, when all's said and done, and lads is like to think they know a deal better than their dad.... Ay, well, you can think it over and let me know," he finished, in a disappointed tone.
Simon poked for a while longer, and succeeded in poking the cow as well as the dog. He was fighting hard with his pride as he scraped busily at the flags. The tie of blood pulled him, as well as the whole atmosphere of the prosperous place. He knew in his heart that he was never so happy as when he was with his brother, never so good a man as when he was preaching in Will's shippons. As for pride, that would have to go by the board sooner or later; indeed, who would say that he had any right to it, even now? He made up his mind at last on a sudden impulse, lifting his head with a hasty jerk.
"I've had enough o' thinking things over, thank ye all the same. I'll be main glad o' the job, Will, and that's the truth...." He sank back instantly, however, and fell to poking again. "Folk'll have plenty to say, though, I reckon," he added bitterly, "when they hear as I'm hired man to my younger brother!"
"They've always a deal to say, so what's the odds? As for younger and older, there isn't a deal to that when you get up in years.... There's a good cottage across t'road," he went on eagerly, bringing up reinforcements before Simon should retire. "It's handy for t'stock, and there's a garden and orchard as well. Lasses could see to Sarah, you'll think on, if she's that closer. There's berry-bushes in t'garden and a deal besides...."
Simon was busy shaking his head and saying he wasn't worth it and that he was over old, but all the time he was listening with interest and even pleasure to Will's talk. Milking had now begun, and already, as the levers swung back and forwards over the cattle's heads, he found himself looking about the shippon with a possessive eye. Even in these few moments, life had taken a turn for the Thornthwaite of the desolate marsh farm. Already his back felt straighter, his eye brighter, his brain more alive. The drawbacks of the proposed position began to recede before the many advantages it had to offer. It was true, of course, that he would be his brother's hired man, but it was equally true that he was the master's brother, too. To all intents and purposes he would be master himself,--that is to say, when Eliza wasn't about! Will's cottages were good, like everything else of Will's, and the lasses could see to Sarah, as he said. For himself there would be the constant interest and stimulant of a big farm, as well as the mental relief of a steady weekly wage. He felt almost excited about it as they crossed the yard, making for Taylor's cottage over the road. He tried not to think of what Sarah might say when she heard the news, still less of what Mrs. Will would most certainly say. He felt equal to both of them in his present spirited mood, and even tried to convince himself that in time they would make friends.
As they stood looking at Taylor's cottage and Taylor's gooseberry bushes and canes, Will suddenly asked his brother whether there was any news of Geordie. And Simon, when he had given the old answer that there was no news that was worth crossing the road to hear, turned his face away in the direction of Taylor's hens, and enquired whether there was any news of Jim.
"There's been none for a sight o' years now," Will answered sadly, leaning on the wall. "Eliza wrote him a letter as put his back up, and he's never sent us a line since. He always set a deal more by you and your missis than he ever did by us. I'd ha' stood his friend, poor lad, if he'd ha' let me, but he always took it I was agen him, too."
There was silence between them for a while, and then,--"Eh, well, you've a mort of others to fill his place!" Simon sighed, watching a well-built lad swing whistling across the yard.
Will raised himself from the wall, and watched him, too.
"Ay, but I'd nobbut the one eldest son!" was all he said.
V
Sally led her aunt to the grand but unused parlour in which so many expensive and handsome things were doomed to spend their lives. There was a piano, of course, which none of the Blindbeck folk knew how to play, in spite of Eliza's conviction that the gift was included in the price. A Chippendale bookcase made a prison for strange books never opened and never named, and the shut doors of a cabinet kept watch and ward over some lovely china and glass. There was a satin-wood table with a velvet sheen, whose polished mirror never reflected a laughing human face. There was an American rocking-chair, poised like a floating bird, with cushions filled with the finest down ever drawn from an heirloom of a feather-bed. Sarah would not have taken the rocking-chair, as a rule; she would have thought herself either too humble or too proud. But to-day she went to it as a matter of course, because of the false pomp that she had drawn to herself like a stolen royal robe. With a sigh of relief that was half physical and half mental, she let herself gently down, dropped her rusty bonnet against the silk, and peacefully closed her eyes.
Sally stood looking at her with an expression of mingled pity, curiosity and awe. She had pitied her often enough before, but she had never before seen her through the slightest veil of romance. Sometimes, indeed, the tale of the damaged wedding-day had touched her imagination like the scent of a bruised flower, but it was so faint and far-off that it passed again like a breath. To-day, however, she had that sudden sense of exquisite beauty in the old, which all must feel who see in them the fragile storehouses of life. The old woman had known so much that she would never know, looked on a different world with utterly different eyes. There was romance in the thought of the dead she had seen and spoken to and laughed with and touched and loved. And even now, with the flower of her life apparently over and withered back again to its earth, this sudden splendour of Geordie had blossomed for her at the end.
The girl waited a moment, hoping for a word, and then, though rather reluctantly, turned towards the door. She wanted to hear still more about the marvellous news, but the old woman looked so tired that she did not like to ask. She was anxious, too, to get back to the kitchen to keep an eye on Mary Phyllis. Yet still she lingered, puzzled and curious, and still touched by that unusual sense of awe. An exotic beauty had passed swiftly into the musty air of Eliza's parlour, a sense of wonder from worlds beyond ... the strong power of a dream.
"You're over-tired, aren't you, Aunt Sarah?" she repeated, for want of something better to say. She spoke rather timidly, as if aware that the words only brushed the surface of deeper things below.
Sarah answered her without opening her eyes.
"Ay, my lass. Just a bit."
"You'd best stop here quietly till Uncle Simon's yoked up. I'll see nobody bothers you if you feel like a nap. I'd fetch you a drop of cowslip wine, but mother's got the key."
"Nay, I want nowt wi' it, thank ye," Sarah said. "I'll do all right." She lifted her hands contentedly, and folded them in her lap. "Likely I'll drop off for a minute, as you say."
"Ay, well, then, I'd best be getting back." She moved resolutely now, but paused with her hand on the latch. "Aunt Sarah," she asked rather breathlessly, "was all that about Cousin Geordie true?"
Sarah's lids quivered a little, and then tightened over her eyes.
"Ay. True enough."
"It's grand news, if it is! ... I'm right glad about it, I'm sure! I've always thought it hard lines, him going off like that. And you said he'd done well for himself, didn't you, Aunt Sarah? ... Eh, but I wish Elliman could make some brass an' all!"
"There's a deal o' power in brass." The words came as if of themselves from behind the mask-like face. "Folks say it don't mean happiness, but it means power. It's a stick to beat other folk wi', if it's nowt else."
"I don't want to beat anybody, I'm sure!" Sally laughed, though with tears in her voice. "I only want what's my own."
"Ay, we all on us want that," Sarah said, with a grim smile. "But it's only another fancy name for the whole world!"
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She sat still for some time after the girl had gone out, as if she were afraid that she might betray herself before she was actually alone. Presently, however, she began to rock gently to and fro, still keeping her hands folded and her eyes closed. The good chair moved easily without creak or jar, and the good cushions adapted themselves to every demand of her weary bones. Geordie should buy her a chair like this, she told herself as she rocked, still maintaining the wonderful fiction even to herself. She would have cushions, too, of the very best, covered with silk and cool to a tired cheek. A footstool, also, ample and well stuffed, and exactly the right height for a pair of aching feet.
But though one half of her brain continued to dally with these pleasant fancies, the other was standing amazed before her late stupendous act. She was half-aghast, half-proud at the ease with which she had suddenly flung forth her swift, gigantic lie. Never for a moment had she intended to affirm anything of the kind, never as much as imagined that she might hint at it even in joke. She had been angry, of course, bitter and deeply hurt, but there had been no racing thoughts in her mind eager to frame the princely tale. It had seemed vacant, indeed, paralysed by rage, unable to do little else but suffer and hate. And then suddenly the words had been said, had shaped themselves on her lips and taken flight, as if by an agency with which she had nothing to do. It was just as if somebody had taken her arm and used it to wave a banner in the enemy's face; as if she were merely an instrument on which an angry hand had suddenly played.
So she was not ashamed, or even really alarmed, because of this inward conviction that the crime was not her own. Yet the voice had been hers, and most certainly the succeeding grim satisfaction and ironic joy had been hers! She allowed herself an occasional chuckle now that she was really alone, gloating freely over Eliza's abasement and acute dismay. For once at least, in the tourney of years, she had come away victor from the fray. No matter how she was made to pay for it in the end, she had had the whip-hand of Blindbeck just for once. Indeed, now that it was done,--and so easily done,--she marvelled that she had never done it before. At the back of her mind, however, was the vague knowledge that there is only one possible moment for tremendous happenings such as these. Perhaps the longing engendered by the Dream in the yard had suddenly grown strong enough to act of its own accord. Perhaps, as in the decision about the farm, a sentence lying long in the brain is spoken at length without the apparent assistance of the brain....
She did not trouble herself even to speculate how she would feel when at last the truth was out. This was the truth, as long as she chose to keep it so, as long as she sat and rocked and shut the world from her dreaming eyes. From pretending that it was true she came very soon to believing that it might really be possible, after all. Such things had happened more than once, she knew, and who was to say that they were not happening now? She told herself that, if she could believe it with every part of herself just for a moment, it would be true. Up in Heaven, where, as they said, a star winked every time a child was born, they had only to move some lever or other, and it would be true.
A clock ticked on the mantelpiece with a slow, rather hesitating sound, as if trying to warn the house that Sunday and the need of the winding-key were near. There was a close, secretive feeling in the room, the atmosphere of so many objects shut together in an almost terrible proximity for so many days of the week. She was so weary that she could have fallen asleep, but her brain was too excited to let her rest. The magnitude of her crime still held her breathlessly enthralled; the glamour of it made possible all impossible hopes. She dwelt again and again on the spontaneity of the lie, which seemed to give it the unmistakable stamp of truth.
She had long since forgotten what it was like to be really happy or even at peace, but in some sort of fierce, gloating, heathenish way she was happy now. She was conscious, for instance, of a sense of importance beyond anything she had ever known. Even that half of her brain which insisted that the whole thing was pretence could not really chill the pervading glow of pride. She had caught the reflection of her state in Eliza's voice, as well as in others less familiar to her ear. She had read it even in Sally's kindly championship and support; through the sympathy she had not failed to hear the awe. The best proof,--if she needed proof,--was that she was actually here in the sacred parlour, and seated in the precious chair. Eliza would have turned her out of both long since, she knew, if she had not been clad in that new importance as in cloth of gold.
The impossible lies nearer than mere probability to the actual fact; so near at times that the merest effort seems needed to cross the line. Desire, racking both soul and body with such powerful hands, must surely be strong enough to leap the slender pale. The peculiar mockery about ill-luck is always the trifling difference between the opposite sides of the shield. It is the difference between the full glass and the glass turned upside-down. But to-day at least this tired old woman had swung the buckler round, and laughed as she held the glass in her hand and saw the light strike through the wine.
In this long day of Simon's and Sarah's nothing was stranger than the varying strata of glamour and gloom through which in turn they passed. Their days and weeks were, as a rule, mere grey blocks of blank, monotonous life, imperceptibly lightened or further shadowed by the subtle changes of the sky. But into these few hours so closely packed with dreadful humiliations and decisions, so much accumulated unkindness and insult and cold hate, there kept streaming upon them shafts of light from some centre quite unknown. For Simon there had been the unexpected stimulant of his Witham success, and later the new interest in life which Will's proposal had seemed to offer. For Sarah there was the wistful pleasure of her morning with May, as well as the unlawful but passionate pleasure of her present position. The speed of the changes kept them over-strung, so that each as it came found them more sensitive than the last. They were like falling bodies dropping by turn through cloud and sunlit air. They were like total wrecks on some darkened sea, catching and losing by turn the lights of an approaching vessel.
The slow clock dragged the protesting minutes on, and still no one disturbed her and the dream widened and grew. Tea would be brought in soon, she told herself in the dream,--strong, expensive, visitor's tea, freshly boiled and brewed. The silver teapot would be queening it over the tray, flanked by steaming scones and an oven-new, home-made cake. Eliza herself would appear to entertain her guest, always with that new note of reverence in her voice. When the door opened they would hear another voice,--Geordie's, laughing and talking in some room beyond. All the happy young voices of the house would mingle with his, but always the youngest and happiest would be Geordie's own. Hearing that voice, she would make mock of herself for ever having feared Eliza's tongue, still more for ever having cared enough to honour her with hate. A small thing then would be the great Eliza, in spite of her size, beside the mother for whom the dead had been made alive. She would talk with Eliza as the gods talk when they speak with the humble human from invisible heights. So strong was the vision that she found herself framing the godlike sentences with gracious ease. The silver teaspoons clinked against the cups, and the visitor's tea was fragrant in the musty room. She spread a linen handkerchief across her knee ... a snowy softness against her silken knee.... And always, always, as the meal progressed, the voice of her ecstasy sang in her happy ear....
She had that one moment of clear beauty unprofaned by hate, with Geordie's face swimming before her in a golden haze. Then her hand, going out to the silk and linen of the dream, encountered the darned and threadbare serge of dreary fact. The dream rent violently all around her, letting her out again into the unlovely world. Even her blindness had been forgotten for the time, for in the dream she was never blind. Now the touch of the darns under her hand brought back the long hours of mending by candlelight which had had their share in despoiling her of her sight. She would never be able to darn by candlelight again, and the loss of that drudgery seemed to her now an added grief, because into this and all similar work, as women know, goes the hope of the future to emerge again as the soul of the past.... Sarah knew that her hand would ache for her needle as the sailor's hand aches for the helm, or the crippled horseman's for the feel of the flat rein. She felt, too, a sudden desperate anger against the woman who would have the mending of Simon's clothes. Geordie's, she knew, she would simply have wrenched from any stranger's hands, but since there was no Geordie she need not think of that. The Dream had been merely the make-believe of the bitterly oppressed, who had taken to desperate lying as a last resort. Yet still the sweetness lingered, keeping her serene, like the last scent of a passed garden or the last light upon darkening hills.
She smoothed her hands on the arms of the precious chair, and reached out and smoothed the satin of the table. Through the dimness the solid piano loomed, the rosewood coffin of a thousand songs. The carpet under her feet felt elastic yet softly deep. There were ornaments in the room, good stuff as well as trash, trifles pointing the passions of Eliza's curious soul. But for once, after all these years, Eliza's soul would be sorrowful in spite of her great possessions. Back in the kitchen she would be gritting her teeth on the fact that it was Sarah's son who was coming home, coming with money to burn and a great and splendid will to burn it. She would exact payment, of course, when the truth was known, but even the last ounce of payment could not give her back this hour. For this hour, at least, it was hers to suffer and Sarah's to reign. For this hour, at least, the heavily-weighted tables of destiny were turned.
VI
That which had been the terrible Eliza sat still for a long moment after Sarah had gone out. There was silence about the table until Elliman Wilkinson took upon himself to speak.
"But Jim's never your son, Cousin Eliza?" he exclaimed, puzzled, rushing in where not only angels would have feared to tread, but where the opposite host also would have taken care to keep their distance. "It's very stupid of me, of course, but I've always made sure that Geordie-an'-Jim were twins."
Eliza turned baleful eyes upon the eager, inquisitive face. Her mind, concentrated in sullen fury upon the enemy recently departed with banners, found a difficulty in focussing itself upon this insignificant shape. When it succeeded, however, she ground him into dust.
"Ay, well, next time you feel sure of anything, you can make certain you're dead wrong!" she told him cruelly, surveying his bland countenance with cold contempt. "Jim's my eldest, if you want to know, and as much the better o' Geordie as Blindbeck's the better o' yon mudhole down on the marsh! He was always the smarter lad o' the two,--'tisn't likely he'd ha' been left.... I'll lay what you like it's Jim as is really coming, after all!"
"But in that case you would surely have heard from him yourself?" Elliman was still disporting himself with the brazen folly of innocence upon the forbidden ground. "He'd have written to tell his mother, surely,--not his aunt?"
A distinct thrill of apprehension ran through the company at this tactful speech. Mary Phyllis's nudge on this occasion was one of sharp reproof. The clouds thickened on Eliza's brow.
"Nay, then, he just wouldn't, Mr. Clever-Lad-Know-All, so that's that! I'm his mother right enough, as nobody but a fool would ha' needed telling, but he wouldn't ha' written me, all the same. Me and Jim got across a while back, and he's taken sulks with me ever since. He'd be like enough to write to Sarah, by way of giving me back a bit o' my own. She always cockered him fearful, did Sarah, and set him agen me whenever she could. And if there's brass about, as she says, she'll keep it warm for him, never fear! She'll take right good care it never gets past her to Blindbeck or any of his own!"
"Jim would ha' been right enough but for Geordie all along." Mrs. Addison shook a loose and agile bonnet with an impressive air. "He was a right-down nuisance, was Geordie Thornthet,--a bad lad as well as a reg'lar limb! Such tricks as he was up to, I'm sure,--turmut-lanterns and the like, booin' at folks' winders after dark, and hiding behind hedges when folk was courtin' about t'lanes! Stephen and me wasn't wed then, you'll think on, and I mind a terble fright as Geordie give us one summer night. Stephen was terble sweet on me, as you'll likely know, though he'd choke himself black in the face afore he'd own to it now. Well, yon night as I'm speaking of he had hold o' my hand, and was looking as near like a dying duck in a thunderstorm as ever I see. 'Jenny Sophia,' he was saying, as sweet as a field of clover, 'I'm that set on you, Jenny Sophia'--when up pops Geordie on t'far side o' the hedge, girning and making a hullaballoo like a donkey afore rain!"
"You've no call to go raking up yon d--d rubbish!" Mr. Addison burst out, crimson to the hair, and quite forgetting the obligations of his Christian mission. He had said the same thing to Eliza's eldest lass, and much about the same time, and knew that Eliza knew it as well as he. "Folks isn't right in their heads when they're courtin', as everybody knows, and it's real mean to bring it agen 'em after all these years. As for Geordie Thornthet, there was lile or nowt I could learn him, and that's sure! T'lasses was always after him like bees at a bottle o' rum."
"Nay, now, you mean our Jim!" Jim's mother corrected him with an air of offence. "Nobody never reckoned nowt o' Geordie but May Fleming. He couldn't hold a candle to Jim, any day o' the week. Folk said they couldn't tell 'em apart, but I never see a scrap o' likeness myself." She glanced defiantly round the table, as if expecting opposition, and then swung round eagerly as Sally reappeared. "Well, my lass, well?" she rapped out,--"did she tell you anything more? You've taken your time about coming back, I'm sure!"
"Nay, she said nowt fresh," Sally answered evasively, without meeting her eyes. She advanced to the table and began to gather the china together, ready for clearing away. Her mother pushed back her chair with an angry scrape.
"Well, of all the gert, helpless gabies!" she exploded violently. "I made sure she'd talk when she'd gitten you by herself. Didn't she say when letter come, or how much brass there was, or owt? ... Eh, well, it's never Geordie as made it, that I'll swear!"
"She said it was Geordie." Sally went on mechanically with her task, collecting cups and plates from under the noses of the still-stupefied clan. "It's real nice, anyway, to see somebody happy," she added suddenly, raising her eyes to look at the smug cousin. Elliman met them unexpectedly and coloured furiously. On a sudden remorseful impulse he shuffled a couple of plates together, and handed them to her with a deprecating air.
"I can't say she looked very set up about it, anyhow!" Eliza sneered. "What, she was even more glumpy than usual, seemed to me!"
"More like a burying than a home-coming, by a deal!" Mary Phyllis finished for her, with a scornful laugh.
"As for Uncle Simon, he was as cross as a pair of shears!" Emily Marion added in a fretted tone. The Thornthwaites were making things awkward to-day for the bride-to-be. Simon had nearly queered the engagement at the start, and now the company's interest was all for a Thornthwaite whom she had never seen.
"Not howIshould take good news, certainly!" Elliman said, hoping that no one had noticed his menial act. "I should have something more to say for myself, I hope, than that."
Eliza's eyes brightened considerably at this unanimous point of view.
"Nay, you're right there," she took them up eagerly, "you're right enough! 'Tisn't natural to be so quiet. I'll tell you what it is," she added impressively, "it's one o' two things, that's all. It's either a lie from beginning to end, or else--or else--well, it's our Jim!" She pushed her chair further still, and got hurriedly to her feet. "Ay, well, whichever it is, I'd best see for myself," she added quickly. "You'll not mind me leaving you, Mrs. Addison, just for a little while? I don't know as we're doing right to leave Sarah so long alone. She's getting a bit of an old body now, you know, and she was never that strong in her poor head."
She departed noisily after this surprisingly sympathetic speech, and Sarah, hearing her heavy step along the passage, chuckled for the last time. Her mind braced itself for the coming contest with a grim excitement that was almost joy. Nothing could have been more unlike her attitude of the morning in the inn-yard. She lay back in her chair again and closed her eyes, and was rocking peacefully when Eliza opened the door.
Just for the moment the sight of the tranquil figure gave her pause, but neither sleep nor its greater Counterpart could still Eliza for very long. "Feeling more like yourself, are you, Sarah?" she enquired cautiously, peering in, and then repeated the question when she got no answer. Finally, irritated by the other's immobility which was obviously not sleep, she entered the room heavily, shutting the door with a sharp click. "There's nowt amiss, from the look of you," she added loudly, as she advanced.
Sarah exclaimed, "Eh now, whatever's yon!" at the sound of the harsh voice, and sat up stiffly, winking her blind eyes. She even turned her head and blinked behind, as if she thought the voice had come out of the grandfather's clock. "Nay, I'll do now, thank ye," she answered politely, discovering Eliza's whereabouts with a show of surprise. "It'll be about time we were thinking of getting off."
Eliza, however, had no intention of parting with her just yet. She stopped her hastily when she tried to rise.
"Nay, now, there isn't that much hurry, is there?" she demanded sharply. "Yon old horse o' yourn'll barely have stretched his legs. Your master and mine'd have a deal to say to each other an' all." She paused a moment, creaking from foot to foot, and staring irresolutely at the mask-like face. "You talked a deal o' stuff in t'other room, Sarah," she broke out at last, "but I reckon you meant nowt by it, after all?"
Sarah wanted to chuckle again, but was forced to deny herself the pleasure. For appearance' sake she stiffened her back, and bristled a little at Eliza's tone.
"Ay, but I did!" she retorted briskly, her voice firm. "Whatever else should I mean, I'd like to know?"
The strong hope that had sprung in Eliza's heart died down again before this brazen show.
"You can't rightly know what you're saying, Sarah," she said coldly, "you can't, indeed! Geordie coming after all these years,--nay, now, yon isn't true!"
"Ay, but it is, I tell ye,--true enough! True as yon Sunday fringe o' yourn as you bought in Witham!"
"And wi' brass, you said?" Eliza let the flippant remark pass without notice, and Sarah nodded. "A deal o' brass?"
"Yon's what he says."
"Eh, well, I never did!" The angry wind of her sigh passed over Sarah's head and rustled the honesty in a vase behind. She repeated "I never did!" and creaked away from the enemy towards the window. Behind her, Geordie's mother allowed the ghost of a smile to find a fleeting resting-place on her lips.
"And so he's on his road home, is he,--coming right back?" Mrs. Will kept her back turned, thinking hard as she spoke. There was no section of Sarah's statement but she intended to prove by the inch. "Ay, well, it's what they mostly do when they've made their brass."
"He'll be over here, I reckon, afore you can say knife! Taking first boat, he says he is, or the fastest he can find." She turned her head towards the door through which his voice had come in the dream. "What, I shouldn't be that surprised if he was to open yon door now!"
There was such conviction in her tone that Eliza, too, was startled into turning her head. There was nothing to see, of course, and she turned back, but her ears still thrilled with the thrill in Sarah's voice. The cowman, passing, saw her face behind the glass, and said to himself that the missis was out for trouble once again.
She was silent for a while, trying vainly to grapple the situation in the pause. She saw well enough that there was nothing to be gained by dispute if the story were true. She still looked to be top-dog in that or any other case, because Blindbeck pride was founded on solid Blindbeck gold; but there was no denying that the enemy would lie in a totally different position, and would have to be met on totally different ground. If, on the other hand, the great statement was a lie, there would be plenty of time for vengeance when the facts were known. Her malicious soul argued that the real game was to give Sarah plenty of rope, but her evil temper stood in the way of the more subtle method. It got the upper hand of her at last, and she flung round with an angry swing.
"Nay, then, I can't believe it!" she exclaimed passionately,--"I just can't! It's a pack o' lies, that's what it is, Sarah,--a gert string o' senseless lies!"
This coarse description of her effort hurt Sarah in her artistic pride. She stiffened still further.
"I reckoned you'd take it like that," she replied in a dignified tone. "'Tisn't decent nor Christian, but it's terble nat'ral."
"I don't see how you could look for folks to take it different!" Eliza cried. "'Tisn't a likely sort o' story, any way round. Ne'er-do-weels don't make their fortunes every day o' the week, and your Geordie was a wastrel, if ever there was one yet. You don't look like good news, neither, come to that. They've just been saying so in t'other room."
"Good news wants a bit o' getting used to," Sarah said quietly, "same as everything else. When you've never had no luck for years and years you don't seem at first as if you could rightly take it in."
"More particular when you're making it up out o' your own head!" Eliza scoffed, but growing more and more unwillingly convinced. "Nay, now, Sarah!" she added impatiently, her hands twitching,--"what d'ye think ye're at? What about all yon talk o' giving up the farm? No need for such a to-do if Geordie's coming home!"
For the first time, though only just for a second, Sarah quailed. For the first time she had a glimpse of the maze in which she had set her feet, and longed sharply for her physical sight as if it would help her mental vision. But her brain was still quick with the power of the dream, and it rose easily to the sudden need. "It's like this, d'ye see," she announced firmly. "Simon knows nowt about it yet. I didn't mean telling him till we'd gitten back."
Eliza had followed the explanation with lowering brows, but now she burst into one of her great laughs.
"Losh, Sarah, woman! but I'd have a better tale than that! What, you'd never ha' let him give in his notice, and you wi' your tongue in your cheek all the time! ... When did you get yon precious letter o' yours?" she enquired swiftly, switching on to another track.
"Just last minute this morning as we was starting off." Sarah was thoroughly launched now on her wild career. Each detail as she required it rose triumphantly to her lips. "Simon was back in t'stable wi' t'horse when postman come, so I put it away in my pocket and settled to say nowt. I thought it was likely axing for money or summat like that, and Simon had more than enough to bother him as it was. I got May Fleming to read it for me at doctor's," she finished simply, with a supreme touch. "I'm terble bad wi' my eyes, Eliza, if you'll trouble to think on."
Once again Eliza was forced to belief against her will, and then once again she leaped at the only discrepancy in the tale.
"You could ha' tellt Simon easy enough on the road out!" she threw at her in a swift taunt. "There's time for a deal o' telling at your rate o' speed!"
But now, to her vexed surprise, it was Sarah who laughed, and with a society smoothness that would have been hard to beat. It was in matters like these that the dream lifted her into another sphere, puzzling her clumsy antagonist by the finer air she seemed to breathe.
"Eh, now, Eliza!" she said good-humouredly, and with something almost like kindliness in her voice, "whatever-like use is it telling a man owt when he's chock full o' summat else? Simon was fit to crack himself over some joke as he'd heard in Witham, talking a deal o' nonsense and laughing fit to shake the trap! Coming from market's no time any day for telling a man important news, and anyway I'd never ha' got a word in edgeways if I'd tried." She paused a moment, and then continued, aspiring to still greater heights. "I'd another reason an' all for wanting it kept quiet. I knew he'd be sure an' certain to go shouting it out here."
"Ay, and why ever not, I'd like to know!" Eliza gasped, when she was able to speak. "Come to that, you were smart enough shoving it down our throats yourself!"
"Ay, but that was because I lost my temper," Sarah admitted, with a noble simplicity which again struck the other dumb. "If I hadn't ha' lost my temper," she added, "I should ha' said nowt,--nowt!"--a statement so perfectly true in itself that it needed nothing to make it tell. "I never meant you should hear it so sudden-like," she went on gently, the kindness growing in her voice. "It's hard lines our Geordie should ha' done so well for himself, and not your Jim. I never meant to crow over you about it, Eliza,--I didn't, indeed. I never thought o' such a thing!"
Eliza was making a noise like a motor-car trying to start, but Sarah took up her tale before she could reply.
"As for letting Simon give in his notice as we'd fixed, I don't know as it'll make that much differ, after all. There's my eyes, for one thing, as I mentioned before. Blind folk is only a nuisance wherever they be, but they're a real, right-down nuisance on a farm. And Geordie'll want more nor a farm, I reckon, wi' all yon brass to splash. He'll want summat wi' stables and gardens and happen fishing an' all,--a grand gentleman's spot, likely, same as the Hall itself."
Mrs. Will felt the world wheeling rapidly about her, and tried to clutch at it as it went. Her temples throbbed and her throat worked, and her staring eyes went blind. She groped her way to the window, and flung up the stiff sash; and, as she stood there, drawing panting breaths, Simon and Will came sauntering through the yard. Her eyes, clearing again in the rush of air, caught the incipient smile on Simon's face, the new signs of interest and life in his whole look. He could know nothing about the great news, if what Sarah said was true; the utmost that he could do was to sense it in the air. But his look of subtle contentment was a sufficient annoyance in itself. It was the last straw, indeed, which broke the back of Eliza's self-control. When she turned again her words and her breath came with the leap of a mountain stream.
"I wonder you're not afraid, Sarah Thornthet, to be setting there reeling off lies like hanks o' cotton off a bobbin! Happen you're just thinking you'll get a rise out o' me and mine, but if that's the best you can do by way of a joke, well, I think nowt on't, and so I tell you! Geordie coming home wi' brass! Geordie wanting the Hall and suchlike! Nay, Sarah, I might ha' believed the rest wi' a bit o' pulling and pushing, but yon last's taking it over far. Why, I'd as lief believe he was going to get the King's Crown right out, wi' mappen Witham Town Hall for a spot to live in! As for thinking o' me and my feelings and suchlike stuff, you've never troubled that much about 'em to start bothering now. There's only two ways about it, Sarah, and I reckon I know which it is. It's either a smart lie you've been telling from end to end, or else it's never Geordie that's coming, but our Jim!"
She choked when she came to the last words, both from sudden nervousness, and lack of breath, and again Sarah gave her well-bred laugh.
"I wouldn't be as hard o' faith as you, Eliza," she said placidly,--"not for a deal! It's you, not me, would have heard if Jim was coming home. What's Jim to do wi' me?"
"He'd a deal to do wi' you when he was in England, as everybody knows! Nay, you hated the sight o' him,--that's true enough,--but you were right keen on trying to set him agen me, all the same. What, the last letter I had from him,--and terble saucy an' all,--was blacking me over summat I'd said of you as his lordship didn't like! Nay, if he come home, Sarah, he'd come to you, not me, and right glad you'd be to have him while he'd a penny before his teeth! Ay, and why shouldn't our lad ha' done as well as yours, and happen better, come to that? He was the smarter lad o' the two, and come o' smarter folk,--ay, but he did now, Sarah, so you'll kindly shut your mouth! You've only to look at the way we've done at Blindbeck, me and Will, and then at the mess o' things you've made at yon pig-hull on the marsh! It stands to reason our lad would be the likely one to make out, just as it isn't in reason to expect owt from yours!"
She came a step nearer as she finished, twisting her plump hands, her voice, as it mounted higher, full of bewilderment and angry tears.
"Will you swear to it Jim isn't coming, Sarah?" she demanded,--"will you swear? Will you swear as it isn't my lad that's coming and not yours?"
Sarah said, "Ay, I will that!" in a hearty tone, and with such absolute readiness that Eliza bit her lip. "If you've a Bible anywhere handy," she went on tranquilly, "I'll swear to it right off."
But already Eliza had drawn back in order to follow a fresh trail. Quite suddenly she had perceived the only means of getting at the truth.
"Nay, I'll not trouble you," she sneered. "'Tisn't worth it, after all. I shouldn't like our grand Family Bible to turn yeller wi' false swearing! Geordie's letter'll be proof enough, Sarah, now I come to think on. I'll believe owt about Halls and suchlike, if you'll show me that!"
She came a step nearer still, holding out her hand, and instantly Sarah's lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. She might have had a dozen sacred letters about her, from the look of her, at that moment. It might have been Geordie's face itself that she guarded from the touch of Eliza's hands.
"Ay, I'd be like to show you his letter, wouldn't I?" she answered, with a wicked smile. "You and me have been such terble friends all these years,--I'd be like to show you owt from my bonny lad! Nay, Eliza, you know I'd shove it in t'fire unread, afore I'd let you as much as clap eyes on a single word!"
Eliza wheeled away from her with an angry oath, and began to walk to and fro, setting the loose planks jumping and creaking under her feet, and the china rattling and clinking on the shelves. Her hands worked in and out of each other with convulsive movements, and now and then she flung out her heavy arms. She was working herself into one of those storms which the folk at the farm knew only too well, but Sarah, who was the cause of it, did not seem to care. She, too, however, was breathing faster than before, and a faint colour had stayed in her waxen cheek. She still felt as if, in that last bout, she had protected something vital from Eliza's hands.
"I'll be bound it's Jim!" Eliza was saying senselessly, over and over again. "I'll swear it's Jim!" ... It was like a giant's voice, Sarah thought to herself, the voice of a cruel, clumsy giant-child. "You're telling a lie, Sarah,--a nasty lie! You're jealous, that's what it is,--jealous and mean!Geordiewi' brass? Not likely! ... Nay, it's Jim!"
"It's plain enough it's the brass you're after and nowt else," Sarah said in her cool tones. "You'd have no use for the poor lad if he come back without a cent!"
But even while the words were on her lips, Eliza, creaking to and fro, was brought to a sudden halt. The thing that held her was a photograph of Jim, catching her eye in its frame of crimson plush. If he had been older when it was taken, it would have been banished long ago, but here he was only a mischievous baby, struggling in his mother's arms. Eliza stared at it as she stood in front of the mantelpiece, and quite suddenly she began to cry. The tears poured down her face, and her hands trembled and her body shook. Into the brutal voice came a note at which Sarah, unable to trace the cause, yet quivered in every nerve.
"Nay, then, Sarah, you're wrong, Sarah, you're dead wrong! I'd be glad to see him just for himself, I would that! He's been nowt but a trouble and disappointment all his life, but I'd be glad to see him, all the same." She put out the plump fingers which Sarah loathed, and drew them caressingly over the baby face. "I can't do wi' failures," she added brokenly; "they make me wild; and Jim was the only failure Blindbeck ever hatched. But for all that he was the bonniest baby of the lot, and there's times I never remember nowt but that. There's days I just ache for the sound of his voice, and fair break my heart to think he'll never come back."
There was no doubting the sincerity of her grief, and the big sobs shaking their way through her shook Sarah, too. Her own lips trembled, and her eyes filled; her hands quivered on the arms of the chair. She could not see the pitiful fingers stroking the child's face, but she who had offered that worship herself needed little help to guess. She had her revenge in full as she sat and listened to the passion that never dies, forcing its way upward even through Eliza's leathern soul; but the revenge was a two-edged sword that wounded herself as well. All the generosity in her that was still alive and kind would have sprung to the surface instantly if the story had been true. She would have groped her way to Eliza's side in an effort to console, and perhaps the lifelong enemies might have drawn together for once. But the story was not true, and she had nothing to offer and no right of any sort to speak. She could only sit where she was and suffer and shake, hating herself more in this moment of absolute conquest than she had ever hated Eliza in her darkest hour.
But, as a matter of fact, Eliza's grief would have passed before she could even have tottered to her feet. Her own lips were still shaking when Eliza's had hardened again; her own eyes were still wet when Eliza's were dry with hate. The passion which for a brief moment had been selfless and sincere was turned once again into the channel of jealous rage. She swung round so swiftly that her sleeve caught the little frame, and it fell forward unnoticed with a sharp tinkle of broken glass.
"There's summat wrong about it all," she cried venomously, "and I'll not rest till I find out what it is! What's Geordie mean by landing up so smart, and leaving our Jim a thousand mile behind? It's a nasty sort o' trick, if it's nothing worse, seeing how they were thick as thieves as lads. I'll tell you what it is, Sarah, and you may swallow it as you can,--if Geordie's gitten brass, it's because he's robbed it off our Jim! Like enough he's put an end to him for it, the poor, honest lad--knifed him ... finished him ... put him out o' the road...!"
The fierce malice of the voice penetrated into the passage, and carried its message into the kitchen and the yard. Will and Simon heard it at the stable door and looked at each other and turned instantly towards the house. Passing the parlour window, they saw the women rigid on their feet, and felt the current of hate sweep strongly across their path. They had a glimpse of Sarah's face, white, blind and quiet: and Eliza's, vindictive, purple, and bathed with furious tears. Her heavy tone beat at the other's immobility as if with actual blows, and the glass in the cabinet rang and rang in sweet reply. Will quickened his pace as he neared the house, for he knew that Eliza did not always stop at words. Indeed, her hands were reaching out towards Sarah's throat at the very moment he stepped inside.
"Whisht, can't ye, Eliza!" he ordered roughly, his voice harsh with the swift reaction from the little space of content through which he and his brother had just passed. "What's taken you, missis, to be going on like yon?"
He was now in the parlour, with Simon at his heels, while the company from the kitchen clustered round the door. Peering into the tiny arena round each other's heads, they giggled and whispered, curious and alarmed. Sarah could hear them stirring and gurgling just beyond her sight, and felt their rapacious glances fastened upon her face. Sally tried to push her way through to her aunt's side, but was stopped by the solid figure of Elliman, set in the very front. The lads had forsaken the milking to run to the window and peep in, and a dog lifted its bright head and planted its forefeet on the sill. All the life of the place seemed drawn to this little room, where at last the women were fighting things out to the very death.
"What's amiss, d'ye say?" Eliza echoed his speech. "Nay, what isn't amiss! Here's Sarah has it her Geordie's a-coming home, but never a word as I can hear about our Jim!"
The eyes of the brothers met in a startled glance, and the red came painfully into Simon's face. Before they could speak, however, Eliza swept their intention from them like a western gale.
"What's come to Jim, I want to know? Why isn't it our Jim? Geordie's made his pile, so Sarah says, but I can't hear of a pile for Jim. He's dead, that's what it is! ... Geordie's finished him, I'll swear! He's robbed him! ... knifed him! ... given him a shove in t'beck...!"
Again she made that threatening movement towards Sarah's throat, but Will put out his hand and caught her by the wrist. Both the giggles and whispers had died a sudden death, and the lads at the window pressed nearer and looked scared. Sally succeeded at last in forcing her way through, careless that Elliman suffered severely as she passed.
"For goodness' sake, stop it, mother!" she cried sharply. "You're fair daft! Can't you wait to make a stir till Geordie's landed back? He'll tell us right enough then what's happened to our Jim."
"He'll tell us nowt--nowt----!" Eliza began again on a high note, but Simon threw up his hand with a sudden snarl.
"Whisht, can't ye! You fair deafen a body, Eliza!" he flung out. "What's all this stir about Geordie coming back?"
"It's a lie, that's what it is!" Eliza exploded again, and again he silenced her with an angry "Whisht!" He kept his eyes on her a moment longer, as if daring her to speak, and then let them travel slowly and almost reluctantly to his wife's face. He opened his lips to address her and then changed his mind, turning instead to the crew beyond the door.
"Tell me about it, can't you?" he demanded angrily. "One o' you speak up! Emily Marion--Addison--you wi' the fat face!" He jerked a contemptuous thumb at Elliman, who went crimson with extreme disgust. "One o' you tell me the meaning o' this precious hullaballoo!"
Elliman looked across to Sally for help, but did not get it. Instead, she turned her eyes away, ignoring his appeal.
"It's hardly my place to enlighten you, sir," he said, with an offended shrug, "but I don't mind telling you the little I know. Apparently your son Geordie is expected soon, and with a fat purse in his pocket to buy him a welcome home."
"Geordie's coming back, d'ye say?" Simon stared at him with bewildered eyes.
"So Mrs. Thornthwaite has given us to understand."
"And wi' brass? Plenty o' brass?Geordiewi' brass?"
"Enough and to spare, if all we're told is true."
"Ay, but that's just what it isn't!" Eliza broke out on a peacock scream, and this time Will actually shook her into silence. The poignancy of the moment had hushed the rest of the audience into complete quiet. There was no sound in the room but Eliza's breathing as Simon turned again to look at his wife.
"What's it all about, Sarah?" he asked quietly, though his voice shook. "You never said nowt about Geordie coming to me."
In the pause that followed Sally drew away from her aunt's side, as if conscious that this moment was for the two of them alone. The silence waited for Sarah's answer, but she could not bring herself to speak. In the heat of her victory she had forgotten that Simon also would hear the lying tale. It was the only hitch in the splendid machinery of the lie, but it was enough in itself to bring the whole of it to the ground. Here was Simon in front of her, asking for the truth, and if a hundred Elizas had been present she could still have given him nothing but the truth. But indeed, at that moment, Eliza, and all that Eliza stood for, was swept away. In that hush and sudden confronting of souls Sarah and Simon were indeed alone.
"Geordie's never coming, is he, Sarah?" he asked anxiously. "Nay, you've dreamed it, my lass! And he's rich, d'ye say?--why, that settles it right out! Why, it was nobbut the other day he was writing home for brass!"
Still she did not speak, and quite suddenly he was wroth, vexed by her mask-like face and the sudden diminishing of his hope.
"Losh, woman!" he cried angrily. "You look half daft! Is yon lad of ours coming, or is he not? Is it truth you're telling me, or a pack o' lies?"