CHAPTER III
Out in the clear September sunshine she planted herself well beyond the doorstep and a yard or two down the road, feet apart, hands on her hips, and her calm but interested gaze staring steadily down the hill. She was not ashamed to be seen standing there waiting for the great good thing that was certainly coming her way. There could be nothing forward or lacking in delicacy in waiting about for what everybody knew to be your own. The sun, slanting towards her over the houses, brought out the original lilac of her faded gown, burnished her hair into actual silver and caught at the wedding-ring on her hand. From either side of the street they looked out and saw her there, and according to their natures were either interested or uninterested, sympathetic or the reverse. All of them, however, could not help looking at her for at least a minute. There was something regal about the big, fine, patient figure that was not afraid to go forth in the eye of the sun to meet the possibilities of fate.
Martha Jane Fell, fastening a piece of torn lace about her neck with a bent and tarnished gilt pin, saw her through her cracked panes and gave vent to a cracked laugh. Martha Jane had her own hopes, which were playing havoc with her nerves, and her hands, working at the lace, trembled so much that at last the pin, pressed over-hard, turned like the proverbial worm and ran itself into her thumb. Nevertheless, she laughed again, after the first agony had passed, sucking the wound as she gazed at the figure in the street.
“Looks as if she was waiting for a depitation o’ some sort!” she remarked to herself humorously. “This way to the Monyment of Honest Toil!... Thinks she’s got yon house in her pocket already, I should say; but I reckon there’s still a dip in the bag for Martha Fell!”
And from behind the dusty ferns that were only just alive, and would so very much have preferred not to live at all, Emma Catterall also stared at the figure that was the cynosure of every eye. Its serenity, its dignity, its contented assurance seemed to amuse her almost as much as they amused Martha Jane. Her beady black eyes brightened as they fastened upon it, and slowly there grew on her lips the queer little smile which everybody in the village hated without knowing why. But presently, as nothing happened in the street, she stirred and dropped her lids. “Ay, well, she knows her own business best,” she murmured to herself, still smiling, as she moved away....
After a while Mrs. Tanner came pattering out to join Mrs. Clapham, followed by young Mrs. James from her grand house that had pillars to its door. This was too much for Mrs. Clapham’s own side of the street, which promptly sent forth supporters in the shape of Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn. Martha Jane, heating a pair of rickety curling-tongs at a tallow-dip, was more amused than ever. “Got her court an’ all now!” she observed to the guttering candle as she singed her hair.
The postman might now be looked for at any moment, and excitement mounted in the group in the street. Mrs. Clapham’s Court—or, more correctly speaking, her Chorus—was full of good-humoured banter, feeling more and more thrilled with every minute that passed. Mrs. Tanner’s thin little voice chirped its jests at dark and haughty Mrs. James, round and motherly Mrs. Airey, and limp and careworn Mrs. Dunn; while the heroine of the occasion, too nervous to say much, left them most of the talking and merely beamed upon all alike.
Mrs. Tanner, out of the little pursed-up mouth that was so ridiculously like a wren’s, was of opinion that it was worse than useless to be looking for Mr. Baines.
“Nay, it’ll be t’ post, you’ll see!” she asserted confidently to the crowd. “Ay, he’ll have slipped it into the post.... I don’t say but what it wouldn’t be more an attention like if he brought it himself, but it isn’t in nature what you’d look for from Baines. Baines is the sort that first has to be driven to his bed and then shaken out of it. Depend upon it, it won’t be Baines!”
Young Mrs. James flushed with annoyance, and drew herself up haughtily. She had a weakness for amiable, short-sighted Mr. Baines, who at a recent Red Cross bazaar had made the pleasant mistake of addressing her as Lady Thorpe.... “I don’t agree with you, Mrs. Tanner,” she contradicted her coldly. “Mr. Baines is a gentleman, and he’ll do the right thing. Speaking as one as has had personal experience of Mr. Baines, it seems to me a deal more likely that he’ll come himself.”
“Nay, it’ll be t’ post!” Mrs. Tanner persisted, shaking an obstinate head. “You haven’t been here that long, Mrs. James, and you don’t know Baines as well as us. He’s not like to do for himself what he can shape to get done for him by somebody else. Ay, it’ll be t’ post!”
“Supposing it’s neither?” Mrs. Airey put in with a kindly laugh; and Mrs. Dunn, whose brain was as careworn as her face, observed, “Supposing it’s Martha Jane——?” but was hastily elbowed into silence.
“It don’t matter how it comes, as long as it comes right!” Mrs. Clapham answered the lot of them, with her heavenly smile. She soared above them all like a great comfortable hen above bantams and sparrows, growing and gaining in significance as they dwindled and lost....
“Ay, it’ll come right, no doubt about that!” At once the Chorus forgot its differences in a breath of united devotion. Mrs. Dunn’s remark had been made without her noticing it, so to speak, a kind of side-slip of her deflated mind.... “And there’s nobody’ll be more pleased than us, Ann Clapham, not even yourself!”
“You’re right kind!” the charwoman beamed, turning a grateful glance from one to the other. “I must say folks is very decent. Mrs. Tanner here come round first thing to ask if I’d heard; and right glad I was to see her, feeling lonesome without my Tibbie.”
“You’ll have heard from her lately, I suppose?” Mrs. James asked elegantly, the present belle of the village inquiring politely after her predecessor. Mrs. James was married, of course, but she was the belle, nevertheless; not to speak of the splendid enhancement of having been taken for Lady Thorpe.
“Nay, I haven’t,” Mrs. Clapham answered, without turning her head. “I haven’t heard for a while. But she’s been making a gown for Miss Marigold’s trousseau, so she’s sure to have been throng. It’s Miss Marigold’s wedding-day to-day, you’ll think on, and a grand one an’ all!”
“Same age as your Tibbie, isn’t she?” asked Mrs. Dunn; and added, by way of making up for her late slip, “But nowhere near her when it comes to looks!”
“Nay, now, Miss Marigold’s right enough; she’d pass in a crowd!”... Mrs. Clapham was flattered, but she wished to be just. “Let’s hope she hasn’t been through the wood that often, though, she’s had to pick t’ crooked stick at last!” she went on chuckling. “My Tibbie took t’ bull by t’ horns, and picked crooked stick right off!”
This evoked a perfect volley of reproach from the shocked Chorus, put finally into intelligible form by Mrs. Tanner.
“Nay, now, Ann Clapham, you should think shame to be talking like that! ’Tisn’t right to Poor Stephen, seeing he turned out so grand. Doesn’t seem right to your Tibbie, neither, as lost her man in t’ war.”
Mrs. Clapham looked slightly conscience-stricken. “Ay, poor lad—poor lass!” she sighed, by way of amends, and suddenly the shadow of the terrible four years came out of the corners in which it had been dispersed, and breathed a vapour as of shell-smoke over the sunny street. Before the minds of all rose a succession of khaki figures, coming and going; or only going, and getting ever further away. Young Mrs. James, whose husband had been off to Gallipoli before they were three months wed, looked at that moment not such a very young Mrs. James, after all. The sisters, Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn, drew together and touched hands. Mrs. Airey’s lad had come back, and Mrs. Dunn’s had not, but even Mrs. Dunn’s flattened mind could have told you that the real agony of war is in the suspense and not in the blow. The mental horizon of all stretched itself again, demanding that strained, painful vision which had looked so long towards India, Salonika, Palestine and France. They felt again that atmosphere which is like no other on earth—that mixture of bewilderment and intense interest, terror and exaltation, utter helplessness and secret pride. And, sighing, they sighed as one, chiefly with relief, but also with an unconscious regret for the heady wine of drama that had once been poured into the white glass vials of their colourless lives.
“Stephen wasn’t much to crack on when he was here,” Mrs. Tanner continued, “I’ll give you that; but he was a good lad, all the same. Ay, and need to be, too, or he’d have murdered yon mother of his long before!”
The fresh outbreak of shocked expostulation was this time addressed to her, accompanied by quick, half-scared glances at Emma Catterall’s door. “Nay, now, Maggie, you’re going a deal further than me!” Mrs. Clapham protested, but Mrs. Tanner remained unmoved.
“What’s the use of shutting me up about a thing as everybody knows?” she demanded boldly, “barring perhaps Mrs. James here, as is over-young? It’s a wonder the boy stayed right in his head, the way he was tret!”
“Mrs. Catterall’s set up enough about him now, anyhow,” Mrs. James said, throwing another glance up the street. “What with cramming his likeness down everybody’s throat, and taking flowers to the War Memorial and the Shrine, you’d think he’d been her own pet lamb and a mother’s darling from the start!”
“I never rightly knew what it was shedid!” Mrs. Dunn said in her flat tones, giving vent to the inevitable remark which had its place in every discussion of Emma’s doings. “I don’t know as I ever heard her lift her voice to him once, and she isn’t the sort to lift a hand. ’Tisn’t shouting and leathering a lad as does him that much harm, neither; nay, nor even keeping him a bit short o’ grub. I’ve seen a many as fair throve on it, and that’s a fact—laughing and whistling and making right fine men an’ all! It wants summat else to take the heart out on ’em as it was took out o’ Poor Stephen.”
“It’s not feelingsafeas does for a child,” Mrs. Clapham said slowly, repeating rather reluctantly her statement of less than an hour before. “I was saying so to Maggie Tanner just now.... A child’s got to be growing and learning things every day, and without knowing he’s doing either; and if he don’t feel certain he’s doing the right thing, what, he stops doing it altogether. That’s how it was with Stephen, I reckon. He just stopped.... It was like as if he was always holding his breath.”
“Doctor says there’s some folk should never have charge of children at all,” Mrs. Airey put in with sudden and ghoulish emphasis. “He says they sort of destroy them just by living with ’em—fair suck the life out on ’em, so to speak!”
Mrs. Clapham stirred unhappily.
“Eh, for t’ land’s sake, don’t talk like that, Bessie!” she besought her anxiously. Fear came over her after that last speech, the sense of a sinister presence brooding over the street that was very much worse than the shadow of the War. A look of almost clairvoyant apprehension came into her eyes, slaying their happy prevision of beautiful things.... “It don’t seem quite fair to be talking like that of folks as live so close.”
“She givesmethe shivers right enough, anyway!” Mrs. James broke out, laughing nervously, and casting yet another glance at the dreaded door. “It’s that smile of hers ... and the way she watches to see what you’re at! There’s something at the back of her mind as sneers and laughs at you all the time.... As for yon tag of hers about knowing your own business best, all I can say is it fair makes me want to scream!”
“I’ve known a many as was feared of Emma,” Mrs. Tanner followed on; “parson’s wife, for one—ay, and parson an’ all! I’ve seen district visitors and suchlike coming out of yon house looking for all the world like a bit o’ chewed string. Ay, and one day—yon time when parson had a curate as was more than a shade soft—I see him come shambling down t’ steps fair crying and wringing his hands. I was in t’ street at the time, clipping yon bit of box we have at the door, and he stopped alongside of me, and said, ‘Mrs. Tanner, that woman’s a devil!’ I was fair took aback by such language, as you might think; but when I looked up there was Emma smiling behind her ferns, and watching yon snivelling lad like a cat wi’ a half-dead mouse. It was so like the way she carried on wi’ Poor Stephen, it fair give me a turn; so for Stephen’s sake I took curate into t’ house and give him a cup o’ tea and all the gossip I could lay my tongue to, and sent him off home with Emma clean out of his mind, and chuckling as throng as a laying hen!”
“There’s only one as has never taken much count of her,” Mrs. Airey said, when they had stopped laughing about the curate, “and that’s Martha Jane Fell. I’ve heard her reeling off stuff at Emma as just made you catch your breath, and Emma’s smile getting lesser and lesser with every minute. Ay, and I’ve seen her bolt into yon house like a rabbit into its hole, just to get away from her long tongue!”
“’Tisn’t to be expected Martha Jane should have fine feelings same as us!”... Young Mrs. James tossed her head with a fiercely virtuous air. Being acquainted only by hearsay with the informalities of Martha Jane’s past, she naturally supposed them to be more momentous than was actually the case. Nor were the rest of the Chorus averse to encouraging her in this supposition. The post still lagged, and the time had to be passed; so presently they were drawn nearer and nearer in the road, lowering their voices and nodding their shocked heads. Mrs. Clapham kept saying—“For shame, now!” and “Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie?” breaking every now and then into her hearty laugh. “I must say, though, I do think I’ve more claim to that house than her!” she added, after a while, getting hungry for fresh encouragement as there was still no sign of the post.
“I can’t think how they ever considered her for a moment!...” Mrs. James thrust her head above water, so to speak, and then eagerly plunged it back. The feet shuffled in the road, and the heads whispered and bobbed, with every second that passed getting further from the truth. Martha Jane, pulling up at the back the skirt that instantly slipped down, and down at the front the blouse that instantly slipped up, came out of her door and stood watching them with a sardonic grin.
“Talking about me, I’ll lay!” she observed to herself, half bitter, half amused. She had seen too many heads close together in her vicinity not to know when it meant scandal about herself. Often enough some of it happened to get round to her again, and there were times when she had a malicious joy in speeding it on its way. “I’ve heard that much about myself and my goings-on,” she remarked once, “that I don’t know by now which is gospel and which ain’t! Anyway, it wouldn’t be safe for me to swear it on t’ Book, I know that! I reckon I’ll be as surprised as anybody when t’ Judgment Day comes round!”
Suddenly turning her glance up street instead of down, she beheld Emma Catterall’s furtive gaze sliding away from her like a half-felt hand, afterwards focussing itself on the gossiping group. “Wonder what she’s gaping atmefor?” she said to herself, rather uncomfortably, and then winked and grinned. “The Queenandher ladies-in-waiting!” she remarked with a jerk of her head towards the little throng. “Ann Clapham’s mighty sure things is going to be O.K. Seems to think she’ll simply romp home over yon house!”
Emma Catterall made no attempt to reply to this effort of wit; did not, indeed, look as if she had even heard it. She merely began to dissolve into thin air, and disappeared even as Martha stared. The latter, however, was used to this vanishing trick on the part of her neighbour, and only laughed. But she, too, was hungering for an exchange of words with somebody, feeling, as Mrs. Clapham had felt earlier in the morning, that even Emma was better than nothing. She waited a while, therefore, hoping that she might reappear, and then, as she gave no further impression of life, took her courage in her hands, and sidled cringingly down the street.
“There’s no telling, after all, as it mightn’t be me!” she was saying to herself, by way of keeping up her pluck, though, in point of fact, she had very little hope of anything as splendid as almshouses ever coming her way. But Martha Jane was never the sort to cry beaten before she was down. She, too, had awakened that morning with an unwonted sense of something about to happen, some forthcoming miracle already launched upon its path. She, too, had felt upon her cheek the far-off brushings of the wings of romance. She had done wonders—and more than wonders—with the committee, as she knew, and it might be that even one vote more than she had counted would suffice to put her in. The weight of the village was against her, of course, heavy with laden tongues, but village opinion would matter nothing if she had got the vote. Little indeed would she care for the whole lip-pursing lot, once she was safely possessed of the house on Hermitage Hill!
She thought of all that it represented—mental and physical comfort, as well as prestige—and longed for it with a passion that was almost angry in its desire. Life for Martha Jane had consisted chiefly not of things which had been given her, but of the things which she had taken, and for once in that life she wanted a free gift. She had always preferred to achieve her ends by crooked ways and doubtful means, but she wanted a straight road to lead the way to this. The house on the hill had not been her dream, as it had been Mrs. Clapham’s, but it had its glamour, nevertheless. Her chances could hardly be called favourable, however, as she was bound to acknowledge. She wasn’t the “almshouse sort,” she said to herself, with a cynical sigh; followed—justbecauseshe wasn’t “the almshouse sort”—by a cynical grin.
But at least the grin raised her spirits, since her courage consisted largely of her sense of humour, and she came sidling down upon the group with the cringing yet flaunting air which she kept for her own sex. As soon as a member of the opposite sex appeared, the flaunting vanished as if by magic. Then Martha Jane became at once a faded but sweet blossom, a bruised petal patiently waiting the fall of a manly foot. She wilted, so to speak, withered under your eye, producing the same impression of appeal as in the more forward and less subtle attitude of seeming to cling. It had been this air of shrinking from life, of being beaten back by every zephyr that blew, that had been Martha Jane’s chief asset in dealing with the Committee. But there are limits to the marvels that may be accomplished even by the ghost of a vanished grace, and Martha Jane was pretty sure that hers had stopped at the extra vote.
The Clapham Contingent stiffened when they saw her coming, sliding down upon them with that amazing mixture of provocative humour and fawning appeal. But she was a neighbour, in spite of her morals, and still had her rights, no final pronouncement from some august mouth having set her definitely beyond the pale. Moreover, she had every reason to suppose that she was in the running for the coveted house, and on that ground alone she had authority to be present. Once in possession (always supposing such a thing possible) she would have to be treated differently; wouldbedifferent, in fact. The more imaginative and calculating among them visioned a Martha Jane in genteel black, visited by parsons’ and governors’ wives, a prominent figure at village sewing-parties, church pill-gills and the altar-rail. They drew a little apart, therefore, though quite unable to look pleased, allowing the protagonists in the forthcoming drama to line up side by side.
Martha Jane threw a mocking glance sideways at the fine bulk of Mrs. Clapham, towering above her like a great merchantman beside some beaten yacht. “You’re waiting for t’ post, likely?” she inquired innocently. “It’s getting about time. I thought I’d like to be along with my few well-chosen words when t’ news comes as you’re in.”
Mrs. Clapham laughed kindly, as at an intended joke, but her cheek flushed, nevertheless. Again she was conscious of outrage that this worthless specimen of humanity should be bracketed with her in the great event. She was a tolerant woman, and not one at any time to drive a sinner to the wall, but there was no getting past the fact that Martha Jane was a blot on the fine beauty of the day. Her slovenliness, with the tawdry touch which was somehow so peculiarly Martha Jane’s, was in itself an offence against the pure delicacy of the morning, but it was the mocking quality of her mien that especially sullied the fine air. Mrs. Clapham began to wonder whether she wasn’t being merely absurd in trying to take her beautiful day so beautifully. Martha Jane gave her much the same uncomfortable feeling as that curate of Mrs. Tanner’s used to give her in church; the same feeling that she might have had if a clown had been introduced into a Bethlehem Play.
“It’s right kind of you, I’m sure,” she replied, as she had already replied right and left, but with none of the usual heartiness in her voice. “Happen it’ll be t’other way about, though,” she added politely, but with an effort, “and me as ’ll be the one to congratulateyou!”
“Likely—Idon’tthink!” spurted forth from Mrs. James, who had fully intended to preserve a dignified silence while in the polluted propinquity of Martha Jane, but found it quite impossible when it came to it. She stiffened herself, however, as if violently conscious of a background with pillars, and although there were no men to be seen, Martha Jane wilted, staring pathetically into the distance where possibly they might lurk.... “It’d be queer if they passedyouover, Mrs. Clapham, for anybody round here!”
“It’s real nice of you to say so,” the charwoman thanked her, a trifle uncomfortably, “but there’s a many as good as me. I’m a deal older than Miss Fell here, though, and I reckon that gives me the better right.”
“Not to speak of a sight of other things as well!”... Mrs. Tanner pursed up her tiny, sharp physiognomy until it was more like a bird’s than ever. “They’ll never go past you, and that’s all there is about it. Martha Jane’ll have to wait a bit longer, I doubt; ay, and happen another bit after that!”
The latter suddenly stopped wilting, nobody of the male persuasion having put in an appearance, and straightened into a brazen fierceness.
“There’s them as says I just can’tmissgetting it,” she announced, flushing; “his lordship, for one! What, he very near promised it me, there and then, but I couldn’t go taking it behind Mrs. Clapham! ‘’Twouldn’t be fair,’ I says to him, firm but kind, ‘not to go letting her have her chance.’... Almshouses ismeantfor folks like me, his lordship says,” she went on, the toss of her head infinitely more impressive than anything in that line achieved by Mrs. James—“folks as can’t frame to fight their way. ’Tisn’t everybody as has titles voting for ’em, and coronets shaking hands!”
“It’s about all youwillget, I reckon!...” Mrs. James’ tone was more venomous than she intended, for not only was she a kind enough woman at heart, but there were those chances of Martha’s to be considered. But her private piece of vainglory as typified by Mr. Baines was threatening to lose in glamour beside this lordly support.... “I don’t mind betting yon feather boa of mine as you can’t keep your eyes off every time I go past as you never set foot inside t’ almshouse door!”
The unconscious but none the less telling malignancy of this thrust almost brought the tears to Martha Jane’s eyes. She was not quite herself, this morning, not quite her own armoured and viper-tongued self. Slight as was her hope of success, it was still sufficient to soften her fibre, to fray her nerves and make her generally more susceptible to attack. It was only for a moment, however. Her body’s trick of wilting was seldom anything but camouflage for an unwilting spirit. When she had conquered her tears she turned upon Mrs. James such a stream of vituperation that that refined lady was fairly driven backwards by it, as by a hose; and heads came out of windows and round corners and through doors that had hitherto been hiding themselves discreetly behind arch or curtain or jamb.
The furious storm, sprung out of nowhere in the calm September street, was brought to an end by Mrs. Clapham laying a kindly hand upon Martha Jane’s shoulder. On any other day, perhaps, she might not have interfered; might even have found it rather amusing. Racy vulgarity getting the better of ultra-refinement is always a rather inspiriting sight. But to-day it seemed dreadful to her that her splendid moment should be prefaced by this sordid scrap. It hurt her that there should be this unpleasantness at the climax of her honest life; and moreover there was always the fear at the back of her mind that somehow it might break her luck....
Martha Jane’s speech snapped like a bent twig when the charwoman’s hand came down upon her. With her mouth still open, as if it were indeed the mouth of a hose from which the water had been switched off, she stared weakly into the pleasant face. It was a long time now since any woman had touched her, especially a woman like Mrs. Clapham. The last time she had been touched, if you might term it as such, had been in a quarrel with the drunken Mrs. Johnson, of Lame Lane. Mrs. Johnson had blacked one of Martha Jane’s mocking and cynical eyes, and Martha Jane had pulled out a lock of Mrs. Johnson’s none too plentiful hair. Not that Martha Jane was in the habit of doing these things—they only happened sometimes; but that last occasion contrasted with this was enough in itself to make her wince.
Mrs. Clapham, for her part, was thinking that Martha Jane’s shoulder was nearly as thin as a young girl’s. Not such a shoulder as Tibbie’s had been, of course, because Tibbie’s shoulders had never been thin. They were plump, laughing, expressive shoulders, which talked almost as much as Tibbie herself. Nevertheless, it was of her absent daughter that Mrs. Clapham thought, and the tenderness that was in her heart went into her hand and so down into Martha Jane.
“Now, Martha, don’t carry on like that!” she rebuked her authoritatively, though on a motherly note. “You’ll be finely ashamed, making such a to-do, if you find you’ve got the house, after all. Anyway, it’ll be a good day for one of us when t’newsdoescome along, and we don’t want it spoilt by nasty words. If it’s me as gets it, I hope you won’t take it too hard; and if it’s you”—her voice faltered a moment as she tried to envisage the fearful conditions in which such an event could ever occur—“I’ll be right glad to help you with moving in; ay, and to scrub floors for you an’ all!”
The generosity of this offer produced an outburst of admiration from her satellites. “Eh, now, if that isn’t kind!.... Real Christian,Icall it!....” and “If that isn’t the kindest thing I ever heard!”—this last from young Mrs. James, retired within escaping distance of her pillars. Martha Jane looked spitefully round the group, and then back for a moment at Mrs. Clapham’s hand. The sun played on the wedding-ring as she looked, flashing it in her eyes, and suddenly she gave her shoulder a little twitch, so that the hand slid off it and dropped.
“Thank you kindly, Ann Clapham!” she jeered, “I’ll be sure to think on. I’m not very set on cleaning, myself, so I’ll be glad of a hand. Folks is different, of course, and I wasn’t brought up to it, same as you. Some on us is finer clay than others, as his lordship says, and I reckon my sort o’ clay wasn’t intended for scrubbing floors!”
There was another outburst, though one of resentment, at this grateful and gracious speech, and the charwoman turned away with the colour hot in her cheek. The heart that had felt so tender only a moment ago now seemed full of nothing but angry disgust. Martha Jane was certainly doing her best to spoil the beautiful day, first of all by turning it into a ribald joke, and then by setting the company by the ears. Just for the moment Mrs. Clapham felt thoroughly vexed with the whole world—with Martha Jane, with the post, with his lordship and Mr. Baines; and even, though quite unjustly, with the admiring Chorus itself. Even the lovely morning seemed to fade because of her wrath, taking with it, as it dimmed, the perfect certainty of her hope....
And then suddenly there rose before her eyes a picture of Tibbie laughing at Martha Jane—Tibbie, who had always refused to look upon Martha Jane as anything but the village clown. She had even been known to say that they ought to be grateful for Martha Jane, but she could hardly expect her mother to be grateful to-day! The thought of Tibbie, however, brought the smile back to Mrs. Clapham’s lips, and her sense of miracle slowly returned. She told herself with a gallant boast that was at the same time rather grim, that she would certainly scrub the floors for the poor, daft thing if she got the house! But even while she played with the thought, she knew that she troubled herself for nothing. She could no more picture Martha Jane in her temple of hope than she could picture her beautiful Tibbie in her coffin.
Putting the matter from her, she settled once more to her patient watching of the street, only to be conscious instantly of a fresh commotion. Mrs. James, who had started again upon Martha Jane, came to a dead stop, and darted back to the charwoman’s side, while the rest of the women gathered around her like chickens about a Buff Orpington hen. Mrs. Clapham turned a surprised head, and looked over her shoulder. Emma Catterall was coming slowly towards them down the hill.