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The Splendid Fairing

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Title: The Splendid Fairing

Creator: Constance Holme


        
Release date: August 20, 2012 [eBook #40545]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40545

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPLENDID FAIRING ***




Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]



[Illustration: THE MESSENGER FROM THE DEEP.  _J. D. Wilson_]




                              THE SPLENDID
                                FAIRING


                                   BY

                            CONSTANCE HOLME



              "All night long the water is crying to me."



                         MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
                            49 RUPERT STREET
                              LONDON, W.1




                            _Published 1919_




                                   TO
                            MABEL AND JIMMY

                 Boscombe, March 28th--April 5th, 1919




                                CONTENTS


SIMON AND SARAH

ELIZA

MAY

GEORDIE-AN'-JIM




                                 PART I

                            SIMON AND SARAH



                                   I


Perhaps it would never have happened but for the day.  A brave, buoyant
day, with a racing wind, might have scattered the clinging obsession
just in time.  A tender, laughing day might have laid a healing finger
on old sores.  A clean, frosty day might have braced the naturally sane
old mind.  But Fate, out of all the days in the year, took upon itself
to send just this.

The human soul, which seems so utterly out of reach, is only shut away
from every other soul.  In every other respect it is like a harp hung on
a tree.  Even the actual day as it comes is itself a lever in many a
fate.  Deeds are done on certain days which on others would be mere
passing impulses easily dead before the night. This blind Martinmas Day
went all day long with its head among the clouds, as if it thought that
never again would there be any sun. Indeed, it was out of the lack of
every sort of sight that the evil grew; since, otherwise--"Mothers
couldn't have done those things," as Geordie would have said.

All day the earth retained that stillness which it keeps as a rule only
for the last hour before the dawn.  Everywhere in the morning there was
mist,--that strange, wandering, thinking mist that seems to have nothing
to do with either earth or air; and when the slow dark drew back there
would be mist everywhere again.  Between those shadowy tide-marks of the
air there was a space when the white mist shredded above the trees,
leaving the atmosphere with the look of a glass that has been breathed
upon and never clears.

The Simon Thornthwaites were going to market simply because they did not
know how to stay away.  They went as naturally as the sun comes out of
the east, but with a good deal less of decision about the journey.  They
looked dull and tired, too, less indeed as if they were setting out than
as if they were wearily trundling home again.  Both horse and trap
looked as though they might fall to pieces after an extra jolt, and the
jumble of harness was mended here and there with string.  There was
neither butter nor fowl in the market-basket behind; there was not even
a limp rabbit dangling over the wheel.  But all the time they were part
of a chain which gave them a motive and impulse not their own, since
others, more sure of their errand, were taking the same road. Sometimes
a horseman on a young Shire went past with a flash of feather and a
clumping of hoofs.  Livelier traps spun by at a trot and gave them a
hail.  Behind and before them they had an occasional glimpse of the
procession stretching to the town.

They had climbed from the marsh, leaving it dropped like a colourless
cloth beside the sea, and already they seemed to have been a long time
on the road.  They had not slept much, and, waking, had had the cheated
feeling, common to the weary, that the foregoing day had never really
ended nor the incoming morning ever quite begun.  Indeed, the strange,
dreamlike day had never really seemed to come awake.  Looking back and
west, they saw everything grey, with just a lightened shadow marking the
far sea, and the marsh lying down on its face like a figure flung down
to die. Houses sat low to the earth as if they crouched, and the trees
were vague, bodiless wisps, without backbone or sap.  When they had
their first glimpse of Witham, they saw the town on the fell-side like a
fortress through smoked glass, and the Castle alone on its hill was of
shadow-stones poised on a poised cloud.

The Simon Thornthwaites were old now, and under-dogs in the tussle of
life, but they had once been as strong and confident as most. Sometimes
they had a vision of their former selves, and wondered how this could
ever have been that.  The old man was thin and bent, the sort that shows
the flame through the lantern long before the end, but the woman was
stronger-boned, squarer, and still straight.  Most of her life she had
worked like a horse, but she was still straight.  Her face was mask-like
and her mouth close.  Only her hands betrayed her at times,--old,
over-done hands that would not always be still.  Her eyes seemed to look
straight before her at something only she could see,--staring and
staring at the image which she had set up.

They farmed Sandholes down on the marsh, a lonely bit of a spot that
looked as if it had been left there for a winter's tide to take away. It
had always had an unlucky name, and, like many unlucky people and
things, seemed to have the trick of attracting to itself those who were
equally ill-starred.  Certainly, Sandholes and the Thornthwaites between
them had achieved amazing things in the way of ill-luck. No doubt both
farm and folk would have done better apart, but then they had never
succeeded in getting apart.  It was just as if Fate had thrown and kept
them together in order to do each other down.  Luck to luck--there
seemed nothing else to be said about the Thornthwaites' plight.  They
even carried the stamp of each other plain to be seen.  You had only to
look at the farm to know how its tenants looked; you had only to see the
folk to know what their home was like.  Perhaps it was just that the
double weight of misfortune was too big a thing to lift.  Perhaps the
canker at the heart of it all would allow nothing to prosper and grow
sweet.

They had an easy landlord, easy and rich; too easy and rich, perhaps,
for the Thornthwaites' good.  That farm had money--landlord's and
tenant's--spent on it above its due; yes, and a certain amount of
borrowed brass as well.  It had work put into it, thought and courage
sufficient to run a colony, and good-will enough to build a church.  And
all that it did in return was to go back and back and be a deadhead and
a chapter of accidents and an everlasting disappointment and surprise.
It was a standing contradiction of the saying--"Be honest with the land,
and it will be honest with you."  Everything went wrong with that farm
that could go wrong, as well as other things that couldn't by any chance
have gone anything but right.  Most people would have thrown a stone at
it at an early stage, but it was part of the Thornthwaite doom that they
could not tear themselves away.  Even when there seemed no longer a
reason for staying, still they stayed.  The one streak of sentiment in
them that survived the dismal years held them there captive by its
silken string.

But to-day, as they jogged and jolted endlessly towards Witham, the
whole, drear, long business came to an end.  No matter what they had
thought of the probable future to themselves, they had hitherto shut
their mouths obstinately and clung close.  They had never even said to
each other that some day they would have to quit.  They had put it off
so long that it seemed the least little push would always put it further
still.  But to-day the matter suddenly settled itself for good; almost,
it seemed, between one telegraph-post and the next.

Martinmas hirings would be in full swing when they got in, but there was
no need now for Simon to enter the ring.  Their hired man had seen them
through the busiest time, but they could manage without him through the
winter months.  Their hired men had never stayed very long, because the
depression of the place seemed to get into their bones.  They tired of
crops which seemed to make a point of 'finger and toe,' and of waiting
through dismal weeks to get in the hay.  Now the Thornthwaites would
never have the worry of hay-time on their own account again,--never open
the door to catch the scent from their waiting fields,--never watch the
carts coming back on the golden evening to the barn.  'Never again'
would be written over many things after to-day, but perhaps it was there
that they saw it written first.  After all this time things had somehow
stopped of themselves, and after all this time there was nothing to do
but go.

Lads and lasses went by them on cycles, or tugging bundles as they
walked; youth with bright cheeks and strong shoulders and clear eyes,
taking its health and strength to the market to be hired.  Some of them
greeted the old folks as they passed, but others did not as much as know
their names.  Both Simon and Sarah came of old and respectable stock,
but to the young generation skimming by on wheels these two had been as
good as buried years ago. Sarah's eyes strained themselves after the
lithe bodies of the lads, while Simon looked at the lasses with their
loads.  He would have liked to have offered some of them a lift, but he
knew he would catch it from Sarah if he did.  Sarah hated the younger
end of folk, she always said, and the fly-away lasses she hated most of
all. She saw them going past her into beautiful life, just as their
swifter wheels went past the trap. Always they were leaving her behind
as it seemed to her that she had always been left. It was true, of
course, that she had had her turn, but now it seemed so far away it
might never have been.  All she could see in the background when she
looked behind was the cheerless desert which she had had to cover since.

They were about half-way to Witham when the moment of spoken decision
caught them unawares.  All their stolid resistance and obstinate
clinging to the farm gave in that instant as easily as a pushed door.
It was as if a rock at the mouth of a cave had suddenly proved no more
than a cloud pausing before it in the act of drifting by.  The end came
as nearly always after a prolonged fight,--smoothly, painlessly, with a
curious lack of interest or personal will. The burden had been so heavy
that the last straw passed almost unnoticed which brought them finally
to the ground.  They had lived so close to the edge for so many years
that the step which carried them over it scarcely jarred.

They were climbing the long hill that runs from Doestone Hall, the Tudor
house standing close to the cross-roads.  By turning their heads they
could see its gabled front with the larches set like lances beside its
door.  The river ran swift below the beech-covered slope of the park,
reaching impatiently after the ebbed tide.  The house, for all the
weight of its age, looked unsubstantial in the filmy air.  Fast as the
river flowed below, from above it looked like a sheeted but still
faintly moving corpse.

The road was damp and shadowy under the overhanging trees, and padded
with the hoof-welded carpet of the autumn leaves.  The fields on either
side were formless and wet, and seemed to stretch away to unknown
lengths.  The hedges appeared to wander and wind across the land without
purpose and without end.  Under all the hedges and trees there were
leaves, wet splashes of crushed colour on the misted grass. Simon lifted
his whip to point at the hips and haws, and said it would be a hard
winter when it came, but Sarah did not so much as turn her head.

"I'm bothered a deal wi' my eyes, Simon," she said in a quiet tone.  "I
thought I'd best see doctor about 'em to-day."

He dropped his gaze from the hedges with a startled stare.  "Oh, ay?
That's summat fresh, isn't it?" he enquired.  "You've never said nowt
about it afore."

"Nay, what, I thought it was likely just old age.  But I've gitten a
deal worse these last few week.  I can't shape to do a bit o' sewing or
owt."

"Ay, well, you'd best see doctor right off," Simon said, and the horse
crawled a little further up the hill.  They did not speak again for some
time, but those who live together in a great loneliness grow to speak
together in thought as much as in words.  That was why his next speech
seemed to come out placidly enough.  "I doubt it's about time for us to
quit."

"I doubt it is."

"I never meant to gang till I was carried," Simon said, "and then I
doubt there'd still ha' been some o' me left.  But I've seen the end o'
things coming for a while back now.  It seems kind o' meant, you being
bothered wi' your eyes an' all."

"Happen it is," she said again, and sighed. Then she laughed, a slight
laugh, but bitter and grim.  "It nobbut wanted that on top o' the rest!"

Simon threw her an uneasy glance.

"Nay, now, you mustn't get down about it, missis," he said hastily.  "It
waint do to get down.  Doctor'll likely see his way to put you right.
But we've had a terble poor time wi' it all," he went on glumly,
forgetting his own advice.  "Seems like as if we'd been overlooked by
summat, you and me.  'Tisn't as if we'd made such a bad start at things,
neither.  We were both on us strong and willing when we was wed.  It's
like as if there'd been a curse o' some sort on the danged spot!"

"There's been a curse on the lot of us right enough!" Sarah said.  "Ay,
and we don't need telling where it come from, neither!"

Again he looked at her with that uncomfortable air, though he took no
notice of her bitter speech.  He knew only too well that haunted corner
of her mind.  That sour, irreclaimable pasture had been trodden in every
inch.

"Ay, well, we're through on t'far side on't now," he said morosely.
"Sandholes can grind the soul out o' some other poor body for the next
forty year!  I never hear tell o' such a spot!" he went on crossly, with
that puzzled exasperation which he always showed when discussing the
marsh-farm.  "It'd be summat to laugh at if only it didn't make you
dancin' mad!  What, it's like as if even slates had gitten a spite agen
sticking to t'roof!  We've had t'tide in t'house more nor once, and sure
an' certain it'd be when we'd summat new in the way o' gear.  We'd a
fire an' all, you'll think on, and it took us a couple o' year getting
to rights agen.  Burned out and drownded out,--why, it's right silly,
that's what it is!  As for t'land, what it fair swallers up lime an'
slag and any mak' o' manure, and does as lile or nowt as it can for it
in return.  Nigh every crop we've had yet was some sort of a
let-down,--that's if we'd happen luck to get it at all!  Kitchen
garden's near as bad; lile or nowt'll come up in't, nobbut you set by it
and hod its hand!  Ay, and the stock, now,--if there was sickness about,
sure an' certain it'd fix on us.  You'd nobbut just to hear o' tell o'
foot and mouth, or anthrax, or summat o' the sort, an' it'd be showing
at Sandholes inside a week!  Same wi' t'folk in t'house as wi' folk in
t'shuppon,--fever, fluenzy, diphthery,--the whole doctor's bag o'
tricks.  Nay, there's summat queer about spot, and that's Bible truth!
We should ha' made up our minds to get shot of it long since, and tried
our luck somewheres else."

"We'd likely just ha' taken our luck along wi' us," Sarah said, "and
there was yon brass we'd sunk in the spot,--ay, and other folks' brass
an' all."  (Simon growled "Ay, ay," to this, but in a reproachful tone,
as if he thought it might well have been left unsaid.)  "We were set
enough on Sandholes when we was wed, think on; and when Geordie was
running about as a bit of a lad."

"Ay, and Jim."

"Nay, then, I want nowt about Jim!"

"Ay, well, it's a bit since now," Simon said hastily, thinking that it
seemed as long ago as when there was firm land stretching from Ireland
to the marsh.

"Over forty year."

"It's a bit since," he said again, just as he said equally of the
Creation of the world, or his own boyhood, or the last time he was at
Witham Show.

"Surely to goodness we were right enough then?  We shouldn't ha' said
thank you for any other spot.  Nay, and we wouldn't ha' gone later on,
neither, if we'd gitten chanst. It would never ha' done for Geordie to
come back and find the old folks quit."

"Nay, nor for Jim----" he began again thoughtlessly, and bit it off.
"Ay, well, I doubt he'll never come back now!"

"He's likely best where he is."  Sarah shut her mouth with a hard snap.
Once again she stared straight in front of her over the horse's head,
staring and staring at the image which she had set up.

A motor-horn challenged them presently from behind, and Simon pulled
aside without even turning his head.  He had never really grown used to
the cars and the stricter rule of the road. He belonged to the days when
the highway to Witham saw a leisurely procession of farmers'
shandrydans, peat-carts, and carriers' carts with curved hoods; with
here and there a country gentleman's pair of steppers flashing their way
through.  He never took to the cars with their raucous voices and trains
of dust, their sudden gusts of passage which sent his heart into his
mouth.  His slack-reined driving forced him to keep to the crown of the
road, and only an always forthcoming miracle got him out of the way in
time.  He used to shrink a little when the cars drew level, and the
occupants turned their curious heads.  Somehow the whole occurrence had
the effect of a definite personal attack. Sometimes he thought they
laughed at the jolting trap, the shabby old couple and the harness tied
with string.  The rush of the cars seemed to bring a crescendo of
mocking voices and leave a trail of diminishing mirth.  But as a matter
of fact he did not often look at them when they looked at him.  There
was nothing to link their hurrying world with his.

This particular car, however, seemed an unusually long time in getting
past.  The horn sounded again, and, muttering indignantly, he pulled
still further into the hedge-side.  He held his breath for the usual
disturbance and rush, but they did not come.  The car kept closely
behind him, but it did not pass.  Round each corner, as they reached it,
he lost and then caught again the subdued purring of the engine and the
soft slurring of the wheels.  When they met anything, it fell further
back, so that at times he felt sure that it must have stopped. Then he
would draw his breath, and drop into a walk, but almost at once it would
be at his back again.  The note of it grew to have a stealthy, stalking
sound, as of something that waited to spring upon its prey.

The strangeness of this proceeding began suddenly to tell upon Simon's
nerves.  Lack of interest had at first prevented him from turning his
head, but now it changed into sheer inability to look behind.  Soon he
was in the grip of a panic fear that the car at his back might not be a
real car, after all.  He began to think that he had only imagined the
horn, the gentle note of the engine and the soft sound of the wheels.
Perhaps, now that he was old, his ears were playing him false, just as
Sarah's eyes, so it seemed, were suddenly playing her false. Presently
he was sure, if he turned, he would see nothing at all, or that, instead
of nothing at all, he would see a ghost.  Something that moved in
another world would be there, with spidery wheels and a body through
which he could see the fields; something that had once belonged to life
and gone out with a crash, or was only just coming into it on the
road....

It was quite true that there was something peculiar about the behaviour
of the car.  From its number, it must have come from the county next
below, and it was splashed as if it had travelled far and fast.  During
the last few miles, however, it had done nothing but crawl. More than
one farmer had heard it behind him and wondered why it took so long to
pass, but it had never dallied and dawdled so long before. Almost at
once it had gathered speed and slithered by, and the man inside had
turned with a friendly hail.  He was a stranger, so they said
afterwards, with a puzzled air, but at the time they answered the hail
as if he were one of themselves.

But Simon, at least, had no intention of hailing anybody just then.
Indeed, he was fast losing both his sense and his self-control.  He
slapped the reins on the horse's back, making urgent, uncouth sounds,
and doing his best to yank it into a sharper trot.  It plunged forward
with an air of surprise, so that the old folks bumped in their seats,
knocked against each other and were jerked back.  Presently it bundled
itself into an aged gallop, while Simon clicked at it through his scanty
teeth.

"Nay, now, master, what are you at!" Sarah protested, gripping the rail.
"We've no call to hurry ourselves, think on."

"It's yon danged car!" Simon growled, feeling somehow as though he were
galloping, too. He was quite sure now that a boggle was hot on his
track, and the sweat stood on his brow as he slapped and lashed.  Losing
his nerve completely, he got to his feet with a shout, at the same time
waving the car to pass ahead.  It obeyed instantly, drawing level in a
breath, and just for a breath slowing again as it reached his side.  The
hired driver was wearing a cheerful grin, but the man leaning out of the
back of the car was perfectly grave.  He was a big man, tanned, with
steady grey-blue eyes, fixed on the old couple with an earnest gaze.
Simon, however, would not have looked at him for gold, and after its
momentary hesitation, the car shot on.  The horse felt its master drop
back again in his seat, and subsided, panting, into its slowest crawl.

Sarah straightened her bonnet, and tugged at her mantle upon which Simon
had collapsed. "Whatever took you to act like yon?" she asked.  "There
was nowt to put you about as I could see."

"It was yon danged car!" Simon muttered again, but beginning already to
feel rather ashamed.  "It give me the jumps, taking so long to get by.
What, I got thinking after a bit it wasn't a motor-car at all!  More
like a hearse it seemed, when it ganged past,--a gert, black hearse wi'
nid-noddin' feathers on top...."  He let out a great sigh, mopping his
face as if he would never stop.  "Danged if yon new strap baint gone and
give out first thing!"

He climbed down, grumbling at the new strap which had gone back on him
so soon, and began to add a fresh ornamentation to the mended gear.  The
horse stood with drooped head, emitting great breaths which shook and
stirred the trap.  Simon's hands trembled as he worked at his woolly
knot, his eyes still full of that vision of sweeping plumes.  Further
down the road the car had stopped again, but as soon as Simon had
finished, it moved away.  It went over the hill as if it indeed had
wings,--feathery, velvet-black and soft on the misty air....




                                   II


Another thing happened to them on the road to Witham, though it was even
more trivial than the last.  The first, perhaps, was meant for
Simon,--that face coming out of the void and trying to look him in the
eyes.  The other,--a voice from the void,--was a call to the woman with
the failing sight.  But to most people there come these days of slight,
blind, reasonless events.  Something that is not so much memory as
re-vision reaches out of the past into the present; faint foretellings
shape themselves out of some far-off hour.  And then on the following
morning there is sun, and clear outlines and a blowing sky.  The firm
circlet of To-Day is bound again shining and hard about the narrow
earth.

For a short time they seemed almost alone on the processional road.  No
more cars passed them, and only occasionally a bicycle or a trap. Simon
felt more than ever ashamed of himself as his nerve steadied and his
excitement cooled. He had made a bonny fool of himself, he thought,
standing up and shouting as if he was cracked. Witham would snap at the
tale like a meaty bone, and folk would be waiting to twit him when he
got in.  It wasn't as if he were in the mood for a joke, either, seeing
how things were; he would find it hard to take it as it was meant. And
there was one person at least to whom the tale would be Balm in Gilead
for many a happy day.  He hoped fervently that it might not reach her
ears.

Sooner or later it would reach her, of course; everything that made mock
of them always did. The most that could be hoped for was that they would
not meet her to-day, backed by her usual sycophantic crowd.  Sarah would
never stand any nonsense from her to-day, depressed as she was by the
trouble about her eyes.  There would be a scuffle between them, as sure
as eggs were eggs, and just when he wanted things smooth in that
quarter, too.  He thought of giving her a hint to be careful, and opened
his mouth, and then decided to keep off the subject, and shut it again.

Not that they ever _did_ keep off it, as he knew perfectly well.  Sooner
or later it was on their lips, and certainly always after a day at
market. They had discussed it so often from every possible point that
they did not always know which it was that spoke.  They had long since
forgotten from which of their minds the bitter, perpetual speeches had
first been born.  Often they waked in the night to talk of the hated
thing, and slept and wakened only to talk of it again.  There was
nothing good that they had which it had not poisoned at the source, and
no sorrow but was made a double sorrow thereby.  There was scarcely one
of their memories that did not ache because of that constant sword-point
in its heart.

It was on market-day each week that their fount of bitterness was
continually refreshed. They kept up the old habit for more reasons than
one, but most of all because of this thing which hurt and cramped their
lives.  It was like a vice of some sort which had long become an
imperative need.  Each week they came home with the iron fresh sunk in
their souls, and each week they went again to look on the thing that
they both loathed.

Now they were right away from the marsh and the sands, and would not see
them until they returned, although from the moor and fell-land
surrounding Witham it was always possible to see the bay.  Indeed, in
this part of the little county it was hard to get away from the
knowledge of the sea, and even further in, among the shouldering peaks,
you had only to climb awhile to find the water almost within a throw.
On days like this, however, even on the beach it was hard to tell which
was water and which mist, and when at last the tide drew silently from
beneath, those who looked at it from the hills could not tell whether it
went or stayed.

Simon, looking drearily around, thought that the whole earth had a
drowned appearance to-day.  It reminded him of the marsh after it had
been swamped by a flood, and the miserable land emerged soddenly as the
sea drew back.  Everything was so still, too, with the stillness of the
dead or drugged.  Only the mist moved steadily and of set purpose,
though it was the purpose of a creature with shut eyes walking in its
sleep.

Out of the low vapour softly roofing the fields a gull came flying
slowly over their heads. First Simon saw the shadow of it huge upon the
mist, and then it came swooping and circling until it hung above the
road.  Its long, pointed wings and drooping legs were magnified by the
distorting air, and presently he could see the colour of its bill and
the gleam of its expressionless eye.  It moved in that lifeless
atmosphere as a ship that has lost the wind moves still by its gathered
momentum over a deadened sea, but when it came over the road it turned
to follow the trap, instead of making away at an angle towards the west.
Simon concluded that it must have lost its way in the mist, and was
following them as sea-birds follow a boat, but presently he was reminded
of the car in this leisurely gliding on their track.  Like the car, too,
it drew level at last, but this time he was not afraid.  He looked up at
it, indeed, but without much interest, watching its lone vagrancy with
apathetic eyes.  It was silent at first as it circled and swooped,
looping its aimless, unnecessary curves, yet always travelling on.  It
might have been a piece of the wandering mist that had taken shape, yet
the sluggish, unbuoyant atmosphere seemed scarcely to have sufficient
strength to carry its weight.  So low it flew at last that it almost
brushed their faces and the horse's ears, and in fancy he felt the touch
of it damp and soft against his cheek. And then, as it dropped for the
hundredth time, it suddenly spoke.

Sarah started violently when the cry broke over her head, the harsh
wailing cry that makes all sands desolate and all moorland lone.  She
lifted her face to search the curtained sky as well as she could, but
already the bird had left them and mounted higher, as if called and
turned to another road.  Each cry as it came was fainter than the last,
like the speech of a passing soul ever further off.  There was about it
something of the majesty and terror of all irrevocable retreats, of
those who go forth unhesitatingly when summoned, never to return. It
left behind it the same impulse to reach out passionate, yearning arms,
to cry aloud for the fainting answer that would still go on long after
the ear had ceased to take it in.

Sarah sat with her face lifted to the last, trembling and drawing short,
uneven breaths. Simon was silent until she had settled again, and
then--"It was nobbut a gull," he said, at length.

She gave a deep sigh, and folded her hands tightly before her in their
black cotton gloves.

"We've plenty on 'em, I'm sure, down on t'marsh....  I'm that used to
them, I never hear their noise."

She turned her head slightly towards him, as if in a vain attempt to see
his face.

"Ay, but it was _that like_," she answered in a suppressed tone.  "Eh,
man, but it was terble like!"

He gave a grunt by way of reply, knowing well enough what she meant, but
knowing also that there was nothing to say.  It was not true, of course,
that he never heard the gulls.  He heard them always, and behind them
the voice that called across the years.  But they had long since ceased
to talk about it or to take the voice of the present for the voice of
the past. Sometimes, indeed, when the cry came at the window on a stormy
night, they started and looked at each other, and then looked away.  But
it was not often that they were deceived, as Sarah had been to-day.
Even now, he felt sure, she was straining after the voice, that would
never cease crying until it reached the tide.

They were passed again before they reached the town, but this time it
was by the cheerful rap of hoofs.  It caught them as they creaked their
way up the last hill,--the smart going of a good horse that even on the
smothered highway managed to ring sharp.  A whip was waved as the
dog-cart dashed by, and the driver turned back to give them a smile.
She was Fleming's motherless daughter from the 'Ship' Inn across the
sands, and Simon and Sarah had known her all her life.  All her life she
had lived looking out across the bay, and half her life looking a
thousand miles beyond.

Simon threw up his hand to her with an answering smile, a sudden
sweetness changing his whole face.  Even Sarah relaxed when she knew who
it was, and both of them brightened for a little while.  They were fond
of May, a good girl who did not change, and who never made light of
those whom Fate was counting out.  She had always had the power to
strengthen their hold on life, to blow their dying courage into a flame.
There was a serene yet pulsing strength about her that had the soothing
stimulus of a summer tide.  Sarah had been jealous of her when she was
young, and had fended her off, but May had long since found her patient
way to her heart. Now she stood to both the old people as their one firm
link with the past, and as such she was more precious to them than
rubies and dearer than bright gold.

"A good lass!" Simon observed, with the smile still present on his lips.

"Ay."

"I've always thought a deal o' May."

"Ay, an' me."

"Geordie an' all," he added, with a faintly mischievous air.

Sarah did not speak.

"An' Jim----"

"Nay, then, I want nowt about Jim!"

Simon drew the lash gently along the horse's back.

"I hear Fleming's been none so well lately," he resumed, as they rumbled
into Witham. "We mun think on to ax.  Happen I could slip across to t'
'Ship' after we've gitten back. Tide's about six, isn't it?  I could
happen do it."

"Fleming's nobbut going the same road as t'rest on us," Sarah said.
"He'll be glad to see you, though, like enough.  But it'll be dark soon,
think on, wi' all this fog."

"There's summat queer about t'weather," Simon said broodingly, knitting
his brows. "Tides is fairish big, and yet it's terble whyet. Happen
we'll have a change o' some sort afore so long."

"I've noticed it's often whyet afore a big change.  Seems like as if it
knew what was coming afore it was on t'road."

"Ay, but it's different, some way....  It's more nor that.  There's a
blind look about things, seems to me."

"Blind weather for blind folk!" Sarah put in with a grim laugh.  Simon
grunted a protest but she took no notice.  "I never thought as I should
be blind," she went on, almost as if to herself.  "I've always been
terble sharp wi' my eyes; likely that's why I've managed to wear 'em
out.  And I've always been terble feared o' folk as couldn't see.
There's no telling what blind weather and a blind body's brain may
breed....  Ay, well, likely I'll know a bit more about they sort o'
things now...."




                                  III


All old and historical towns seem older and richer in meaning on some
days than they do on others.  But the old and the rich days are also the
most aloof.  The towns withdraw, as it were, to ponder on their past.
By some magic of their own they eliminate all the latest features, such
as a library, a garage, or a new town hall, and show you nothing but
winding alleys filled with leaning walls and mossy roofs. The eye finds
for itself with ease things which it has seen for a lifetime and yet
never seen,--carved stone dates, colour-washed houses jutting out over
worn pillars, grey, mullioned houses tucked away between the shops.  The
old pigments and figures stand out strangely on the well-known signs,
and the old names of the inns make a new music in the ear.  The
mother-church by the river seems bowed to the earth with the weight of
the prayers that cling to her arched roof.  The flags in the chancel
seem more fragile than they did last week.  The whole spirit of the town
sinks, as the eyelids of the old sink on a twilit afternoon.

Witham wore this air of detachment when Simon and Sarah came to it
to-day, as if it held itself aloof from one of the busiest spectacles of
the year.  The long main street, rising and dipping, but otherwise
running as if on a terrace cut in the side of the hill, was strung from
end to end with the scattered units of the road.  The ambling traffic
blocked and dislocated itself with the automatic ease of a body of folk
who are all acquainted with each other's ways.  Groups clustered on the
pavements, deep in talk, and overflowed carelessly into the street.
Horses' heads came up over their shoulders and car wheels against their
knees, without disturbing either their conversation or their nerves.
Sheepdogs hung closely at their masters' heels, or slipped with a cocked
eye between the hoofs. The shops were full, but those who wandered
outside to wait could always find a friend to fill their time.  Simon's
personal cronies jerked their heads at him as he passed, and the busy
matrons nodded a greeting as they hurried in front of the horse's nose.

He made as if to draw up at the house of a well-known doctor in the
town, but Sarah stopped him before he reached the kerb.  "Nay, nay," she
said nervously, "it'll likely bide.  I don't know as I'm that fain to
hear what he's got to say.  Anyway, I'd a deal sooner get my marketing
done first."

So instead of stopping they went straight to the inn where they had put
up on market-day for the last forty years, and where Simon's father had
put up before Simon was born.  Turning suddenly across the pavement
through a narrow entry, they plunged sharply downhill into a sloping
yard.  The back premises of old houses shut it in on every side, lifting
their top windows for a glimpse of the near moor.  The inn itself, small
and dark, with winding staircases and innumerable doors, had also this
sudden vision of a lone, high world against the sky.

An ancient ostler came to help Simon with the horse, while Sarah waited
on the sloping stones.  The steep yard was full of traps, pushed under
sheds or left in the open with their shafts against the ground.
Fleming's dog-cart was there, with its neat body and light wheels; but
May was already gone on her business in the town.  Simon had an
affection for a particular spot of his own, and it always put him about
to find it filled.  It was taken this morning, he found, though not by
May.  May would never have played him a trick like that.  It was a car
that was standing smugly in Simon's place, with a doubled-up driver busy
about its wheels.  Cars were always intruders in the cobbled old yard,
but it was a personal insult to find one in his 'spot.'  He went and
talked to the driver about it in rising tones, and the driver stood on
his head and made biting comments between his feet.  A man came to one
of the inn windows while the scene was on, and listened attentively to
the feast of reason and the flow of soul.

Sarah looked rather white and shaky by the time Simon returned, thinking
of something new to say to the very last.  He left the newest and best
unsaid, however, when he saw her face.

"You'd best set down for a bit," he observed, leading her anxiously
towards the inn.  "You're fretting yourself about seeing doctor, that's
what it is.  You'd ha' done better to call as we come in."

But Sarah insisted that she was not troubling about the doctor in the
least.  She had been right as a bobbin, she said, and then she had
suddenly come over all queer.  "Happen it's standing that long while you
and morter-man sauced each other about car!" she added, with shaky
spirit.  "You made a terble song about it, I'm sure.  Trap'll do well
enough where it is."

"I can't abide they morter-folk!" Simon muttered, crestfallen but still
vexed.  "But never mind about yon.  Gang in and set you down.  If I
happen across May, I'll tell her to look you up."

A door opened at the end of the dark passage, showing a warm parlour
with flowers and crimson blinds.  The stout landlady came swimming
towards them, speaking as she swam, so that the vibrations of her
welcoming voice reached them first like oncoming waves.  Another door
opened in the wall on the right, and a man looked out from the dim
corner behind.

"That you, Mrs. Thornthet?  What?--not so well?  Nay, now, it'll never
do to start market-day feeling badly, I'm sure!  Come along in and rest
yourself by t'fire, and a cup of tea'll happen set you right."

Sarah, shaken and faint, and longing to sit down, yet hesitated as if
afraid to step inside. It seemed to her, as she paused, that there was
some ordeal in front of her which she could not face.  Her heart beat
and her throat was dry, and though she longed to go in, she was unable
to stir.  The man inside saw her against a background of misty yard, a
white face and homely figure dressed in threadbare black.  Once or twice
his gaze left her to dwell on Simon, but it was always to the more
dramatic figure that it returned.  There was a current in the passage,
full and sweeping like the wind that went before the still, small Voice
of God.  Sarah was caught by it, urged forward, filled with it with each
breath.  But even as she lifted her foot she heard a woman's voice in
the room beyond.

"We've Mrs. Will here an' all," the landlady called, as she swam away.
"She'll see to you if there's anything you want, I'm sure."

She might just as well have slammed and locked the door in the old
folks' teeth.  At once they made a simultaneous movement of recoil,
stiffening themselves as if against attack.  The spirit in the passage
died down, leaving it filled to the ceiling with that heavy, chattering
voice. Sarah was well away from the doorstep before she opened her
mouth.

"Nay, I don't know as I won't go right on, thank ye, Mrs. Bond.  I'm
feeling a deal better already,--I am that.  If I set down, I'll likely
not feel like getting up again, and I've a deal to see to in t'town."

Mrs. Bond swam back, concerned and surprised, but Sarah was already well
across the yard.  Simon, when appealed to, said nothing but, "Nay, I
reckon she'll do," and seemed equally bent upon getting himself away.
They retreated hurriedly through the arch that led to the street,
leaving Mrs. Bond to say, "Well, I never, now!" to the empty air.  The
man's face came back to the window as they went, looking after this
sudden retirement with a troubled frown.

The driver was still working at his car when he found his passenger
suddenly at his side.  He was a queer customer, he thought to himself,
looking up at the moody expression on his handsome face.  He had behaved
like a boy on their early morning ride, continually stopping the car,
and then hustling it on again.  He had sung and whistled and shouted at
people on the road, laughed without any apparent reason, and dug the
unfortunate driver in the back.  He was clean off it, the man thought,
grinning and vexed by turn, and wondering when and where the expedition
would end.  People as lively as that at blush of dawn were simply asking
for slaps before the sun was down.  He had steadied a trifle when they
reached the Witham road, but the queerest thing of all that he did was
that checking behind the traps.  The driver was sure he was cracked by
the time they got to the town, and he was surer than ever when he came
out now and told him to move the car.  He might have refused if his fare
had not been so big and broad, and if he had not already shown himself
generous on the road.  As it was, he found himself, after a moment of
sulky surprise, helping to push the trap into the disputed place.  He
still wore his injured expression when he went back to his job, but it
was wasted on his employer, who never looked his way.  Instead, he was
standing and staring at Simon's crazy rig, and he smiled as he stared,
but it was not a happy smile.  Presently he, too, made his way to the
arch, and disappeared into the crowded street.

The old folks had seemed in a terrible hurry to be gone, but, as a
matter of fact, they halted as soon as they got outside.  "I couldn't
ha' gone in there whatever," Sarah said, in an apologetic tone, and
Simon nodded, looking anxiously up and down.

"If I could nobbut catch a sight o' May," he muttered worriedly,
searching the crowd. "May'd see to you right off, and get you a snack o'
summat an' all.  I've Mr. Dent to see about chucking t'farm, and I've a
two-three other things to do as well."

But instead of May, who was nowhere to be seen, a man came shyly towards
them from a neighbouring group.  He was like Simon to look at, only
younger and better clad, showing none of the other's signs of trouble
and hard toil.  His voice was like Simon's, too, when Simon was at his
best, but Sarah stiffened when she heard him speak.

"You'll not ha' seen Fleming's lass?" Simon asked, devouring the street,
and Will swung about at once to cast his own glance over the press.

"She was by a minute since," he said thoughtfully. "She can't ha' gone
far...."  He hunted a moment longer, and turned shyly back. "Likely
you'll give us a call at Blindbeck this afternoon?"

Sarah said nothing in reply to the invitation, but Simon gave a nod.

"I could do wi' a word wi' you, Will, if you're not throng.  It's about
time we were thinking o' making a change.  Sarah's bothered wi' her
eyes."

"Nay, now, that's bad news, to be sure."  Will was genuinely concerned.
He glanced at Sarah kindly, though with a diffident air. "Happen a pair
o' glasses'll fix you," he said, in his gentle tones.  There was a
pause, and then he jerked his head towards the arch that led to the inn.
"I left my missis behind there, talking to Mrs. Bond.  If you're
thinking o' seeing t'doctor, you'd best have a woman to come along."

"I meant to ax May," Simon said hurriedly, praying for May to spring out
of the ground, and, as if by way of reply, she came out of a shop on the
far side.  He plunged forward, waving and calling her name, and she
stopped, smiling, as he caught her by the arm.  She was grave at once,
however, when she heard what he had to say, and her eyes rested on Sarah
with a troubled look.  She gave a nod of comprehension when he pointed
towards the arch, and, without waiting to hear more, crossed over to
Sarah's side.  By the time the stranger appeared the women had vanished
down the street, while the brothers were making their way to the market
square.  This was the second time that the Thornthwaites had fled at the
sound of a name, and this time, as it happened, May was sent speeding
away, too.




                                   IV


May, however, was only thinking of how she could be of use, and was very
cheery and pleasant all along the street.  Already she had come across
one or two pieces of news, and laughed about them to Sarah until Sarah
was laughing, too.  Once or twice they met somebody who had something
else to tell, and they stood on the pavement together and thrashed the
matter out.  May's laugh sounded young and gay, and a girlish colour
came into her cheeks.  The old figure beside her seemed to draw vitality
from her generous warmth, her brave air which made an adventure of every
commonplace of life.  Sarah even rose to a joke or two on her own
account, and was wonderfully heartened when they got to the doctor's
house.  She would not hear of having a cup of tea or even a rest.  Time
enough for such things, she said with spirit, when they were through.

She had both of them, however, at the doctor's, because he would not let
her go away without. May took her into the dining-room by his orders,
and found her an easy chair beside the fire.  A parlourmaid brought a
tray, and Sarah drank her tea cheerfully enough, soothed by the comfort
and quiet and the presence of some sweet-smelling flower.  The doctor
had been kindness itself, and had felt a little depressed when he sent
the women away.  He did not know that the last thing that was in their
minds as they sat by the fire was the terrible fact that Sarah was going
blind.

They spoke of it, indeed, but only casually, as it were, before passing
on to the greater thing at its back.  Sarah's sense of courtesy forced
her at least to give the doctor a pat on the head.

"Ay, he was right kind," she said in a matter-of-fact tone, "and I will
say this for him that he seemed to know his job.  I've had my doubts for
a while there was summat badly wrong.  I don't know as it's news to me,
after all.  As for yon operation he says might do summat for me, I doubt
I'm over old.  We've no brass for notions o' that sort, neither, come to
that."

"There's hospitals," May said,--"homes and suchlike where they take you
free.  Plenty of folk go to 'em, even at your age, and they'd see to you
well enough, I'm sure."

"Ay, doctor said that an' all," Sarah assented, though in an
uninterested tone.  "But I'd only take badly to they sort o' spots now,"
she added, sipping her tea.  "I'd be marching out agen, likely, as soon
as ever I'd set my foot inside of the door."

"They say folks settle wonderfully when they've made up their minds.
It's worth a bit of trouble, if they put you right."

"Happen," Sarah said casually, and withdrew it at once.  "I don't know
as it is."

"You're down, that's what it is.  You'll feel better after a bit."

"I don't know as I shall."

"You'll feel different about it in a day or two.  You'd come through it
right as a bobbin. You've pluck enough for ten."

"Ay, well, I can't settle it one way or t'other," Sarah said stubbornly,
turning a deaf ear. "Things is a bit ham-sam just now," she added
evasively, fiddling with her cup, and wondering why she could not bring
herself to announce that they were leaving the farm.  But as long as
they did not speak of it, it was just as if nothing had happened, as
though the words which had framed the decision had never been said.  And
yet at that very moment Simon was probably telling Will and Mr. Dent,
and the news would be racing its way round Witham until it came to
Eliza's ear....

"We'll work it some way," May urged, not knowing of the big pause that
had come into Sarah's life.  "You may have to get a word put in for you,
but that's easy done.  I'll see the Squire and Mrs. Wilson and maybe a
few more, and it'll be all fixed up without you putting yourself about."

"You're right kind, you are that."

"It's worth it," May said again.

"Ay ... I don't know..." Sarah answered her absently, and then sat up
straight.  "It'd ha' been worth it once," she broke out suddenly, as if
letting herself go.  "There was a time when I'd a deal sooner ha' been
dead than blind, but it don't matter much now.  There's not that much
left as I care to look at, I'm sure.  It's the eyes make the heart sore
more nor half the time.  But I'd ha' felt badly about it if Geordie was
coming back, and I couldn't ha' framed to see his face."

May said--"It's best not to think of such things," as cheerfully as she
could, but her own face clouded as she spoke, and suddenly she looked
old.  Here was the old trouble, if the doctor had known, that was still
big enough to make the new one seem almost small.  Blindness was not so
dreadful a thing to these two women, who had both of them lost the light
of their eyes so long before.  Long ago they had known what it was to
rise and see no shine in the day, no blue in the sea for May who had
lost her lover, no sun in the sky for Sarah without her child.

It was twenty years now since Geordie had gone away, clearing out
over-seas as casually as if into the next field.  Eliza's eldest from
Blindbeck had gone as well, as like him in face and voice as if hatched
in the same nest.  They were too lively, too restless for the calm
machinery of English country life, and when the call came from over the
ocean they had vanished in a night.  Canada, which has so many links
with Westmorland now, seemed farther away then than the world beyond the
grave.  Death at least left you with bones in a green yard and a stone
with a graven name, but Canada made you childless, and there was no sign
of your grief beneath the church's wall.  Geordie had written, indeed,
from time to time, but though the letters were light enough on the top,
there was heartache underneath.  He was a failure there, they gathered,
after a while, just as they were failures here; as if the curse of the
Sandholes luck had followed even across the sea, Jim was a failure, too,
as far as they knew, though their impression of Jim's doings was always
vague.  His very name on the page seemed to have the trick of dissolving
itself in invisible ink, and his own letters were never answered and
barely even read.  He had been fond of his aunt, but Sarah had given him
only the scantiest tolerance in return.  Sarah, indeed, would not have
cared if Jim had been burning in everlasting fire....

"We'd a letter from Geordie a month back," she said suddenly, after the
pause, "begging the loan of a pound o' two to fetch him home."

May started a little, and the colour came back to her cheek.  It was a
long time now since anything fresh about Geordie had come her way.  Once
she had been in the habit of going to Sandholes for news, asking for it
by indirect methods of which she was still rather ashamed.  Sarah had
been jealous of her in those days and grudged her every word; and since
she had stopped being jealous there had been next to nothing to
grudge.....

"Ay, he axed for his fare, but we hadn't got it to send.  I don't know
as we want him, neither, if he can't shape better than that."

May felt her heart shake as she leaned forward, clasping her hands.

"I've a bit put by I could spare," she began, with a thrill in her
voice.  "It could go from you, Mrs. Thornthet,--he need never know.
You've only to say the word, and you can have it when you want."

A twinge of the ancient jealousy caught suddenly at Sarah's heart.  With
difficulty she remembered May's kindness and the long bond of the years.

"I'll not spend any lass's savings on my lad!" she answered roughly, and
then softened again.  "Nay, May, my girl, you mean well enough, but it
wain't do.  Losh save us!  Hasn't he done badly enough by you, as it
is?" she added grimly.  "You should ha' been wed this many a long year,
instead o' hanging on for the likes o' him!"

"I doubt I'd never have married in any case," May said.  "I don't know
as I'd ever have made up my mind to leave my dad."

"You'd ha' wed right enough but for Geordie,--dad or no dad!" Sarah
scoffed. "You're the sort as is meant to be wed, from the start.  Nay,
he's spoilt your life, and no doubt about it, but there's no sense in
lossing the can because you've gone and spilt the milk. Say you sent him
the brass, and he come back without a cent, what'd be the end o' the
business then?  You'd wed him, I'll be bound,--for pity, if for nowt
else.  Your father'll likely leave you a nice bit, and you'd get along
on that, but who's to say how Geordie'd frame after all these years?
Happen he's lost the habit o' work by now, and it'll be a deal more
likely than not if he's taken to drink."

"Geordie wasn't that sort."  May shook her head.  "He'll not have taken
to drink, not he!"

"Folks change out of all knowledge,--ay, and inside as well as out."

"Not if they're made right," May said stubbornly, "and Geordie was all
right.  He was a daft mafflin, I'll give you that, always playing jokes
and the like, but it was just the life in him,--nowt else.  He was a
fine lad then, in spite of it all, and I don't mind swearing that he's a
fine man now."

"Ay," Sarah said slowly, "fine enough, to be sure!  A fine lad to leave
his folks for t'far side o' the world wi' never a word!  A fine man as
can't look to himself at forty, let alone give his father and mother a
bit o' help! ... Nay, my lass, don't you talk to me!" she finished
brusquely.  "We've thought a deal o' Geordie, me and Simon and you, but
I reckon he's nowt to crack on, all the same!"

"You'd think different when he was back," May pleaded,--"I'm sure you
would.  And you needn't fret about me if that's all there is in the
road.  I made up my mind long since as I shouldn't wed.  But I'd be
rarely glad, all the same, to have had a hand in fetching him home."

"You're real good, as I said, but it's over late."  She paused a moment
and then went on again.  "Letter went a couple o' week ago."

The tears came into May's eyes.

"You don't mean as you said him no?  Eh, Mrs. Thornthet, but I'm sorry
to hear that!"

"Yon sort o' thing's best answered right off."

For a moment or two May put her hand to her face.  "Eh, but what a
pity!" she murmured, after a while.  "What does it matter whose brass
fetches him home?"

"It matters to me."

"It matters a deal more that you're breaking your heart----"

"Nay, then, I'm not! ... Ay, well, then, what if I be?"

"Let me get the brass right off!" May said, in a coaxing tone.  "Let
me,--do now!  Send it to him to-day."

"Nay."

"You've got it into your head he's different, but I'll swear you're
wrong!  Different in looks, maybe, but he'll be none the worse for that.
He always framed to be a fine figure of a man when he was set.  You'd be
as throng wi' him as a clockie hen wi' a pot egg."

Sarah snorted scorn, but her face softened a little.

"He's forty, but I'll be bound he hasn't changed.  I'll be bound he's
nobbut the same merry lad inside."

"Happen none the better for that."

"Geordie isn't the sort as grows old--Geordie an' Jim----"

"Nay, then, I want nowt about Jim!"  Sarah flared, and the other
laughed.

"It's hard to think of 'em apart even now,--they were that like.  Why,
I've mixed 'em myself, over and over again, and fine fun it was for
them, to be sure!"

"_I_ never mixed 'em!" Sarah snapped, with a blind glare.  "I never see
a scrap o' likeness myself."

"Why, the whole countryside couldn't tell 'em apart,--school-folk an'
all!  'Twasn't only their faces was like; 'twas their voices, too."

"Hold your whisht!"

"You'll remember yon calls they had, Geordie an' Jim----"

"Whisht, I tell ye!"  There was something scared as well as angry in
Sarah's tone, and May was hushed into silence in spite of herself.  "Jim
was sweet on you, too," the old woman went on surlily, after a pause.
"If there wasn't that much to choose between 'em, why didn't you choose
him?"

"There was all the world to choose between them, when it come to it,"
May said smiling, but with tears in her voice.  "Once Geordie'd kissed
me, I never mixed 'em up again!"

The rough colour came suddenly into Sarah's face.  She tried to turn it
away, with the pathetic helplessness of the blind who cannot tell what
others may be reading there in spite of their will.  May, however, was
looking away from her into the past.

"Not but what Jim was a rare good sort," she was saying, with the
tenderness of a woman towards a lover who once might have been and just
was not.  "Eh, and how fond he was of you, Mrs. Thornthet!" she added,
turning again.  "No lad could ha' thought more of his own mother than he
did of you."

"I wanted nowt wi' his fondness," Sarah said in a hard tone.  "And I
want no mewling about him now, as I said afore!"

"Ay, you told him off terrible, poor lad, but he was that set on you he
didn't mind.  He used to fetch you fairings and suchlike, didn't
he,--same as Geordie did?  It was never his mother he fetched 'em for;
'twas always you."

"Eliza never had no need o' fairings, wi' all she had at her back!"
Sarah stood up sharply and began to grope about for her mantle and
gloves.  "You're bringing things back just to coax me about yon brass!"
she added, as May came forward to help....  "Your father's none so well,
I'm sorry to hear?"

"He hasn't been himself for a while now, and he's getting worse.  I
doubt he's going down the hill sharp-like, poor old chap!"

"Ay, well, our time comes to us all, and we wouldn't wish for owt else.
But it'll be rare an' lonely for you wi'out him, all the same."

"I'm used to being alone, though I can't say it's very grand....  You'll
have to let me come and see to you and Mr. Thornthet," she added, with a
cheerful laugh.

"We're over old for the likes o' you.  You want friends of your own age
to keep you lively-like."

"I'm not so young myself, if it comes to that," May said.  "And I don't
know as I ever had a real friend, barring Geordie-an'-Jim."

"That's enough o' the two on 'em!" Sarah snarled, as they went out.
"Geordie's been a bonny friend to you, anyway,--he has that! We'd best
be getting about our business. Talking o' things as is dead and gone
won't make us any more lish."

"Simon'll be bothered about my eyes," she said presently, as they turned
towards the shops. "It's a deal worse having to tell him than to put up
wi' it myself."

"Happen you'd like me to tell him for you?" May suggested, but Sarah
shook her head.

"Nay, you'd do it right enough, I'm sure," she said kindly, "but it'd
come best from me. You've enough o' your own to fash you, wi'out that.
Married folk mun do their own telling over things like yon...."




                                   V


But though Sarah had held to the telling of Simon, she seemed in no
hurry to break the dismal news.  All morning she clung to May, as if
they drew together as a matter of course, and May was glad to have her,
not only because she was old and needed help, but because of the tie
between them which had never been loosed. It was true that they had seen
little of each other of late years, but it had only needed the talk in
the doctor's house to draw them together again.  The dwelling upon a
lost hope may sometimes make the impossible possible and the dead live,
if only for a space.  The two of them had recreated Geordie in the quiet
room, so that his mother had seen him plain before her darkened eyes,
and his sweetheart had felt his kisses on her lips.

So all morning they stayed together, even though they did not speak of
him again, because while they were together the glamour persisted and
the dream remained.  Just as one name had robbed them that day, though
they did not know it, so another name sweetened everything for them, and
for a little space made them rich. Things might so easily have been as
they wished that it seemed as if even now just a little determination
might twist them into shape.  In the ordinary course of events, and with
ever such an ordinary share of luck, Geordie and May should have been
married long ago, with a home of their own to offer the old folk at the
last.  Even now, so it seemed, Geordie might be somewhere in the street,
in the midst of that crowd of healthy youth, sturdy manhood and wiry
age. Instinctively, as they came out of each shop, they looked to find
him the centre of some chaffing group, the laughing, handsome, witty
centre, as he had always been.  He would break away when he saw them to
ask his old mother how she did, and suddenly the greatest and best of
all happenings would have happened, and they would have heard the
miracle of his speech....

This was the spell they wove for each other, making the day brighter and
the world kinder, and helping them to laugh at things which otherwise
would have been too light to stir their hearts.  Sarah's shopping was
dull and soon finished, but May had an exciting list, and seemed
constantly in need of help.  The old woman actually enjoyed herself as
she peered at stockings and linen buttons, and nipped longcloth and
serge between her finger and thumb.  It might have been wedding-gear
they were after, she told May, with a grim chuckle, and May laughed and
sighed, thinking of a bottom drawer at home that had been locked for
many years.  The salesman laughed, too, and asked Sarah which of them it
was that was thinking of getting wed, and Sarah, with all her arduous
married life behind her, was yet as pleased as a young girl.  She was a
shrewd marketer, even now, in spite of her sight, especially in the
food-shops, where one nose can often be quite as useful as a pair of
eyes; while, as for pots and pans, she knew them as a hen knows her
chickens and a shepherd his sheep.

They had many a chat over a counter, making and receiving enquiries
about friends, opening their mouths at any lively piece of news, and
pursing them sympathetically when there was trouble around the door.  In
the low shops with the new windows in their old walls and new slates on
their bowed roofs, little, low doorways stooping for their heads,
little, worn doorsteps watching for their feet, they heard many a hint
of the romance of evolving or changing trade, many a precious historic
touch that would never find its way into print.  You cannot put your ear
to the past anywhere but in the old places where men are born to their
trades, where they know the customer's pedigree as the customer knows
theirs, and where everybody has time for the human as well as the
commercial exchange.  Only there can you learn in the space of an hour
wonderful things about drapery and furniture and hardware and tea, and
feel the glamour of the whole budding and fruit-bearing earth come into
the florist's, and the atmosphere of old posting-inns into the pot-shop
with the clink of glass.  And no man who is born to his trade is ever a
cobbler who may not look beyond his last.  The potman will tell you
where to order a stylish suit of clothes, and the florist instruct you
how to smoke a ham.  And every one of them will tell you, with or
without their knowing it, what they have learned of human nature and the
hope of eternity in their quiet little town, and with what eyes they
have looked abroad upon the world.

All that morning the tides of life swept against Sarah and her friend as
they went about the streets,--tides of humanity and sympathy, memory and
custom,--all the currents that move in the air and the blood and the
brain when a hand is shaken or a friendly voice is heard.  It was life
at its fullest as it is known to the northern farmer and his kind, the
public recognition in a given place of the great and intimate system of
which he is a part.  The dumb beasts had their place in it,
too,--perhaps the chief place,--and though only the wise dogs and the
cobby, half-clipped horses were there in the flesh, the all-absorbing
stock was never absent from the mind.  Into every conversation before so
long some grand bull-calf or pedigree shearling was sure to push its
way.  Moving among the warm human tides was like moving in a flood,
while, overhead, low almost as the roofs, the mist drifted and the sky
drooped.  Seven miles away, the sands lay bare as a hand, as if never in
any aeon of time would the sea return.

Sarah and May had their dinner together in a cafe overlooking one of the
steep streets, and, choosing a table by one of the windows, so that they
could look out, spread their parcels about them, and discussed their
bargains and their mistakes.  They were still happy, as happiness went
for them in those days, because of the miracle that seemed always
possible down in the street.  Folks in plenty were coming and going on
the narrow stair, and as each head rose above the floor of the room in
which they sat, they felt a thrill of anticipation that was yet too
slight to bring disappointment in its train.  May, perhaps, was slightly
puzzled by the persistence of the feeling in the air, but Sarah was well
used, like all who are old, to the strange reality of these glamour-days
that are fashioned from the past.

They had their heads together over a new-fangled floor-cloth when the
ubiquitous stranger came quietly up the stairs; and they were so
absorbed, and Sarah was so exuberant in her wrath, that he had time to
look about him before the final word was said.  There was no room for
him, he saw, except at the table where they sat, and presently, though
rather uncertainly, he advanced a foot.  If they had looked at him, he
would have gone forward at once, but when they lifted their eyes it was
only to turn them towards the window and the street. The little action
seemed somehow to shut him out, and, drawing back almost guiltily, he
found a seat for himself in the adjoining room.  May looked round as he
did so, just as though somebody had called, and stared intently at the
place where he had been.

He could still see them, however, from where he sat, and he noticed many
things about them as he watched.  He noticed, for instance, how strong
and capable May looked, like a woman who had long since taken her life
in her hands and ruled it well.  He noticed her good clothes and Sarah's
shabby ones, and that the multitudinous parcels were most of them May's.
He noticed the shake which Time, in spite of her, had put into Sarah's
hands, and was puzzled by the groping manner in which she used her fork.
He noticed that the two of them ate little and that without much heart,
and that always they turned their faces towards the street.  And finally
he noticed how Sarah, in the midst of her talk, went suddenly rigid as a
woman came into the room.

She was a big woman over sixty years of age, with smooth, high-coloured
cheeks and thick dark hair that was still a long way from turning white.
Her face said plainly that she had had a full, comfortable, healthy
life, with plenty to interest her and little to fret.  Her brown eyes,
which had been beautiful in youth, had kept their expression of
self-satisfaction wholly undisturbed.  She looked, indeed, what she was,
the mother of a big family, the mistress of a good-class farm, and the
wife of a man whose banking-account had long since ceased to keep him
awake at nights.  She wore a black hat and a black plush coat, and round
her shoulders was a big fur wrap.  In a kid-gloved hand she carried a
muff and a silver-mounted bag, and May, looking down, saw patent-toed
boots showing beneath her neat, black skirt.  Sarah was sure of them,
too, though she could not see them.  It was not with her physical eye
that she looked at Eliza of Blindbeck, Simon's brother's wife.

She, too, had paused in the doorway, looking for a place, but as soon as
she saw the two in the window, she advanced at once.  As she passed she
spoke to several people in a noisy, hearty voice, that seemed to have a
blustering quality somewhere at its back.  By the time she had reached
Sarah's table and come to a stop, the man in the other room noticed that
Sarah had suddenly grown small....

"Eh, now, if I haven't been seeking you all over the shop!" Eliza
exclaimed.  "Will had it you wanted me most particular, so I've been
looking out.  I couldn't find you, though, whatever I did.  I never see
folks so set on keeping out of the road!"

Sarah still continued to look as though she had shrunk.  Even her voice
seemed to have grown less.  It sounded far off and rather prim.

"Nay, I don't know as I did, thank ye," was all she said.  "Will mun ha'
gitten hold o' the wrong end o' the stick."

Eliza looked at her with the little smile which the sight of Sarah
always brought to her lips. She pulled a chair towards her and collapsed
into it without waiting to be asked.

"Ay, well, that's queer, to be sure!  Will's no more muddled than most
on market-day, as a rule.  I made sure you were wanting me right off the
reel, from what he said."

May explained nervously that she had come to Sarah's assistance instead.
Eliza always made her nervous, because she never seemed to know she was
in the room.  "There wasn't that much to do," she finished hurriedly,
stumbling over her words.  "It's a pity Mr. Thornthwaite set you looking
her up."

"Nay, I don't know....  I'd have been glad to do anything, I'm sure!"
Eliza spoke in her heartiest tones, so that everybody could hear.
"Nobody can say I'm one as can't be bothered to lend a hand.  I reckon
me and Will have done as much in that line as most."  She looked at
Sarah again, the smile growing on her lips.... "You'll not mind me
sitting down with you, I suppose?"

"We're through, thank ye.  We're just off."  Sarah pushed her plate from
her, and began to fumble shakily for the thread gloves.  May looked
across at her with a troubled glance, and gathered the parcels together,
ready to move. Eliza, however, had no intention of allowing them to
escape so soon.

"You're surely not thinking o' stirring yet!" she exclaimed, in a hurt
tone.  "What, we've barely as much as passed the time o' day! You'll not
grudge me a word or two after all my trouble, and me that throng wi'
shopping I didn't know where to turn.  Will was as full of nods and
becks as a row o' poppies in a wind, and I've been fair aching ever
since to know what he could be at."

She turned in her seat to call a waitress, and ordered a substantial
meal; after which, throwing back her fur, she leaned her arms on the
table, and resumed her smile.  Everybody in the place knew what Eliza
Thornthwaite was having for her dinner, and here and there they were
saying to each other, "They do themselves rarely at Blindbeck....
There's a deal o' brass to Blindbeck ... ay, Blindbeck's plenty o'
brass!"  Eliza knew what they were saying, of course, and felt
unctuously pleased; but May's heart swelled as she looked at Sarah's
scanty, unfinished repast and the thin thread gloves that she was
smoothing over her wrists. Eliza had taken off her own gloves by now,
showing thick fingers and short nails.  They were trapped in the alcove
as long as she sat at the table-end, because of her big, overflowing
figure which shut the two of them in.  They would have to push their way
past her if they wanted to get out, and Sarah would never as much as
touch her with the end of a ten-foot pole.

"I'd ha' done what I could, I'm sure," Eliza was busy telling them
again.  "I'd never say no to folks as can't help themselves.  But
there,--I needn't ha' bothered about it,--you're as right as rain.  Will
had it you were off to t'doctor's, but I made sure he was wrong.  I
haven't seen you looking so well for a month o' Sundays, and that's the
truth."

She raised herself as the waitress set a steaming plate in front of her,
and stared at it critically.

"Eh, well, you've not that much to bother you, have you?" she added
kindly, setting to work,--"nobbut Simon to see to, and just that bit of
a spot?  'Tisn't the same for you as it is for me, with that great place
of our'n on my hands, and the house fair crowded out."

Sarah did not speak, but she saw, as she was intended to see, a picture
of the good farm where Mrs. Will reigned supreme, of her sons and
daughters and their friends, and her hired lasses and lads; and after
that another picture of her own empty home, where no youthful steps
sounded along the floors, and no vibrant young voices rang against the
roof.  The pictures hurt her, as they were meant to do, as well as the
cheerful comment upon her looks.  Eliza always assumed that you were as
strong as a horse, even if you lay on your death-bed at her feet.

"I never heard tell you were badly," she persisted, fixing her eyes on
Sarah's face, which looked like parchment against the misty pane, "and
surely to goodness I'd be more like to know than Will?"

"I'll do, thank ye.  I'm right enough," Sarah said stiffly, forced into
speech at last; and Eliza laughed victoriously and returned to her food
with zest.

"You've always been rarely strong, as far as I can think on.  I never
heard tell as you ailed anything in your life.  You were always a rare
hand wi' a knife and fork an' all!" she finished, laughing again.
"Will's a bonny fool to go scaring folk wi' such-like tales."

"Yes, but we _did_ go to the doctor's!" May broke out warmly, goaded
into speech. "Mrs. Thornthwaite's bothered with her eyes."

Mrs. Will lifted her own sharply for a fresh stare at the defenceless
face.

"Eh, now, you don't say so!" she exclaimed cheerfully, with a quite
uninterested air.  "It's bad hearing, is that, but they look right
enough, I'm sure."

"They're bad, all the same!" May answered indignantly, on the verge of
tears.  "Doctor says she ought to have an operation right off."

There was a little pause after the dread word operation, poignant in
every class, but especially so in this.  Even Mrs. Will was shocked
momentarily into quiet.  Her fork stayed arrested in mid-air, half-way
to her mouth.

"Well, I never!" she observed at last, withdrawing her startled gaze.
"Eh, now, I never did!"  She set to work again at her food like a
machine that has been stopped for a second by an outside hand.  "I don't
hold much by operations myself," she went on presently, growing fluent
again.  "I doubt they're never no use.  They're luxuries for rich folk,
anyway, seems to me, same as servants and motor-cars and the like.  But
you'll likely be asking somebody for a hospital ticket, so as you
needn't pay?"

"Nay, I think not," Sarah said calmly, though her hands gripped each
other in her threadbare lap.

"You'll never go wasting your own brass on a job like yon!"

"Nay, nor that, neither."

"You'll borrow it, likely?"  A slyness came into her voice.  She peered
at Sarah over her cup.

"Nay."

"Ay, well, no matter where it come from, it would nobbut be money thrown
away.  You're an old body now, Sarah, and folk don't mend that much when
they get to your age.  It's real lucky you've only that small spot, as I
said, and neither chick nor child to fret after you when you've gone."

Sarah stood up suddenly when she said that, trying to focus her eyes on
Eliza's face.  She stood very stiff and straight, as if she were all of
one piece from feet to crown.  A sudden notion came to May that, if she
had thrown off the shabby black cloak, a column of fierce flame would
have shot up towards the roof....

"I'll be saying good day, Eliza," was all she said, however, and moved,
but stopped because the other's skirts still lay before her feet. Mrs.
Will leaned back in her chair, looking up at her, and smiled.

"Nay, now, Sarah, what's the sense o' getting mad?  I'm real sorry about
your eyes, but you'd ha' done better to tell me right off.  As for
saying good day and such-like so mighty grand, you know as well as me
we're looking to see you at Blindbeck this afternoon."  She paused a
moment, and then her voice rose on an insolent note.  "Ay, and you know
well enough what you're coming for an' all!"

"Nay, then, I don't."  Sarah seemed actually to grow in height.  She
looked down at her quietly.  "Nay, I don't."

"That's a lie, if I say it to all Witham!" Eliza cried in furious tones.
Battle was really joined now, and her voice, strident and loud, carried
into and disturbed even the street. Those near turned about openly to
listen, or listened eagerly without turning.  The man in the adjoining
room got up and came to the door. May stood poised for flight, looking
from one to the other of the warriors with dismay.

"You're leaving Sandholes, aren't you?" Eliza asked, exactly as if she
were addressing somebody over the road,--"leaving because you're broke!
You're coming to Blindbeck to beg of Blindbeck, just as you've begged of
us before.  Simon told Will, if you want to know, and Will told me, and
every farmer at market'll be taking it home by now...."

There was a murmur of discomfort and disapproval all over the room, and
then somebody in a corner whispered something and laughed. May roused
herself and pushed her way past Eliza with burning cheeks; but Sarah
stood perfectly still, looking down at the blurred presence sneering
from her chair.

"Ay, we're quitting right enough," she answered her in a passionless
voice.  "We're finished, Simon and me, and there's nowt for it but to
give up.  But I've gitten one thing to be thankful for, when
everything's said and done ... I'm that bad wi' my eyes I can't rightly
see your face...."

The person who had laughed before laughed again, and faint titters broke
out on every side. Sarah, however, did not seem to hear.  She lifted a
thread-gloved hand and pointed at Eliza's skirts.  "Happen you'll shift
yon gown o' yours, Eliza Thornthet?" she added, coolly. "I've a deal o'
dirt on my shoes as I reckon you won't want."

The laughter Was unrestrained now, and Eliza flushed angrily as she
dragged her skirts reluctantly out of the way.  From the corner of a
raging eye she observed the elaborate care with which Sarah went by.

"We'll finish our bit of a crack at Blindbeck!" she called after her
with a coarse laugh; but Sarah and May were already on the stairs.  The
stranger put out his hand to them as they brushed past, but in their
anger and concentration they did not notice that he was there.  Even if
he had spoken to them they would not have heard him, for through the
cloud of hate which Eliza had cast about them the voice of the Trump
itself would never have found a way. He stood aside, therefore, and let
them go, but presently, as if unable to help himself, he followed them
into the street.  They were soon cheerful again, he noticed, walking at
their heels, as the charm which they had for each other reasserted its
power.  Once, indeed, as they looked in at a window, they even laughed,
and he frowned sharply and felt aggrieved. When they laughed again he
turned on his heel with an angry movement, and flung away down the
nearest street.  He could not know that it was only in their memories
they ever really laughed or smiled....




                                   VI


Simon had been right in thinking that the tale of the car would be all
over the town by the time he arrived.  He came across it, indeed, almost
the moment that he got in.  The driver of the car had told a farmer or
two in the inn-yard, and the farmer or two had chuckled with glee and
gone out to spread it among the rest.  Of course, they took good care
that it lost nothing in the telling, and, moreover, the driver had given
it a good shove-off at the start.  He told them that Simon had shaken
his fist and wept aloud, and that Sarah had fainted away and couldn't be
brought round.  A later account had it that the chase had lasted fast
and furious for miles, ending with an accident in Witham streets.  Simon
encountered the tale in many lengths and shapes, and it was hard to say
whether the flippant or sympathetic folk annoyed him most.  He always
started out by refusing to discuss the matter at all, and then wouldn't
stop talking about it once he had begun.

"Ay, well, ye see, I thought it was a hearse," he always growled, when
forced to admit that part of the tale, at least, was true.  "Mebbe I was
half asleep, or thinking o' summat else; or likely I'm just daft, like
other folk not so far."  Here he usually threw a glance at the enquiring
friend, who gave a loud guffaw and shifted from foot to foot.  "Ay, a
hearse,--yon's what I thought it was, wi' nid-noddin' plumes, and happen
a corp in a coffin fleein' along inside. You've no call to make such a
stir about it as I can see," he wound up helplessly, with a threatening
scowl.  "Boggles isn't out o' date yet by a parlish long while, and
there's many a body still wick as can mind seeing Jamie Lowther's
headless Coach and Four!"

He forgot to feel annoyed, however, when he found that his story had
made him in some sort the hero of the day.  He could see folks talking
about him and pointing him out as he went along, and men came up smiling
and wanting a chat who as a rule had no more for him than a casual nod.
Often, indeed, he had only a dreary time, bemoaning his fate with one or
two cronies almost as luckless as himself; listening, perhaps, on the
edge of an interested group, or wandering into some bar for a sup of ale
and a pipe.  But to-day he was as busy as an old wife putting the story
to rights, and when he had stopped being angry for having behaved like a
fool, he began to feel rather proud of himself for having done something
rather fine.  He ended, indeed, by laughing as heartily as the rest, and
allowed several points to pass which had nothing whatever to do with the
truth.  He felt more important than he had done for years, and forgot
for a while the press of his troubles and the fear about Sarah's eyes.
Will told himself that he hadn't seen him so cheerful for long, and
wondered whether things were really as bad at the farm as his brother
had made out.

They made a curious couple as they went about, because in face and
figure they were so alike, and yet the stamp of their different
circumstances was so plain.  They had the same thin face and dreamy
eyes, lean figure and fine bones, but whereas one carried his age well
and his head high, the other had long since bowed himself to the weight
of the years.  Will wore a light overcoat of a modern make, brown boots
and a fashionable soft hat; but Simon's ancient suit was of some rough,
hard stuff that had never paid any attention to his frame.  Will had a
white collar and neat tie; but Simon had a faded neckcloth with
colourless spots, and he wore dubbined boots that had clogged soles, and
a wideawake that had once been black but now was green.  Eliza often
observed in her kindly way that Simon looked old enough to be Will's
father, but indeed it was in the periods to which they seemed to belong
that the difference was most marked.  Will had been pushed ahead by
prosperity and a striving brood; while Simon had gone steadily down the
hill where the years redouble the moment you start to run.

They had encountered the agent early on, and fixed an appointment for
twelve o'clock; and afterwards they spent the morning together until
noon struck from the Town Hall.  Will had grown rather tired of hearing
the hearse story by then, and felt slightly relieved when the time came
for them to part.  "Nay, I'll not come in," he demurred, as Simon urged
him at the door of the 'Rising Sun.'  "You'll manage a deal better by
yourself.  You needn't fear, though, but what I'll see you through.
We'll settle summat or other at Blindbeck this afternoon."

But at the very moment he turned away he changed his mind again and
turned back.  "I can't rightly make out about yon car," he asked, almost
as if against his will.  "What, in the name o' fortune, made you behave
like yon?"

Simon muttered gloomily that he didn't know, and shuffled his feet
uncomfortably on the step. Now that the shadow of the coming interview
was upon him, he was not so perfectly sure as he had been that the story
was a joke.  He remembered his terror when the car was at his back, his
frantic certainty that there were strange things in the air.  He took it
amiss, too, both as a personal insult and from superstition, that the
Town Hall chimes should be playing "There is no luck about the house"
just as he stepped inside.

"It was nobbut a hired car, wasn't it," Will went on,--"wi' two chaps in
it, they said, as come from Liverpool way?"

"That's what they've tellt me since," Simon agreed, "though I never see
it plain....  Seems as if it might be a warning or summat," he added,
with a shamefaced air.

"Warning o' what?" Will threw at him with a startled glance.  "Nay, now!
Whatever for?"

"Death, happen," Simon said feebly,--"nay, it's never that!  I'm wrong
in my head, I doubt," he added, trying to laugh; "but there's queerish
things, all the same.  There's some see coffins at the foot o' their
beds, and you'll think on when last Squire's missis died sudden-like yon
hard winter, she had it she could smell t'wreaths in t'house every day
for a month before."

"Ay, well, you'd best put it out of your head as sharp as you can," Will
soothed him, moving away.  "You're bothering overmuch about the farm,
that's what it is.  A nip o' frost in the air'll likely set you right.
Weather's enough to make anybody dowly, it's that soft."

"Ay, it's soft," Simon agreed, lifting his eyes to look at the sky, and
wondering suddenly how long it had taken the gull to get itself out to
sea. His brother nodded and went away, and he drifted unwillingly into
the inn.  The chimes had finished their ill-omened song, but the echo of
it still seemed to linger on the air.  They told him inside that Mr.
Dent was engaged, so he went into the bar to wait, seating himself where
he could see the stairs.  The landlord tried to coax him to talk, but he
was too melancholy to respond, and could only sit waiting for the door
to open and summon him overhead.  He was able to think, now that he was
away from the crowd and the chaff about the hearse, but no amount of
thinking could find him a way out. He had already given the agent a hint
of his business, and would only have to confirm it when he got upstairs,
but it seemed to him at the moment as if the final words would never be
said.  After a while, indeed, he began to think that he would sneak away
quietly and let the appointment go.  He would say no more about the
notice to Mr. Dent, and things might take their way for another year.
It was just possible, with the promised help from Will, that they might
manage to scrape along for another year....

He left it there at last and got to his feet, but even as he did so he
remembered Sarah's eyes. He wondered what the doctor had said and wished
he knew, because, of course, there would be no question of staying if
the report were bad. He was still standing, hesitating, and wondering
what he should do, when the door of the Stewards' Room opened above, and
a man came out.

It was, as somehow might have been expected, the stranger of the car,
otherwise Simon's now celebrated 'hearse.'  Simon, however, had not
looked at him then, and he barely glanced at him now.  It was a blind
day, as Sarah had said, and all through the Thornthwaites seemed
determined to be as blind as the day.  The agent followed him out,
looking cheerful and amused. "I wish you luck all round!" Simon heard
him say, as he shook the stranger's hand, and thought morosely that it
was easy and cheap to wish folks luck.  "This should be the finest day
of your life," he added more gravely, looking over the rail, and the man
going down looked up and said "That's so!" in a fervent tone.  The old
farmer waiting in the bar felt a spasm of envy and bitterness at the
quietly triumphant words. "The finest day of your life,"--that was for
the man going down.  "The heaviest day of your life,"--that was for the
man going up.  With a touch of dreary humour he thought to himself that
it was really he who was going down, if it came to that....

With a feeling of something like shame he kept himself out of sight
until the stranger had disappeared, and then experienced a slight shock
when Dent called to him in the same cheery tone.  Almost without knowing
it he had looked for the voice to change, and its geniality jarred on
his dismal mood.  Somehow it seemed to put him about at the start, and
when Dent laid a hand on his shoulder, saying--"Well, Simon!" with a
smile, it was all he could do not to give him a surly snarl by way of
reply.  They went into the old-fashioned room, which smelt of horsehair
and wool mats, and Simon seated himself miserably on the extreme edge of
a chair.  Dent went to the window and lifted a finger to somebody in the
street, and then seated himself at the table, and said "Well, Simon!"
and smiled again.  He was a strongly built man, with a pleasant face,
which seemed rather more pleasant than need be to his visitor's
jaundiced eye.

He looked away from it, however, staring at the floor, and after the
first conventional remarks began his tale of woe, that slow trickle of
disaster which always gathered itself into terrible spate.  "You'll know
what I'm here for, sir," he concluded, at the end of his first breath,
twisting his hat like a tea-tray in his restless hands.  "Things has got
that bad wi' us I doubt we can't go on, and so we've made up our minds
we'd best clear out next year."

Dent nodded kindly in answer, but with a rather abstracted air.  He had
listened patiently enough to the slow tale, but Simon had a feeling that
his tragic recital was not receiving the sympathy it deserved.  He began
a fresh relation of the ills which had befallen him at the farm,
intending a grand climax to be capped by Sarah's eyes; but there were so
many dead troubles to dig out of their graves as he went along, that the
last and most vital dropped from the reckoning, after all.

"Ay, well, you've likely heard all this before," he finished lamely in
the middle of a speech, conscious that he had missed his point, though
without being able to say how.  "We've had a bad year this year an' all,
and I can't see as it's any use holding on.  Me and my missis fixed it
up as we come in, so if you'll take my notice, sir, we'll go next
spring."

"Your wife's in town, is she?" Dent asked. For some reason he looked
again at the window from which he had waved.  "How does she take the
thought of leaving the farm?"

"Well, sir, we'll both feel it, after all these years, but I don't know
as it's any use calling out.  I put it to her as we'd better quit, and
she agreed to it right off."

"I wish you'd brought her along," the agent said, still speaking in a
detached tone.  There were some notes on the table within reach of his
hand, and he glanced thoughtfully at them as he spoke.

Simon stiffened a little, and looked surprised. "I'm speaking for both
on us, sir, as I said before."

"Of course, Simon," Dent said, rousing himself. "I know that.  But I'd
have liked a word with her, all the same."  His glance went back to the
notes, and he smiled as if at his own thoughts....  "And so you've
really made up your minds that you'd better go?"

"Haven't I been saying so, sir, all along?"  Simon was really injured
now, and his wounded dignity showed in his tone.  Mr. Dent was taking
the whole thing far too easily, he thought. First of all, he did not
seem to be listening as much as he might, and then, when the notice was
offered, he actually smiled!  Tenants of forty years' standing do not
look to have their departure speeded with smiles.  Simon thought it
heartless, to say the least, and only to be excused because Mr. Dent did
not know what they had to face.  They had not been very satisfactory
tenants, of course,--even Simon admitted that,--and it was more than
likely that the agent was rather relieved.  At least he was saved the
unpleasant task of turning them out, a duty which, as Simon knew, had
seemed imminent more than once.  But they were respectable folk of good
stock, and they were not entirely to blame because they were failures,
too.  Gravity was their due, anyhow, if not sympathy, but Mr. Dent, on
this solemn occasion, seemed to be failing them in both.

"Of course you know you're late with your notice?" he observed
presently, looking up. "You ought to have made up your minds a couple of
months ago."

"Ay, we're late, I know, but we weren't thinking of owt o' the sort
then.  I'm sorry if we've put you about, but you'll not have that much
trouble in getting rid of the farm.  It's nobbut a small spot, you'll
think on.  It'll let right off the reel."

"It's been going back a long while, though," Dent said thoughtfully, and
then felt penitent as the old man flushed.  Just for the moment he had
forgotten that Simon was in the room.

"Of course I know you've had pretty rough luck," he went on hastily,
trying to cover it up. "Sandholes holds the record for every sort of
mischance.  It sounds like one of the old fairy-tales," he added,
laughing,--"curses and all that! ... But I can't help thinking it would
have been better for everybody if there had been a change earlier on."

"Ay, well, you've gitten your change now, and no mistake about it!"
Simon retorted angrily, deeply hurt.  There was something wrong with the
scene, though he could not tell what it was.  He only knew that he had
not expected it to go in the very least like this.

"It should have been made long since if it was to do you any good...."
Dent did not seem to notice that there was anything amiss. He sat,
tapping the table, deep in thought, while Simon seethed....  "Sure you
couldn't put on for another year?"

This change of front upset his visitor so completely that he dropped his
hat.  He sat glaring at Mr. Dent with a dropped mouth.

"Nay, then, I just couldn't!" he snapped at last, wondering whether he
was on his head or his heels.  "Losh save us!" he added angrily,
"haven't I tellt you I meant to gang ever since I come in?  It'll take
me all my time to hang on till spring, as it is."

"You've run it as close as that?" Dent enquired, and Simon gave a grunt.

"Ay, and I'm not the first as has done it, neither!"

"Couldn't your Blindbeck brother see to give you a hand?  He's done well
for himself, I should say, and his children are getting on."

"He's given us a hand more than once already, has Will, but there's no
sense in throwing good money after bad.  We'll have to quit next year,
if we don't this.  Farm's going back, as you say, and I'm over old to
pull it round. I can't keep going for ever, nay, nor my missis,
neither."

He remembered Sarah's eyes as he spoke, and how they were enough to
clinch the matter in themselves, but he was too offended even to mention
them by now.  There was no telling to-day how Mr. Dent would take the
tragic news.  He had smiled and looked cheerful over the notice to quit,
but Simon felt he would not be able to bear it if he smiled at Sarah's
eyes. Indeed, it was all he could do to keep a hold on himself, as it
was,--first of all hearing that he ought to have gone long since, and
then being told to stop when he'd settled to clear out!

The trend of his injured thought must have reached the other at last,
for he roused himself to look at his sulky face.

"You needn't think I'm trying to shove the place down your throat!" he
said, with a laugh. "But I certainly thought you'd rather be stopping
on!"

Simon felt a little appeased, though he took care not to show any sign.
He growled miserably that they had never intended to quit except under a
coffin-lid.

"This is where you want a lad of your own to take hold,--a lad with a
good wife who would be able to see to you both.  You've no news, I
suppose, of that son of yours that went overseas?"

"A word or two, now and then,--nowt more.  Nowt as'd set you running
across t'countryside to hear."

"No chance of getting him home again, is there?" Dent enquired, and
Simon stared at the floor and shook his head.  He must have felt a
change in the atmosphere, however, for suddenly he began to repeat what
Sarah had told May, how Geordie had written for money, and there had
been none to send.  The words came easily after he had made a start, and
for the time being he forgot his resentment and injured-tenant's pride.

"I reckon you know, sir, how it all come about.  There'll ha' been
plenty o' folk ready to tell you, I'll be bound, and them as knowed
least'll likely ha' tellt you most.  We never had but the one lad, Sarah
and me, and, by Gox! but he was a limb!  The queer thing was that my
brother Will's eldest should ha' been the very marrow o' mine,--looks,
voice, ways, ay, and character an' all.  Will and me were whyet enough
lads, I'm sure; it was terble strange we should breed a pair o'
rattlehorns like yon. You couldn't rightly say there was any harm to
'em, but they were that wick they mun always be making a stir.  Being
that like, too, helped 'em rarely when there was chanst o' their getting
catched.  Each on 'em had a call for telling when he was about.  Jim's
was a heron like, but Geordie's was nobbut a gull----"

This time it was his own glance that went to the window, as again he
remembered the bird gone out to the waves.  When Dent spoke, his mind
came back from its flight with a tiny jerk.

"Then they made off to Canada, didn't they, the two lads?  You told me
something about it when I first came."

"Ay, they cleared off in a night without a word or owt, and they've
never done no good from then to this.  Sarah sticks to it Geordie would
never ha' gone at all if it hadn't been for Jim, and Will's missis
sticks to it t'other way about.  I reckon there was nowt to choose
between 'em myself, but my missis never could abide poor Jim.  He was
that set on her, though, there was no keeping him off the spot.  Right
cruel she was to him sometimes, but she couldn't drive him off.  He'd
just make off laughing and whistling, and turn up again next day.  Of
course, she was bound to have her knife into him, for his mother's sake.
She and Eliza have always been fit to scratch at each other all their
lives."

"Long enough to finish any feud, surely, and a bit over?  It's a pity
they can't bury the hatchet and make friends."

"They'll happen make friends when the rabbit makes friends wi' the
ferret," Simon said grimly, "and the blackbird wi' the cat! I don't say
Sarah isn't to blame in some ways, but she's had a deal to put up wi',
all the same. There's summat about Eliza as sets you fair bilin' inside
your bones!  It's like as if she'd made up her mind to pipe Sarah's eye
straight from the very start.  She never said ay to Will, for one thing,
till Sarah and me had our wedding-day fixed, and then danged if she
didn't make up her mind to get wed that day an' all!  She fixed same
church, same parson, same day and same time,--ay, an' there's some folk
say she'd ha' fixed on t'same man if she'd gitten chanst!"  He paused
for a moment to chuckle when he had said that, but he was too bitter to
let his vanity dwell on it for long.  "She tellt parson it was a double
wedding or summat o' the sort, but she never let wit on't to Sarah and
me until she was fair inside door.  Sarah and me walked to kirk arm in
arm, wi' nowt very much by-ordinar' on our backs; but Eliza come
scampering up in a carriage and pair, donned up in a white gown and wi'
a gert, waggling veil.  Will was that shammed on it all he couldn't
abide to look me in t'face, but there, I reckon he couldn't help
hisself, poor lad!  Sarah was that wild I could feel her fair dodderin'
wi' rage as we stood alongside at chancel-step.  She was that mad she
could hardly shape to get her tongue round Weddin'-Service or owt, and
when we was in t'vestry I see her clump both her feet on the tail of
Eliza's gown.  She would have it nobody knew she was as much as getting
wed at all,--they were that busy gawping at Eliza and her veil.  She was
a fine, strapping lass, Eliza was, and I'd a deal o' work keeping my
eyes off'n her myself! ... ay, and I won't say but what she give me a
sheep's eye or so at the back o' Will as well...."  He chuckled again,
and his face became suddenly youthful, with a roguish eye.  "But yon was
no way o' starting in friendly, was it, Mr. Dent?

"Ay, well, things has gone on like that atween 'em more or less ever
since, and I won't say but Sarah's gitten a bit of her own back when
she's gitten chanst.  Will having all the luck and such-like hasn't made
things better, neither.  Blindbeck's ganged up and Sandholes has ganged
down,--ay, and seems like to hit bottom afore it stops!  Will and me
have hung together all along, but the women have always been at each
other's throats.  It riled Eliza Jim being always at our spot, and
thinking a deal more o' Sarah than he did of her.  Neither on 'em could
break him of it, whatever they said or did.  He always stuck to it
Sandholes was his home by rights."

"Pity the two of them aren't here to help you now," Dent said.  "Those
runabout lads often make fine men."

"Nay, I doubt they've not made much out, anyway round."  Simon shook his
head.  "Likely they're best where they be," he said, as Sarah had said
on the road in.  He sat silent a moment longer for politeness' sake, and
then was stopped again as he rose to go.

"May I enquire what you intend to do when you leave the farm?"

The old man's face had brightened as he talked, but now the shadow came
over it again.

"I can't rightly tell, sir, till I've had a word wi' Will, but anyway
he'll not let us come to want.  He's offered us a home at Blindbeck
afore now, but I reckon his missis'd have summat to say to that.  Ay,
and mine an' all!" he added, with a fresh attempt at a laugh.  "There'd
be lile or nowt done on t'farm, I reckon, if it ever come about.  It'd
take the lot on us all our time to keep them two apart!"

Again, as he finished, he remembered Sarah's eyes, and once again he let
the opportunity pass. He was on his feet now, anxious to get away, and
there seemed little use in prolonging this evil hour.  Mr. Dent would
think they were for ever whingeing and whining and like enough calling
out before they were hurt....  He moved hurriedly to the door, conscious
of a sense of relief as well as of loss, and Sarah's eyes missed their
final chance of getting into the talk....

"You're likely throng, sir," he finished, "and I'll not keep you."  He
put a hand to the latch.  "Anyway, you'll kindly take it as we'll quit
next year."

Dent said--"No, Simon, I shan't do anything of the sort!" and laughed
when the other shot round on him again with open mouth. His expression
was grave, however, as he ended his speech.  "I want you to think it
over a bit first."

Simon felt his head going round for the second time.  The red came into
his thin face.

"I don't rightly know what you're driving at, sir," he said, with a
dignified air.  "I reckon I can give in my notice same as anybody else?"

"Oh, Lord, yes, Simon!  Of course."  Dent's eyes went back to the notes.
"Yes, of course you can."

"Ay, well, then?" Simon demanded stiffly. "What's all this stir?"

"Well, ... it's like this, you see ... you've missed your time.  It was
due a couple of months back, as I said before."

"Ay, but you're not that hard and fast about notice, as a rule!  Tom
Robison did t'same thing last year, you'll think on, and you let it
pass.  Seems to me you're by way of having a joke wi' me, sir," he
added, in a pitiful tone, "and I don't know as it's kind, seeing how I'm
placed."

Dent jumped to his feet and came across to lay a hand on his arm.

"It's only that I've a feeling you'll change your mind, Simon," he said
earnestly, "and you'll be sorry if you've spread it about that you're
going to quit.  A week, say,--a week won't make that much difference,
will it? Can't you let it stand over another week?"

"You said a minute back 'twas a pity we'd stopped so long!  I can't make
out what you're at, Mr. Dent,--I'm danged if I can!"

The agent laughed and left him to stroll back again to the window, where
he stood looking down into the full street.

"Perhaps we're neither of us as clear in our minds as we might be!" he
observed, with a cryptic smile.  "The weather, perhaps; it's only a
dreary day.  I'm not one of the folks who like November grey."

"Tides is big an' all," Simon found himself saying, unable to resist the
lure.  "We've had t'watter up agen t'wall every night this week. Last
night I went out for a look afore it was dark, but it was that thick it
was all I could do to tell it was there at all.  There was just summat
grey-like lifting under my nose; but, by Gox! it was deep enough for all
it was so whyet!"

Dent shivered at the drear little picture which the other had conjured
up.

"I don't know how you sleep," he said, "perched on the edge of things
like that!  It would give me fits to have the sea knocking twice a day
at my back door."

"Ay, it knocks," Simon said slowly, with a thoughtful air.  "There's
whiles you'd fair think it was axing for somebody to come out.... You'll
mind yon time you were near catched by the tide?" he went on, after a
pause.  "Eh, man, but I was in a terble tew yon night!"

"It was my own fault," Dent laughed,--"not that it was any the nicer for
that!  I knew the time of the tide, but I'd forgotten the time of day.
It was a day something like this, much the same dismal colour all
through.  Lord, no!"  He shivered again.  "I've not forgotten, not I!
I'll never forget pounding away from that horrible wave, and finding
myself, quite without knowing it, back below the farm!"

"It was my missis saved you that night," Simon said, "and a near shave
it was an' all! Tide would ha' got you even then if it hadn't been for
her.  We heard you hollerin' and came out to look, but we couldn't see
nowt, it was that dark.  I thought we'd fancied it like, as we didn't
hear no more, but Sarah wouldn't hear of owt o' the sort.  She would
have it she could see you liggin' at bottom o' t'bank, and she give me
no peace till I'd crammelled down to look."

"Well, you may be sure I'm grateful enough," the agent said, as they
shook hands.  "I wouldn't wish my worst enemy a death like that.  I hope
it's been put to the credit side of her account."

He followed this caller out as he had done the last, and again, leaning
over the railing, he called "Good luck!"  Simon, looking up, full of
resentment, saw the face above him bright with smiles.  He went out with
offended dignity written in every line.




                                PART II

                                 ELIZA



                                   I


It was two o'clock and after before the old folks left Witham.  Simon
had gone to his dinner on quitting the agent, and at his favourite
eating-house he encountered others who wanted the hearse-story at first
hand.  He was not at all averse to talking about it by now, and after a
good dinner it improved with the telling every time.  Once more he
forgot the interview of the morning as well as the coming one in the
afternoon, and stayed smoking and talking and sunning himself in the
fine atmosphere of success.

Sarah, however, had neither pipe nor admiring circle to soothe or
enliven the heavy, dragging hours.  She went into the inn after the
'Ship' dog-cart had rattled off, and tried to gather a little comfort
from the parlour fire; but the glamour of the morning had departed with
May, and now that she was alone she felt depressed and tired.  The
doctor's verdict, which had passed her by at the time, rushed back upon
her, shaking her nerves and chilling her heart.  She began to wonder
what it would be like to be really blind, and in a sudden panic she made
a strained attempt to discern the pictures and almanacks in the room,
tracing the patterns of the antimacassars with a shaking finger, and the
shapes of the chair-backs and table-legs.  When she was really blind,
Simon would have to do for her instead of her doing for him, but he
would only make a poorish job of it, she felt sure.  There would still
be plenty for both of them to do, in spite of the fact that 'things had
come to an end.'  There were the long winter months to be got through
before they left, as well as the work and worry of changing house.  May
would help her, no doubt; she could always count on May; but she knew
that she did not want to owe her more than she could help.  It was
partly a new uprising of dead jealousy, of course, as well as pride
refusing dependence upon one who did not belong.  But at the back of all
there was a more just and generous motive than either of these,--the
consciousness that May had given too much already, and should not be
called upon for more. Months ahead though it lay, she began presently to
think a woman's thoughts about the breaking-up of the home.  Little as
they possessed of any value in itself, there would be many things, she
knew, that they would want to keep.  There were certain things,
expensive to renew, which still had a flicker of useful life, and
others, useless to others as well as themselves, which were yet bone of
their bone and flesh of their ancient flesh.  She began to make a list
in her head, and to value the furniture as well as she knew how.  She
had been to many a sale in her time, and had a sufficiently good memory
of what the things had fetched, as well as of whose house had eventually
raked them in. She saw Sandholes full of peering and poking folk, a
chattering crowd stretching into the garden and yard, and forming a
black procession along the roads of the marsh.  She saw traps and heavy
carts and laden human beings slowly departing with the stuff of her
human life, while the shreds that were left to her, piled and roped on a
waiting lorry, looked poorer than ever in the light of day.  She saw the
garden gravel printed by many boots, and the yard trenched and crossed
by wheels.  She saw the windows open in a house from which nobody
looked, and scrubbed, bare floors which seemed to have forsworn the
touch of feet.  She saw the lorry pass reluctantly away into the great,
homeless place that was the world.  And last of all she saw herself and
Simon shutting the door that finally shut them out.  There was all the
difference in ten thousand worlds between the sound of a door that was
shutting you in and the sound of the same door shutting you out....

She had always been a still woman, when she had had time to be still,
but she found it impossible to be still to-day.  She began to walk up
and down, listening for Simon's voice, and in the strange room she hurt
herself against the furniture, and received little shocks from the cold
surface of strange objects and the violent closing-up of the walls.  She
gave it up after a while, forcing herself to a stand, and it was so that
Simon found her when he opened the door at last.

She had a further wait, however, when he found that the trap had managed
to oust the car from the coveted place.  At first he was rather afraid
that the hearse-story had earned him too many drinks, but even to
marketing eyes the fact was plain.  He chuckled as he walked from one to
the other, saying "Gox!" and "Did ye ever now?" and "Losh save us!" and
"Wha'd ha' thowt it!"  The driver was not to be seen, or the wait might
have been longer still, but as it was they were mounted presently on the
emaciated seats, and Simon jerked up the horse in a last spasm of
victorious glee.

For some miles he talked of nothing but the sensation that he had caused
in Witham, and how he had found the hearse-story everywhere in the town.

"I'd nobbut to turn a corner," he announced proudly, though pretending
disgust, "but sure an' certain there'd be somebody waiting to tax me on
t'far side!  There was Burton, and Wilson, and Danny Allen and a deal
more, all on 'em ready wi'--'Well, Simon, and what about yon hearse?'  I
could see 'em oppenin' their mouths half a street off!" he chuckled
loudly.  "Folk clipped me by t'arm and begged me tell 'em how it was,
and t'others rushed out o' shops and fair fell on me as I ganged by!"

"They mun ha' been terble hard set for summat to do," Sarah answered
unkindly. "What did you make out wi' Mr. Dent?"

At once the shadow fell again on the fine sun of Simon's success.

"Nay, you may well ax," he growled, "but I'm danged if I rightly know!
He was that queer there was no doing owt wi' him at all. Seemed to be
thinking o' summat else most o' the time,--gaping out at winder and
smiling at nowt.  He was a deal queerer nor me, hearse or no hearse, and
so I tell ye!"

"But you give notice in, didn't you?  You likely got that fixed?"

"Well, I did and I didn't, after a manner o' speaking.  I kept handing
it in like, and he kept handing it back.  He said we'd best take a bit
more time to think."

"We've had time and plenty, I'm sure!" Sarah sighed,--"ay, that we have!
... I reckon you tellt him about my eyes?"

Simon stirred uneasily when she mentioned her eyes, remembering how they
had played in and out of his mind, but never once managed to come to the
front.

"Nay, then, I didn't, if you want to know, because I never gitten
chanst.  I didn't rightly know what to say, neither, come to that.  You
catched doctor right enough, I suppose?"

"Ay, we hadn't to wait or owt.  And he was right kind, he was that!"

"Happen he hadn't a deal to say, after all?" Simon enquired hopefully,
and she gave a faint laugh.

"Nobbut that if I didn't have an operation right off, I'd be as blind as
a barn-door owl by next year!"

Simon said "Gox!" and jerked the horse so violently that it nearly went
through the hedge. "Losh, missis, that's bad!" he went on dismally, when
he had straightened out.  "It's worse than I looked for, by a deal.
I've always been terble feared of operations and such-like. What's to be
done about it, d'ye think?"

"Nowt."

"Nay, but dang it!" he cried sharply,--"we can't leave it like yon!  If
there's owt they can do for you, we mun let them try. They say some folk
come out right enough, wi' a bit o' luck."

"Luck isn't much in our way, I doubt," she said, with a sigh, "and it'd
mean begging o' somebody, I reckon, and I've had enough o' that.  May
says there's free spots for such as us, but there's not that much free
in this world as I've ever seen.  I doubt it'd mean somebody's brass or
other going to pay for it in the end."

"I could ax Will----" Simon began hurriedly, without pausing to think,
but she stopped him before the well-known formula was out.

"Nay, then, master, you'll do nowt o' the sort, so that's all there is
about it!  You're his brother, and you've a right to do as you choose,
but I'll never take a penny piece from him if it's nobbut for myself."

"He'd have his hand in his pocket for you right off.  He's never been
close about brass and suchlike, hasn't Will."

"Ay, but it's Eliza's brass as well, you'll think on, and she's close,
right enough!  She'd see me blind and on t'streets afore she'd lift a
hand, and if happen she did lift it, I'd strike it down!  Nay, master,
you can ax what you like for yourself, but you'll ax nowt for me.  As
for the farm and Mr. Dent, we're bound to get shot of it now, whatever
happens.  The sooner things is fixed the better I'll be suited, so I'll
thank you to get 'em seen to as soon as you can."

"'Tisn't my fault they're not fixed this very minute!" Simon grumbled,
feeling hardly used.... "Did you happen across Eliza in Witham?" he
asked her suddenly, after a while.

Sarah laughed faintly again, though this time it was an echo of triumph.

"We'd a few words together in t'caif," she answered tranquilly, "and wi'
a few folks looking on an' all.  She was setting it round we were broke,
and had gitten the sack, and a deal more; but I reckon I give her summat
to bite on afore I was through....  Seems as if you an' me had been
having a sort o' side-show," she finished, with a grim smile.  "Ay,
well, we've given Witham summat to crack about, if we've never done nowt
else...."

Their minds had been full of Eliza as they drove to market, and now they
were busy turning her over in their minds again.  Sarah's account of her
splendid effort cheered and uplifted them for a while, but they knew
only too well that their sense of superiority would not last.  Even
their victories, ever so dearly bought, turned to Eliza's advantage in
the end. Life was on the side of Eliza, for whom all things were certain
to work out well.  Heaven was on the side of Eliza, whose face had never
registered a single memory of pain.  The Simon Thornthwaites never got
over the feeling that somehow she had played them false, had wheedled by
undue influence the balance of justice off the straight.  Alone, they
were able to see some dignity in their tragic lives, but once with Eliza
they were suddenly cheap,--mere poor relations fawning at her skirts.
They saw themselves framed as such in her mocking eyes, and felt for the
moment the shameful thing they seemed.

She mocked them,--that was the evil thing she did; that petty, insidious
crime which human nature finds so difficult to forgive. Mockery by
comparison was her method, and one which was almost impossible to fight.
In all that Eliza said and did, by her attitude and her dress, she
invited the world to mark the incredible gulf that yawned between the
Simon Thornthwaites and the Wills.  She had made her opening point on
the double wedding-day, though the actual cause of the enmity lay
further back than that.  Eliza, indeed, had intended to marry Simon and
not Will,--Simon, the elder, the better-looking, and even the smarter in
those far-off days.  But in this, at least, Sarah had won the fall, and
Eliza had never recovered from her surprise.  From that moment the
spoilt beauty had seen in the other's plain person an opponent worthy of
her steel, an antagonist whom it would take her all her life to down.
Sneer and strike as she might, she could never be quite sure that she
had finally got home, and in mingled inquisitiveness and wrath she
sneered and struck again.  There must be an end sometime to this spirit
that would not break, but even after forty years there was little sign.
Something deathless in Sarah rose up again after every stroke, and was
always left standing erect when her world was in the dust.

Sarah thought of her wedding-day as they drove through the torpid
afternoon, and under the low sky that was shut over the earth like a
parsimonious hand.  The wedding-day had been soft and sunny and sweet,
with a high blue sky that looked empty from zone to zone, until, looking
up until you were almost blind, you saw that you stared through layer
upon layer of tender-coloured air.  The mountains had been like that,
too, clear yet vapour-veiled, and even the blue of the sea had been just
breathed upon as well.  It was a real bridal day, with its hint of
beauty only just withheld, its lovely actual presences that still
dropped curtains between. The earth-veils had had nothing in common with
Eliza's flaunting mockery of a veil, nor was there anything in common
between the mysteries behind.  The strong mountain was more subtle and
shy than Eliza, the terrible sea more tender, the great sky with its
hidden storms more delicate and remote.  Eliza's bold and confident
beauty had clashed with them as a brass band clashes with a stretching,
moonlit shore.  It was for Sarah in her stiff straw bonnet and brown
gown that the bridal veils of the world had been sweetly worn.

She had thought herself neat and suitable when she looked in the glass,
and had found it enough, because all her instincts were neat and plain.
It was a cruel irony of fate that had forced her into a morbid,
passionate groove. In those days she had never as much as heard of
obsessions of the mind, and would not have believed they could touch
her, if she had.  She had asked nothing of life but that it should be
clean and straight, and still found it hard to believe in the shadowed,
twisted thing which it had proved.

Her parents had died before Simon had made her a home, so she had gone
out to service and had been married from her 'place.'  She found him
waiting when she went downstairs, in clothes as neat and suitable as her
own, and he had given her a bunch of lilies of the valley, and a little
Prayer Book with a brown back.  They had always been matter-of-fact as
lovers, and they were very matter-of-fact now, but Sarah, from this
far-off distance, knew that, after all, they had not missed the thrill.
Even in the small-windowed, silent house that had a maiden lady for
tenant there was a touch of the exquisite thing,--the same delicate
rapture that was spreading its diaphanous wings over the coloured sea
and land....

They walked to church by the path across the fields, and the cattle
raised their heads to look at Simon's suitable clothes, and the inch of
escaped ribbon frisking on Sarah's suitable bonnet.  They went
arm-in-arm through the still churchyard, where their forefathers, lying
together, saw nothing strange in this new conjunction of old names; and
arm-in-arm up the empty aisle towards the cave of the chancel that had
the flower of its rose window set in it like a jewelled eye.  Their
boots sounded terribly loud on the uncarpeted tiles, and they trod on
tiptoe when they crossed the stones of the vaults, because the names
looking up seemed somehow to turn into the uplifted faces of the
prostrate dead. And presently the stone of the chancel-steps had stopped
them as with a bar, bidding them think, in that last moment, whether the
feet of their purpose had been rightly set.

They felt very small as they waited among the climbing pillars and under
the spring of the groined roof, smaller and smaller as the unmarked
minutes passed and nobody came.  A shaft of light from the clerestory
touched them like the point of a sacrificial knife, showing their faces
humble and patient and a little too anxious to be glad.  A bird flashed
in through the open chancel-door, sat for a moment on the altar-rail and
sang, and then caught sight of the sunlit country and flashed out again.
It had not even seen the waiting couple who were so very quiet and so
terribly small.  And then, just as they were at their smallest, the
Pageant of Eliza had swept in.

There were many to tell them afterwards of the sensation in the village
when Eliza in gorgeous apparel had come driving with trampling horses to
the old lych-gate.  At the sound of the horses' hoofs and the first
flash of the veil the houses had emptied themselves as a teapot empties
itself when you tilt the spout.  Veils were the prerogative of the
'quality' in those days, and that in itself was sufficient to make a
stir.  In a moment there were groups on the green, children running up
the street and folk pressing into the churchyard, and in a moment more
the veiled yet flaunting figure had passed into the church, an
over-rigged ship up the straight estuary of the aisle.

Behind Simon and Sarah the place was suddenly full of noise, whispering
and shuffling and treading of heavy feet, and the ringing of nailed
boots on the smooth tiles.  Presently all that had been inside the
church had gone out as if swept by a broom, and all that had been
outside had come in with a blatant rush, filling it with curious faces
and crowded bodies and suppressed laughter and muttered speech.  Into
the quiet hour that had been meant for Simon and Sarah alone, Eliza came
full tilt with a tumult of sight-seers in her train.  Not for her was
the peace between the springing pillars which rent before her like a
curtain rent by hands.  She trod with bold, self-satisfied strides over
the dead faces which to her were only names.  She created a vulgar
raree-show out of the simple blessing of a tranquil God.

Only outside the sea and the mountains kept their mystery till the knot
was tied.  The sacred hour of Simon and Sarah was withdrawn silently
into higher courts.

All that was human in Sarah, however, remained at the mercy of the
broken hour below. Now and then she caught a glimpse of Eliza's face
through the veil, or a gleam of her shining gown as she twisted and
turned.  She thought to herself savagely that Eliza looked a fool, but
that did not prevent her from feeling, by contrast, a fool, too.  Even
Will, shy and ashamed, but tricked out in unaccustomed gauds, helped to
point the comparison between the pairs.  She remembered how her cheeks
had burned and her heart battered and her knees shook, while she
strained her ears for the least sign of mirth from the crowded pews
behind.  The whole parody of her precious hour was bitter beyond words,
but it was the mocking distinction in clothes that went furthest home.
For the rest of her life Sarah was sharply conscious of all that Eliza
wore, and hated it right to the sheep that had carried the wool on its
innocent back, and the harmless cotton-plant that had grown for her
unaware.

Eliza sailed down the aisle again amid giggles and loud asides, but
Simon and Sarah crept quietly out of the church by the door through
which the singing-bird had flown.  They stood in the grass among the
rose-bushes on the graves, and watched Eliza drive triumphantly away.
The parson followed them out to make a kindly speech, which they were
far too angry and humiliated to hear.  He wanted to tell them that God
had certainly liked them best, but he knew they would not believe him if
he did. They were so certain that it was Eliza who had had the beautiful
hour.  They were too simple to know that it was only they who had any of
the beauty to carry home....




                                   II


All their lives Simon and Sarah had been the victims of Eliza's Method.
Nothing they had, horse, cow or cart, but was sooner or later measured
by Blindbeck standards and condemned.  Their furniture figured in
Eliza's talk as often as her own,--their humble horsehair abased by her
proud plush, her stout mahogany lording it over their painted deal. They
had scarcely a cup or plate, hay-crop, dog or friend, but it was flung
in the scale and instantly kicked the beam.  People grew tired of
Eliza's Method after a while, but long before they had ceased to enjoy
it its work was done. By that time they knew to the last inch exactly
how the Simon Thornthwaites had fallen behind the Wills.  The Simons
were stamped in their eyes as poor relations to the end of time, and
they treated them differently, spoke to them casually, and as often as
not forgot that they were there.  But Simon and Sarah did not forget, or
cease to notice, or cease to be hurt.  Always they felt pilloried by
Eliza's blatant cry,--"Look here, upon this picture, and on this!"

Only in one respect had Sandholes and the Simons ever managed to hold
their own.  Simon's son had been every whit as fine as Will's, for all
the wooden spoon that was hanging over his cradle.  It was true that
more and more children came to Blindbeck, passing Sandholes by, but that
was nothing to Sarah as long as Geordie was at hand.  Geordie alone
seemed more than sufficient to right them in the eyes of an
Eliza-magicked world.  He was a rattlehorn and a limb, but he had stuff
in him, all the same, and sooner or later he would prove that stuff to
the world and the lordly Wills.  All the working and scraping of those
years went to the one passionate purpose of doing Eliza down.  Those
were the happiest years of Sarah's life, because for the time being she
had a weapon against her foe.

Yet even here she found herself mocked by the amazing likeness between
the brothers' sons.  It had an uncanny effect upon her, as of something
not quite human, even, indeed, as if there were something evil at its
back. She had an uneasy feeling that, in some mysterious way, this was
still another expression of Eliza's malice.  The pride of stock in Simon
and Will was stirred by this double evidence of breed, but Sarah, when
people mistook the lads, was fretted to fierce tears.  There were times
when she even hated the smile on Geordie's lips, because of its exact
similitude on Jim's. Most of all she hated herself when the wrong lad
called and she answered before she knew, or waved to a figure over the
sands, and it came laughing and was not her son....

She had much the same sense of something not quite canny about Jim's
extraordinary passion for Sandholes and herself.  It was almost, indeed,
as if she feared it, as if she knew that in the future it might do her
harm. Even she was not always proof against his laughing, kindly ways,
and nothing but some such fear of a clutching love could have made her
steel her heart.  Through all her absorption in her splendid Geordie she
could not help guessing at the greater depths in Jim.  Geordie had yet
to learn in exile what Jim had learned on the very threshold of his
home.  She remembered nursing him through an illness much against her
will, and even now she could not shed that clinging memory and its
appeal....

It was perhaps because of this hidden terror that she never used his
affection for her against his mother.  She was often tempted to do so,
for Eliza was sore in spite of her loud denials, and when the Method was
hard at work on the furniture or the crops it would have been pleasant
to give her news--and generally none too pleasing news--of Jim.  Often
enough the words were on her tongue, but she never spoke them.  Always
something held her back from taking this easy means to strike.

Her ironic reward, however, was such as might well have made her think
herself bewitched, for even out of her self-denial it was Eliza who
gathered triumph.  As time went on, and more and more lads appeared at
Blindbeck, she deftly changed her tactics by a single twist of the
wheel.  She handed over to Sandholes, as it were, the one member of the
Blindbeck family that did not come up to Blindbeck standards.  Not that
she ever said as much in words, or relinquished any claim that was
likely to be of use.  She merely contrived to convey the impression that
he belonged by nature more to the Have-Nots than the Haves, to the
penniless Simons rather than the wealthy Wills.  The impression
hardened, however, after the lads had run away, and Jim had finally
nailed his sympathies to the mast.  His father, indeed, did not give him
up without a struggle, but Eliza became ever more detached from the
wastrel who was her son.  Smilingly, so to speak, she dropped her thumbs
and let him go.  It was not long before strangers were thinking him
Simon's son instead of Will's, and presently even Sarah awoke to the
fact that she was saddled with the Blindbeck failure as well as her own.

It was a smug young cousin of Eliza's who finally opened her eyes, at
one of those family feasts which Simon and Sarah were always expected to
attend.  Eliza was never at her brightest and best without them, as she
very rightly said,--the organ-grinder without his necessary monkey, the
circus-master without his jumping clown.  As usual, the Simon
Thornthwaites heard their belongings catalogued and found utterly
wanting, and, as usual, for the time being, shared the general sentiment
that they were beneath scorn.  The comparisons, passing in and out of
shippon and parlour, leaping from feather-bed to sofa, and over
root-crops and stacks of hay, arrived finally at the missing sons.

"Our Harry's for learning the violin," Eliza informed the tea-party,
swelling with conscious pride.  "Master wouldn't hear tell o' such a
thing at first, but me and the girls talked him round between us.  I
reckon he'll be suited all right, though, when he hears our Harry play.
Ah, now, Sarah, but wouldn't that ha' been just the thing for
Geordie-an'-Jim?  They were that fond o' music, the poor lads, though
they'd no more tune to the pair on 'em than a steam-whistle.  Eh, well,
poor things, fiddle-playing and suchlike wouldn't ha' been no use to 'em
where they're at.  Brass wasted, that's what it would ha' been, so it's
just as well...."

Harry, also swelling with pride, looked for some sign of admiration from
his aunt, but did not get it.  Eliza soothed him with a meaning glance.

"The trouble is you've got to keep your hands terble nice for the
violin.  Our Harry's terble set on keeping his hands nice....
Geordie-an'-Jim would never ha' come to such-like quality ways, would
they, Sarah?  I never see such hands as the two on 'em used to show at
meals!  I mind you said they got sent home that often from school, at
last the folks took to washing 'em on the spot!  I used to be right
sorry for you, Sarah, I was that, wi' their gert finger-marks all over
the walls and the chair-backs.  It's queer how different folk shape, I'm
sure, even when they're as you might say near-bred.  Our Harry frames
rarely at folding tablecloths and the like, and no more dirt to 'em when
he's finished than if he was a lass!"

The town-bred cousin gazed complacently at his hands, and observed that,
if Geordie-an'-Jim were in Canada, as he understood, from all accounts
it was much the best place for them. Eliza nodded lugubriously, the tail
of her eye on Sarah's unstirred face.

"Ay, they're in Canada right enough, and like to be,--aren't they,
Sarah?--for a goodish while yet.  They wrote home as they'd sworn to
make their fortunes afore they crossed the pond again, but fortunes
isn't as easy come by as some folk seem to think.  Me and Will likely
know as much about it as most, having managed middlin' well, but even
for the best o' folk it isn't as simple as it sounds.  There's always
somebody at you one way or another, wanting to share what you've earned
wi' your own hands. You've just got to keep lifting your feet right high
off the ground, or you'll have folk hanging on to your shoe-wangs all
the time.  Ay, Geordie-an'-Jim'll find as fortunes don't come that slape
off the reel!  'Tisn't as if it was our Harry and Tom here, ay, and Bill
and Fred an' all, as'll find everything ready for 'em when they want to
start on their own.  They'll step into good farms as if it was stepping
out o' bed, and they'll have Blindbeck behind them and its brass as
well.  They'll have a bit o' their own, come to that; I started 'em
saving-books myself.  Eh, yes, they'll do right well, but I doubt
there's never farm nor Post Office book as'll come to Geordie-an'-Jim!"

Later in the day, the smug cousin, trying to be kind, had enquired of
Sarah whether Geordie-an'-Jim were twins.  She was too angry at first to
answer him at all, and by the time she managed to get her breath her
mood had changed.  They were alone at the time, and even Sarah could
sometimes laugh at herself when Eliza was out of sight.  The touch of
humour freed her heart for an instant, and at once it rose up and stood
by the lad whose mother had cast him off.  Jim was suddenly before her,
with his tricks of affection and his borrowed face, his constant cry
that he had only been born at Blindbeck by mistake.  "I'm your lad,
really, Aunt Sarah," she heard him saying, as of old.  "I'm your lad
really, same as Geordie is!"  Jim was forty by now, but it was a child's
voice that she heard speaking and couldn't deny.  The cousin repeated
his question, and she smiled grimly.

"Twins?  Ay ... and as like as a couple o' peas.  As like as a couple o'
gulls on the edge o' the tide...."

It was the only time in her life that she ever stood openly by Eliza's
hated son.  But perhaps even that one occasion may count in the final
sum of things....




                                  III


Now they had left the high-road and were making south-east through the
winding lanes.  Their shoulders were turned to the sea, though in that
lost world of the mist only the native could tell where the bay was
supposed to lie.  It was one of the dead hours, too, when even the salt
goes out of the marsh-air, and no pulse in it warns you subconsciously
of the miracle coming.  Between the high-mounted hedges it was still and
close, and beyond them the land rose until its dank green surface stood
soft against the sky.  All the way Simon looked at the land with a
critical eye, the eye of the lover which loves and asks at the same
time. He looked at the ploughland and knew the rotation through which it
had run and would have to run again; at rich grass-land which seemed
never to have known the steel, and fields which, at rest for a hundred
years, still spoke to some long-rusted share.  He loved it, but he
thought of it first and foremost as good material for the good workman
engaged on the only job in the world.  It was always the land that he
coveted when he came to Blindbeck, never the house.  Eliza had made of
the house a temple to the god of Blessed Self-Satisfaction, but even
Eliza could not spoil the honest, workable land.

The farm kept showing itself to them as they drove, a quadrangle of
long, well-kept buildings backed by trees.  When the sun shone, the
white faces of house and shippon looked silver through the peeping-holes
of the hedge, but to-day they were wan and ghostly in the deadening
mist.  The turned beeches and chestnuts were merely rusty, instead of
glowing, and seemed to droop as if with the weight of moisture on their
boughs.  The Scotch firs on a mound alone, stark, straight, aloof, had
more than ever that air of wild freedom which they carry into the tamest
country; and the pearly shadow misting their green alike in wet weather
or in dry, was to-day the real mist, of which always they wear the other
in remembrance.

The farm had its back well into the grassy hill, and the blind river
which gave it its name wound its way down to it in a hidden channel and
went away from it in a hidden dip in a field below.  There was water
laid on at Blindbeck, as Sarah knew, with a copper cylinder in a special
linen-room, and a hot towel-rail and a porcelain bath.  Simon's
particular envy was the electric light, that marvel of marvels on a
northern farm.  He never got over the wonder of putting his hand to the
switch, and seeing the light flash out on the second to his call.  Once
he had sneaked out of the house on a winter's night, and in the great
shippon had turned the lights on full.  Eliza, of course, had been nasty
about it when she heard, but Will had understood him and had only
laughed.  Later, swinging a lantern in his own dark shippon, Simon had
thought of those switches with envious longing.  He did not know that
they had taken the warm glamour out of the place, and slain in a blow
the long tradition of its beauty.  The lantern went with him like a
descended star as he moved about, and out of the cattle's breath wove
for itself gold-dusted halos.  There had been something precious about
it all before, some sense of mystery and long-garnered peace, but
to-night he could only remember Blindbeck and its modern toy.  For the
time being he ceased to feel the pull of the sweetest chain in the
world, which runs straight back through all the ages to the Child in the
Bethlehem Stall.... There was a billiard-table at Blindbeck, too, with
more switches to tempt Simon, and a well-laid tennis-lawn in the neat
garden by the stream.  On the far side of the farm was a great highway
running north and south, as well as a main-line station over the drop of
the hill.  It seemed as if everything was made easy for those who lived
at Blindbeck, from the washing of pots and the moving of stock to the
amusement and education of the bairns.

Folk who came to Blindbeck for the first time believed that at last they
had found the farm of all their dreams.  They called it an Earthly
Paradise, a model miniature village, a moral object-lesson, a True Home.
They came to it between well-cropped fields, marked by trim hedges and
neat stone walls, and through uniformly painted gates secure in hinge
and hasp into a tidy yard.  They looked with pleasure at the shining
knocker on the green house-door and the fruit tree lustily climbing the
warm south wall.  They looked with delight at the healthy, handsome
family, the well-placed buildings and the show of pedigree stock. They
looked at Will as he went shyly by, and said that his wife was
undoubtedly the better horse.  They looked at Eliza and said that she
was the Housewife of Romance.  When they went away they told others of
this Paradise which was Blindbeck, and the others came in their turn and
looked and said the same.  But to Simon and Sarah it was plain Purgatory
and nothing else, and with each gate that they loosed they unloosed a
devil as well.

There was a party at Blindbeck this afternoon, as long custom might have
led them to expect.  It was part of Eliza's Method to gather a party
together when the poor relations were due.  There was always a noisy
crowd, it seemed to the Simons, when they were tired, or when they had
any particular business to transact. On the day after the lads had flown
there had been an unusually large crowd, with faces that looked like
masks to the parents' tired eyes.... Will was fond of young folk, and
made no objection to the stream of 'company' passing beneath his roof.
His shy, quiet eyes watched the young tide of life surging ahead, with
Eliza floundering like a porpoise in its midst.  He was content only to
watch, but he was not stranded, like the thirsty Simons; the waves still
lapped about his feet.  He could see youth and the pride of youth
without the sense of desolation which embittered his brother and took
his brother's wife by the throat.  Simon was always surly when he came
to Blindbeck, while Sarah was like a bomb in the hand which any
unconscious soul might throw.  Will did not know that for them every lad
that they looked at should have been Geordie, and each lass a lass of
their own with Geordie's face.  He was sorry and sympathetic, but he did
not know those things.  It was Eliza who knew, and used the knowledge
for her private ends.  You could always be sure that Eliza knew where
your hidden things were kept.

To-day, tired as they were with the hours in town, and already reacting
from their great decision, a jovial party seemed more than they could
stand.  Signs of it reached them as they came to the last gate, making
Sarah draw in her lips and Simon scowl.  The sounds seemed intensified
by the stillness of the day, crossing and jarring the mood of Nature as
well as that of the approaching guests.  Faces were pressed to panes as
they rattled up, but nobody came out to give Sarah a hand down, or to
offer to help Simon with the horse.  They were too common a sight to
arouse any interest or even courtesy in that house.

She climbed down gropingly, and he led the horse away, leaving her
standing, waiting, in the empty yard.  She stood with her back turned to
the kitchen window, conscious, though she could not see them, of the
eyes that were raking her shabby figure through the glass.  The sounds
of merriment burst out afresh, and she winced a little, though she did
not move.  They were laughing at her, she felt sure, but there was
nothing new to that.  They often laughed, she knew, since she had ceased
to be able to stop them with a glance.  She shivered, standing there,
and her bones ached with the damp, but she was in no hurry to enter the
warm, crowded room.  It was better to shiver in the coldest spaces of
earth than to be shut into Heaven itself with Eliza and her tongue.

The green house-door with its brass knocker was close at her left hand,
but she did not attempt to open it and go in.  That was a privilege only
accorded to the rich and proud, not to a poor relation come to beg.
Nevertheless, it was one of her hidden dreams that someday she would
enter by that grand front-door. In the Great Dream Geordie came home
with a fortune in his hands, so that all doors, even the Door of
Blindbeck, instantly stood wide.  They would drive up to it in a smart
cart behind a fast young horse, with Geordie, a pattern of fashion,
holding the reins.  His mother would be beside him, of course, in
crackling silk, with a velvet mantle and a bonnet of plumes and jet.
Simon, the lesser glory, would have to sit behind, but even Simon would
be a sight for Blindbeck eyes.  When the Dream came true, the house
could be as full of pryers as it chose, with crushed noses and faces
green with envy set like bottle-ends in every pane.  The farm-men would
come to the doors and gape, and even the dogs would stop to sniff at so
much that was new.  Geordie would jump down, reins in hand, and bang the
brass knocker until it shook the house, while Sarah, secure in the
presence of her golden lad, would sit aloft and aloof like any other
silken queen.  Soon they would hear Eliza's step along the sacred,
oil-clothed passage; and she, when she opened the door, would see their
glory framed beyond. Sarah would throw her a graceful word, asking leave
to step inside, and climb down with a rustle of silk on the arms of her
husband and son.  She would set her feet on the snowy steps and never as
much as trouble to look for a mat. With a smile she would offer her
hostess a kindly, kid-gloved hand.  In the whole armour of the
successful mother she would bear down upon her foe....

It was one of those things that seem as if they might happen so easily,
and never do,--never do.  Simon returned presently, accompanied by Will,
and they entered the house as usual through the old stone porch.  No dog
even looked aside at them as they crossed to the kitchen door.  No
portent of coming wonder shed a sudden sunlight on the day.  The old
trap was tipped on its shafts behind a sheltering wall.  The old horse,
himself mere waiting food for the nearest hounds, munched his way
happily through his feed of Blindbeck corn.

Will talked shyly as he led the way, trying to brighten the melancholy
pair.

"You must have a sup o' tea before we get to business," he said to his
brother, "and Sarah can rest herself while we have our crack. We're over
soon wi' tea to-day, but I reckon you won't mind that.  You'll be tired
likely, and it's none so warm.  I'll be bound Simon'll have a thirst on
him anyway!" he smiled to Sarah.  "He's done a deal o' tattling, Simon
has, to-day!"

He could not get any response from them, however; indeed, they scarcely
seemed to hear. The fear of Eliza was upon them, that was always so
strong until they were actually in her presence, the same fear that had
sent them scuttling like scared rabbits out of the Witham inn. Sarah was
struggling with the usual jealous ache as they entered the spacious,
cleanly place, with the kindly smell of new-baked bread filling the
whole house.  She knew as well as the mistress where the kitchen things
were kept, the special glories such as the bread-maker, the
fruit-bottler, and the aluminium pans.  The Blindbeck motto had always
been that nothing beats the best.  Half her own tools at home were
either broken or gone, and there was only a blind woman to make shift
with the rest as well as she could.  Little need, indeed, for a great
array, with the little they had to cook; and little heart in either
cooking or eating since Geordie had gone away....

Will opened the door of the main kitchen, and at once the warmth and
jollity sweeping out of it smote the shrinking visitors like an actual
blast.  The party were already at table, as he had said, and met the
late-comers with a single, focussed stare.  It was one of their chief
bitternesses, indeed, that they always seemed to arrive late.  Eliza was
at the back of it, they felt almost sure, but they had never been able
to discover how.  No matter how they hurried the old horse, asked the
hour of passers-by, or had Simon's old watch put as right as it would
allow, they never seemed to arrive at the right time.  They could not be
certain, of course, that she had watched for them from upstairs, and at
the first sign of their coming had hustled the party into tea, but
somehow or other they knew it in their bones.  Things happened like
that, they would have told you, when you were up against Mrs. Will;
things that never by any chance would have happened with anybody else.

The room was cloudy to Sarah as she went in, but jealousy had long ago
printed its details on her mind.  She knew what the vivid wall-paper was
like, the modern furniture and the slow-combustion grate.  Once it had
been a beautiful old houseplace with a great fire-spot and a crane, an
ingle-nook, a bacon-loft, and a chimney down which both sun and moon
could slant a way.  Eliza, however, had soon seen to it that these
absurdities were changed, and Sarah, though she affected contempt,
approved of the changes in her heart.  It was true that she always
returned to Sandholes with a great relief, but she did not know that its
bare austerity soothed her finer taste.  She only knew that her mind
expanded and her nerves eased, and, though grief went with her over
every flag and board, a cool hand reached to her forehead as she went
in.

Simon included in one surly glance the faces round the loaded table, the
bright flowers, the china with the gilded rim, and the new
window-curtains which he would never even have seen in any house but
this.  "Plush, by the look on 'em, and the price of a five pun note!" he
thought resentfully, as he stood waiting to be given a place, and
wondering which of the people present he disliked the most.  There were
the two Swainson lasses from the nearest farm, with their young duke of
a brother, who was in a Witham bank.  There was a Lancashire youth whom
Will had taken as pupil, and Stephen Addison and his missis, who were
both of them preaching-mad.  He held forth at chapel and she at
Institute meetings and the like, and folk said they kept each other
awake at nights, practising which of them could do it best.  There was
Sam Battersby of Kitty Fold, who never knew where his own heaf ended and
other people's began, and the familiar smug cousin, long since formally
pledged to Eliza's eldest lass.  There was a grandchild or two, and of
course the Blindbeck brood, with the exception of a couple of married
daughters and the obliterated Jim....  It was small wonder, indeed,
that, after all those years, nobody missed him in that upcoming crowd.

Eliza's hearty voice, that was never hearty at core, rose like a
strong-winged, evil bird at the unwanted guests.  The sight of them
seemed to surprise her so much that she dropped a gold-rimmed cup.

"Surely to goodness, Simon and Sarah, yon's never you!  I'd give you up
an hour back or more, I had indeed.  You've been a terble while on
t'road, surely,--a terble while after us? But there,--I always forget
how fast yon grand little mare of ours gets over t'ground!  You'd need
to start sooner than most folk wi' your poor old crock."

She broke off to throw a remonstrance at Will, who was bundling two of
his daughters out of their seats to make room for their uncle and aunt.

"Nay, now, Will," she called vexedly down the table.  "What d'ye think
you're at?  Leave t'lasses alone, can't you?  Let the poor things be!
If it's a chair you're wanting, there's one here by me as'll suit Sarah
just grand.  Sarah can't abide a chair wi' a cane bottom,--says it rubs
her gown.  It's right enough, too, I'm sure, wi' velvet and the
like,--(I made a bonny mess o' yon grand gown I had when Annie Belle was
wed),--but I can't see as it'll do any harm to a bit o' poorish serge.
Anyway, Sarah can have the best plush to set on, if she sets here, and,
as for Simon, you're for ever sticking him where I can't so much as see
the end of his nose!  You're never thinking I'm still sweet on him,
surely," she added, laughing, "or that happen he'll be making sheep's
eyes at me, as he used to do?"

She looked at the young folk, and chuckled and winked, and they nudged
each other and laughed, too.  But Sarah did not laugh as she waited
behind the chairs, or Simon, red to the ears, and recalling the
machinations of Eliza's youth.  He pushed one of his nieces roughly out
of his way and took her place, while Sarah went slowly to seat herself
on the red plush chair that was warranted not to hurt her poor patched
gown.

"I hope there's summat for you, I'm sure!" Eliza went on, when the
giggling and whispering had died down, and Simon's thin cheeks had lost
their furious red.  She cast an anxious glance down the well-filled
table, but her tone was complacency itself.  "Folks as come late can't
expect to find everything just so.... Ay, I give you up a long while
back.  Sally here'll tell you I give you up.  'Sally,' I says to her,
'likely yon old horse'll be put to it to do the extra bit, and so
they've happen thought better on't, and gone straight home.  You're that
used to good horses, Sally,' I says, 'you don't rightly know how poor
folks has to shift. Not but what they'll get a deal better tea here than
they will at home, Sally,' I says, 'and though I says it as shouldn't,
that's the truth! Ay, they'll come to tea, I'll be bound, Sally,' I
says, but I changed my mind when I thought on the old horse."

Sarah said nothing in reply to this, partly because her brain was
swimming with the heat of the room, but chiefly because she never did
say anything until Eliza was well ahead in the race for speech.  This
particular method helped her to reserve her strength, but at the same
time it deepened the bitterness in her heart.  It would have been better
for both of them if they could have got the inevitable tussle over at
the start; exhaustion on both sides might have brought at least a
pretence at amity in its train. But it had always been Sarah's instinct
to hold herself back, and time had turned the instinct into a fixed
need.  For the moment, at least, her strength was certainly to sit
still.

"I doubt there's no tea for you just this minute, Sarah," Eliza said,
affecting great concern as she lifted the tea-pot lid.  "Sally, my lass,
you'd best see about mashing another pot. There'll be a deal o' folk
sending up for more in a brace o' shakes, and we can't have them saying
they're not as well-tret at Blindbeck as they're used.  Not as anybody's
ever said it yet as I've heard tell, though you never know what folks'll
do for spite.  Most on 'em get through their three cups afore they're
done, and me like as not just barely through my first. Eh, but I used to
be terble bothered, just at the start, keeping folks filled and their
mugs as they rightly should!  You bairns wasn't up then, of course, but
we'd farm-lads in the house, and wi' a rare twist to 'em an' all!  Yon's
a thing you've never been bothered with, Sarah, wi' such a small spot
and lile or nowt in the way o' work. You'd nobbut a couple o' hands at
any time, had you, and not them when you'd Geordie-an'-Jim? You've a
deal to be thankful for, I'm sure, you have that!  You've always been
able to set down comfortable to your meat, instead o' fretting yourself
to skin and bone seeing as other folk had their wants."

Here Mrs. Addison offered to pass her cup, and then thought better of
it, remembering the new brew.  Eliza, however, urged it forward.
Apparently she had discovered concealed virtue under the tea-pot lid.

"Nay, now, Mrs. Addison, there's a sup in the pot yet!  You've no call
to look shy about it,--I wasn't talking at you! ... Pass Mrs. Addison
the cream, Mary Phyllis, and waken up and look sharp about it!
Blindbeck tea's none the worse, I reckon, for a drop o' Blindbeck
cream...."  She returned the cup, smiling benignly, and then pretended
to have lost Sarah and suddenly found her again.  "Losh, Mrs. Simon,
you're that whyet I'd clean forgot you were there!  You'll not want to
be waiting on Sally and the fresh brew.  I'll wet leaves again for you
just to be going on with!"

So Sarah got the bottom of the pot after a little more talk, a hunt for
a clean cup and an address on the value of the spoons.  Half a
cup--consisting chiefly of tea-leaves--was passed to Simon, but was
intercepted on its way by Will.  Simon did not notice the manoeuvre,
being busy glowering at a niece's shoulder turned sulkily on him from
the left; but Eliza saw it from her end of the table and turned an angry
red.  She never forgot Simon's indifference to her as a girl, and would
have made him pay for the insult if she could.  She could not always
reach him, however, because of the family tie which nothing seemed able
to break. But Sarah, at least, it was always consoling to think, could
be made to pay.  There were times when all her reserve could not hide
from a gleeful Eliza that she paid....

So Simon got the new brew without even knowing that it was new, while
Sarah drank the unpleasant concoction that was weak at the top and
bitter as sea-water at the bottom. Sally came in with another great
brown pot, and sat down languidly at her aunt's side.  She and the smug
cousin had been engaged for years, but there seemed little prospect of
the wedding taking place.  She had been a handsome girl, and was good to
look at still, but there were handsomer Thornthwaites growing and grown
up, as apparently the cousin was quick enough to perceive.  To-day he
had found a seat for himself beside Mary Phyllis, who kept glancing
across at her sister with defiant pride.  Sally had a cheap town-look
nowadays, the cousin thought, not knowing that she had assumed it long
ago to please himself.  Now that he was more mature, he preferred the
purer country type of Mary Phyllis, as well as the fresher atmosphere of
her youth. Sally talked to young Swainson, and pretended not to care,
but she was too unhappy to bother about her aunt.  The Simon
Thornthwaites were boring at any time, like most permanently unlucky
people, and to-day she was too worried even to try to be kind.  So
Sarah, after whom she was called, and who was her godmother to boot, got
very little to eat and only the dregs of things to drink; and nobody at
all rose up to deliver her from Eliza.

Mrs. Addison had opened her mouth very impressively more than once, but
it was only now that she got a chance to speak.  In spite of their
boasted fluency, both she and her husband had always to yield the palm
to Mrs. Will.  Mrs. Addison, however, always watched her chance, while
Stephen was simply flabby, and did not try.  She and Eliza in the same
room were like firmly opposing currents, flowing strongly in the same
stream.

"Mr. Addison's to preach at this mission they're having, next week," she
announced proudly.  "There's to be a Service for men only, and our
Stephen's to give 'em a talk.  I won't say but what he'll do as well as
a real minister, even though I do happen to be his wife.  Likely you'll
think on about it, and send some of your lads along, Mrs. Will?"

Eliza was quite unable to conceal her disgust at a distinction achieved
by somebody not her own.

"I'll do my best, I'm sure," she assented casually and without looking
at her, "though I doubt they'll want coaxing a bit wi' a broom-handle or
a clout!"  She disliked being called Mrs. Will, and knew that Mrs.
Addison did it with fell intent.  It was galling to be reminded that, in
spite of his success, Will had still not managed to make himself into
the elder son....  "I can't say they're that set on either church or
chapel unless it's to see a lass," she went on, busy with the cups, "and
I doubt they don't reckon much o' sermons unless they're good.  They've
been better eddicated than most folk, you'll think on, so they're hard
to suit.  'Tisn't likely they could do wi' second-hand preaching from
some as happen never went to school at all."

Mr. A'ddison made a sudden attempt to speak, but choked instead, while
Eliza looked as innocent as a large-sized lamb.

"Ay, I've heard a deal o' sermons as was just waste breath," she went on
kindly, "and that's the truth.  All the same, I'll likely look in at
Mission myself, one o' these days, if I can get away.  I'm always glad
to set still after a hard week, and to get a look at other folks'
jackets and hats.  Not that there's much to crack on at chapel, that
way....  I'm a deal fonder o' church.  I was wed at St. Michael's,
you'll think on,--ay, and Sarah an' all.  Eh, I could laugh even yet at
yon march we stole on her, me an' Will!"

Sally moved impatiently at her aunt's elbow, and muttered something
under her breath.  She was tired of the old story, and disapproved of it
as well.  Sarah had lifted her cup to her lips, but now she set it
down....

Mary Phyllis stopped giggling a moment, and leaned forward to speak.

"I was telling Cousin Elliman about it only this morning," she said
noisily, "and he says it's the funniest thing he ever heard!  I thought
everybody knew about it, but he says he didn't. He said it was real
smart of you, Mother, and he wished he could have been there...."

"I'll be bound Sarah didn't think it smart!" Eliza chuckled, but without
glancing at her victim's face.  She had a trick of discussing people
when they were present, as Sarah knew. She could tell by the trend of
Eliza's voice that she spoke without turning her head.

"Smart?  Nay!  Sarah was real wild, you take my word!  I spoke to her in
t'vestry when the show was through, and she give me a look as was more
like a dog's bite.  Eh, well, I reckon poor Sarah was jealous o' my
gown, seeing her own was nowt to crack on,--and nowt then! I'd always
settled to be real smart when I got wed, and my own lasses was just the
same. None o' my folk can do wi' owt as isn't first-class and happen a
bit over.  Yon's the photo we had took at Annie Belle's wedding," she
added, turning to point, "and there's another of Alice Evelyn's in the
parlour."

The cousin and Mary Phyllis left their seats to giggle together over the
stiff figures, and presently the girl turned to her sister with a
malicious taunt.

"I say, our Sally, you'd best look out when you _do_ get wed, or happen
I'll play a trick on you, same as mother did Aunt Sarah!  You'll be
rarely riled if I come marching up the aisle with a fine young man,
taking all the shine out of you and Elliman!"

The cousin said something in a low tone which made her flush and laugh,
and Sally guessed at it quickly enough, though it did not reach her
ears.  The tears came into her eyes, and on an impulse of fellow-feeling
she turned towards her aunt.  She was asking after May Fleming when her
mother broke across her talk.

"Eh, now, Sarah, yon was never May, was it, along wi' you in Witham?
I'll be bound I'd never have known her if she hadn't been with you, but
there's not that many you're seen about with nowadays at market.
'Tisn't like me, as can't stir a step without somebody wanting a crack
or hanging on to my gown. But May's changed out of all knowledge,--I was
fair bothered to see her look so old!  I'll swear our Annie Belle looks
as young again, for all she's been wed a dozen year at least.  Ay, I
thought May terble old, and terble unmannerly as well.  I'd be shammed
to think as any lass o' mine had suchlike ways.  You weren't
over-pleasant spoken yourself, Sarah, if it comes to that.  The folk in
the caif were laughing a deal after you'd gone out, and saying you must
be wrong in the garrets to act so queer."

Sarah had regained her spirit a little, in spite of her poor tea.  She
straightened herself on the plush chair and answered calmly.

"They can say what suits 'em and welcome, as long as they let me be.
You know what put me about, Eliza, and nobody to thank for it but
yourself.  As for folks laughing and making game o' me and suchlike, it
was you they was sniggering at plain enough when I come out."

Eliza's colour rose, but she struggled to keep her virtuous air.  She
looked at Sarah with a sorrowful eye.

"I wouldn't get telling lies about it, Sarah," she observed kindly, "I
wouldn't indeed! Mrs. Addison's listening, think on, and she'll be
rarely shocked at suchlike ways.  Caif-folk were shocked more than a
deal, an' me just having a friendly talk an' all!"

"It's a queer sort o' friendliness as puts folk to open shame!"  Sarah's
colour was flying a flag, too.  "It's nobbut a queer sort o' friend as
goes shouting your private business at the end of a bell!"

"There isn't a deal that's private, surely, about the mess o' things
you've made on the marsh?..."  The fight was really begun now, and Eliza
turned in her seat, fixing her adversary with merciless eyes.  Sarah
could see very little but a monstrous blur, but she felt her malignant
atmosphere in every nerve.  She could hear the big, solid presence
creaking with malice as it breathed, and had an impression of strained
whalebone and stretching cloth.  But it was always Eliza's most
cherished garments that she visioned when they fought,--the velvet gown
that was folded away upstairs ... gloves, furs, and a feathered hat;
furthest of all, the wedding-gown and the flaunting veil....

"Private!"  Eliza repeated the sneered word as if it were something too
precious to let go. "There can't be that much private about things as
we've all on us known for years.  What, folks has puzzled no end why
you've never ended in t'bankruptcy court long since!  Will and me could
likely ha' tellt them about it, though, couldn't we, Sarah?  Will an' me
could easy ha' tellt 'em why!  Will and me could ha' tellt where brass
come from as was keeping you on t'rails----"

Will had been lending a careful ear to Simon's surly talk, but he lifted
his head at the sound of his name.

"Now, missis, just you let Mrs. Simon be!" he admonished, with a
troubled frown.  "You're over fond of other folks' business by a deal."

"I'll let her be and welcome, if she'll keep a civil tongue in her
head!" Eliza cried.  She went redder than ever, and slapped a tea-spoon
angrily on the cloth.  "But if our brass isn't our business, I'd like to
know what is, and as for this stir about quitting Sandholes, it's
nothing fresh, I'm sure!  We all on us know it's a marvel landlord
didn't get shot on 'em long ago."

The last remark galvanised Battersby into lively speech.  Hitherto he
had been busily concentrated on his food, but now his mean little
features sharpened and his mean little eyes shone.  He bent eagerly
forward, leaning on the cloth, knife and fork erect like stakes in a
snatched plot.

"What's yon about quitting Sandholes?" he asked, in a thin voice.  "Are
you thinking o' leaving, Simon?  Is it true?"

"I don't see as it's any affair o' yours if it is," Simon answered him,
with a sulky stare.

"Nay, it was nobbut a friendly question between man and man.  If you're
quitting the farm it would only be neighbourly just to give me a hint.
There's a lad o' mine talking o' getting wed, and I thought as how
Sandholes'd likely be going cheap.  Has anybody put in for it yet wi'
t'agent, do ye think?"

"Nay, nor like to do, yet awhile," Simon answered glumly, full of sullen
hurt.  All his love for his tiresome dwelling-place rose to the surface
at this greed.  "I don't mind telling you, Mr. Battersby, as you ax so
kind, that I give in my notice but it wasn't took.  Mr. Dent would have
it I mun think it over a bit more. Your lad'll just have to bide or look
out for somebody else's shoes."

This dreadful exhibition of meanness aggrieved Battersby almost to the
verge of tears.

"Well, now, if yon isn't dog-in-the-manger and nowt else!" he appealed
to the company at large.  "What, you're late wi' your notice already,
and yet you're for sitting tight to the farm like a hen on a pot egg!  I
shouldn't ha' thought it of you, Simon, I shouldn't indeed. Here's a
farmer wanting to quit and my lad wanting a farm, and yet the moment I
ax a decent question I get sneck-posset geyly sharp. You're jealous,
that's what it is, Simon; you're acting jealous-mean.  You've nobbut
made a terble poor job o' things yourself, and you want to keep others
from getting on an' all!"

Simon gave vent to an ironic laugh.

"Nay, now, Sam, never fret yourself!" he jeered.  "You and your lad'll
get on right enough, I'll be bound, what wi' your heaf-snatching and
your sheep-grabbing and the rest o' your bonny ways!  What, man, one o'
your breed'd be fair lost on a marsh farm, wi' nowt to lay hands on
barrin' other folks' turmuts, and never a lile chance of an overlap!"

Battersby's reputation was well known, and an irrepressible laugh
greeted Simon's speech, but was instantly cut short by the terrible
spectacle of the victim's face.  Only the smug cousin went on laughing,
because he was ignorant as well as smug, and did not know what a heaf
meant, let alone how it was possible to add to it by Sam's skilful if
unlawful ways. Battersby jumped to his feet and thumped the table, so
that the blue and gold china danced like dervishes from end to end.
Mrs. Addison's tea made a waterfall down her second-best bodice, and
Sarah's heart, not being prepared for the thump, leaped violently into
her mouth.

"I'll not be insulted in your spot nor nobody else's," he stormed at
Will; "nay, and I'll not take telling from yon wastrel you call brother,
neither!  All on us know what a bonny mess o' things he's made at
Sandholes.  All on us know it'll be right fain to see his back....  As
for you, you gomeless half-thick," he added, swinging round so suddenly
on the smug cousin that he was left gaping, "you can just shut yon
calf's head o' yours and mighty sharp or I'll shut it for you!  Them as
knows nowt'd do best to say nowt, and look as lile like gawping
jackasses as Nature'll let 'em!" ... He sent a final glare round the
stifled table, and let Eliza have the sting in his tail.  "I'd been
looking to be real friendly wi' Blindbeck," he finished nastily, "and my
lad an' all, but I don't know as we'll either on us be fain for it after
this.  Nay, I wain't set down agen, missis, and that's flat, so you
needn't ax me!  I'm off home and glad to be going, and no thanks to none
o' you for nowt!"

He glanced at his plate to make certain there was nothing left, snatched
at his cup and hastily swallowed the dregs; then, thrusting his chair
backward so violently that it fell to the floor, he clapped his hat on
his head and marched rudely out.  Eliza, catching a glance from a
tearful daughter, got to her feet, too.  They swam from the room in a
torrent of loud apologies and bitter, snarled replies.

Will leaned back in his chair with a fretted expression on his gentle
face.  The cousin, slowly turning from red to mottled mauve, observed to
Mary Phyllis that the old man's language was 'really remarkably like my
chief's!'  Some of the younger end started to giggle afresh, but Sarah
was still trembling from the unexpected shock, and Simon felt gloomy
again after his public effort.  He could see that he had upset Will, and
that was the last thing he wanted to do, to-day.  Will did not like
Battersby, but he liked peace, and there were other reasons for friendly
relations at present.  Will's youngest daughter had a direct interest in
Battersby's lad and his hopes of a farm, and now the father had shaken
the Blindbeck dust from his proud feet.  She looked across at the cause
of the trouble with tear-filled, indignant eyes.

"Seems to me things is always wrong when you come to Blindbeck, Uncle
Simon!" she exclaimed hotly.  "Nobody wants your old farm, I'm sure!  I
wouldn't have it at a gift! But you might have spoken him fair about it,
all the same.  I never see such folks as you and Aunt Sarah for setting
other folk by the ears!"

Will said "Whisht, lass, whisht!" in as cross a tone as he ever used to
his girls, and Simon glowered at her sulkily, but he did not speak.  She
was a fair, pretty thing, with Geordie-an'-Jim's eyes, and he did not
wish to injure her happiness in any way.  It was true enough, as she
said, that there was generally something in the shape of a row as soon
as he and Sarah set foot in the house, but he could not tell for the
life of him how it came about. It could not be altogether their fault,
he thought resentfully, yet with a sort of despair.  To-day, for
instance, he had every reason for keeping the peace, and yet that fool
of a Battersby must come jumping down his throat!  Nobody could be
expected to stand such manners and such nasty greed,--grabbing a man's
homestead before his notice was well in!  There was nothing surprising,
of course, in the fact that the women had already come to blows.  He had
expected it from the start, and, with the resignation of custom, thought
it as well over soon as late.  They had had one scrap, as it was, from
what Sarah had said, and the dregs of that pot of passion would still be
hot enough to stir.

"It's a shame, that's what it is!" the girl was saying, over and over
again.  Tears dropped from the Geordie-an'-Jim eyes, and Simon felt
furious with everybody, but particularly with himself.

"You needn't bother yourself," he growled across at last, making a rough
attempt to put the trouble right.  "Young Battersby's over much sense to
go taking a spot like ourn, and as for his dad, he'll be back afore you
can speak.  'Tisn't Sam Battersby, I'll be bound, if he isn't as pleased
as punch to be running in double harness wi' Blindbeck and its brass!"

"Ay, like other folk!" Eliza dropped on him from the clouds, reappearing
panting from her chase.  "Like other folk a deal nearer home, Simon
Thornthet, as you don't need telling! Battersby wanted nowt wi' the
farm,--he tellt me so outside.  'Tisn't good enough for the likes of
him, nor for our Emily Marion, neither! He was that stamping mad he was
for breaking it all off, but I got him promised to look in again next
week.  I'd a deal o' work wi' him, all the same," she added, flushing
angrily at her brother-in-law's ironic smile, "and no thanks to you,
neither, if I come out top, after all! Anyway, I'll thank you to speak
folk civilly at my table, if you can, whatever-like hired man's ways you
keep for your own!"

She would have hectored him longer if Will had not got to his feet and
taken himself and his brother out of the room, so instead she went back
to her seat and drank a large cup of tea in angry gulps.  Between
drinks, however, she managed to say to the wife the things she had
wanted to say to the man, though Sarah was silent and paid little or no
heed.  She wished she could have gone outside with the men, and helped
to decide what her future was to be. But it was not for her to advise,
who would soon be no better than a helpless log.  It was her part to
wait patiently until Simon fetched her away.

But it was not easy to wait at all in that atmosphere of critical
dislike.  The successive passages of arms had had their natural effect,
and the party which had been so merry at the start was now in a state of
boredom and constraint.  The thoughts of most of those present were
unfriendly towards the folk of the marsh, and Sarah could feel the
thoughts winding about her in the air.  Emily Marion was right, so they
were saying in their minds; trouble always followed the Thornthwaites
the moment they appeared.  Storms arose out of nowhere and destroyed
some festive occasion with a rush.  Even to look at them, dowdy and
disapproving, was to take the heart out of any happy day.  It was
certainly hard on the poor Will Thornthwaites that the tiresome Simons
should dare to exist.

Sarah, bringing her mind back from the absent brothers with an effort,
found the Method working again at top speed.  The tea had soothed
Eliza's nerves and stimulated her brain.  She was now at her very best
for behaving her very worst.

"And so Mr. Addison's preaching next week, is he?" she reverted
suddenly, making even that supreme egotist blink and start.  Her Voice,
furred and soft, reminded Sarah of a paw reaching out for someone to
scratch.  "Eh, now, but I should be in a rare twitter if it was Will as
was setting up to preach!  But there, we're none of us much of a hand at
talking at our spot, and Will's summat better to do than just wagging a
loose tongue.  I'll see the lads come along, though, as it's you, Mrs.
Addison, and an old friend, unless there's summat useful they're happen
wanted for at home.  Eh, Sarah, but wouldn't they talks to young men ha'
done a sight o' good to Geordie-an'-Jim?  It's a sad pity you didn't
start preaching before they went, Mr. Addison,--it is that!  Like
enough, if you had, they'd be at Sandholes yet."

The preacher's brow had been thunderous during the early part of this
speech, but now he looked suddenly coy.  Sally, dropping her glance to
her aunt's lap, saw her fingers clench and unclench on a fold of her own
black gown.

"Any news of the prodigals?" Elliman Wilkinson suddenly enquired.  He
looked at Eliza as he spoke, and smiled as at a well-known joke.  "I'm
always in hopes to find one of them eating the fatted calf."

"Nay, you must ask Sarah, not me!" Eliza answered, with an affected
laugh.  She despised Elliman in her heart, but she was grateful for the
cue.  "Sarah knows what they're at, if there's anybody does at all.
Like enough they'll turn up one o' these days, but I don't know as we'll
run to calves.  They'll be terble rough in their ways, I doubt, after
all this time.  Out at elbows an' all, as like as not, and wi' happen a
toe or two keeking through their boots!"

There was a ripple of laughter at this show of wit, and then Elliman,
urged by a nudge and a whisper from Mary Phyllis, repeated the question
in the proper quarter.  He raised his voice when he spoke to Sarah, as
if she were deaf as well as blind, and when she paused a moment before
replying, he apostrophised her again. The whole table had pricked its
ears and was listening by the time the answer came.

Sarah felt the giggles and the impertinent voice striking like arrows
through the misty ring in which she sat.  Sharpest of all was Eliza's
laugh, introducing the question and afterwards punctuating it when it
was put. She was achingly conscious of the antipathetic audience hanging
on her lips.  They were baiting her, and she knew it, and her heart
swelled with helpless rage.  A passionate longing seized her to be lord
of them all for once,--just for once to fling back an answer that would
slay their smiles, put respect into their mocking voices and change
their sneers into awed surprise.  If only for once the Dream and the
glory might be true,--the trap and the new clothes and Geordie and the
green front door!  But nothing could be further from what they expected,
as she knew too well.  They were waiting merely to hear her say what she
had often said before,--for news that there was no news or news that was
worse than none.  She had faced more than one trial that day, and had
come out of them with her self-respect intact, but this unexpected
humiliation was more than she could bear.  She was telling herself in
the pause that she would not answer at all, when something that she took
for the total revolt of pride spoke to the mockers through her lips.

"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 w

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