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 featherbed 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 suchlike 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 fingermarks 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.⁠ ⁠… + 