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” dogcart 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 almanacs 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 today. 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 suchlike. 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’ sideshow,” 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 lychgate. 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 sightseers 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 rosebushes 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.⁠ ⁠… + 