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” 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.⁠ ⁠… + 

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.⁠ ⁠… + 

III + 

Now they had left the high-road and were making southeast 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 grassland 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 today 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 today 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 tonight 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 mainline 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. + 

Today, 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 today, 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, today!” + 

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 latecomers with a single, focused 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 passersby, 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 wallpaper 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 inglenook, 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 forever 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 teapot 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 teapot 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 seawater 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. Today 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 today 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’ secondhand preaching from some as happen never went to school at all.” + 

Mr. Addison 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 teaspoon 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, today. 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. Today, 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 womenfolk, 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. Today, as they wandered round the shippons, he listened respectfully while his brother criticised the herd, quarrelled with the quality of the foodstuffs, 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 crossbeams 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 today she was going blind.” + 

His brother’s face filled at once with sympathy and dismay. In that forbidden compartment of his mind where he sometimes ventured to criticise his wife, he saw in a flash how she would take the news. This latest trouble of Sarah’s would indeed be the summit of Eliza’s triumph. Poverty Sarah had withstood; blindness she might have mastered, given time; but poverty and blindness combined would deliver her finally into the enemy’s hand. + 

“I never thought it would be as bad as that,” he murmured pityingly. “It’s a bad business, is that!⁠ ⁠… Didn’t doctor say there was anything could be done?” + 

“There was summat about an operation, but it’ll get no forrarder,” Simon said. “They fancy things is hardly in Sarah’s line.” + 

“If it’s brass that’s wanted, you needn’t fash over that.⁠ ⁠…” He added more urgently as Simon shook his head, “It’d be queer if I grudged you brass for a thing like yon!” + 

“You’re right kind,” Simon said gratefully, “but it isn’t no use. She’s that proud, is Sarah, she’ll never agree. I doubt she just means to let things slide.” + 

“She’s no call, I’m sure, to be proud with me!” Will’s voice was almost hot. “I’ve always been ready any time to stand her friend. Anyway, there’s the offer, and she can take it or leave it as best suits her. If she changes her mind after a while, she won’t find as I’ve altered mine.⁠ ⁠… But there’s no sense in your taking a job and leaving a blind woman to fend for herself. There’s nowt for it but Sarah’ll have to come to us.” + 

Simon laughed when he said that, a grim, mirthless laugh which made the dog open his sleepless eyes and throw him a searching glance. + 

“Nay, nay, Will, my lad! It’s right good of you, but it wouldn’t do. A bonny time you’d have, to be sure, wi’ the pair on ’em in t’house! And anyway your missis’d never hear tell o’ such a thing, so that fixes it right off.” + 

“It’s my own spot, I reckon!” Will spoke with unusual force. “I can do as suits me, I suppose. T’lasses hasn’t that much to do they can’t see to a blind body, and as for room and suchlike, there’ll be plenty soon. Young Battersby’s made it up with our Em, and it’s more than time yon Elliman Wilkinson was thinking o’ getting wed. He’s been going with our Sally a terble long while, though he and Mary Phyllis seem mighty throng just now. Anyway, there’ll be a corner for Sarah right enough⁠—ay, and for you an’ all.” + 

But Simon shook his head again, and stood up straight and took his arm off the back of the cow. + 

“There’d be murder, I doubt,” he said quite simply, and this time he did not laugh. “There’s bad blood between they two women as nobbut death’ll cure. Nay, I thank ye right enough, Will, but yon horse won’t pull.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I mun get a job, that’s all,” he went on quickly, before Will could speak again, “and some sort of a spot where t’neighbours’ll look to the missis while I’m off. I’ll see t’agent agen and try to ram into him as I mean to gang, and if you hear of owt going to suit, you’ll likely let me know?” + 

Will nodded but did not answer because of approaching steps, and they stood silently waiting until the cowman showed at the door. At once the deep symphony of the hungry broke from the cattle at sight of their servant with his swill. The quiet picture, almost as still as if painted on the wall, upheaved suddenly into a chaos of rocking, bellowing beasts. The great heads tugged at their yokes, the great eyes pleaded and rolled. The big organ-notes of complaint and desire chorded and jarred, dropping into satisfied silence as the man passed from stall to stall. Will jerked his head after him as he went out at the far door, and said that he would be leaving before so long. + 

“Eh? Taylor, did ye say?” Simon stared, for the man had been at Blindbeck for years. “What’s amiss?” + 

“Nay, there’s nowt wrong between us, if you mean that. But his wife’s father’s had a stroke, and wants him to take over for him at Drigg. News didn’t come till I was off this morning, or I might ha’ looked round for somebody while I was in t’town.” + 

Simon began a fresh violent poking with his ancient stick. “You’ll ha’ somebody in your eye, likely?” he enquired. “There’ll be plenty glad o’ the job.” + 

“Oh, ay, but it’s nobbut a weary business learning folk your ways.” He glanced at his brother a moment, and then looked shyly away. “If you’re really after a shop, Simon, what’s wrong wi’ it for yourself?” + 

The painful colour came into the other’s averted face. He poked so recklessly that he poked the dog, who arose with an offended growl. + 

“Nay, it’s charity, that’s what it is! I’m over old.⁠ ⁠… You know as well as me I’d never get such a spot anywheres else.” + 

“You know the place, and you’re a rare hand wi’ stock. I could trust you same as I could myself.” + 

“I’m over old,” Simon demurred again, “and done to boot. I’d not be worth the brass.” + 

“We’ve plenty o’ help on the place,” Will said. “It’d be worth it just to have you about. Nigh the same as having a vet on t’spot!” he added jokingly, trying to flatter him into acquiescence. “I’d be main glad for my own sake,” he went on, his face grave again and slightly wistful. “There’s times I fair ache for a crack wi’ somebody o’ my own. Women is nobbut women, when all’s said and done, and lads is like to think they know a deal better than their dad.⁠ ⁠… Ay, well, you can think it over and let me know,” he finished, in a disappointed tone. + 

Simon poked for a while longer, and succeeded in poking the cow as well as the dog. He was fighting hard with his pride as he scraped busily at the flags. The tie of blood pulled him, as well as the whole atmosphere of the prosperous place. He knew in his heart that he was never so happy as when he was with his brother, never so good a man as when he was preaching in Will’s shippons. As for pride, that would have to go by the board sooner or later; indeed, who would say that he had any right to it, even now? He made up his mind at last on a sudden impulse, lifting his head with a hasty jerk. + 

“I’ve had enough o’ thinking things over, thank ye all the same. I’ll be main glad o’ the job, Will, and that’s the truth.⁠ ⁠…” He sank back instantly, however, and fell to poking again. “Folk’ll have plenty to say, though, I reckon,” he added bitterly, “when they hear as I’m hired man to my younger brother!” + 

“They’ve always a deal to say, so what’s the odds? As for younger and older, there isn’t a deal to that when you get up in years.⁠ ⁠… There’s a good cottage across t’road,” he went on eagerly, bringing up reinforcements before Simon should retire. “It’s handy for t’stock, and there’s a garden and orchard as well. Lasses could see to Sarah, you’ll think on, if she’s that closer. There’s berry-bushes in t’garden and a deal besides.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Simon was busy shaking his head and saying he wasn’t worth it and that he was over old, but all the time he was listening with interest and even pleasure to Will’s talk. Milking had now begun, and already, as the levers swung back and forwards over the cattle’s heads, he found himself looking about the shippon with a possessive eye. Even in these few moments, life had taken a turn for the Thornthwaite of the desolate marsh farm. Already his back felt straighter, his eye brighter, his brain more alive. The drawbacks of the proposed position began to recede before the many advantages it had to offer. It was true, of course, that he would be his brother’s hired man, but it was equally true that he was the master’s brother, too. To all intents and purposes he would be master himself⁠—that is to say, when Eliza wasn’t about! Will’s cottages were good, like everything else of Will’s, and the lasses could see to Sarah, as he said. For himself there would be the constant interest and stimulant of a big farm, as well as the mental relief of a steady weekly wage. He felt almost excited about it as they crossed the yard, making for Taylor’s cottage over the road. He tried not to think of what Sarah might say when she heard the news, still less of what Mrs. Will would most certainly say. He felt equal to both of them in his present spirited mood, and even tried to convince himself that in time they would make friends. + 

As they stood looking at Taylor’s cottage and Taylor’s gooseberry bushes and canes, Will suddenly asked his brother whether there was any news of Geordie. And Simon, when he had given the old answer that there was no news that was worth crossing the road to hear, turned his face away in the direction of Taylor’s hens, and enquired whether there was any news of Jim. + 

“There’s been none for a sight o’ years now,” Will answered sadly, leaning on the wall. “Eliza wrote him a letter as put his back up, and he’s never sent us a line since. He always set a deal more by you and your missis than he ever did by us. I’d ha’ stood his friend, poor lad, if he’d ha’ let me, but he always took it I was agen him, too.” + 

There was silence between them for a while, and then⁠—“Eh, well, you’ve a mort of others to fill his place!” Simon sighed, watching a well-built lad swing whistling across the yard. + 

Will raised himself from the wall, and watched him, too. + 

“Ay, but I’d nobbut the one eldest son!” was all he said. + 

V + 

Sally led her aunt to the grand but unused parlour in which so many expensive and handsome things were doomed to spend their lives. There was a piano, of course, which none of the Blindbeck folk knew how to play, in spite of Eliza’s conviction that the gift was included in the price. A Chippendale bookcase made a prison for strange books never opened and never named, and the shut doors of a cabinet kept watch and ward over some lovely china and glass. There was a satinwood table with a velvet sheen, whose polished mirror never reflected a laughing human face. There was an American rocking-chair, poised like a floating bird, with cushions filled with the finest down ever drawn from an heirloom of a featherbed. Sarah would not have taken the rocking-chair, as a rule; she would have thought herself either too humble or too proud. But today she went to it as a matter of course, because of the false pomp that she had drawn to herself like a stolen royal robe. With a sigh of relief that was half physical and half mental, she let herself gently down, dropped her rusty bonnet against the silk, and peacefully closed her eyes. + 

Sally stood looking at her with an expression of mingled pity, curiosity and awe. She had pitied her often enough before, but she had never before seen her through the slightest veil of romance. Sometimes, indeed, the tale of the damaged wedding-day had touched her imagination like the scent of a bruised flower, but it was so faint and far-off that it passed again like a breath. Today, however, she had that sudden sense of exquisite beauty in the old, which all must feel who see in them the fragile storehouses of life. The old woman had known so much that she would never know, looked on a different world with utterly different eyes. There was romance in the thought of the dead she had seen and spoken to and laughed with and touched and loved. And even now, with the flower of her life apparently over and withered back again to its earth, this sudden splendour of Geordie had blossomed for her at the end. + 

The girl waited a moment, hoping for a word, and then, though rather reluctantly, turned towards the door. She wanted to hear still more about the marvellous news, but the old woman looked so tired that she did not like to ask. She was anxious, too, to get back to the kitchen to keep an eye on Mary Phyllis. Yet still she lingered, puzzled and curious, and still touched by that unusual sense of awe. An exotic beauty had passed swiftly into the musty air of Eliza’s parlour, a sense of wonder from worlds beyond⁠ ⁠… the strong power of a dream. + 

“You’re overtired, aren’t you, Aunt Sarah?” she repeated, for want of something better to say. She spoke rather timidly, as if aware that the words only brushed the surface of deeper things below. + 

Sarah answered her without opening her eyes. + 

“Ay, my lass. Just a bit.” + 

“You’d best stop here quietly till Uncle Simon’s yoked up. I’ll see nobody bothers you if you feel like a nap. I’d fetch you a drop of cowslip wine, but mother’s got the key.” + 

“Nay, I want nowt wi’ it, thank ye,” Sarah said. “I’ll do all right.” She lifted her hands contentedly, and folded them in her lap. “Likely I’ll drop off for a minute, as you say.” + 

“Ay, well, then, I’d best be getting back.” She moved resolutely now, but paused with her hand on the latch. “Aunt Sarah,” she asked rather breathlessly, “was all that about Cousin Geordie true?” + 

Sarah’s lids quivered a little, and then tightened over her eyes. + 

“Ay. True enough.” + 

“It’s grand news, if it is!⁠ ⁠… I’m right glad about it, I’m sure! I’ve always thought it hard lines, him going off like that. And you said he’d done well for himself, didn’t you, Aunt Sarah?⁠ ⁠… Eh, but I wish Elliman could make some brass an’ all!” + 

“There’s a deal o’ power in brass.” The words came as if of themselves from behind the mask-like face. “Folks say it don’t mean happiness, but it means power. It’s a stick to beat other folk wi’, if it’s nowt else.” + 

“I don’t want to beat anybody, I’m sure!” Sally laughed, though with tears in her voice. “I only want what’s my own.” + 

“Ay, we all on us want that,” Sarah said, with a grim smile. “But it’s only another fancy name for the whole world!” + 

⸻— + 

She sat still for some time after the girl had gone out, as if she were afraid that she might betray herself before she was actually alone. Presently, however, she began to rock gently to and fro, still keeping her hands folded and her eyes closed. The good chair moved easily without creak or jar, and the good cushions adapted themselves to every demand of her weary bones. Geordie should buy her a chair like this, she told herself as she rocked, still maintaining the wonderful fiction even to herself. She would have cushions, too, of the very best, covered with silk and cool to a tired cheek. A footstool, also, ample and well stuffed, and exactly the right height for a pair of aching feet. + 

But though one half of her brain continued to dally with these pleasant fancies, the other was standing amazed before her late stupendous act. She was half-aghast, half-proud at the ease with which she had suddenly flung forth her swift, gigantic lie. Never for a moment had she intended to affirm anything of the kind, never as much as imagined that she might hint at it even in joke. She had been angry, of course, bitter and deeply hurt, but there had been no racing thoughts in her mind eager to frame the princely tale. It had seemed vacant, indeed, paralysed by rage, unable to do little else but suffer and hate. And then suddenly the words had been said, had shaped themselves on her lips and taken flight, as if by an agency with which she had nothing to do. It was just as if somebody had taken her arm and used it to wave a banner in the enemy’s face; as if she were merely an instrument on which an angry hand had suddenly played. + 

So she was not ashamed, or even really alarmed, because of this inward conviction that the crime was not her own. Yet the voice had been hers, and most certainly the succeeding grim satisfaction and ironic joy had been hers! She allowed herself an occasional chuckle now that she was really alone, gloating freely over Eliza’s abasement and acute dismay. For once at least, in the tourney of years, she had come away victor from the fray. No matter how she was made to pay for it in the end, she had had the whip-hand of Blindbeck just for once. Indeed, now that it was done⁠—and so easily done⁠—she marvelled that she had never done it before. At the back of her mind, however, was the vague knowledge that there is only one possible moment for tremendous happenings such as these. Perhaps the longing engendered by the Dream in the yard had suddenly grown strong enough to act of its own accord. Perhaps, as in the decision about the farm, a sentence lying long in the brain is spoken at length without the apparent assistance of the brain.⁠ ⁠… + 

She did not trouble herself even to speculate how she would feel when at last the truth was out. This was the truth, as long as she chose to keep it so, as long as she sat and rocked and shut the world from her dreaming eyes. From pretending that it was true she came very soon to believing that it might really be possible, after all. Such things had happened more than once, she knew, and who was to say that they were not happening now? She told herself that, if she could believe it with every part of herself just for a moment, it would be true. Up in Heaven, where, as they said, a star winked every time a child was born, they had only to move some lever or other, and it would be true. + 

A clock ticked on the mantelpiece with a slow, rather hesitating sound, as if trying to warn the house that Sunday and the need of the winding-key were near. There was a close, secretive feeling in the room, the atmosphere of so many objects shut together in an almost terrible proximity for so many days of the week. She was so weary that she could have fallen asleep, but her brain was too excited to let her rest. The magnitude of her crime still held her breathlessly enthralled; the glamour of it made possible all impossible hopes. She dwelt again and again on the spontaneity of the lie, which seemed to give it the unmistakable stamp of truth. + 

She had long since forgotten what it was like to be really happy or even at peace, but in some sort of fierce, gloating, heathenish way she was happy now. She was conscious, for instance, of a sense of importance beyond anything she had ever known. Even that half of her brain which insisted that the whole thing was pretence could not really chill the pervading glow of pride. She had caught the reflection of her state in Eliza’s voice, as well as in others less familiar to her ear. She had read it even in Sally’s kindly championship and support; through the sympathy she had not failed to hear the awe. The best proof⁠—if she needed proof⁠—was that she was actually here in the sacred parlour, and seated in the precious chair. Eliza would have turned her out of both long since, she knew, if she had not been clad in that new importance as in cloth of gold. + 

The impossible lies nearer than mere probability to the actual fact; so near at times that the merest effort seems needed to cross the line. Desire, racking both soul and body with such powerful hands, must surely be strong enough to leap the slender pale. The peculiar mockery about ill-luck is always the trifling difference between the opposite sides of the shield. It is the difference between the full glass and the glass turned upside-down. But today at least this tired old woman had swung the buckler round, and laughed as she held the glass in her hand and saw the light strike through the wine. + 

In this long day of Simon’s and Sarah’s nothing was stranger than the varying strata of glamour and gloom through which in turn they passed. Their days and weeks were, as a rule, mere grey blocks of blank, monotonous life, imperceptibly lightened or further shadowed by the subtle changes of the sky. But into these few hours so closely packed with dreadful humiliations and decisions, so much accumulated unkindness and insult and cold hate, there kept streaming upon them shafts of light from some centre quite unknown. For Simon there had been the unexpected stimulant of his Witham success, and later the new interest in life which Will’s proposal had seemed to offer. For Sarah there was the wistful pleasure of her morning with May, as well as the unlawful but passionate pleasure of her present position. The speed of the changes kept them overstrung, so that each as it came found them more sensitive than the last. They were like falling bodies dropping by turn through cloud and sunlit air. They were like total wrecks on some darkened sea, catching and losing by turn the lights of an approaching vessel. + 

The slow clock dragged the protesting minutes on, and still no one disturbed her and the dream widened and grew. Tea would be brought in soon, she told herself in the dream⁠—strong, expensive, visitor’s tea, freshly boiled and brewed. The silver teapot would be queening it over the tray, flanked by steaming scones and an oven-new, homemade cake. Eliza herself would appear to entertain her guest, always with that new note of reverence in her voice. When the door opened they would hear another voice⁠—Geordie’s, laughing and talking in some room beyond. All the happy young voices of the house would mingle with his, but always the youngest and happiest would be Geordie’s own. Hearing that voice, she would make mock of herself forever having feared Eliza’s tongue, still more forever having cared enough to honour her with hate. A small thing then would be the great Eliza, in spite of her size, beside the mother for whom the dead had been made alive. She would talk with Eliza as the gods talk when they speak with the humble human from invisible heights. So strong was the vision that she found herself framing the godlike sentences with gracious ease. The silver teaspoons clinked against the cups, and the visitor’s tea was fragrant in the musty room. She spread a linen handkerchief across her knee⁠ ⁠… a snowy softness against her silken knee.⁠ ⁠… And always, always, as the meal progressed, the voice of her ecstasy sang in her happy ear.⁠ ⁠… + 

She had that one moment of clear beauty unprofaned by hate, with Geordie’s face swimming before her in a golden haze. Then her hand, going out to the silk and linen of the dream, encountered the darned and threadbare serge of dreary fact. The dream rent violently all around her, letting her out again into the unlovely world. Even her blindness had been forgotten for the time, for in the dream she was never blind. Now the touch of the darns under her hand brought back the long hours of mending by candlelight which had had their share in despoiling her of her sight. She would never be able to darn by candlelight again, and the loss of that drudgery seemed to her now an added grief, because into this and all similar work, as women know, goes the hope of the future to emerge again as the soul of the past.⁠ ⁠… Sarah knew that her hand would ache for her needle as the sailor’s hand aches for the helm, or the crippled horseman’s for the feel of the flat rein. She felt, too, a sudden desperate anger against the woman who would have the mending of Simon’s clothes. Geordie’s, she knew, she would simply have wrenched from any stranger’s hands, but since there was no Geordie she need not think of that. The Dream had been merely the make-believe of the bitterly oppressed, who had taken to desperate lying as a last resort. Yet still the sweetness lingered, keeping her serene, like the last scent of a passed garden or the last light upon darkening hills. + 

She smoothed her hands on the arms of the precious chair, and reached out and smoothed the satin of the table. Through the dimness the solid piano loomed, the rosewood coffin of a thousand songs. The carpet under her feet felt elastic yet softly deep. There were ornaments in the room, good stuff as well as trash, trifles pointing the passions of Eliza’s curious soul. But for once, after all these years, Eliza’s soul would be sorrowful in spite of her great possessions. Back in the kitchen she would be gritting her teeth on the fact that it was Sarah’s son who was coming home, coming with money to burn and a great and splendid will to burn it. She would exact payment, of course, when the truth was known, but even the last ounce of payment could not give her back this hour. For this hour, at least, it was hers to suffer and Sarah’s to reign. For this hour, at least, the heavily-weighted tables of destiny were turned. + 

VI + 

That which had been the terrible Eliza sat still for a long moment after Sarah had gone out. There was silence about the table until Elliman Wilkinson took upon himself to speak. + 

“But Jim’s never your son, Cousin Eliza?” he exclaimed, puzzled, rushing in where not only angels would have feared to tread, but where the opposite host also would have taken care to keep their distance. “It’s very stupid of me, of course, but I’ve always made sure that Geordie-an’-Jim were twins.” + 

Eliza turned baleful eyes upon the eager, inquisitive face. Her mind, concentrated in sullen fury upon the enemy recently departed with banners, found a difficulty in focusing itself upon this insignificant shape. When it succeeded, however, she ground him into dust. + 

“Ay, well, next time you feel sure of anything, you can make certain you’re dead wrong!” she told him cruelly, surveying his bland countenance with cold contempt. “Jim’s my eldest, if you want to know, and as much the better o’ Geordie as Blindbeck’s the better o’ yon mudhole down on the marsh! He was always the smarter lad o’ the two⁠—’tisn’t likely he’d ha’ been left.⁠ ⁠… I’ll lay what you like it’s Jim as is really coming, after all!” + 

“But in that case you would surely have heard from him yourself?” Elliman was still disporting himself with the brazen folly of innocence upon the forbidden ground. “He’d have written to tell his mother, surely⁠—not his aunt?” + 

A distinct thrill of apprehension ran through the company at this tactful speech. Mary Phyllis’s nudge on this occasion was one of sharp reproof. The clouds thickened on Eliza’s brow. + 

“Nay, then, he just wouldn’t, Mr. Clever-Lad-Know-All, so that’s that! I’m his mother right enough, as nobody but a fool would ha’ needed telling, but he wouldn’t ha’ written me, all the same. Me and Jim got across a while back, and he’s taken sulks with me ever since. He’d be like enough to write to Sarah, by way of giving me back a bit o’ my own. She always cockered him fearful, did Sarah, and set him agen me whenever she could. And if there’s brass about, as she says, she’ll keep it warm for him, never fear! She’ll take right good care it never gets past her to Blindbeck or any of his own!” + 

“Jim would ha’ been right enough but for Geordie all along.” Mrs. Addison shook a loose and agile bonnet with an impressive air. “He was a right-down nuisance, was Geordie Thornthet⁠—a bad lad as well as a reg’lar limb! Such tricks as he was up to, I’m sure⁠—turmut-lanterns and the like, booin’ at folks’ winders after dark, and hiding behind hedges when folk was courtin’ about t’lanes! Stephen and me wasn’t wed then, you’ll think on, and I mind a terble fright as Geordie give us one summer night. Stephen was terble sweet on me, as you’ll likely know, though he’d choke himself black in the face afore he’d own to it now. Well, yon night as I’m speaking of he had hold o’ my hand, and was looking as near like a dying duck in a thunderstorm as ever I see. ‘Jenny Sophia,’ he was saying, as sweet as a field of clover, ‘I’m that set on you, Jenny Sophia’⁠—when up pops Geordie on t’far side o’ the hedge, girning and making a hullaballoo like a donkey afore rain!” + 

“You’ve no call to go raking up yon d⁠—d rubbish!” Mr. Addison burst out, crimson to the hair, and quite forgetting the obligations of his Christian mission. He had said the same thing to Eliza’s eldest lass, and much about the same time, and knew that Eliza knew it as well as he. “Folks isn’t right in their heads when they’re courtin’, as everybody knows, and it’s real mean to bring it agen ’em after all these years. As for Geordie Thornthet, there was lile or nowt I could learn him, and that’s sure! T’lasses was always after him like bees at a bottle o’ rum.” + 

“Nay, now, you mean our Jim!” Jim’s mother corrected him with an air of offence. “Nobody never reckoned nowt o’ Geordie but May Fleming. He couldn’t hold a candle to Jim, any day o’ the week. Folk said they couldn’t tell ’em apart, but I never see a scrap o’ likeness myself.” She glanced defiantly round the table, as if expecting opposition, and then swung round eagerly as Sally reappeared. “Well, my lass, well?” she rapped out⁠—“did she tell you anything more? You’ve taken your time about coming back, I’m sure!” + 

“Nay, she said nowt fresh,” Sally answered evasively, without meeting her eyes. She advanced to the table and began to gather the china together, ready for clearing away. Her mother pushed back her chair with an angry scrape. + 

“Well, of all the gert, helpless gabies!” she exploded violently. “I made sure she’d talk when she’d gitten you by herself. Didn’t she say when letter come, or how much brass there was, or owt?⁠ ⁠… Eh, well, it’s never Geordie as made it, that I’ll swear!” + 

“She said it was Geordie.” Sally went on mechanically with her task, collecting cups and plates from under the noses of the still-stupefied clan. “It’s real nice, anyway, to see somebody happy,” she added suddenly, raising her eyes to look at the smug cousin. Elliman met them unexpectedly and coloured furiously. On a sudden remorseful impulse he shuffled a couple of plates together, and handed them to her with a deprecating air. + 

“I can’t say she looked very set up about it, anyhow!” Eliza sneered. “What, she was even more glumpy than usual, seemed to me!” + 

“More like a burying than a homecoming, by a deal!” Mary Phyllis finished for her, with a scornful laugh. + 

“As for Uncle Simon, he was as cross as a pair of shears!” Emily Marion added in a fretted tone. The Thornthwaites were making things awkward today for the bride-to-be. Simon had nearly queered the engagement at the start, and now the company’s interest was all for a Thornthwaite whom she had never seen. + 

“Not how I should take good news, certainly!” Elliman said, hoping that no one had noticed his menial act. “I should have something more to say for myself, I hope, than that.” + 

Eliza’s eyes brightened considerably at this unanimous point of view. + 

“Nay, you’re right there,” she took them up eagerly, “you’re right enough! ’Tisn’t natural to be so quiet. I’ll tell you what it is,” she added impressively, “it’s one o’ two things, that’s all. It’s either a lie from beginning to end, or else⁠—or else⁠—well, it’s our Jim!” She pushed her chair further still, and got hurriedly to her feet. “Ay, well, whichever it is, I’d best see for myself,” she added quickly. “You’ll not mind me leaving you, Mrs. Addison, just for a little while? I don’t know as we’re doing right to leave Sarah so long alone. She’s getting a bit of an old body now, you know, and she was never that strong in her poor head.” + 

She departed noisily after this surprisingly sympathetic speech, and Sarah, hearing her heavy step along the passage, chuckled for the last time. Her mind braced itself for the coming contest with a grim excitement that was almost joy. Nothing could have been more unlike her attitude of the morning in the innyard. She lay back in her chair again and closed her eyes, and was rocking peacefully when Eliza opened the door. + 

Just for the moment the sight of the tranquil figure gave her pause, but neither sleep nor its greater Counterpart could still Eliza for very long. “Feeling more like yourself, are you, Sarah?” she enquired cautiously, peering in, and then repeated the question when she got no answer. Finally, irritated by the other’s immobility which was obviously not sleep, she entered the room heavily, shutting the door with a sharp click. “There’s nowt amiss, from the look of you,” she added loudly, as she advanced. + 

Sarah exclaimed, “Eh now, whatever’s yon!” at the sound of the harsh voice, and sat up stiffly, winking her blind eyes. She even turned her head and blinked behind, as if she thought the voice had come out of the grandfather’s clock. “Nay, I’ll do now, thank ye,” she answered politely, discovering Eliza’s whereabouts with a show of surprise. “It’ll be about time we were thinking of getting off.” + 

Eliza, however, had no intention of parting with her just yet. She stopped her hastily when she tried to rise. + 

“Nay, now, there isn’t that much hurry, is there?” she demanded sharply. “Yon old horse o’ yourn’ll barely have stretched his legs. Your master and mine’d have a deal to say to each other an’ all.” She paused a moment, creaking from foot to foot, and staring irresolutely at the mask-like face. “You talked a deal o’ stuff in t’other room, Sarah,” she broke out at last, “but I reckon you meant nowt by it, after all?” + 

Sarah wanted to chuckle again, but was forced to deny herself the pleasure. For appearance’ sake she stiffened her back, and bristled a little at Eliza’s tone. + 

“Ay, but I did!” she retorted briskly, her voice firm. “Whatever else should I mean, I’d like to know?” + 

The strong hope that had sprung in Eliza’s heart died down again before this brazen show. + 

“You can’t rightly know what you’re saying, Sarah,” she said coldly, “you can’t, indeed! Geordie coming after all these years⁠—nay, now, yon isn’t true!” + 

“Ay, but it is, I tell ye⁠—true enough! True as yon Sunday fringe o’ yourn as you bought in Witham!” + 

“And wi’ brass, you said?” Eliza let the flippant remark pass without notice, and Sarah nodded. “A deal o’ brass?” + 

“Yon’s what he says.” + 

“Eh, well, I never did!” The angry wind of her sigh passed over Sarah’s head and rustled the honesty in a vase behind. She repeated “I never did!” and creaked away from the enemy towards the window. Behind her, Geordie’s mother allowed the ghost of a smile to find a fleeting resting-place on her lips. + 

“And so he’s on his road home, is he⁠—coming right back?” Mrs. Will kept her back turned, thinking hard as she spoke. There was no section of Sarah’s statement but she intended to prove by the inch. “Ay, well, it’s what they mostly do when they’ve made their brass.” + 

“He’ll be over here, I reckon, afore you can say knife! Taking first boat, he says he is, or the fastest he can find.” She turned her head towards the door through which his voice had come in the dream. “What, I shouldn’t be that surprised if he was to open yon door now!” + 

There was such conviction in her tone that Eliza, too, was startled into turning her head. There was nothing to see, of course, and she turned back, but her ears still thrilled with the thrill in Sarah’s voice. The cowman, passing, saw her face behind the glass, and said to himself that the missis was out for trouble once again. + 

She was silent for a while, trying vainly to grapple the situation in the pause. She saw well enough that there was nothing to be gained by dispute if the story were true. She still looked to be top-dog in that or any other case, because Blindbeck pride was founded on solid Blindbeck gold; but there was no denying that the enemy would lie in a totally different position, and would have to be met on totally different ground. If, on the other hand, the great statement was a lie, there would be plenty of time for vengeance when the facts were known. Her malicious soul argued that the real game was to give Sarah plenty of rope, but her evil temper stood in the way of the more subtle method. It got the upper hand of her at last, and she flung round with an angry swing. + 

“Nay, then, I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed passionately⁠—“I just can’t! It’s a pack o’ lies, that’s what it is, Sarah⁠—a gert string o’ senseless lies!” + 

This coarse description of her effort hurt Sarah in her artistic pride. She stiffened still further. + 

“I reckoned you’d take it like that,” she replied in a dignified tone. “ ’Tisn’t decent nor Christian, but it’s terble nat’ral.” + 

“I don’t see how you could look for folks to take it different!” Eliza cried. “ ’Tisn’t a likely sort o’ story, any way round. Ne’er-do-weels don’t make their fortunes every day o’ the week, and your Geordie was a wastrel, if ever there was one yet. You don’t look like good news, neither, come to that. They’ve just been saying so in t’other room.” + 

“Good news wants a bit o’ getting used to,” Sarah said quietly, “same as everything else. When you’ve never had no luck for years and years you don’t seem at first as if you could rightly take it in.” + 

“More particular when you’re making it up out o’ your own head!” Eliza scoffed, but growing more and more unwillingly convinced. “Nay, now, Sarah!” she added impatiently, her hands twitching⁠—“what d’ye think ye’re at? What about all yon talk o’ giving up the farm? No need for such a to-do if Geordie’s coming home!” + 

For the first time, though only just for a second, Sarah quailed. For the first time she had a glimpse of the maze in which she had set her feet, and longed sharply for her physical sight as if it would help her mental vision. But her brain was still quick with the power of the dream, and it rose easily to the sudden need. “It’s like this, d’ye see,” she announced firmly. “Simon knows nowt about it yet. I didn’t mean telling him till we’d gitten back.” + 

Eliza had followed the explanation with lowering brows, but now she burst into one of her great laughs. + 

“Losh, Sarah, woman! but I’d have a better tale than that! What, you’d never ha’ let him give in his notice, and you wi’ your tongue in your cheek all the time!⁠ ⁠… When did you get yon precious letter o’ yours?” she enquired swiftly, switching on to another track. + 

“Just last minute this morning as we was starting off.” Sarah was thoroughly launched now on her wild career. Each detail as she required it rose triumphantly to her lips. “Simon was back in t’stable wi’ t’horse when postman come, so I put it away in my pocket and settled to say nowt. I thought it was likely axing for money or summat like that, and Simon had more than enough to bother him as it was. I got May Fleming to read it for me at doctor’s,” she finished simply, with a supreme touch. “I’m terble bad wi’ my eyes, Eliza, if you’ll trouble to think on.” + 

Once again Eliza was forced to belief against her will, and then once again she leaped at the only discrepancy in the tale. + 

“You could ha’ tellt Simon easy enough on the road out!” she threw at her in a swift taunt. “There’s time for a deal o’ telling at your rate o’ speed!” + 

But now, to her vexed surprise, it was Sarah who laughed, and with a society smoothness that would have been hard to beat. It was in matters like these that the dream lifted her into another sphere, puzzling her clumsy antagonist by the finer air she seemed to breathe. + 

“Eh, now, Eliza!” she said good-humouredly, and with something almost like kindliness in her voice, “whatever-like use is it telling a man owt when he’s chock full o’ summat else? Simon was fit to crack himself over some joke as he’d heard in Witham, talking a deal o’ nonsense and laughing fit to shake the trap! Coming from market’s no time any day for telling a man important news, and anyway I’d never ha’ got a word in edgeways if I’d tried.” She paused a moment, and then continued, aspiring to still greater heights. “I’d another reason an’ all for wanting it kept quiet. I knew he’d be sure an’ certain to go shouting it out here.” + 

“Ay, and why ever not, I’d like to know!” Eliza gasped, when she was able to speak. “Come to that, you were smart enough shoving it down our throats yourself!” + 

“Ay, but that was because I lost my temper,” Sarah admitted, with a noble simplicity which again struck the other dumb. “If I hadn’t ha’ lost my temper,” she added, “I should ha’ said nowt⁠—nowt!”⁠—a statement so perfectly true in itself that it needed nothing to make it tell. “I never meant you should hear it so sudden-like,” she went on gently, the kindness growing in her voice. “It’s hard lines our Geordie should ha’ done so well for himself, and not your Jim. I never meant to crow over you about it, Eliza⁠—I didn’t, indeed. I never thought o’ such a thing!” + 

Eliza was making a noise like a motorcar trying to start, but Sarah took up her tale before she could reply. + 

“As for letting Simon give in his notice as we’d fixed, I don’t know as it’ll make that much differ, after all. There’s my eyes, for one thing, as I mentioned before. Blind folk is only a nuisance wherever they be, but they’re a real, right-down nuisance on a farm. And Geordie’ll want more nor a farm, I reckon, wi’ all yon brass to splash. He’ll want summat wi’ stables and gardens and happen fishing an’ all⁠—a grand gentleman’s spot, likely, same as the Hall itself.” + 

Mrs. Will felt the world wheeling rapidly about her, and tried to clutch at it as it went. Her temples throbbed and her throat worked, and her staring eyes went blind. She groped her way to the window, and flung up the stiff sash; and, as she stood there, drawing panting breaths, Simon and Will came sauntering through the yard. Her eyes, clearing again in the rush of air, caught the incipient smile on Simon’s face, the new signs of interest and life in his whole look. He could know nothing about the great news, if what Sarah said was true; the utmost that he could do was to sense it in the air. But his look of subtle contentment was a sufficient annoyance in itself. It was the last straw, indeed, which broke the back of Eliza’s self-control. When she turned again her words and her breath came with the leap of a mountain stream. + 

“I wonder you’re not afraid, Sarah Thornthet, to be setting there reeling off lies like hanks o’ cotton off a bobbin! Happen you’re just thinking you’ll get a rise out o’ me and mine, but if that’s the best you can do by way of a joke, well, I think nowt on’t, and so I tell you! Geordie coming home wi’ brass! Geordie wanting the Hall and suchlike! Nay, Sarah, I might ha’ believed the rest wi’ a bit o’ pulling and pushing, but yon last’s taking it over far. Why, I’d as lief believe he was going to get the King’s Crown right out, wi’ mappen Witham Town Hall for a spot to live in! As for thinking o’ me and my feelings and suchlike stuff, you’ve never troubled that much about ’em to start bothering now. There’s only two ways about it, Sarah, and I reckon I know which it is. It’s either a smart lie you’ve been telling from end to end, or else it’s never Geordie that’s coming, but our Jim!” + 

She choked when she came to the last words, both from sudden nervousness, and lack of breath, and again Sarah gave her well-bred laugh. + 

“I wouldn’t be as hard o’ faith as you, Eliza,” she said placidly⁠—“not for a deal! It’s you, not me, would have heard if Jim was coming home. What’s Jim to do wi’ me?” + 

“He’d a deal to do wi’ you when he was in England, as everybody knows! Nay, you hated the sight o’ him⁠—that’s true enough⁠—but you were right keen on trying to set him agen me, all the same. What, the last letter I had from him⁠—and terble saucy an’ all⁠—was blacking me over summat I’d said of you as his lordship didn’t like! Nay, if he come home, Sarah, he’d come to you, not me, and right glad you’d be to have him while he’d a penny before his teeth! Ay, and why shouldn’t our lad ha’ done as well as yours, and happen better, come to that? He was the smarter lad o’ the two, and come o’ smarter folk⁠—ay, but he did now, Sarah, so you’ll kindly shut your mouth! You’ve only to look at the way we’ve done at Blindbeck, me and Will, and then at the mess o’ things you’ve made at yon pig-hull on the marsh! It stands to reason our lad would be the likely one to make out, just as it isn’t in reason to expect owt from yours!” + 

She came a step nearer as she finished, twisting her plump hands, her voice, as it mounted higher, full of bewilderment and angry tears. + 

“Will you swear to it Jim isn’t coming, Sarah?” she demanded⁠—“will you swear? Will you swear as it isn’t my lad that’s coming and not yours?” + 

Sarah said, “Ay, I will that!” in a hearty tone, and with such absolute readiness that Eliza bit her lip. “If you’ve a Bible anywhere handy,” she went on tranquilly, “I’ll swear to it right off.” + 

But already Eliza had drawn back in order to follow a fresh trail. Quite suddenly she had perceived the only means of getting at the truth. + 

“Nay, I’ll not trouble you,” she sneered. “ ’Tisn’t worth it, after all. I shouldn’t like our grand Family Bible to turn yeller wi’ false swearing! Geordie’s letter’ll be proof enough, Sarah, now I come to think on. I’ll believe owt about Halls and suchlike, if you’ll show me that!” + 

She came a step nearer still, holding out her hand, and instantly Sarah’s lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. She might have had a dozen sacred letters about her, from the look of her, at that moment. It might have been Geordie’s face itself that she guarded from the touch of Eliza’s hands. + 

“Ay, I’d be like to show you his letter, wouldn’t I?” she answered, with a wicked smile. “You and me have been such terble friends all these years⁠—I’d be like to show you owt from my bonny lad! Nay, Eliza, you know I’d shove it in t’fire unread, afore I’d let you as much as clap eyes on a single word!” + 

Eliza wheeled away from her with an angry oath, and began to walk to and fro, setting the loose planks jumping and creaking under her feet, and the china rattling and clinking on the shelves. Her hands worked in and out of each other with convulsive movements, and now and then she flung out her heavy arms. She was working herself into one of those storms which the folk at the farm knew only too well, but Sarah, who was the cause of it, did not seem to care. She, too, however, was breathing faster than before, and a faint colour had stayed in her waxen cheek. She still felt as if, in that last bout, she had protected something vital from Eliza’s hands. + 

“I’ll be bound it’s Jim!” Eliza was saying senselessly, over and over again. “I’ll swear it’s Jim!”⁠ ⁠… It was like a giant’s voice, Sarah thought to herself, the voice of a cruel, clumsy giant-child. “You’re telling a lie, Sarah⁠—a nasty lie! You’re jealous, that’s what it is⁠—jealous and mean! Geordie wi’ brass? Not likely!⁠ ⁠… Nay, it’s Jim!” + 

“It’s plain enough it’s the brass you’re after and nowt else,” Sarah said in her cool tones. “You’d have no use for the poor lad if he come back without a cent!” + 

But even while the words were on her lips, Eliza, creaking to and fro, was brought to a sudden halt. The thing that held her was a photograph of Jim, catching her eye in its frame of crimson plush. If he had been older when it was taken, it would have been banished long ago, but here he was only a mischievous baby, struggling in his mother’s arms. Eliza stared at it as she stood in front of the mantelpiece, and quite suddenly she began to cry. The tears poured down her face, and her hands trembled and her body shook. Into the brutal voice came a note at which Sarah, unable to trace the cause, yet quivered in every nerve. + 

“Nay, then, Sarah, you’re wrong, Sarah, you’re dead wrong! I’d be glad to see him just for himself, I would that! He’s been nowt but a trouble and disappointment all his life, but I’d be glad to see him, all the same.” She put out the plump fingers which Sarah loathed, and drew them caressingly over the baby face. “I can’t do wi’ failures,” she added brokenly; “they make me wild; and Jim was the only failure Blindbeck ever hatched. But for all that he was the bonniest baby of the lot, and there’s times I never remember nowt but that. There’s days I just ache for the sound of his voice, and fair break my heart to think he’ll never come back.” + 

There was no doubting the sincerity of her grief, and the big sobs shaking their way through her shook Sarah, too. Her own lips trembled, and her eyes filled; her hands quivered on the arms of the chair. She could not see the pitiful fingers stroking the child’s face, but she who had offered that worship herself needed little help to guess. She had her revenge in full as she sat and listened to the passion that never dies, forcing its way upward even through Eliza’s leathern soul; but the revenge was a two-edged sword that wounded herself as well. All the generosity in her that was still alive and kind would have sprung to the surface instantly if the story had been true. She would have groped her way to Eliza’s side in an effort to console, and perhaps the lifelong enemies might have drawn together for once. But the story was not true, and she had nothing to offer and no right of any sort to speak. She could only sit where she was and suffer and shake, hating herself more in this moment of absolute conquest than she had ever hated Eliza in her darkest hour. + 

But, as a matter of fact, Eliza’s grief would have passed before she could even have tottered to her feet. Her own lips were still shaking when Eliza’s had hardened again; her own eyes were still wet when Eliza’s were dry with hate. The passion which for a brief moment had been selfless and sincere was turned once again into the channel of jealous rage. She swung round so swiftly that her sleeve caught the little frame, and it fell forward unnoticed with a sharp tinkle of broken glass. + 

“There’s summat wrong about it all,” she cried venomously, “and I’ll not rest till I find out what it is! What’s Geordie mean by landing up so smart, and leaving our Jim a thousand mile behind? It’s a nasty sort o’ trick, if it’s nothing worse, seeing how they were thick as thieves as lads. I’ll tell you what it is, Sarah, and you may swallow it as you can⁠—if Geordie’s gitten brass, it’s because he’s robbed it off our Jim! Like enough he’s put an end to him for it, the poor, honest lad⁠—knifed him⁠ ⁠… finished him⁠ ⁠… put him out o’ the road⁠ ⁠… !” + 

The fierce malice of the voice penetrated into the passage, and carried its message into the kitchen and the yard. Will and Simon heard it at the stable door and looked at each other and turned instantly towards the house. Passing the parlour window, they saw the women rigid on their feet, and felt the current of hate sweep strongly across their path. They had a glimpse of Sarah’s face, white, blind and quiet: and Eliza’s, vindictive, purple, and bathed with furious tears. Her heavy tone beat at the other’s immobility as if with actual blows, and the glass in the cabinet rang and rang in sweet reply. Will quickened his pace as he neared the house, for he knew that Eliza did not always stop at words. Indeed, her hands were reaching out towards Sarah’s throat at the very moment he stepped inside. + 

“Whisht, can’t ye, Eliza!” he ordered roughly, his voice harsh with the swift reaction from the little space of content through which he and his brother had just passed. “What’s taken you, missis, to be going on like yon?” + 

He was now in the parlour, with Simon at his heels, while the company from the kitchen clustered round the door. Peering into the tiny arena round each other’s heads, they giggled and whispered, curious and alarmed. Sarah could hear them stirring and gurgling just beyond her sight, and felt their rapacious glances fastened upon her face. Sally tried to push her way through to her aunt’s side, but was stopped by the solid figure of Elliman, set in the very front. The lads had forsaken the milking to run to the window and peep in, and a dog lifted its bright head and planted its forefeet on the sill. All the life of the place seemed drawn to this little room, where at last the women were fighting things out to the very death. + 

“What’s amiss, d’ye say?” Eliza echoed his speech. “Nay, what isn’t amiss! Here’s Sarah has it her Geordie’s a-coming home, but never a word as I can hear about our Jim!” + 

The eyes of the brothers met in a startled glance, and the red came painfully into Simon’s face. Before they could speak, however, Eliza swept their intention from them like a western gale. + 

“What’s come to Jim, I want to know? Why isn’t it our Jim? Geordie’s made his pile, so Sarah says, but I can’t hear of a pile for Jim. He’s dead, that’s what it is!⁠ ⁠… Geordie’s finished him, I’ll swear! He’s robbed him!⁠ ⁠… knifed him!⁠ ⁠… given him a shove in t’beck⁠ ⁠… !” + 

Again she made that threatening movement towards Sarah’s throat, but Will put out his hand and caught her by the wrist. Both the giggles and whispers had died a sudden death, and the lads at the window pressed nearer and looked scared. Sally succeeded at last in forcing her way through, careless that Elliman suffered severely as she passed. + 

“For goodness’ sake, stop it, mother!” she cried sharply. “You’re fair daft! Can’t you wait to make a stir till Geordie’s landed back? He’ll tell us right enough then what’s happened to our Jim.” + 

“He’ll tell us nowt⁠—nowt⁠—!” Eliza began again on a high note, but Simon threw up his hand with a sudden snarl. + 

“Whisht, can’t ye! You fair deafen a body, Eliza!” he flung out. “What’s all this stir about Geordie coming back?” + 

“It’s a lie, that’s what it is!” Eliza exploded again, and again he silenced her with an angry “Whisht!” He kept his eyes on her a moment longer, as if daring her to speak, and then let them travel slowly and almost reluctantly to his wife’s face. He opened his lips to address her and then changed his mind, turning instead to the crew beyond the door. + 

“Tell me about it, can’t you?” he demanded angrily. “One o’ you speak up! Emily Marion⁠—Addison⁠—you wi’ the fat face!” He jerked a contemptuous thumb at Elliman, who went crimson with extreme disgust. “One o’ you tell me the meaning o’ this precious hullaballoo!” + 

Elliman looked across to Sally for help, but did not get it. Instead, she turned her eyes away, ignoring his appeal. + 

“It’s hardly my place to enlighten you, sir,” he said, with an offended shrug, “but I don’t mind telling you the little I know. Apparently your son Geordie is expected soon, and with a fat purse in his pocket to buy him a welcome home.” + 

“Geordie’s coming back, d’ye say?” Simon stared at him with bewildered eyes. + 

“So Mrs. Thornthwaite has given us to understand.” + 

“And wi’ brass? Plenty o’ brass? Geordie wi’ brass?” + 

“Enough and to spare, if all we’re told is true.” + 

“Ay, but that’s just what it isn’t!” Eliza broke out on a peacock scream, and this time Will actually shook her into silence. The poignancy of the moment had hushed the rest of the audience into complete quiet. There was no sound in the room but Eliza’s breathing as Simon turned again to look at his wife. + 

“What’s it all about, Sarah?” he asked quietly, though his voice shook. “You never said nowt about Geordie coming to me.” + 

In the pause that followed Sally drew away from her aunt’s side, as if conscious that this moment was for the two of them alone. The silence waited for Sarah’s answer, but she could not bring herself to speak. In the heat of her victory she had forgotten that Simon also would hear the lying tale. It was the only hitch in the splendid machinery of the lie, but it was enough in itself to bring the whole of it to the ground. Here was Simon in front of her, asking for the truth, and if a hundred Elizas had been present she could still have given him nothing but the truth. But indeed, at that moment, Eliza, and all that Eliza stood for, was swept away. In that hush and sudden confronting of souls Sarah and Simon were indeed alone. + 

“Geordie’s never coming, is he, Sarah?” he asked anxiously. “Nay, you’ve dreamed it, my lass! And he’s rich, d’ye say?⁠—why, that settles it right out! Why, it was nobbut the other day he was writing home for brass!” + 

Still she did not speak, and quite suddenly he was wroth, vexed by her mask-like face and the sudden diminishing of his hope. + 

“Losh, woman!” he cried angrily. “You look half daft! Is yon lad of ours coming, or is he not? Is it truth you’re telling me, or a pack o’ lies?” + 

She stirred then, moved by the cheated sound in his angry voice. She gave a sigh. The fooling of Eliza had been utterly great and glorious, but it had come to an end. “It was just lies,” she heard herself saying in a passionless tone, and then with a last twinge of regret, she sighed again. + 

Eliza’s scream of “I knew it! I knew it!” merged in the chorus of exclamation from the group about the door. Will said nothing, fixing his sister-in-law with his kindly gaze, but Simon fell back muttering, and staring as if afraid. He wondered, looking at her unemotional face, whether the trouble about her eyes was beginning to touch her brain. She herself had said there was no knowing what blind weather might possibly do, no telling what a blind body’s brain might someday suddenly breed.⁠ ⁠… + 

He came back to the consciousness of Eliza’s voice as a man from the dead hears the roar of life as he returns. + 

“I wonder you’re not struck down where you stand, Sarah Thornthet! I wonder you’re not liggin’ dead on t’floor! But you’ll be punished for it, right enough; you’ll be paid for it, never fear! You’ll see, summat’ll happen to you afore so long⁠—I shouldn’t wonder if it happened before morn! Like enough, the next news as we have o’ Geordie’ll be as he’s dead or drowned.⁠ ⁠… I’ll serve you a slap on t’lugs, Will, if you can’t shape to let me be!” + 

It was Sally who saved the situation for the second time that day. + 

“Fetch the trap, Uncle Simon, and look sharp about it!” she commanded smartly, “and you come and set down, Aunt Sarah, until it’s round. Let her be, can’t you!” she added roughly, flinging round on her mother. “She’s that tired and put out she don’t know what’s she’s at.” + 

She shook her fist at the window, and the faces disappeared like morning frost. Then she turned on the others and ordered them out, too. + 

“You’d best be getting about your business!” she commanded them, hand on hip. “You should be in t’dairy this minute, Mary Phyllis⁠—you know that as well as me. I’d think shame o’ myself, Mr. and Mrs. Addison, to be helping other folks’ wi’ their weekly wash! Same to you, Elliman Wilkinson, and a bit over, come to that! You’re not one o’ the family yet by a long chalk, my lad; nay, nor like to be, neither, if you don’t see to mend your ways!” + 

Eliza still lingered, however, loth that anything should be left unsaid, but Sally ushered her resolutely to the door. She protested to the last inch, and the hand that had been denied judgment on Sarah flew up and slapped Sally’s face. The girl looked at her with scornful eyes. + 

“Ay, you can’t keep your hands off folk, can you?” she said bitterly. “You never could. I remember Jim saying he fair hated you for it when we were bairns. That was why he always liked Aunt Sarah a deal better than he liked you!” + 

“You’ll find other folk free wi’ their hands,” Eliza stormed, “if you’re that free wi’ your impident tongue! Yon fool of an Elliman’ll stand no nonsense, for all he looks so new-milk soft! Not that he wants any truck wi’ you at all, as far as I can see. It’s Mary Phyllis he can’t take his eyes off, and no wonder, neither. She was always a sight better-looking than you, and she’s younger, by a deal. You’re that old and teptious you fair turn the cream sour just by being along wi’t in t’house! Nay, I reckon you can put wedding and suchlike out o’ your head as soon as you like! You’ll never have a house of your own, or a man to put in it; and as for bairns o’ your own to slap, why, you’ll never have none o’ them⁠ ⁠… !” + 

She said the rest to the closed door, a stout, oaken door which even she was reluctant to attack. In the few pauses that she allowed herself she could hear nothing inside the room, and presently, tiring of the one-sided contest, she waddled heavily away along the passage. She was in the dairy a minute later, and saw through the window the brothers yoking the old horse. Through the window, too, she caught scraps of their talk, and strained her ears eagerly to catch its bent. As if by magic the anger left her face, and a little smile grew happily on her lips. She even hummed a little tune to herself, as she watched and listened, leaning against the frame.⁠ ⁠… + 

The silence persisted in the room that she had left, as if the air was so laden with words that it would hold no more. Sarah groped her way to the rocking-chair and sat down again to wait. Sally went to the window, and stared miserably into the yard. So they waited together until they heard the rattle of the wheels along the stones.⁠ ⁠… + 

VII + 

Even now, however, the Blindbeck comedy was not quite played out. Eliza had still to give it its finishing touch. The lately routed audience must have been conscious of this, for they assembled again in order to watch the Thornthwaites take their leave. As a rule, the Simons simply faded away, unperceived and unsped of anybody but Will. They were not welcome when they came, and they were not lamented when they went away. But today Sarah had managed to touch the imagination of the crowd, arousing unwilling admiration and even respect. The Addisons, for instance, though outwardly badly shocked, rejoiced by proxy in a crime which they would never have had the courage to commit themselves. Even Elliman was heard to remark that Sarah’s psychology seemed possibly worthy of study, after all. The main motive with all, however, was a sneaking hope that, on some ground or another, the opponents might go for each other again. + 

As if by accident, therefore, they drifted out of the house, and on Sarah’s appearance were to be found sitting on rails or pigsty walls, or leaning in graceful attitudes against the porch. Sarah could not see them, but Simon could, and divided a scowl of dislike amongst the lot. The Thornthwaites were actually settled in the trap when Eliza came bustling after them into the yard. + 

It was such a different Eliza, however, that at first it looked as if the audience were to be cheated of their scene. The virulent harridan of ten minutes ago had vanished as if she had never been. This Eliza was hearty, smiling, serene, the smooth-faced, smooth-tongued mocker which Sarah detested most. Even her hair and dress, lately dishevelled by rage, were now as tidy and sleek as the fur of a well-brushed cat. She came to a halt close beside the wheel, and Sarah started when she heard her speak. + 

“So you’re off, are you, Sarah? Ay, well, you’ll be best at home! I reckon our Sally’s right, and you’re not yourself at all. Mind and see doctor again, first thing as ever you can. It’s a bad sign, they say, to go making up fancy tales. Folks as get telling lies is framing for softening of the brain.” + 

Will looked back with a frown as he hurried on to open the gate. + 

“We’ve had enough o’ that, missis!” he called sharply. “Just you let Sarah be!” + 

Mrs. Will tossed her head, but managed to preserve her compassionate air. + 

“Losh, master!” she reproached him loudly. “You’ve no call to speak so sharp. I’m meaning kindly enough by poor Sarah here, I’m sure! She’s welcome to tell lies till they turn her black in the face, but it isn’t healthy for her, all the same. I shouldn’t like to see poor Sarah in Garland’s Asylum, or some such spot as yon. Ay, well, we’ll be having her close at hand afore so long, and then we can do our best for her ourselves!” + 

Sarah started a second time when she said that, and the pigsty audience brightened and pricked its ears. Simon muttered an oath and pulled at the horse until it sidled and backed, forcing the subtle tormentor to retreat. + 

“You stand back, missis,” he cried angrily, waving a threatening whip, “and take your long tongue with you, or it’ll be tripping us in t’road!” + 

There was a burst of laughter at this show of wit, and Eliza flared instantly into open war. She raised her voice after the departing pair, stepping back heavily upon Elliman’s feet. + 

“You’ll have to speak different from that, Mr. Thornthet,” she called shrilly, “if you’re coming to Blindbeck to act as our hired man!” + 

The laughter broke out again, and then stopped, cut short. Simon, red to the ears, raised the whip violently above the horse’s back, but it was checked before it descended by Sarah’s outstretched hand. + 

“Bide a minute, Simon,” she said quietly. “Just hold on. What’s Eliza meaning to say by that?” + 

Simon looked helplessly about him, noting the interested gaping faces on all sides. “Ax me on t’road,” he said desperately, yearning to get away. “It’s time we were getting on, missis. Ax me on t’road!” + 

“Nay, ax him now, and ha’ done wi’ it, Sarah!” Eliza jeered, advancing again. “Or ax me if you want, and I’ll tell you mighty sharp! Likely you’ve been wondering what’s to come o’ you when you leave the farm? Ay, well, our cowman’s job is going begging at present, and I hear your master’s thinking o’ taking it on.” + 

There was a pause after that, in which even the pigsty audience was hushed as mice, and the fretting horse itself was suddenly still. Those nearest to Sarah heard her give a sigh, the same little sigh with which she had loosed her hold on the Parlour Dream. The next moment Simon had thankfully eased the reins, and the trap went creaking and jolting out of the still yard.⁠ ⁠… + 

Eliza watched it triumphantly until the very last, and then, bursting into a laugh, turned expectantly for applause. But for once her usually appreciative audience failed her of her due. They avoided her eyes and looked at their boots, or leaned over the pigsty walls and pretended a passionate interest in the pigs. The Addisons, in whom Christian charity was apt to rise and fall like a turned-on jet, murmured tepid thanks for their entertainment, and hurried away. Even the smug cousin refused to play up to Eliza for once, partly because of a latent fineness of feeling which she had hurt, but chiefly because she had trodden on his toes. Turning his back determinedly upon Mary Phyllis, he bent to whisper something in Sally’s ear. She hesitated a moment, lifting her eyes to his sobered face, and then followed him slowly towards the track across the fields. + 

VIII + 

Outside the farmyard wall Sarah again put out a hand to Simon’s arm. “Yon’s Taylor’s spot, isn’t it?” she enquired, as the cottage came up. “Just hold on a minute, and let me see.” + 

He obeyed, watching her nervously as she bent and peered at the house, and wondering uneasily what she was about. She knew the house well enough, both inside and out, so she could not be stopping to look at it just for that. She must be trying to form some impression of it that was wholly new, perhaps picturing it as it would be when she had come to live in it herself. + 

When he found that she did not speak, he began to offer clipped remarks, anxiously pointing out objects that she was quite unable to see. + 

“It’s a good house, missis.⁠ ⁠… You’ll remember it’s a tidy spot. There’s a fairish garden for cabbishes and the like, and a bit of a drying-ground as well. As for berry-bushes, there’s gooseberry and black currant and red⁠ ⁠… and danged if there isn’t a few rasps over at far side wall an’ all!” + 

Sarah looked away from the house the moment he started to speak, as if some spell were broken by the sound of his voice. “Ay,” she said, with a total lack of interest, and staring ahead.⁠ ⁠… “Now, master, we’d best get on.” + 

Simon, cut off in mid-flight, repeated “Rasps!” in a feeble tone, and again Sarah said “Ay,” and requested him to get on. He drove away rather reluctantly, looking behind him as he went, and muttering of Taylor’s rasps and cabbishes until they were finally lost to sight. + 

Now once more they were in the high-flanked lane, with Blindbeck and all that Blindbeck stood for fallen away at last. The cross went with them, indeed, but the calvary dropped behind. The horse turned homeward, and, encouraged by Will’s corn, showed a sudden freakish revival of vanished youth. Bicycles met and passed them in the narrow road, sliding by like thistledown on a wind, while the riders saw only an elderly couple apparently half asleep. Yet even the dullest farm-lad would have cried aloud to them if he had known to what they went. He would have flung himself off his bicycle and barred the road, a humble but valiant imitation of an Angel of God. + 

Evening was coming, but the day was still alive, incredibly long as the afternoon had seemed. Simon’s old watch, put right that morning in Witham, asserted that it was only half-past four. The atmosphere had never been really light, and only imperceptibly was it drawing down to dusk. The grey seemed to have deepened and settled a little, but that was all. It was a day on which people forgot the time, as Mr. Dent had said, a day when they had every excuse for forgetting the right time. Simon felt suddenly as though he had never seen the sun either rise or set for at least a week. Yesterday there had been only a swift setting, hurriedly blotted out, and today, if there had been any fugitive brightness of farewell, it must have passed while they were still at the farm. The night was coming unduly to the grey-green land which had never had its meed of sun, just as the night came unfairly to lives whose share of glamour and glory had been missed. He longed to see a light spring out of the west, showing the silver water in a shining line, and re-tinting the heavy, neutral-coloured earth. + 

Sun⁠—evening sun lying over the sea⁠—would have made things easier for both of them, but especially for his wife. Even though there was so little that she could see, the warmth and light would at least have lain tenderly upon her lids. Trouble and change were always easier to bear under a smiling sky; it did not mock at the trouble, as smiling faces so often seemed to do. Rain and the dark seemed to narrow a trouble in, so that change was a nameless peril into which each step was into a void. But there was to be no sun for these lost folk who seemed to be straying all the day long; only the unstirred breath of the mist in the blotted west, filling the mighty bowl at whose bottom lay the sea. + 

They felt strange with each other, now that they were alone, because of all that the other had done while the two of them were apart. Simon’s sudden decision was as inexplicable to his wife as her afternoon’s jest with Eliza had seemed to him. In his place she would never have stooped to make of herself the younger brother’s man; she would have worked for the hardest driver amongst them sooner than that. Even the close affection between the brothers could not dignify the position in her eyes. She could understand something of Simon’s yearning towards the farm, but Sarah was never the sort of which they make doorkeepers in Heaven. She would never really have understood the strength of the pull, even with no Eliza set like a many-eyed monster on the farmyard wall. He, on the other hand, could not even pretend to understand the Lie, but then the Vision of the Parlour had been granted to her and not to him. + 

Both their minds, however, were at work more on the change that was coming than on Sarah’s sudden craze, since always the pressing business of life must supersede the dream. Simon, indeed, did not want to think about Sarah’s behaviour further than he could help, because of that sinister saying about the doings of blind brains. As for Sarah herself, she had done with the dream forever in that moment when she came face to face with the limits of her lie. It had had its tremendous hour in the down-treading of a lifelong foe, but in that one stupendous achievement it had finally passed. Never again would she be able to shut herself in the spell, until the blind saw and the lost spoke, and the sea was crossed in a leap. Never again would she be able to believe that Geordie might come home. + 

In spite of their shameful departure, fast fading, however, from his mind, Simon was already planning the bittersweet prospect of their near return. Like so many ideas impossible and even repellent at the start, this had already become natural and full of an acid charm. For the time being he was content to ignore the drawbacks of the position, and to concentrate only upon its obvious gains. His mind, hurrying forward over the next few months, was already disposing of stock, farm-implements and surplus household gear; and in his complete absorption he forgot that he was not alone, and kept jerking out fragments of disjointed speech. Sarah allowed him to amuse himself after this fashion for some time, and then broke dryly into his current of thought. + 

“You may as well tell me what’s settled, and get it by with,” she observed in a sardonic tone. “So far, even Eliza seems to know more about it than me. You and Will seem to ha’ fixed things up wi’ a vengeance, that you have! You’d best to tell me how it come about, instead of booing away to yourself like a badly calf.” + 

“Nay, it was all fixed that sharp,” Simon grumbled, with an injured air, though very relieved at heart to hear her speak. “There was no time to ax nobody nor nowt. I’m still a bit maiselt about it myself, for the matter o’ that. I don’t know as I’ll be that surprised if I hear tomorrow it’s all off. As for Eliza, it fair beats me how she could ha’ got wind of it so smart! She likely hid herself somewheres when we was talking it out; though she’s not that easy to miss⁠—gert, spying toad!” + 

He brisked considerably now that the first awkwardness was past, and went on to tell her, after his usual backwards and forwards fashion, exactly how the new arrangement had come about. + 

“It’s not much to crack on, I dare say,” he finished, pleading with her across the disapproving silence which had again risen between them like a wall, “but, when all’s said and done, it’s a sight better than I’d looked for, by a deal. I’d ha’ been bound to hire myself somewheres, to help us make out, and there isn’t a decenter master in t’countryside than Will. It’s a deal better than being odd-job man at some one-horse spot, or maybe scrattin’ up weeds and suchlike at some private house. There’ll be a decent wage, think on, and milk⁠—ay, and happen a load o’ coal an’ all. Will’ll see as we’re rightly done by, never fret! We’ll be right comfortable, I’m sure. Will says his lasses’ll give you a hand wi’ washing and the like, and if happen we get a good sale we might run to a bit o’ help ourselves. You’ll miss t’horse and cart, I reckon, but we’ll find a way out o’ yon as well. If you felt as you fancied a bit of a ride, Will’d like enough loan me a horse and trap.” + 

He was coaxing her for all he was worth, but neither the coaxing nor the explanation seemed to get any further than her ears. Again he felt the spasm of irritation which he had felt in the parlour, and was at the same time reminded of its original cause. + 

“I don’t say it’ll be over pleasant for either on us,” he went on vexedly, as she did not open her lips, “but you’ll likely admit I did the best I could for us, all the same. It’s a sad pity you and Eliza pull together so bad, but it’s over late to think o’ mending it now. Anyway, you did nowt to mend it by telling yon string o’ lies this afternoon! What, in the name o’ goodness, made you act so strange?” + 

She moved then, a touch of the afternoon glamour reaching from Blindbeck, and following her down the lane. + 

“Nay, I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… Things come over folk, now and then. I’m right sorry, though, if I set you thinking it was the lad.” + 

“I’ve given up thinking owt o’ the sort long since,” he said dejectedly. “I should ha’ thought you would ha’ done the same an’ all.” + 

“Things come over folk,” she repeated, unwilling to say more, and he nodded his head, relieved by her softer tone. “You’ll try to make up your mind to Blindbeck, will you, missis?” he pressed on nervously, hoping her mood would last. “It’s a bad best, maybe, but I nobbut did what I could.” + 

She gave a sharp sigh, but her voice was firm. “Ay, I’ll make up my mind to it, after a bit.” + 

“It’s a big change at our time of life, but you’ll settle, never fear.” + 

“Ay, I’ll settle all right. Don’t you fret.” + 

“It’s a good shop, Sarah.” + 

“Ay.” + 

“And Will’s a right good sort.” + 

“Oh, ay.” + 

The sudden gentleness of her mood prompted him to a further unburdening of his soul. He leaned forward a little in the trap, staring over the grey fields, and with the note of pleading rising and falling in his tone. + 

“I don’t mind telling you now, Sarah, but I’ve been fair fretted out o’ my senses all this while. There’s been times I’ve felt like just making off on t’sands, and letting tide settle it for me for good an’ all. Ay, and by Gox! it very near come about, too, one day when I was mooning along and not looking where I was at! But there was you to see to, and I couldn’t rightly bring myself to chuck up the sponge. ’Tisn’t as if the lad was dead, neither⁠—there was that as well. He’s as good as dead, likely, but it’s a different thing, all the same. Folks can get along on a mighty little hope⁠—same as yon old horse as died just when it was learning to live on nowt! We’ve come to a bonny pass, these days, you and Geordie an’ me, but the world isn’t past bearing as long as the three on us is over sod.” + 

It was with a sense of enlightenment and escape that they came out finally on to the high road, for in the cleft of the lane every curve of the land stole what little clarity was left to the slowly withdrawing earth. Even Sarah was faintly conscious of lightened lids, as well as of easier breathing as the borders of the road drew further apart. In the lane they had been high, looming presences, over-close to the lurching wheels, but now they ceased to oppress her, though she was still aware that they marched with her as she went. It was as if the furniture of the land was being withdrawn into the wings before the curtain of night was really down; yet even in its slow departure it still formed the picture and dominated the scene. The only real comfort for brain and eyes was on the unfurnished marsh, where even the fenced roads lifted themselves as often as not above their fences to look abroad. + 

There was more life, also, on the open road⁠—cycles and traps, and people walking in twos and threes; motorcars, too, at which Simon never so much as glanced aside, though now they were really beginning to look like ghosts in the sinking light. Even when there was nobody on the road there was still the sense of being part of an unseen train, the link which binds traveller to traveller on every principal highway in the land, but especially on those which run north and south. The link strengthens and the thrill deepens as the day lengthens and the hours go on. Each wonders instinctively to what home the other is hastening before he is overtaken by the dark. From each to each at the hour of dusk passes the unconscious Godspeed uniting all who are drawing together towards the adventure of the night. + 

And, for Simon and Sarah, as for all, either man or beast, even in this bitter hour, there was the comfort of the road that goes home. There is always a lamp set high in the house to which one returns, even though it be poor and empty and dark. The greatest sorrow awaiting one at the end is not really a sorrow until one steps inside. The ease of the road home is the ineffable ease of the mind. Stout hearts and limbs may carry us out, and barely suffice to stagger us back, but the running and leaping mind can comfort the body on. There is always a lamp set high at the end of the road that is going home.⁠ ⁠… + 

Not until they had lost it would they realise the perpetual consolation of that long-accustomed road. Times without number they had travelled it, seething with anger and hate, and yet always they were the richer for having passed that way. Simon, busily thinking of Blindbeck and all the advantages of the wealthy farm, did not know that he was putting his real wealth from him with every thought. Yet he would know it all the rest of his life when he drove a road that was not consecrated by the years, when the folk that hailed them in passing were not part of a lifelong chain; when the turns of the road were no longer pictures and books, with each house where it should be and would be for all time; when he stopped at a gate in the dusk and knew it was not his; when he entered a meaningless building at last and knew it was not home.⁠ ⁠… + 

But just for the moment he was thinking neither of the immediate present nor of the greater part of his long-reaching past. His mind, unusually stimulated by the day’s events, swung easily to and fro between the future at Blindbeck and the far-off boyhood which he had spent with Will. Blindbeck had never been his home in any sense, but his call to Blindbeck was nevertheless the call of the past. They would renew their youth for each other, the two old men, and forget when they were together that they were old. They turned instinctively to each other, as all turn to those who can recreate for them the young beginnings of their lives. On the marsh Simon always felt immeasurably old, weighted as with an actual burden by the years. He saw himself looking behind him at them as at monsters created in his pride, which now and forever were out of his control. With Will beside him, they would lie in front as they used to do, rolling meadowlands still untouched by the plough of time. Because they had been young together it would be impossible for them to be really old. Because they had been young together they could took smiling, shoulder to shoulder, into the unbelievable grave. + 

Not that his longing had any such definite frame of thought as this, though he was aware that in it had lain the motive which had fixed his mind. He only moved towards its fulfilment as all untutored souls move naturally towards release from strain. He scarcely remembered Sarah after their talk had come to an end that was hardly an end, like an unravelled cord of which no one troubles to count the untwisted strands. That mighty leap which he was taking across the years carried him well above both Sarah’s and Geordie’s heads. The school-years, the climbing, running, hungry years were more distinct to him than the heavy, responsible years of marriage and middle life. He saw himself and Will running after the hounds, paddling in calm lakes of gold-shot evening tides, skating by slowly rising moons. He saw a raw lad going shyly but stolidly to his first place, already a man in the awed estimation of the brother left behind. He heard the clink of the first money he had ever earned, which had gone straight from his pocket into the family purse. He had handed it over without a twinge of regret, and his empty hands had continued to thrill with pride. Later, he had begged a couple of shillings for himself and Will, and had never thought of the money then or since but as a gift.⁠ ⁠… + 

They came at last to the dangerous, right-angled turn which dropped them down to the marsh, and as the horse began to jerk itself down the hill a car passed slowly above them along the open road. Although the day still lingered, the taillight was already lit, as if the car were setting out on a journey instead of going home. Yet it went slowly and almost reluctantly, like a man who looks over his shoulder all the while. It was as if it was only waiting its opportunity to turn itself in its tracks. But all the time it was drifting gradually away, and the red light, that could hardly as yet impress itself on the dusk, seemed to hesitate for a moment at a curve of the road, and then, as if a hand had been clapped in front of it, was suddenly gone. + 

The drop from the highway was like being dropped from a cliff, so distinct was the change to the loneliness of the marsh. The link was broken which made them members of a purposed line, leaving them mere strayed wanderers of whom nobody was aware. The few farmhouses, lifeless-looking in the deadened light, stared always towards great distances over their puny heads. The few trees sprang up before them, suddenly strange, acquiring an almost violent personality against the meaningless scene. + 

The straight miles dragged reluctantly past their heavy wheels, and on the unending road they seemed to go forward without purpose and to be set on a journey that had no goal. When at length the stretches of meadow and cropped land gave place to the pale-coloured desert of the sand, there seemed no possible reason why one should cease and the other begin. Away out behind the mist there was a living, moving tide, but here on the marsh there was no consciousness of tide. Things just stopped, that was all, and from the garden became the waste, just as the growth and renewal of life had stopped for the old pair, leaving nothing but desolation before their feet. + 

Yet still the earth was with them, and Simon turned his eyes again and again to its vague outlines with relief. Across the bay the cone of the Knott still held to its tangibility and form, protesting against the swamping hand of night. The crown of it, fitted with wood as closely as with a cap, was darker against the sky than the shadowy slopes on which the houses climbed. And, nearer inland still, on the low edge of shore that was like a trail of smoke on the farther side of the sands, a blur of formless yet purposeful grey showed where the tiny hamlet of Sandyeat clustered about the “Ship.” + 

Sandholes was in sight now, and the horse quickened its pace, triumphing over the last few wearisome yards. As they approached the house, with its white face set on a body of looming buildings behind, they had as always a mingled sensation of sadness and relief. Not that the place was sad to them because of its dreary emptiness set amongst formless fields. In the course of years it had become for them merely an atmosphere, not a thing of sight. They were only depressed by it because for them it was the heart of failure and loss. And in the same way they were relieved by it, dignified, sanctuaried and consoled, because this was their hiding-place against the world, and here the heart of their few memories of joy. + 

The house was dark, but they were accustomed to that, used to the door that would not open, however they knocked, and the windows that forever would never frame a face, however they hailed. They were used to that stumbling into the place in the folding dark, to the striking of a match that brought them nothing but the dreary waiting rigidity of the things they had left behind. They were used, too, to an uprising fear on the struck light that some terrible change might have taken place in the empty house; that even the waiting things might have played them false while they were gone.⁠ ⁠… + 

So lonely looked the place, that it seemed as if it might even revenge itself upon those who had the temerity to awaken it during that sinking hour, but, as they reached the gate, the old dog asleep in a loose box aroused himself to a hoarse, recognising bark. The few cows, also, waiting to be fed, sent out deep complaints at the sound of the coming wheels. And as they finally rattled into the uneven yard, a woman’s figure stood up and waved to them from the seawall. + 