THE TRUMPET IN THE DUST

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

CRUMP FOLK GOING HOME
THE LONELY PLOUGH
THE OLD ROAD FROM SPAIN
BEAUTIFUL END
THE SPLENDID FAIRING

THE TRUMPET
IN THE DUST

BY
CONSTANCE HOLME
SECOND EDITION
MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
49 RUPERT STREET
LONDON, W. 1

Published 1921

TO
LORD HENRY BENTINCK,
THIS WEED
FROM
AN UNCULTIVATED GARDEN

“I was on my way to the temple with my evening offerings,
Seeking for the heaven of rest after the day’s dusty toil;
Hoping my hurts would be healed and stains in my garment washed white,
When I found thy trumpet lying in the dust.
Has it not been the time for me to light my lamp?
Has my evening not come to bring me sleep?
O, thou blood-red rose, where have my poppies faded?
I was certain my wanderings were over and my debts all paid
When suddenly I came upon thy trumpet lying in the dust.

From thee I had asked peace only to find shame.
Now I stand before thee—help me to don my armour!
Let hard blows of trouble strike fire into my life.
Let my heart beat in pain—beating the drum of thy victory.
My hands shall be utterly emptied to take up thy trumpet.”

The Trumpet—Rabindranath Tagore.

CONTENTS

PART I
REWARD OF BATTLE

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Clapham got up on that fine September morning like some king of the East going forth to Bethlehem. She awoke with a heady sense of excitement and power, not wearily, and with a dulled brain, as she so often did now that she was beginning to grow old, but with vivid perceptions and a throbbing heart. First of all, opening her eyes on the sunny square of her little window, she was conscious of actual enrichment, as if the sunshine itself were a tangible personal gift. To the pleasure of this was added the happy anticipation of something not yet quite within reach, thrilling her nerves as they had not been thrilled for years. Then, as the thought of what the day might possibly bring flashed upon her in full force, she warmed from head to foot in a passion of exultation, wonder and grateful joy.

She started up presently to peer at the little clock by the bedside, and then remembered that she had no engagement, and sank back happily. Had not the Vicar’s wife called, only the evening before, to inform her that she would not want her to-day? Mrs. Clapham chuckled as she lay in bed, telling herself that if Mrs. Wrench did not have her to-day, in all probability she would never have her again at all.

Mrs. Wrench, she remembered now, had been called to London to her daughter’s wedding, one of those nowadays weddings which could only be called catching a bird on the wing—snapping up a sailor when he was a few days in port, or a soldier when the War Office happened to take its eye off him for a couple of minutes. The actual war was over, of course, but the war weddings still continued. In Mrs. Clapham’s young days weddings were things which took years to come to their full conclusion, slowly ripening to their end like mellowing cheeses or maturing port. The weddings of these days seemed to her like hastily-tossed pancakes by comparison; half-cooked efforts which had only a poor choice at the best between the frying-pan and the fire.

She was pleased for Miss Marigold, however, that she had succeeded in catching her bird at last. It was just as well not to waste any time, seeing how long she had been about it. Why, she was the same age as Mrs. Clapham’s daughter Tibbie, who had been married these last eight years, and a widow for going on two! Mrs. Clapham experienced the conscious superiority of the mother whose daughter has long since been disposed of in no matter what unfortunate circumstances. She had always been perfectly convinced that the Vicar’s wife was jealous because Tibbie had got off first, and had even rallied her about it in her jolly, good-tempered fashion. Now, however, Miss Marigold had suddenly seen her way towards making things even, and Mrs. Wrench had rushed off in a fluster to see her do it.

Looking in, the evening before, in order to deliver her message, she had been so full of the impending change in Miss Marigold’s life that she had quite forgotten the impending change in Mrs. Clapham’s. Seated in the armchair that had been made by the long-departed Jonty Clapham, she had talked excitedly of her daughter in the Government office, who would be snatched out of it, pen in hand, so to speak, to be married to a bridegroom who, metaphorically, would still have one foot on his ship. She had also wept a little in the way that women and mothers have, and Mrs. Clapham, whose own tears over a daughter’s bridal had been shed so many superior years before, had consoled her with words of sympathy and wisdom, and her well-known kindly laugh. Presently Mrs. Wrench had dried her tears and begun to tell her about her daughter’s frocks, and Mrs. Clapham, whose Tibbie happened to be a dressmaker by profession, was able to shine a second time as a qualified judge. But never once during the conversation had she as much as hinted at her own bright hope which was so near its wonderful fulfilment. She had just allowed Mrs. Wrench to babble happily on, and kept her own thoughts hugged to herself where they lay so snug and warm.

Not even when Mrs. Wrench had risen at last to go had she referred to any possible alteration in her own affairs. She had merely sent her love and respects to the bride, and the bride’s mother had promised to come and tell her about the wedding. “And of course next week as usual, please!” she had said as she hurried away, and the charwoman had said neither yea nor nay, but had merely dropped her old-fashioned curtsey. It was no use reminding the Vicar’s wife that, by the time next week came round, things might have become anything but “usual.” There was always the possibility, too, that it might be unlucky, with the whole entrancing affair still hanging breathlessly in the balance. So she had let her go away without even dropping a hint of her personal prospects, and it was only after the door was shut that she had allowed herself to smile. Then she had begun to chuckle and chuckle, and sat down and chuckled, and stood up and chuckled, and sat down again and chuckled and chuckled and chuckled and chuckled....

She chuckled afresh now as she lay thinking, and then reflected that it might possibly be as unlucky as singing too early, and therefore desisted. It occurred to her also that she might be tempting Providence by lying in bed, behaving, as it were, as if the decree which would set her free to lie in bed had actually been spoken; and, sitting up in a flurry, she threw off the bed-clothes and began to dress. It was more than probable that she would have as much bed as anybody could want, in the near future. She who had always been a phenomenally early riser need not grudge an exhibition of the accomplishment on this possibly last day.

The boards creaked under her feet as she stirred about the cottage bedroom, moving cleverly in the limited space and under the sloping ceiling. She had always been a big woman, coming of big, upstanding stock, and now at sixty-five she was stout as well. To all outward appearance, though, she was strong and sound, and it was only lately that her comely pink face had begun its network of fine lines. Always as neat as a new pin, to-day she took greater pains over dressing than usual, giving an extra polish to her healthy skin and an extra shine to her white hair. The day which was bringing her so much—as she serenely hoped—could not be encountered in any other spirit. She looked at herself in the glass when she had finished, and was glad to see that she stood her age so well. Her hands alone troubled her—those toil-worn, charwoman’s hands which spoke so clearly of her profession. Not that she was ashamed of her work—on the contrary, she was proud—but in that moment of personal satisfaction she was ashamed of her hands.

She turned away at last, and creaked across the boards to the stairs, full of that pleasant consciousness of sound health and of coming good. She forgot that lately she had begun to feel old, that she had had doubts about her heart, and that the knee which she had damaged years ago on Mrs. Fletcher’s stairs was often too painful to let her sleep. She forgot that there had been a day—not so long ago, either—when she had suddenly found herself coming home thoroughly tired out, not only in body, but in mind. The spirit had gone clean out of her for the time being. She had wondered, indeed, whether she would ever be able to persuade herself to enter other people’s houses again, so utterly weary was she of their unvarying routine, their anything but unvarying servants, their dull furniture and their duller meals. She had even felt a spasm of real hatred for the houses themselves, which, no matter how often or how thoroughly she scrubbed them from roof to floor, were always waiting for her to come and scrub them again.

That unexpected breakdown of hers had lasted at least twenty-four hours. The following morning she had actually refused to go to Mrs. Hogg, whose dwelling at any time was never one of those that she liked best. She had sent back word at the last minute—an unforgivable crime in her scrupulous code—and had sat indoors all day brooding and doing nothing. Towards evening she had had a vision of herself as a helpless old woman, and then she had broken down and wept; but next day her courage had come surging back, and next week as usual she had gone to Mrs. Hogg. Her work was as good as ever it had been, and outsiders had seen no difference. Nevertheless, there was a difference, as she knew very well. That day had marked the point at which she had begun definitely to grow old. From that day she realised that she had been scarred by the battle of life, and that before very long she must seek some haven to be healed.

This morning, however, sadness and doubt were gone from her mind as if they had never been. She went downstairs briskly, carrying the little clock, and set to work at her usual tasks with the zest of a young lass. Her knee did not pain her when she knelt to light the kitchen fire; her heart did not trouble her when she filled the bucket at the pump. She moved from one room to another as lightly as in the days when she had been a well-known local dancer, steady and tireless on her feet. She had never felt stronger or more fit for her life’s work than on the morning of the day which was to see her bid that work farewell.

The very day itself seemed to know that something uncommon was afoot, drawing by slow degrees to some poised and perfect hour. It was one of those days which are at the same time sharply etched and yet soft in tone, with their vivid colours as smooth as if seen through water or in a glass. In the village street, where the pillars of smoke were not yet set on their stacks, the low cottage-rows had clear black shadows under their eaves, and clear black edges along their roofs. The flag-staff on the church-tower was like a needle poised in a steady hand, and the tower itself was not so much built as flung by a brush on the gilded air. Below the dropping, curving street and the painted church the river was shedding its sheath of steel, ready for drawing on the faint-coloured robe that it would wear during the day. And always the hills to the west were growing in beauty with bracken and bent, the warm tones of turning trees, the fine sharp blue of stone, and the heather that seemed to keep all day long the colours of sunrise over the sea.

But in Mrs. Clapham’s heart this morning there was so much beauty already that she scarcely heeded the extra loveliness of the outside world. She was glad, of course, that it was going to be fine, because life altogether was easier when it was fine. She was glad that the sun greeted her when she came down, splashing about the little kitchen that was always so greedy of its light, catching at it in the morning before it was well in the sky, and through the scullery door at the back snatching the last beam from the fading west. She opened the scullery door now, not only for a sight of the Michaelmas daisies bunched in the garden beyond, but because of the extra space it seemed to afford the exultation in her heart. As she went to and fro, her eyes drew to them as to flowers set upon some altar of thanksgiving, and the glow in her heart deepened as she passed through the warm sun. But the beauty of the day seemed only a natural background for the miracle that was coming. She trusted it contentedly, just as she was trusting other things in life. It was not one of those days of exquisite promise which languished and faded before it was noon. The perfect day was perfect and reliable all through, just as the perfect happenings of life went steadily to their appointed end....

She thought of Miss Marigold again while she forced herself to eat her breakfast, difficult as she found it to sit still because of the tremor in her nerves. The Vicar’s daughter would make a handsome bride, she said to herself, though no power on earth could make her a young one. She would look clever and nice and rather fine, but not the sweet little bundle of youth that Tibbie had looked. But then Tibbie had always had the pull in the matter of looks, even although Miss Marigold might be supposed to have scored in the matter of brains. Even that point, however, so Mrs. Clapham considered, was open to dispute. Tibbie, rosy and laughing and fair, and looking as though she hadn’t a care in the world, had been clever enough in her own way. It was real shrewdness of character which had led her to choose for a husband the tamest youth in the place, whom everybody knew now to have been a hero in disguise. And she was so clever with her fingers that each one of them was worth at least the whole of another person’s hand. Young as she was, she had been the village dressmaker par excellence before she married Stephen Catterall, and Mrs. Clapham’s memories of Tibbie’s youth were always shot through by the colours in which she had worked. Her bright head, gleaming about the cottage, had always a background of coloured cottons and silks. Mrs. Clapham’s own best gown, still “best” after years of wearing, had been also of Tibbie’s making. Her heart leaped and her nerves thrilled as she told herself that, if things happened as she expected, she would crown the occasion by appearing in it to-day....

Tibbie had even made gowns for Miss Marigold and Mrs. Wrench, and she had actually been commissioned to make a frock for Miss Marigold’s trousseau. That had been part of the information proceeding so copiously from the Vicar’s wife, the evening before.

“It’s a pale blue crêpe de Chine, Mrs. Clapham,” Mrs. Wrench had said, “and Marigold writes that she’s quite delighted with it. Tibbie was always so dainty in everything she did, and Marigold wanted a frock from her for the sake of old times. It’s the sort of frock that would have suited Tibbie herself, from the description. I remember she always looked pretty in pale blue.”

Mrs. Clapham had remembered it, too, throwing a glance at the photograph of the young widow, framed on a shelf near. The sober colours of life were Tibbie’s wear now; not the delicate shades of youth making ready to be a bride. Yet the face looking out of the picture was neither bitter nor sad; thinner, perhaps, and deepened in shadow and meaning, but laughing and valiant as of old. Tibbie’s husband had gone down in the War, together with many another lad whom Mrs. Clapham had first seen as a much bewrapped bundle in his mother’s arms; but Tibbie’s spirit had not gone down with him. By that time she had made for herself a nice little dress-making business in Whalley, where she had lived since her marriage, and when Stephen was dead she continued to carry it on. Mrs. Clapham, of course, had wanted her to come home, but Tibbie and her two children were very comfortable in their little house, and there were the clients to think of, as well as other reasons. She, on her side, had wanted her mother to join her in Whalley, but Mrs. Clapham, too, had had her reasons for staying where fortune had happened to place her. She thought of those reasons now as she finished her breakfast—and chuckled; and took her last drink of tea and chuckled and chuckled and chuckled and chuckled....

It was strange how full her mind was this morning of Tibbie and Tibbie’s doings; not that the girl and her children were ever far from the old woman’s thoughts. Probably it was Miss Marigold’s wedding that was making her think of her own lass, and of the way life fuses and separates and alters and breaks. With what mixed smiles and tears must Tibbie have fashioned that gown for the Vicar’s daughter, feeling a hundred years older in experience, although born on the same day! She knew something of Tibbie’s feelings as she sewed at the blue gown, because Mrs. Wrench had told her that she had written a letter.

“Such a nice letter it was, Mrs. Clapham! Marigold was so pleased. But Tibbie always had such nice ways ... you brought her up so well. She said she hoped Marigold would have better luck than hers, though she couldn’t have a better happiness while it had lasted.... As a matter of fact, she ran the crêpe de Chine rather late, though she didn’t say why. Marigold was really getting rather anxious about it, but in the end it turned up all right.”

“Nay, Tibbie’d never fail nobody,” Mrs. Clapham had said, though rather absently, wishing herself alone so that she might sit and chuckle over the happiness that was coming.

“Nor you, either!” (Thank goodness she was getting to her feet at last!) “I’ve never known you send me back word yet, and I don’t think you ever will.” (Incredible as it seemed, she was out at the door and in the road.) “Very well, then, good night; and I’ll expect you as usual next week!”

Yes, it must be Miss Marigold’s wedding that was making her think of the absent Tibbie, thinking so vividly that instead of absent she was very much present. In the little room where the sun kept pushing its way she seemed almost there in the flesh, catching and reflecting the light with her shimmering scissors and silks. The children, too, seemed unaccountably near, so that she felt as if at any moment she might hear their gentle if chattering voices and their sober if pattering feet. Their post-card photographs were on the shelf with that of their mother, seven-year-old Libby and five-year-old Stevie—stiff, grave, patient little people, who looked as if they couldn’t possibly belong to laughing Tibbie. Those who noticed the difference said that they looked as though they had been born protesting against the sorrows of a great war, but those who had known their father and their father’s mother said something else. It was from Stephen Catterall that they inherited their pale, haunted faces and their mournful dark eyes. When Stephen was killed, they said in Whalley that he had always looked as though the hand of death was never far from his tragic face, but those who had known him as a child knew it was never a little thing like death that had made Stephen afraid....

Mrs. Clapham had once been to Whalley to pay her daughter a visit, and once Tibbie and the children had come to Mrs. Clapham, but on neither side had the visit been repeated. One had her charing to think of, and the other her sewing, and both had their other supremely important reasons.... But the result of the separation was that Mrs. Clapham knew very little about Tibbie’s children, except what she was able to learn from Tibbie’s letters. She was fond of them as far as she did know them, and of course proud, but she was always a little puzzled about them, a little uneasy. They were so very unlike what Tibbie had been, or Tibbie’s uncles and aunts; so very unlike what Mrs. Clapham had been herself. But there was no reason to worry about them or their mother, as she knew, seeing that they were comfortably off, and had plenty of neighbours and friends. If it had not been for that she could never have felt this satisfaction in the change which, other individuals being willing, she was shortly proposing to take. She would have been afraid that, as soon as the home was broken up, Tibbie and Co. might possibly want to come back. But there was no chance of such a thing as long as certain circumstances existed; Tibbie would never come. She fretted for her mother sometimes, just as her mother fretted for her, but as long as a certain person remained alive, Tibbie would never come.

In all the history of mankind there could never have been anybody more free than Mrs. Clapham to take what her heart desired, and just at the moment when it was most accessible to her reach. All the ties and burdens of life seemed to fall away from her as she sat waiting there, looking for the news that was certain to come, with the happy expectancy of a trustful child. It was only when things were meant that they fell out so perfectly at the right time, flowing naturally to their end as the day flows into night. It was only then that they were accomplished without hitch or jar (unless you chose to consider Martha Jane a sort of jar). Everybody’s hand seemed to stretch out to give you your wish when it came at the right time, and this seemed in every respect the perfectly right time. It had come, too, when she was old and weary enough really to appreciate it, and yet not too old and weary to care. She could say to herself that she had fought an honourable battle with life, and was now at liberty to seek her ease. She could say to herself with pride and as often as she liked that she had won her almshouse on Hermitage Hill.

Even by the fields the almshouses were at least a mile away from her little cottage, but in Mrs. Clapham’s mind they showed as clearly as in a picture hung on the wall. Grey, gabled, flower-gardened, they topped the steep hill that ran up out of the village on the great north road, challenging by their perfection the notice of the passer-by. From them you looked down over grassy slopes to the roofs of the village, the long shape of the Hall against its wooded hill, and further across still to the mystery of the sea. Unscamped and well-built in every inch, they were growing more aristocratic and mellow with every year that passed. The change to them from the uneven-floored, crooked-walled cottage in which Mrs. Clapham had lived so long would be, when it came, like the change to a king’s palace. To have a roof of her own, with nothing to pay for it, nothing to fear, would make her feel little less of a property-owner than his lordship himself. Moving up to that high place from the huddled and crouching street would be like soaring on strong wings into the open spaces of the sky.

All through her working life she had hoped that she might be allowed to end her days in one of the almshouses on Hermitage Hill. Especially she had wanted the house with the double view, the one that faced alike the humanity of the road and the miracle of the sea. Over and over again she had seen it fall vacant, and pass into fresh hands, but she had never attempted to ask for it until now. Never until now had she considered that she had a right to apply. She was the true type of worker, hardy, honest and proud, and both her pride and her sense of honour had kept her from taking her rest before it was due. But she had always hoped that fate and the governors would see fit to make her this particular gift when at last she had really earned it; and not only had she hoped—she had also believed. She had always felt certain that, sooner or later, the house of her dreams would come her way. She had seen it as the natural apex of her mounting years, clear as a temple set on a hill. All her life it had cheered her and urged her on, standing alike to her as a symbol and the concrete object of her desire.

She had had her anxious moments, of course—moments when she had been hard put to it not to apply before it was time. Terrible qualms had seized upon her whenever a new tenant had taken possession of the corner house, terrible fears that she might outlive her in the comfort and peace. She had resisted temptation, however, in spite of her fears, and now she was being repaid. Most of the tenants had died obligingly quite soon, so that she had learned to believe that they would continue to die when she really needed it. And Mrs. Phipps had died, poor soul, thoughtfully and uncomplainingly, just at the time when Mrs. Clapham was beginning to fail. That, together with the fact that she had known and liked Mrs. Phipps, made the whole thing seem more than ever as if it was “meant.” She would not have cared to follow just anybody in the corner house, but she was quite contented to follow Mrs. Phipps.

Yet she had not made up her mind all at once, even after Mrs. Phipps had so tactfully made room. Even then she had gone into the matter very carefully, testing her motives and her strength, and making sure, above all, that she was loosing no natural tics. But her final conclusion had been that the moment had actually come; and so, weeping even while she rejoiced, and trembling while she believed, she had sent in her name to the committee with a fine certainty of success.

There was not a soul in the place but would speak well of her, she knew; everybody, that is, whose testimony really counted. Hers was, in fact, that peculiar position which perhaps only the poor can ever achieve, dependent as it is upon character alone. Then too, the very man who had built the almshouses had promised her one of them long ago. He was a rich Lancashire brewer, with a gruff manner and a generous heart, and Ann Clapham had been a servant in his Westmorland shooting-box before she married. “Jones,” he had said to her one day—(she was Ann Atkinson just then, but he called the whole of his household “Jones”)—“if ever you want one of those houses of mine, you’re to be sure to have it. I’ll be dead then, of course... can’t live for ever... but there’ll be a committee. No d—d good, probably, but it’s the best I can do. Tell ’em from me, Jones, that you’re to have a house; and tell ’em from me, Jones, that you’re a d—d good sort...”

And now, after all these years, “Jones” had at last repeated the millionaire brewer’s words, and so realistically that nobody who had known the old man could refuse to believe them. Not but what she had earned the house right enough on her own merits, as she did not need telling; still, it was all to the good to be backed by old Mr. T. There were other candidates, however, so that a meeting had to be called, though she was assured time and again that it would only be formal. But when she came to her final canvassing for votes, she found that at least one of the other applicants had been in before her. Times had changed even in that remote little village, and it was not everybody now who remembered old Mr. T. Nevertheless, it had been a decided shock to her to find that her most important opponent was Martha Jane Fell.

Martha Jane was a neighbour of Mrs. Clapham’s, living just up the street, and Mrs. Clapham knew all about her. Younger than her rival by a good many years, Martha Jane had been very pretty as a girl, and even now had a decided “way” with her. It was a “way,” at least, that always went down with the men, and in pursuance of this particular piece of good fortune she had canvassed the men on the committee first. Mrs. Clapham could not help feeling it a distinct outrage that her most dangerous obstacle should take the form of this peculiarly worthless woman. Her own value seemed somehow to be lessened by it, her own virtue maligned. But then men, she remarked to herself scornfully, were always like wax in the hands of a woman like that. One of her own sex would have had her doubts any day about Martha Jane Fell.

The decisive meeting had been held the day before in the school, and Mrs. Clapham, scrubbing and scouring at Mrs. Helme’s, had found it a terrible business to keep her mind on her task. More than once she had found herself on the verge of missing corners or stairs, neglecting to put the final polish on chair-legs, or “slaping floors over” that needed elbow-grease and goodwill. But always she had checked herself with a feeling of shame. It seemed to her not only unlucky but dishonest to count herself free before the chains were loosed. In fact, in the access of zeal following upon her momentary lapse, she was almost sure that she did the same job twice.

Afterwards, indeed, she had allowed herself to come home by the school, though she had passed it without even turning her head, and scarcely so much as straining her ears for a murmur of voices from inside. Martha Jane, however, had no such scruples, as she discovered when she turned the corner. Martha Jane, indeed, was planted brazenly on the doorstep, applying ear and eye in turn to the open keyhole. Not only that—so Mrs. Clapham was told later—but she waylaid the members of the committee as they came in, reminding her allies of their promised support, and attempting to soften the hearts of the rest. She looked slightly abashed for a moment when she saw her opponent, and then gave her a wink and grinned impudently.

“Like to have a peep?” she inquired generously, moving to one side. “There’s nine on ’em sitting in a bunch, and all as solemn as a row of hens! His lordship’s been pressing ’em to give it to me, and right touching he was an’ all. Says I’m one o’ them delicate folk for whom life is over-strong!” She winked again. “I doubt none o’ your gentry’ll be saying that for you!”

Twisted towards her on the step, she looked with a sort of mocking good-humour at the stalwart, motherly woman with the honest face. There was still something of the street-arab about Martha Jane Fell, something that metaphorically turned cart-wheels even in the most sacred presence. But her most dangerous quality was a capacity for passing at will from brazenness to appeal, for seeming to cling even while she defied. Martha Jane could wilt like a weed or spring like a steel trap. She was worn, reckless and down-at-heel, but she had contrived nevertheless to keep something of the grace of youth, a slimness of form, a fineness of skin, a faint beauty of cheek and chin. Only her eyes betrayed her under her untidy hair, hard even as they laughed at the well-bound figure before them.

After that moment’s hesitation, Mrs. Clapham made as if to pass on, but Martha Jane, swinging round again to the keyhole, called her back.

“They’re talking about you now,” she informed her kindly, “saying you’re a credit to the village and all that! But they say you’ve a daughter to see to you in your old age, and I haven’t. You’ll have to get rid of yon daughter o’ yours, Ann Clapham, if you want to best me over the house!”

She spared another second from the keyhole to throw her a fresh impudent glance, but her fellow-candidate did not answer. Turning resolutely away, she marched steadily towards the hill, wishing in every nerve that she could demean herself to stand in Martha Jane’s place. She hadn’t gone far, however, taking the hill slowly because of her heart, when the school-door had suddenly opened, and, as it were, flung the Committee into the road. One or two of them had hurriedly passed her, smiling as they went, and the parson had thrown her a pleasant greeting and lifted his hat. They couldn’t have looked at her like that, she told herself triumphantly, if they hadn’t given her the house; and the heart about which there was just a little doubt became so thrilled that it threatened to drop her down in a dead faint.

All the evening she had looked for a letter, knowing all the time that it was too early to expect it, and rebuking herself for impatience and greed. But it had not come, in spite of her hopes, and nobody she saw seemed to have the faintest notion of what had happened. Anyhow, she was sure that there would be a letter this morning, either by post or hand; or, instead of a letter, a personal message. She was as certain about it as she was certain of Heaven. It was only a question of waiting until the manna should choose to fall.

Over the muslin half-blind masking the little window, she saw a telegraph-boy come riding up, wriggling his bicycle from side to side of the road after his usual fashion; and, as on the day before, her heart jumped so that her breath caught and her eyes blurred. Just for a moment she wondered wildly whether they could possibly have telegraphed the news, waiting for the slither of light-descending feet and the batter of Government on the door. Nothing happened, however, and presently she relaxed her muscles, released her breath and rubbed her eyes; reproving herself with a shrug of her shoulders and a half-ashamed laugh for being so foolish as to imagine that the wire could possibly have been meant for her.

But she was still curious about its actual destination, and presently, when her heart had steadied again, she opened the door and looked out. The telegraph-boy was returning by now, whistling and wriggling as he came, but there was nothing to show at which house he had left his message. Yet even after he had disappeared she remained on her threshold, partly because the sun and the fine air soothed and stimulated her in the same moment, and partly because of a subconscious thrill that she could not define. But all that she received by way of a spectacle was the stiff, dark-clad form of Emma Catterall, appearing suddenly in the doorway of a house which always seemed gloomier than other people’s. “Suddenly,” however, was not the right word to use for Emma. Emma always dawned. Slowly, when you were not thinking about her, she took her place—an unsolicited place—in your conscious vision; and in the same way, when she had finished with you, she faded before your unwillingly strained eyes.

It was after this fashion that Mrs. Clapham discovered her presence this morning, driven to it by the unpleasant consciousness that she was being watched. Fixing each other with a stare that was almost fascinated in its length, they stood looking across the September sunshine in the sloping street. Then, in the same unaccountable manner in which she had appeared, Emma began to fade, and Mrs. Clapham, with a shake and a fresh laugh, moved likewise and went within.

CHAPTER II

She re-acted a little after the episode of the telegraph-boy, who had seemed to be bringing her happiness to her, and after all wasn’t. That moment of mounting excitement had left her a little flat, or as flat as it was possible to be on this day of wonderful promise. She still felt rather foolish for imagining that the Committee would be in the least likely to telegraph the news. The event was trivial enough to them, after all, however world-shaking it might seem to her. Mr. Baines, the lawyer, who was secretary to the Committee, would probably send the news by his clerk, or, failing the clerk, he might slip it into the post. There was also the chance, of course, that he might bring it himself, and Mrs. Clapham quivered with pride when she thought of that. Even then, it would be only another of the wonderful happenings which she felt to be gathering about the central fact. There was the grand weather, to begin with, with herself feeling as grand as the day; and presently, when she had waited a little longer, there would no doubt be Mr. Baines...

It was no use expecting him yet, however, so she made a determined effort to school herself to patience. Mr. Baines, as all the village was aware, was hardly the sort to rise up early in order to bathe his face in morning dew. Besides, as she reminded herself again, this enchanting dispensation of Providence could not possibly seem as important to him as it did to her. Why, in the pressure of business he might even forget it—let it stand over, perhaps, until to-morrow! Mrs. Clapham could hardly restrain herself from rushing off to sit waiting for him on his office doorstep when she thought of that.

She found herself wishing, with a fervour that almost surprised her, that this was Mrs. Wrench’s “day,” after all. She remembered how she had chuckled, on waking, to think it was nothing of the sort, but she was not so sure that she felt like chuckling now. Even with Mrs. Wrench it was sometimes possible to slip a word in edgeways, if you tried; and in spite of her absorption in Miss Marigold and Miss Marigold’s gowns, she would surely have spared a moment to tell her how matters stood.

But it was not Mrs. Wrench’s day, so it was no use thinking about it. It was nobody’s “day,” for the matter of that. It was her own day, to do as she liked with from rise to set, and just for the moment it threatened to hang on her hands. She tried to make a bargain with herself that she wouldn’t look at the clock for another half-hour, and found her eyes stealing round to it the very next minute. She almost wished—so desperately was she at a loose end—that she had gone up the street to speak to Emma Catterall. She hated Tibbie’s mother-in-law as she hated nobody else on earth, but even Emma would have been better than nothing. She went to the window at last, to see whether she had re-emerged, bending her pink face above the box of pink asters, the Family Bible and the clock. But there was no sign of Emma, as far as she could tell, although, as it happened, Emma, at that moment, was also peering out. There were no flowers in Emma’s window, but only a few half-dead ferns; nevertheless in the blankness and gloom of her dismal dwelling she was hidden as in a cave.

When Mrs. Clapham could bear the waiting no longer, she fetched pail and brush from the back kitchen, and got herself down to scrub the floor. The place was already so clean that her energy seemed rather wasted, but, although she was unaware of it, there was something symbolical in the act. In its own way it was a sort of dedication, a cleansing of everything round her for the coming event. In any case, nothing that hadn’t been washed since the day before was ever quite clean to Mrs. Clapham. Yesterday was yesterday, and to-day was to-day, and nobody knew better than she just how far dirt could manage to spread itself in a single night.

At all events, her instinct in the matter had been perfectly sound, for her nerves calmed as soon as she touched her tools. As she knelt on her little mat, scrubbing with strong, rhythmic, stiff-armed strokes, she felt full of a placid confidence that was infinitely more pleasant than the foregoing state of thrill. Even she knew that she was at her best when she was at her “job,” rough though it was, and low in the social scale. She felt so soothed that she even sang as she scoured the flags, giving them just enough water and yet not too much, as a skilful scrubber should. She had done the doorstep already, of course—as soon as she came down—a matutinal rite as mechanical and natural as washing her own face. She found herself hankering, however, to wash the doorstep again, and was only stopped by the consciousness that it seemed rather silly. Yet the step could not be too clean across which the wonderful news was certain to come, and there would be plenty of time for it to dry. The fact that she could say to herself that there was plenty of time showed that she had ceased to expect the news at every minute. She was so pleased with herself when she realised that that she started to sing again. In her present mood of contented assurance she felt she could wait all day.

She and her little mat had just about finished their perambulation in honour of cleanliness, and she was dipping the brush for almost the last time, when somebody came up the street and gave a birdlike tap at her door. Again Mrs. Clapham’s heart warned her that life at this strenuous pitch was not suitable to its constitution, and it was a moment or two before she could force herself to her feet. But she had hardly started to answer the summons before the latch moved in its socket, and the thin little face of Mrs. Tanner came peeping excitedly round the jamb.

“Any news, Ann Clapham?” she inquired breathlessly. “Have you had t’ news? Eh, now, I could hardly sleep for fearing summat might go wrong!”

She slipped into the room as she spoke, pushing the door behind her with a neat movement. There was an almost birdlike activity in every inch of her thin form, and an almost beak-like effect in her pursed-up, toothless mouth. Mrs. Clapham looked simply immense beside her spare little shape, a towering giantess of a woman, broad and wholesome and strong. The rolled-up sleeves of her faded print frock showed her splendid arms, just as her skirt, turned up over her short striped petticoat, showed her sturdy legs. Her clean harding apron struck a note of extreme freshness which was accentuated by the glow of her pink face and the gleam of her white hair. The scrubbing-brush was still gripped in her wet hand, and the zinc pail behind her spoke to her honest trade. Even in her excitement Mrs. Tanner had time for a spasm of admiration. “Eh, but it seems a shame to put the likes of her in an almshouse!” she said to herself; and then forgot the impression in her eagerness for a reply.

“Nay, I’ve heard nowt yet!” Mrs. Clapham was one broad smile. “I doubt it’s hardly time. Folks as sit on committees and suchlike don’t get up as soon as us!”

Mrs. Tanner gave the nod of pained but tolerant comprehension with which one class salutes the idiosyncrasies of another.

“Anyway, it’ll be all right. Folks say as it’s yours already.... I had to look in, though; I was that keen to know.”

“It was right kind of you, Maggie,” Mrs. Clapham beamed; “it was right kind! Good luck doesn’t come every day o’ the week, and when it does, it’d be a queer sort as didn’t want everybody to hear!”

Steeped in a mutual kindness that had the warmth of an embrace, they drifted across the fast-drying floor and seated themselves by the small fire. Mrs. Tanner perched herself on the edge of the stiff rocker, while Mrs. Clapham sat in her late husband’s chair, bolt upright, her bare arms outstretched, her plump moist hands resting upon her knees. The big woman and the little beamed across at each other, thoroughly satisfied with a pleasant world.

“They’ll hear right enough—trust ’em for that! They’re agog about it, even now. Mrs. Simmons put her head out as I ran up and said ‘Hst! Any more about yon almshouse do?’—but of course I couldn’t tell her what I didn’t know myself!”

“Ay, she’s the sort to get up the night before, to make sure of a bit o’ gossip!” ... They had a hearty laugh together at this peculiarity of Mrs. Simmons’, exactly as if it wasn’t shared by everybody in the street. But anything was good enough to laugh at on this day that was to be laughter and pleasantness all through. Mrs. Simmons’ weakness did as well as anything else. “But there! I mustn’t be counting my chickens afore they’re hatched!” Mrs. Clapham said presently, trying to sober down. “Nice and silly I’ll look if I don’t get it, after all! Not but what I sort o’ feel in my bones as it’s going to be all right.”

Mrs. Tanner, at least, had no qualms about tempting Providence.

“Folks all say you’re the only person for it,” she repeated stoutly. “There’s a many wanted it, of course, but there’s nobody earned it same as you. You’d be fit to hide your face if you knew all the fine things I’ve heard tell of you these last few days, about you being that honest and straight-living and all that! What, I shouldn’t wonder if folks was that pleased they’d go sticking out flags!” she went on, her imagination running away with her,—“nay, but they won’t. They’ll be too put about over lossing your grand work.”

“Ay, well, I can’t say I shan’t be pleased to be missed. Folks always want to be told there’s nobody like ’em when their turn comes to step aside. I’m sure I’ve done my best for the place while I’ve been about it!” She chuckled happily, rubbing her hands backwards and forwards over the harding apron. “There’s not a floor can cry out at me as I’ve ever had occasion to scrub!... But I’m going back, all the same, and it’s about time I gave up. My knee’s been bothering me a deal lately, and my heart’s a bit jumpy an’ all. I did think of going to doctor about it, but I reckon it’s just old age. I’ll be right enough, likely, when I’m in my own spot, and no call to bother about the rent!”

“Ay, you’ve had a fairish hard life,” Mrs. Tanner agreed sympathetically, “and it’s no wonder it’s beginning to tell. Not but what you’d have found work for yourself wherever you were, that I’ll be bound! You’re the sort as always likes things a little hard. You’d never ha’ done with ’em soft.”

“I could ha’ done with ’em a bit easier like, all the same!” Mrs. Clapham rejoined humorously. “But you’re likely right. I can’t abide folks to be mooning around or lying about half their time. I like to see a bit of elbow-grease put into life, same as it might be a kitchen-table! I was brought up to think there was nowt like work, and I can’t say I’ve ever found anything better. My Tibbie’s a grand worker an’ all, and yon little Libby of hers shapes to frame the same way.... But folks can’t last for ever and that’s a fact; and I’ve always sworn as I’d end my days in them almshouses on Hermitage Hill.”

The eyes of the two women shone as they met and smiled. They leaned towards each other, a little breathless.

“A pound a week!” chanted the ecstatic Mrs. Tanner. “It’s gone up since t’ War.”

“Ay, and as bonny a spot as you could wish!”

“Coal!”

“Such a view as there is, looking right over towards t’ sea!”

“No rates nor nothing,” sang Mrs. Tanner; “and water laid on from a big tank!”

“A flower-garden, wi’ a man to see to it—”

“Tatie bed, gooseberry bushes, black currants, red currants, mint——”

“Eh, and such furniture and fittings as you couldn’t find bettered at the Hall!” Mrs. Clapham’s tone was almost reverent. It seemed to her rather greedy to lay stress upon the material side of her luck, but the excellent plenishings provided by old Mr. T. could scarcely be termed that. It was more as if they were the fittings of the temple which the place stood for in her mind, than the actual chattels of a house in which she was going to live.

They laughed again as they paused for breath, because even for a thing that was sacred nothing but laughter was good enough to greet it. Then Mrs. Clapham checked herself firmly a second time.

“There I go again—making out I’ve got the place, when I’ve never had as much as a word! I’m just asking for bad luck, that’s what it is! What, blessed if I didn’t find myself singing at my work, for all the world like a daft lass going to meet a lad!” She chuckled again, drawing her hands slowly backwards and forwards over her knees. “Serves me right if I bring a judgment on my crazy head!... But I was fair hankering after somebody to talk to when you come in. It’s next best thing to my own Tibbie, having you setting there.”

“I’m sure I wish it was Tibbie herself, I do that! Your lass’ll be real pleased when she hears the news.”

“She will that!” The charwoman smiled contentedly. “She’s always thought a deal of her mother, has my Tibbie.... But, bless me, Maggie Tanner, you’re every bit as bad as me! Who’s to say, after all, as it won’t be Martha Jane?”

“Martha Jane!” Mrs. Tanner’s wrath and contempt were such that the rocker, hitherto apparently oblivious of her birdlike presence, began to rock as if possessed by some evil spirit. “Nay, now, don’t you talk such rubbish to me! She isn’t fit to be mentioned in t’ same week!”

“She thinks a deal of her chances, all the same,” Mrs. Clapham returned seriously. “Ay, she fancies her chances, does Martha Jane. I do think I’m a bit better stuff than her, and that’s gospel truth, but seemingly there’s some as’d sooner put in a word for her than they would for me.”

“Likely nicked in the head, then, that’s what they are!” scoffed Mrs. Tanner. “I’ll believe in ’em when I see ’em. It’s true she’s seemed mighty full of herself, these last few days, but there’s nowt new to that. Nobody in their senses’d vote for her as knew anything about her.”

“There’s men on the Committee, you’ll think on, and she was always one for getting round the men. I remember I could never get my Jonty to say a word agen her, and I reckon it’ll be the same with your Joe. Them Committee-men won’t bother themselves whether she’s fit to look after a grand spot like yon; and she’s never been one either to cook or to clean, hasn’t Martha Jane. She’d let a bit o’ pie crust burn any day o’ the week if a man chanced to be going past.”

“She’s never got herself wed with it all, any way up!” Mrs. Tanner was rocking and fierce. “Not that them sort o’ little details make that much difference to Martha Jane!”

“Not as I ever heard of!” Mrs. Clapham supplemented, with pursed lips; and then relinquished the virtuous matron in a burst of happy beams. “Oh, well, never mind the poor daft thing!” she finished kindly, rubbing her knees. “I mustn’t get talking nasty on such a grand day as this.”

“Tibbie’ll be coming to help you to move, likely?” Mrs. Tanner inquired presently, when by a violently charitable effort they had allowed Martha Jane’s frailties to sink out of mind. But Mrs. Clapham shook her head.

“Nay, I don’t know as she will. Happen she might, if she could get somebody to see to the children.... But there’s her sewing, you’ll think on, and a deal besides; and anyway she’s not that keen on coming back here, isn’t Tibbie.”

“What, she was fond enough of the place as a lass!” Mrs. Tanner protested, though less out of contradiction than as if she were somehow taking a cue.

“Ay, she likes the place well enough—I don’t mean that. You always think a deal of the spot where you lived as a child. But she’d put the whole world if she could between them children of hers and Emma Catterall. She’s never forgiven the way his mother treated Poor Stephen.”

“Nay, now, don’t you go calling him ‘poor,’ Ann Clapham,” Mrs. Tanner interpolated with spirit, “and him with his V.C. an’ all! Think on how well he did in t’ Army, and what they said about him in t’ papers. What, even Germans, they said, owned up he was right brave; Tibbie’d give it you, I’ll be bound, if she heard you calling him ‘poor’!”

“‘Poor’ was the word for him, though, as a bit of a lad....” Mrs. Clapham’s expression had changed and become grave and a trifle bitter; and again, as if picking up a cue, Mrs. Tanner found one to match it.

“Ay, he had a terribly thin time of it, had Stephen—I don’t mind giving you that. She wasn’t kind to him, wasn’t Emma. Yet I don’t know as she ever laid a hand on him, as far as I’ve heard tell. Yon half-daft father of his did, so they said, but I make nowt o’ that. A boy never frets himself much over that sort o’ thing. It’s all just in the day’s work.”

“Nay, it was something a deal worse.” The charwoman’s kind face was troubled and puzzled. “It was more the sort o’ way she looked and spoke, hinting at nasty things she could do if she liked.... I reckon she made him feel as if he wasn’t safe. She didn’t feed him over-well, neither; I doubt he was always going short. Emma’s always been well covered, and will be, I reckon, when she’s in her coffin; but Steve and his father were as thin as laths. I always kind o’ think she starved poor Jemmy into his grave, though I doubt he wouldn’t ha’ been much of a man even on four meals a day instead of two. Likely she’d ha’ done the same for Stephen, if he hadn’t got away in time. There’s nowt breaks a boy’s spirit like keeping him short of food.”

“He’d plenty o’ spirit when it come to it, anyway—the poor lad!” The patriotic Mrs. Tanner fired again.... “There now, I’m calling him ‘poor’ myself! Germans didn’t think him short of it, though, that I’ll be bound!... But I don’t wonder Tibbie isn’t keen on bringing them children anywhere near Emma. It’s natural she should be sore about it, seeing how fond she was of Stephen. What, I remember once, when she was nobbut about ten, seeing her sobbing her heart out in t’ street, and when I fetched her in to ax what in creation it was all about, it turned out as she’d seen Poor Stephen looking as thin as a knife-edge!”

“Ay, she never could abear to see anything tret rough-like or unkind. It was that made her look at him first thing. She’d a deal of offers, had Tibbie, as you’ll likely know, but she never would hear tell of anybody but Stephen. Once she’d started in feeling sorry for him, the rest was like to follow. He worshipped her an’ all, did the poor lad, but I reckon it was Tibbie had to do the asking! She’d to begin all over again from the beginning, so to speak, and make a man of him from the start.”

“And a right fine man she made of him, while she was about it!” Mrs. Tanner crowed. “Germans’ll say so, any way up!... Them children of his are ter’ble like him an’ all,” she went on presently, but more as if she were now offering the cue instead of accepting it.

“Ay.” Mrs. Clapham’s hands returned to their slow travel up and down her knees. “Ay, they’re ter’ble like....” She turned her head and stared thoughtfully at the photographs on the shelf. “It’s because they’re that like I couldn’t get Tibbie to bring ’em here to live. ‘It’s over near yon woman,’ she used to say, whenever I axed. They come once, though, you’ll likely think on, and a fair old time we had of it, to be sure! I went to the lass, of course, after Stephen was killed, but I couldn’t frame to stop; so, after a deal o’ pushing and pulling, her and the children come for a short visit. But it wasn’t very long before she found that she couldn’t stop, neither! Emma Catterall was always after them children, standing on t’ doorstep or hanging about in t’ street. She couldn’t keep away from them, whatever she did; what, it was almost as if she watched ’em in their beds!”

Mrs. Tanner had turned her head, too, and was staring out through the slightly open door, through which the sun was pushing its way as if laying a carpet for coming feet. But neither of the women who were sitting there waiting for good news had a thought to spare for that news just now.

“They say Emma makes no end of a stir about Stephen now—showing his likenesses and that. Happen she’s proud of him now, and happen sorry; leastways, that’s what you’d say if it wasn’t Emma.”

But again the charwoman shook her head. “It’d be right enough for most folk—I’ll give you that; but it don’t seem to fit somehow with Emma. She went on that strange, too, she made you creep. She just hung about waiting all the time—never come in once and sat herself down for a bit of a chat. Of course, we were none of us over-friendly-like, she was bound to feel that; but neither Tibbie nor me is the sort to fly out at folk unless we was pressed.”

“She’s not one for ever going into other folks’ spots,” observed Mrs. Tanner. “And I don’t know as I ever see her set down in the whole of my life!”

“Ay, well, she never come past doorstep, as I said.... She just hung about, looking on. She’s brass of her own, you’ll think on, and more time on her hands than most.... She’d come sauntering down t’ road, as if she was looking for summat, and stop at the door and peer in; and as soon as she’d catched sight o’ the poor brats, she’d stand and stare at ’em with her queer smile. They got that upset about it they’d hardly bring ’emselves to go out, and they’d wake in the night, and swear she was in t’ room! Tibbie got that desperate about it at last that she took t’ bull by t’ horns, and took ’em along to Emma’s to tea. She thought happen they’d all on ’em be more sensible-like after that, let alone as Emma was Stephen’s mother and owed attention an’ all. But it didn’t work out as she thought, not by a deal. You never see anything like the three on ’em when they come back! The babies had cried ’emselves sick, and Tibbie was white as a sheet. And after we’d sat alongside of ’em for the best part of a couple of hours, and come down agen to the fire—‘Mother,’ Tibbie says sudden-like, breaking out, ‘it’s no use! We’ve got to go.’”

“And she’s never been since....” Mrs. Tanner was still staring at the sunlight through the open door.

“Nay, and won’t, neither, as long as she’s breath in her to say no! Such letters as she wrote me after she got back!... I’ve still got ’em upstairs. They were that fierce they’d have set t’ house afire if I’d shaped to put ’em in t’ grate!” ... Tibbie’s mother gave her jolly laugh for the first time since the solemn interval, and the rhythmic rubbing began again. “Ay, well, she’s well enough where she is,” she went on placidly. “She’s a good business and a sight o’ friends. The folks next door—Rawlinson’s what they’re called—think the world an’ all o’ my Tibbie.... Nay, she wouldn’t come agen whatever I did, though I axed her ever so often. She was right keen on me going to her instead, but I didn’t fancy a new spot. I’d summat in my eye at home an’ all,” she finished, chuckling; “and you know what that is as well as me!”

Mrs. Tanner turned herself round now, and chuckled, too. The shadow which had lain for a while over the pair of them—the shadow of something they could not understand—dispersed again in the sun of the coming pleasure. Both their faces and their voices lightened now that a safe return had been made to the joyful subject.

“I don’t know when I didn’t know it, come to that! We all on us knew you’d set your heart on that house.”

“Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, I’m sure!” Mrs. Clapham defended herself happily. “There’s a deal o’ things folks want as is a long sight worse.”

“Nay, you’d every right,” Mrs. Tanner concurred, with distinct affection in her tone.... “They say everybody has a dream o’ some sort,” she added thoughtfully, “and that, if they nobbut hold to it fast enough, it’s sure to come true.”

“Ay, well, I’ve held to mine fast enough,” the charwoman chuckled; “ay, that I have, right fast! What, I’ve never as much as thought of anything else! I’ve watched folk marching in, and I’ve watched ’em carried out, and I’ve said to myself about both on ’em—‘Some day yon’ll be me!” ... She laughed when Mrs. Tanner jumped as she said that, exclaiming—“Eh, now, Mrs. Clapham, yon isn’t nice!”—laughed and laughed until the tears ran down her face, and crumpled the apron over her knees. “Eh, well, I hope I’ll have a run for my money, anyway,” she finished contentedly, as the other rose.... “You’re off agen, are you? It was kind of you to look in.”

“Ay, I must be off now, but I’ll be back before so long.” Mrs. Tanner’s neat little figure hopped briskly towards the door. “You’ll have your work cut out, keeping me off t’ step!” she added, turning for a last laugh, and again was struck by the thought that had met her when she came in. “Eh, but I wonder if you’ll like yon dream o’ yours when it comes to getting it!” she exclaimed, looking up at the big woman almost seriously. “I doubt you’ll not take kindly to living so soft. Somebody’ll be wanting a bit o’ help, one o’ these days, and you’ll be out o’ yon almshouse afore you can say knife!”

Mrs. Clapham put out one of her plump hands, and gave her a good-tempered push. “Get along with you, woman,” she scolded cheerfully, “and don’t be putting your spoke in my grand wheel!... Is that postman coming up t’ street?” she added swiftly, suddenly nervous. “Eh, Maggie, my lass, I’m all of a shake!”

“’Tain’t post!” Mrs. Tanner called back, pattering birdlike down the street. “You’re that excited, you can’t see.... I’ll be looking in agen as soon as I’m through, and anyway, here’s wishing you luck!”

She disappeared into a house on the opposite side of the road, and for a while longer Mrs. Clapham stayed at her door, straining her eyes after the mythical postman whom her imagination had supplied. She had begun to feel restless again, and as if she could not possibly wait another moment. Presently, with a sigh, she went back into the house, but she could not bring herself to close the door. That would have been a sign that she still felt equal to waiting, and the mood of patience had finally passed. Mechanically she put away pail and brush, and readjusted the rug, but always with an ear stretched towards the least hint of a step outside. Afterwards she took off the harding and straightened her skirt, turned down her sleeves, and took a clean linen apron from a bottom drawer. She even went to the mirror beside the fire and smoothed and tightened the coils of her hair. And then at last, as if she had done all that could be required of her, either for the postman or Mr. Baines, she settled her features into the expression of placid expectation that was most suitable to the occasion, and stepped like a kindly victor into the street....

CHAPTER III

Out in the clear September sunshine she planted herself well beyond the doorstep and a yard or two down the road, feet apart, hands on her hips, and her calm but interested gaze staring steadily down the hill. She was not ashamed to be seen standing there waiting for the great good thing that was certainly coming her way. There could be nothing forward or lacking in delicacy in waiting about for what everybody knew to be your own. The sun, slanting towards her over the houses, brought out the original lilac of her faded gown, burnished her hair into actual silver and caught at the wedding-ring on her hand. From either side of the street they looked out and saw her there, and according to their natures were either interested or uninterested, sympathetic or the reverse. All of them, however, could not help looking at her for at least a minute. There was something regal about the big, fine, patient figure that was not afraid to go forth in the eye of the sun to meet the possibilities of fate.

Martha Jane Fell, fastening a piece of torn lace about her neck with a bent and tarnished gilt pin, saw her through her cracked panes and gave vent to a cracked laugh. Martha Jane had her own hopes, which were playing havoc with her nerves, and her hands, working at the lace, trembled so much that at last the pin, pressed over-hard, turned like the proverbial worm and ran itself into her thumb. Nevertheless, she laughed again, after the first agony had passed, sucking the wound as she gazed at the figure in the street.

“Looks as if she was waiting for a depitation o’ some sort!” she remarked to herself humorously. “This way to the Monyment of Honest Toil!... Thinks she’s got yon house in her pocket already, I should say; but I reckon there’s still a dip in the bag for Martha Fell!”

And from behind the dusty ferns that were only just alive, and would so very much have preferred not to live at all, Emma Catterall also stared at the figure that was the cynosure of every eye. Its serenity, its dignity, its contented assurance seemed to amuse her almost as much as they amused Martha Jane. Her beady black eyes brightened as they fastened upon it, and slowly there grew on her lips the queer little smile which everybody in the village hated without knowing why. But presently, as nothing happened in the street, she stirred and dropped her lids. “Ay, well, she knows her own business best,” she murmured to herself, still smiling, as she moved away....

After a while Mrs. Tanner came pattering out to join Mrs. Clapham, followed by young Mrs. James from her grand house that had pillars to its door. This was too much for Mrs. Clapham’s own side of the street, which promptly sent forth supporters in the shape of Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn. Martha Jane, heating a pair of rickety curling-tongs at a tallow-dip, was more amused than ever. “Got her court an’ all now!” she observed to the guttering candle as she singed her hair.

The postman might now be looked for at any moment, and excitement mounted in the group in the street. Mrs. Clapham’s Court—or, more correctly speaking, her Chorus—was full of good-humoured banter, feeling more and more thrilled with every minute that passed. Mrs. Tanner’s thin little voice chirped its jests at dark and haughty Mrs. James, round and motherly Mrs. Airey, and limp and careworn Mrs. Dunn; while the heroine of the occasion, too nervous to say much, left them most of the talking and merely beamed upon all alike.

Mrs. Tanner, out of the little pursed-up mouth that was so ridiculously like a wren’s, was of opinion that it was worse than useless to be looking for Mr. Baines.

“Nay, it’ll be t’ post, you’ll see!” she asserted confidently to the crowd. “Ay, he’ll have slipped it into the post.... I don’t say but what it wouldn’t be more an attention like if he brought it himself, but it isn’t in nature what you’d look for from Baines. Baines is the sort that first has to be driven to his bed and then shaken out of it. Depend upon it, it won’t be Baines!”

Young Mrs. James flushed with annoyance, and drew herself up haughtily. She had a weakness for amiable, short-sighted Mr. Baines, who at a recent Red Cross bazaar had made the pleasant mistake of addressing her as Lady Thorpe.... “I don’t agree with you, Mrs. Tanner,” she contradicted her coldly. “Mr. Baines is a gentleman, and he’ll do the right thing. Speaking as one as has had personal experience of Mr. Baines, it seems to me a deal more likely that he’ll come himself.”

“Nay, it’ll be t’ post!” Mrs. Tanner persisted, shaking an obstinate head. “You haven’t been here that long, Mrs. James, and you don’t know Baines as well as us. He’s not like to do for himself what he can shape to get done for him by somebody else. Ay, it’ll be t’ post!”

“Supposing it’s neither?” Mrs. Airey put in with a kindly laugh; and Mrs. Dunn, whose brain was as careworn as her face, observed, “Supposing it’s Martha Jane——?” but was hastily elbowed into silence.

“It don’t matter how it comes, as long as it comes right!” Mrs. Clapham answered the lot of them, with her heavenly smile. She soared above them all like a great comfortable hen above bantams and sparrows, growing and gaining in significance as they dwindled and lost....

“Ay, it’ll come right, no doubt about that!” At once the Chorus forgot its differences in a breath of united devotion. Mrs. Dunn’s remark had been made without her noticing it, so to speak, a kind of side-slip of her deflated mind.... “And there’s nobody’ll be more pleased than us, Ann Clapham, not even yourself!”

“You’re right kind!” the charwoman beamed, turning a grateful glance from one to the other. “I must say folks is very decent. Mrs. Tanner here come round first thing to ask if I’d heard; and right glad I was to see her, feeling lonesome without my Tibbie.”

“You’ll have heard from her lately, I suppose?” Mrs. James asked elegantly, the present belle of the village inquiring politely after her predecessor. Mrs. James was married, of course, but she was the belle, nevertheless; not to speak of the splendid enhancement of having been taken for Lady Thorpe.

“Nay, I haven’t,” Mrs. Clapham answered, without turning her head. “I haven’t heard for a while. But she’s been making a gown for Miss Marigold’s trousseau, so she’s sure to have been throng. It’s Miss Marigold’s wedding-day to-day, you’ll think on, and a grand one an’ all!”

“Same age as your Tibbie, isn’t she?” asked Mrs. Dunn; and added, by way of making up for her late slip, “But nowhere near her when it comes to looks!”

“Nay, now, Miss Marigold’s right enough; she’d pass in a crowd!”... Mrs. Clapham was flattered, but she wished to be just. “Let’s hope she hasn’t been through the wood that often, though, she’s had to pick t’ crooked stick at last!” she went on chuckling. “My Tibbie took t’ bull by t’ horns, and picked crooked stick right off!”

This evoked a perfect volley of reproach from the shocked Chorus, put finally into intelligible form by Mrs. Tanner.

“Nay, now, Ann Clapham, you should think shame to be talking like that! ’Tisn’t right to Poor Stephen, seeing he turned out so grand. Doesn’t seem right to your Tibbie, neither, as lost her man in t’ war.”

Mrs. Clapham looked slightly conscience-stricken. “Ay, poor lad—poor lass!” she sighed, by way of amends, and suddenly the shadow of the terrible four years came out of the corners in which it had been dispersed, and breathed a vapour as of shell-smoke over the sunny street. Before the minds of all rose a succession of khaki figures, coming and going; or only going, and getting ever further away. Young Mrs. James, whose husband had been off to Gallipoli before they were three months wed, looked at that moment not such a very young Mrs. James, after all. The sisters, Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn, drew together and touched hands. Mrs. Airey’s lad had come back, and Mrs. Dunn’s had not, but even Mrs. Dunn’s flattened mind could have told you that the real agony of war is in the suspense and not in the blow. The mental horizon of all stretched itself again, demanding that strained, painful vision which had looked so long towards India, Salonika, Palestine and France. They felt again that atmosphere which is like no other on earth—that mixture of bewilderment and intense interest, terror and exaltation, utter helplessness and secret pride. And, sighing, they sighed as one, chiefly with relief, but also with an unconscious regret for the heady wine of drama that had once been poured into the white glass vials of their colourless lives.

“Stephen wasn’t much to crack on when he was here,” Mrs. Tanner continued, “I’ll give you that; but he was a good lad, all the same. Ay, and need to be, too, or he’d have murdered yon mother of his long before!”

The fresh outbreak of shocked expostulation was this time addressed to her, accompanied by quick, half-scared glances at Emma Catterall’s door. “Nay, now, Maggie, you’re going a deal further than me!” Mrs. Clapham protested, but Mrs. Tanner remained unmoved.

“What’s the use of shutting me up about a thing as everybody knows?” she demanded boldly, “barring perhaps Mrs. James here, as is over-young? It’s a wonder the boy stayed right in his head, the way he was tret!”

“Mrs. Catterall’s set up enough about him now, anyhow,” Mrs. James said, throwing another glance up the street. “What with cramming his likeness down everybody’s throat, and taking flowers to the War Memorial and the Shrine, you’d think he’d been her own pet lamb and a mother’s darling from the start!”

“I never rightly knew what it was she did!” Mrs. Dunn said in her flat tones, giving vent to the inevitable remark which had its place in every discussion of Emma’s doings. “I don’t know as I ever heard her lift her voice to him once, and she isn’t the sort to lift a hand. ’Tisn’t shouting and leathering a lad as does him that much harm, neither; nay, nor even keeping him a bit short o’ grub. I’ve seen a many as fair throve on it, and that’s a fact—laughing and whistling and making right fine men an’ all! It wants summat else to take the heart out on ’em as it was took out o’ Poor Stephen.”

“It’s not feeling safe as does for a child,” Mrs. Clapham said slowly, repeating rather reluctantly her statement of less than an hour before. “I was saying so to Maggie Tanner just now.... A child’s got to be growing and learning things every day, and without knowing he’s doing either; and if he don’t feel certain he’s doing the right thing, what, he stops doing it altogether. That’s how it was with Stephen, I reckon. He just stopped.... It was like as if he was always holding his breath.”

“Doctor says there’s some folk should never have charge of children at all,” Mrs. Airey put in with sudden and ghoulish emphasis. “He says they sort of destroy them just by living with ’em—fair suck the life out on ’em, so to speak!”

Mrs. Clapham stirred unhappily.

“Eh, for t’ land’s sake, don’t talk like that, Bessie!” she besought her anxiously. Fear came over her after that last speech, the sense of a sinister presence brooding over the street that was very much worse than the shadow of the War. A look of almost clairvoyant apprehension came into her eyes, slaying their happy prevision of beautiful things.... “It don’t seem quite fair to be talking like that of folks as live so close.”

“She gives me the shivers right enough, anyway!” Mrs. James broke out, laughing nervously, and casting yet another glance at the dreaded door. “It’s that smile of hers ... and the way she watches to see what you’re at! There’s something at the back of her mind as sneers and laughs at you all the time.... As for yon tag of hers about knowing your own business best, all I can say is it fair makes me want to scream!”

“I’ve known a many as was feared of Emma,” Mrs. Tanner followed on; “parson’s wife, for one—ay, and parson an’ all! I’ve seen district visitors and suchlike coming out of yon house looking for all the world like a bit o’ chewed string. Ay, and one day—yon time when parson had a curate as was more than a shade soft—I see him come shambling down t’ steps fair crying and wringing his hands. I was in t’ street at the time, clipping yon bit of box we have at the door, and he stopped alongside of me, and said, ‘Mrs. Tanner, that woman’s a devil!’ I was fair took aback by such language, as you might think; but when I looked up there was Emma smiling behind her ferns, and watching yon snivelling lad like a cat wi’ a half-dead mouse. It was so like the way she carried on wi’ Poor Stephen, it fair give me a turn; so for Stephen’s sake I took curate into t’ house and give him a cup o’ tea and all the gossip I could lay my tongue to, and sent him off home with Emma clean out of his mind, and chuckling as throng as a laying hen!”

“There’s only one as has never taken much count of her,” Mrs. Airey said, when they had stopped laughing about the curate, “and that’s Martha Jane Fell. I’ve heard her reeling off stuff at Emma as just made you catch your breath, and Emma’s smile getting lesser and lesser with every minute. Ay, and I’ve seen her bolt into yon house like a rabbit into its hole, just to get away from her long tongue!”

“’Tisn’t to be expected Martha Jane should have fine feelings same as us!”... Young Mrs. James tossed her head with a fiercely virtuous air. Being acquainted only by hearsay with the informalities of Martha Jane’s past, she naturally supposed them to be more momentous than was actually the case. Nor were the rest of the Chorus averse to encouraging her in this supposition. The post still lagged, and the time had to be passed; so presently they were drawn nearer and nearer in the road, lowering their voices and nodding their shocked heads. Mrs. Clapham kept saying—“For shame, now!” and “Can’t you let sleeping dogs lie?” breaking every now and then into her hearty laugh. “I must say, though, I do think I’ve more claim to that house than her!” she added, after a while, getting hungry for fresh encouragement as there was still no sign of the post.

“I can’t think how they ever considered her for a moment!...” Mrs. James thrust her head above water, so to speak, and then eagerly plunged it back. The feet shuffled in the road, and the heads whispered and bobbed, with every second that passed getting further from the truth. Martha Jane, pulling up at the back the skirt that instantly slipped down, and down at the front the blouse that instantly slipped up, came out of her door and stood watching them with a sardonic grin.

“Talking about me, I’ll lay!” she observed to herself, half bitter, half amused. She had seen too many heads close together in her vicinity not to know when it meant scandal about herself. Often enough some of it happened to get round to her again, and there were times when she had a malicious joy in speeding it on its way. “I’ve heard that much about myself and my goings-on,” she remarked once, “that I don’t know by now which is gospel and which ain’t! Anyway, it wouldn’t be safe for me to swear it on t’ Book, I know that! I reckon I’ll be as surprised as anybody when t’ Judgment Day comes round!”

Suddenly turning her glance up street instead of down, she beheld Emma Catterall’s furtive gaze sliding away from her like a half-felt hand, afterwards focussing itself on the gossiping group. “Wonder what she’s gaping at me for?” she said to herself, rather uncomfortably, and then winked and grinned. “The Queen and her ladies-in-waiting!” she remarked with a jerk of her head towards the little throng. “Ann Clapham’s mighty sure things is going to be O.K. Seems to think she’ll simply romp home over yon house!”

Emma Catterall made no attempt to reply to this effort of wit; did not, indeed, look as if she had even heard it. She merely began to dissolve into thin air, and disappeared even as Martha stared. The latter, however, was used to this vanishing trick on the part of her neighbour, and only laughed. But she, too, was hungering for an exchange of words with somebody, feeling, as Mrs. Clapham had felt earlier in the morning, that even Emma was better than nothing. She waited a while, therefore, hoping that she might reappear, and then, as she gave no further impression of life, took her courage in her hands, and sidled cringingly down the street.

“There’s no telling, after all, as it mightn’t be me!” she was saying to herself, by way of keeping up her pluck, though, in point of fact, she had very little hope of anything as splendid as almshouses ever coming her way. But Martha Jane was never the sort to cry beaten before she was down. She, too, had awakened that morning with an unwonted sense of something about to happen, some forthcoming miracle already launched upon its path. She, too, had felt upon her cheek the far-off brushings of the wings of romance. She had done wonders—and more than wonders—with the committee, as she knew, and it might be that even one vote more than she had counted would suffice to put her in. The weight of the village was against her, of course, heavy with laden tongues, but village opinion would matter nothing if she had got the vote. Little indeed would she care for the whole lip-pursing lot, once she was safely possessed of the house on Hermitage Hill!

She thought of all that it represented—mental and physical comfort, as well as prestige—and longed for it with a passion that was almost angry in its desire. Life for Martha Jane had consisted chiefly not of things which had been given her, but of the things which she had taken, and for once in that life she wanted a free gift. She had always preferred to achieve her ends by crooked ways and doubtful means, but she wanted a straight road to lead the way to this. The house on the hill had not been her dream, as it had been Mrs. Clapham’s, but it had its glamour, nevertheless. Her chances could hardly be called favourable, however, as she was bound to acknowledge. She wasn’t the “almshouse sort,” she said to herself, with a cynical sigh; followed—just because she wasn’t “the almshouse sort”—by a cynical grin.

But at least the grin raised her spirits, since her courage consisted largely of her sense of humour, and she came sidling down upon the group with the cringing yet flaunting air which she kept for her own sex. As soon as a member of the opposite sex appeared, the flaunting vanished as if by magic. Then Martha Jane became at once a faded but sweet blossom, a bruised petal patiently waiting the fall of a manly foot. She wilted, so to speak, withered under your eye, producing the same impression of appeal as in the more forward and less subtle attitude of seeming to cling. It had been this air of shrinking from life, of being beaten back by every zephyr that blew, that had been Martha Jane’s chief asset in dealing with the Committee. But there are limits to the marvels that may be accomplished even by the ghost of a vanished grace, and Martha Jane was pretty sure that hers had stopped at the extra vote.

The Clapham Contingent stiffened when they saw her coming, sliding down upon them with that amazing mixture of provocative humour and fawning appeal. But she was a neighbour, in spite of her morals, and still had her rights, no final pronouncement from some august mouth having set her definitely beyond the pale. Moreover, she had every reason to suppose that she was in the running for the coveted house, and on that ground alone she had authority to be present. Once in possession (always supposing such a thing possible) she would have to be treated differently; would be different, in fact. The more imaginative and calculating among them visioned a Martha Jane in genteel black, visited by parsons’ and governors’ wives, a prominent figure at village sewing-parties, church pill-gills and the altar-rail. They drew a little apart, therefore, though quite unable to look pleased, allowing the protagonists in the forthcoming drama to line up side by side.

Martha Jane threw a mocking glance sideways at the fine bulk of Mrs. Clapham, towering above her like a great merchantman beside some beaten yacht. “You’re waiting for t’ post, likely?” she inquired innocently. “It’s getting about time. I thought I’d like to be along with my few well-chosen words when t’ news comes as you’re in.”

Mrs. Clapham laughed kindly, as at an intended joke, but her cheek flushed, nevertheless. Again she was conscious of outrage that this worthless specimen of humanity should be bracketed with her in the great event. She was a tolerant woman, and not one at any time to drive a sinner to the wall, but there was no getting past the fact that Martha Jane was a blot on the fine beauty of the day. Her slovenliness, with the tawdry touch which was somehow so peculiarly Martha Jane’s, was in itself an offence against the pure delicacy of the morning, but it was the mocking quality of her mien that especially sullied the fine air. Mrs. Clapham began to wonder whether she wasn’t being merely absurd in trying to take her beautiful day so beautifully. Martha Jane gave her much the same uncomfortable feeling as that curate of Mrs. Tanner’s used to give her in church; the same feeling that she might have had if a clown had been introduced into a Bethlehem Play.

“It’s right kind of you, I’m sure,” she replied, as she had already replied right and left, but with none of the usual heartiness in her voice. “Happen it’ll be t’other way about, though,” she added politely, but with an effort, “and me as ’ll be the one to congratulate you!”

“Likely—I don’t think!” spurted forth from Mrs. James, who had fully intended to preserve a dignified silence while in the polluted propinquity of Martha Jane, but found it quite impossible when it came to it. She stiffened herself, however, as if violently conscious of a background with pillars, and although there were no men to be seen, Martha Jane wilted, staring pathetically into the distance where possibly they might lurk.... “It’d be queer if they passed you over, Mrs. Clapham, for anybody round here!”

“It’s real nice of you to say so,” the charwoman thanked her, a trifle uncomfortably, “but there’s a many as good as me. I’m a deal older than Miss Fell here, though, and I reckon that gives me the better right.”

“Not to speak of a sight of other things as well!”... Mrs. Tanner pursed up her tiny, sharp physiognomy until it was more like a bird’s than ever. “They’ll never go past you, and that’s all there is about it. Martha Jane’ll have to wait a bit longer, I doubt; ay, and happen another bit after that!”

The latter suddenly stopped wilting, nobody of the male persuasion having put in an appearance, and straightened into a brazen fierceness.

“There’s them as says I just can’t miss getting it,” she announced, flushing; “his lordship, for one! What, he very near promised it me, there and then, but I couldn’t go taking it behind Mrs. Clapham! ‘’Twouldn’t be fair,’ I says to him, firm but kind, ‘not to go letting her have her chance.’... Almshouses is meant for folks like me, his lordship says,” she went on, the toss of her head infinitely more impressive than anything in that line achieved by Mrs. James—“folks as can’t frame to fight their way. ’Tisn’t everybody as has titles voting for ’em, and coronets shaking hands!”

“It’s about all you will get, I reckon!...” Mrs. James’ tone was more venomous than she intended, for not only was she a kind enough woman at heart, but there were those chances of Martha’s to be considered. But her private piece of vainglory as typified by Mr. Baines was threatening to lose in glamour beside this lordly support.... “I don’t mind betting yon feather boa of mine as you can’t keep your eyes off every time I go past as you never set foot inside t’ almshouse door!”

The unconscious but none the less telling malignancy of this thrust almost brought the tears to Martha Jane’s eyes. She was not quite herself, this morning, not quite her own armoured and viper-tongued self. Slight as was her hope of success, it was still sufficient to soften her fibre, to fray her nerves and make her generally more susceptible to attack. It was only for a moment, however. Her body’s trick of wilting was seldom anything but camouflage for an unwilting spirit. When she had conquered her tears she turned upon Mrs. James such a stream of vituperation that that refined lady was fairly driven backwards by it, as by a hose; and heads came out of windows and round corners and through doors that had hitherto been hiding themselves discreetly behind arch or curtain or jamb.

The furious storm, sprung out of nowhere in the calm September street, was brought to an end by Mrs. Clapham laying a kindly hand upon Martha Jane’s shoulder. On any other day, perhaps, she might not have interfered; might even have found it rather amusing. Racy vulgarity getting the better of ultra-refinement is always a rather inspiriting sight. But to-day it seemed dreadful to her that her splendid moment should be prefaced by this sordid scrap. It hurt her that there should be this unpleasantness at the climax of her honest life; and moreover there was always the fear at the back of her mind that somehow it might break her luck....

Martha Jane’s speech snapped like a bent twig when the charwoman’s hand came down upon her. With her mouth still open, as if it were indeed the mouth of a hose from which the water had been switched off, she stared weakly into the pleasant face. It was a long time now since any woman had touched her, especially a woman like Mrs. Clapham. The last time she had been touched, if you might term it as such, had been in a quarrel with the drunken Mrs. Johnson, of Lame Lane. Mrs. Johnson had blacked one of Martha Jane’s mocking and cynical eyes, and Martha Jane had pulled out a lock of Mrs. Johnson’s none too plentiful hair. Not that Martha Jane was in the habit of doing these things—they only happened sometimes; but that last occasion contrasted with this was enough in itself to make her wince.

Mrs. Clapham, for her part, was thinking that Martha Jane’s shoulder was nearly as thin as a young girl’s. Not such a shoulder as Tibbie’s had been, of course, because Tibbie’s shoulders had never been thin. They were plump, laughing, expressive shoulders, which talked almost as much as Tibbie herself. Nevertheless, it was of her absent daughter that Mrs. Clapham thought, and the tenderness that was in her heart went into her hand and so down into Martha Jane.

“Now, Martha, don’t carry on like that!” she rebuked her authoritatively, though on a motherly note. “You’ll be finely ashamed, making such a to-do, if you find you’ve got the house, after all. Anyway, it’ll be a good day for one of us when t’news does come along, and we don’t want it spoilt by nasty words. If it’s me as gets it, I hope you won’t take it too hard; and if it’s you”—her voice faltered a moment as she tried to envisage the fearful conditions in which such an event could ever occur—“I’ll be right glad to help you with moving in; ay, and to scrub floors for you an’ all!”

The generosity of this offer produced an outburst of admiration from her satellites. “Eh, now, if that isn’t kind!.... Real Christian, I call it!....” and “If that isn’t the kindest thing I ever heard!”—this last from young Mrs. James, retired within escaping distance of her pillars. Martha Jane looked spitefully round the group, and then back for a moment at Mrs. Clapham’s hand. The sun played on the wedding-ring as she looked, flashing it in her eyes, and suddenly she gave her shoulder a little twitch, so that the hand slid off it and dropped.

“Thank you kindly, Ann Clapham!” she jeered, “I’ll be sure to think on. I’m not very set on cleaning, myself, so I’ll be glad of a hand. Folks is different, of course, and I wasn’t brought up to it, same as you. Some on us is finer clay than others, as his lordship says, and I reckon my sort o’ clay wasn’t intended for scrubbing floors!”

There was another outburst, though one of resentment, at this grateful and gracious speech, and the charwoman turned away with the colour hot in her cheek. The heart that had felt so tender only a moment ago now seemed full of nothing but angry disgust. Martha Jane was certainly doing her best to spoil the beautiful day, first of all by turning it into a ribald joke, and then by setting the company by the ears. Just for the moment Mrs. Clapham felt thoroughly vexed with the whole world—with Martha Jane, with the post, with his lordship and Mr. Baines; and even, though quite unjustly, with the admiring Chorus itself. Even the lovely morning seemed to fade because of her wrath, taking with it, as it dimmed, the perfect certainty of her hope....

And then suddenly there rose before her eyes a picture of Tibbie laughing at Martha Jane—Tibbie, who had always refused to look upon Martha Jane as anything but the village clown. She had even been known to say that they ought to be grateful for Martha Jane, but she could hardly expect her mother to be grateful to-day! The thought of Tibbie, however, brought the smile back to Mrs. Clapham’s lips, and her sense of miracle slowly returned. She told herself with a gallant boast that was at the same time rather grim, that she would certainly scrub the floors for the poor, daft thing if she got the house! But even while she played with the thought, she knew that she troubled herself for nothing. She could no more picture Martha Jane in her temple of hope than she could picture her beautiful Tibbie in her coffin.

Putting the matter from her, she settled once more to her patient watching of the street, only to be conscious instantly of a fresh commotion. Mrs. James, who had started again upon Martha Jane, came to a dead stop, and darted back to the charwoman’s side, while the rest of the women gathered around her like chickens about a Buff Orpington hen. Mrs. Clapham turned a surprised head, and looked over her shoulder. Emma Catterall was coming slowly towards them down the hill.

CHAPTER IV

It was hardly surprising that Emma’s approach should have caused panic in the little group, for it was only on the rarest occasions that Emma ever approached anybody. As for making one of a party, she never did that—as Mrs. Clapham had already observed. The utmost that could be seen of her, as a rule, was a hint of her presence behind the ferns, or ebbing and flowing in the pool of shadow behind her door. Sometimes, on very urgent occasions, she might be found in the street, but even then she only hovered on the edges of things. She never plunged right in and became one of the crowd, as the alarmed intuition of her neighbours warned them that she intended doing to-day. She just hovered on the fringe of whatever was going on, paralysing its energies with her queer little half-smile. Beneath that smile the bride instantly became convinced that there was something wrong with her hair or her gown, while the widow, hitherto upheld by the dignity of her woe, burst into fresh tears. Into the consciousness of each came a vision of the things that stand about human life, aloof and yet close as Emma was aloof and close, and standing and smiling, perhaps, as Emma Catterall stood and smiled....

There was something portentous, therefore, about this alteration in Emma’s methods, and the Clapham Contingent felt it in every nerve. It was as if she brought with her some news which they had not anticipated, some revelation for which they were not prepared. For, great occasion though this undoubtedly was to the people concerned, it was not, after all, such a very great occasion. Events of far wider and higher importance had failed to fetch Emma from her lair—such as Armistice Day, the bolting of the ’bus-horses, or the King’s visit to Cautley School; most important of all, the packing of the six-foot music-hall man into a twenty-four inch box on a brougham in the Market Square.

At first glance there seemed nothing sinister about the short, roundabout figure in its white apron and dark gown, the smooth face and bands of dark hair which showed little sign of turning grey. A respectable, self-controlled, self-respecting woman, you would have said, looking at the still face and folded arms, and hearing the quiet, expressionless voice. It was only after a while that you began to feel troubled by the personality behind, to shiver under the passionless scrutiny of the beady, black eyes, and to long to break up the little suggestive smile which hovered continually on her lips.

Heads were turned as she came up, and curt sentences exchanged, etiquette demanding, as in the case of Martha Jane, some slight recognition of her presence. It was not because of any social ostracism that Emma had never acquired the genial habit of “joining on.” In spite of the widespread feeling regarding her treatment of Poor Stephen, nobody had ever found courage to say much about it. They had hinted, of course, subtle hints or broad, low hints or loud, but they had never accused her to her face. Perhaps they felt that there was nothing to be gained by direct attack, or else in the fits of anger and pity that swept them from time to time, surely somebody would have spoken. Martha Jane had spoken, of course—they all of them knew that; but unluckily Martha’s morals were such that her speaking could hardly count. The other women had simply contented themselves with private arraignment and the casual hint, together with such kindnesses to Poor Stephen as happened to come their way.

Yet even now Emma did not actually penetrate the group—an impossible feat, indeed, seeing that the Chorus was glued about Mrs. Clapham like saplings about an oak. The latter threw her a “Well, Emma, how do you find yourself this morning?” with the heartiness of a bluff English sea-dog to some cynical Spanish don, and then turned again to the street. It was Martha Jane who finally broke the uncomfortable silence with her usual patter of mocking speech.

“Save us, Emma Catterall! You don’t mean to say you’ve ventured out to see what’s coming to me and Mrs. Clapham? I wonder the skies don’t fall—I do that! Me and Mrs. Clapham feel real honoured, I’m sure. You’re in plenty of time if you want to know; you’ll be in at the death; though, if post didn’t happen to be late this morning, you’d likely have missed it, after all!”

“In at the death, am I?” Emma repeated in that uncannily still voice which did not so much seem to speak as only to happen. “In at the death? ...” The little smile came to her lips, as if at some peculiarly agreeable thought.... “Ay, well, that’s where we all come in, one time or another....” Her eyes slid up and down and away from each of the group, and came to a halt on Mrs. Clapham. “Seeing you all that throng made me quite curious-like,” she continued, after a pause. “’Tisn’t everybody has the time to be standing about that early in the day; but there, as I always say, I reckon you know your own business best....”

A kind of spasm ran through the group at the phrase which they had all long since learned to hate. They were all strung-up and sensitive by now, and the phrase tightened the tension beyond bearing. Mrs. Airey’s face lost its comfortable, motherly look, and Mrs. Dunn’s grew longer and flatter. As for Mrs. James, in spite of the house with the pillars, she gave the impression of actually creeping under the wing-feathers of Mrs. Clapham.

“No harm in waiting for t’post, I suppose?” yapped Martha Jane; “especially when folks has important business!”

“Depends on who’s waiting—and what for!” Emma’s tone was silky, but dreadfully full of meaning, and Martha Jane suddenly wilted. “A man isn’t less of a man because he’s a bag on his back and a bit of red to the front of his coat.... He’s ter’ble late, anyway, isn’t he?” she went on smoothly, leaving her cryptic statement to drive pleasantly home. “I’ve noticed a deal o’ times that, when news is long on the road, it’s like enough because there doesn’t happen to be any at all.”

For the second time that morning Mrs. Airey and Mrs. Dunn drew together and touched hands. They who had hungered for news through the Great War knew the terrible truth of that. Mrs. Tanner, however, perked up her head.

“What, there must be news sometime, you’ll think on!” she chirruped bravely. “It’s only a matter of who brings it. There’s some think it’ll be Mr. Baines.”

“Baines?” The smooth, sliding tones seemed to convey, even in that single word, that it would be better on the whole if the devil himself brought the news, rather than the amiable lawyer. “I’ve never known anything but bad luck come o’ news brought by Mr. Baines. There was that time, you’ll think on, when he come to tell Alice Alderson as she’d a bit o’ money left her by her aunt, and after she’d got engaged on the strength of it, and run up a ter’ble big bill, Mrs. Clapham, with your Tibbie, an’ all, round he come again to say it was all a mistake. Then there was that mighty queer tale about Polly Green, which I shouldn’t as much as mention if we wasn’t friends. Baines had looked in to say as her husband was coming back from abroad, after twenty year, and she went and hanged herself, right off the reel. Ay, and yon other time, you’ll think on (now you’ll surely remember this!), when he come to tell Ann Machell as she’d got the same house you’re after now; and blest if she didn’t have a stroke with excitement that very night!”

The spirits of the whole company were at zero by now. Even Martha Jane seemed crushed for the time being. Some of them, indeed—Mrs. James, for one—cast longing glances at their dwellings, and thought to themselves that they might just as well be waiting inside. It seemed mean, of course, to desert Mrs. Clapham, and at the critical moment, but nobody could be expected to put up with Emma. They could not understand why she made things seem so hopelessly wrong, as if nothing splendid could possibly happen. It was as if that little smile of hers brushed all the colour out of life, hinting that it was something different from what you had thought. It couldn’t be just that she slanged everybody as their names came up, because they were more than equal to that themselves, and would, if they were honest, admit that it left them all the brighter and better. It was that queer something at the back of Emma’s mind that made you feel so low, something that hinted at knowledge you didn’t possess. It was like being shut in a dark room with somebody you couldn’t see. It was like being a mouse and thinking you knew the whereabouts of the cat; conscious all the time from your head to your tail that it was watching you from somewhere else.

As for Mrs. Clapham, her knee was beginning to ache with the long standing, and there was also a grumble about her heart. She, too, had almost begun to wish that she had never come into the street at all, but had stayed quietly inside her cottage. It seemed to her suddenly that she was making an exhibition of herself, standing there with that crowd of women. Not that she actually lost faith in the wonderful outcome that was to be; it was only that the perfect approach was being spoilt. First of all, there had been Martha Jane, turning her handsprings like a clown; and now unexpectedly there was Emma, with her prophecies of ill-luck....

So crushed, indeed, was the whole group, that it seemed for the moment as if nobody would ever have courage to answer. But even the most oppressed will fight to the last ounce for a thing that has touched their imagination, and Mrs. James had again been injured in her ideal. “Mr. Baines ’ll bring no more bad luck than most folks—that I’ll be bound!” she burst out sharply, even twisting herself from under the feathers to glare. “Bad luck comes of itself and with nobody’s help; we all on us know that. But, speaking for myself, I’m not sure as even bad luck brought by Mr. Baines wouldn’t sound like good!”

Emma said nothing for quite a long time, but just stood staring with her little smile, while the embarrassed red grew in the other’s face.... Her crossed hands, cupping her elbows, did not so much as twitch.

“I’m not saying it’s what Mr. Baines brings,” she answered at last, as Mrs. James dived back; “it’s what he leaves. He comes up all nice and smiling and sweet-spoken like, and you feel rarely pleased. It’s only after he’s gone you find as things isn’t what they seem.”

“They can seem any old how they choose, so long as I get t’ house....” This was Martha Jane, recovered a second time from her wilting. “News can come through a dozen Baineses, so long as it says I’m in!”

Mrs. James being to all intents and purposes invisible, Emma had plenty of time to attend to Martha Jane.

“I’m surprised, I’m sure, to think of you being after one o’ them houses!” she remarked sweetly. “When I heard tell about it, I could hardly believe my ears. The folks in them houses is expected to keep ’em spick as a pin, and I can’t rightly see you putting your hand to that. You’ll have governors and their wives calling and ferreting round to see what you’re at; and a nice to-do there’ll be if things isn’t just so. Seems to me you’ll have to alter your ways in other things, too, if you mean taking yon house.... But there, after all, I reckon you know your own business best....”

“Ann Clapham’s offered to scrub floors for me as a start off!” Martha Jane laughed. “That’ll give me a leg-up!...” She changed her tone suddenly to the professional whine, as if for the benefit of somebody not present. “Folks isn’t all as hard as you folks seem to think. There’s Mr. Andland promised somebody should see to me if I was ill; and his lordship’ll send me one of his own gardeners if him as belongs almshouses is overpressed.” She caught Mrs. James’s sniff from under the feathers, and grew in defiance. “Right kind about it his lordship was, I’m sure! Says I’m a deal too delicate to lift a finger myself.”

“No use counting on it, and so I tell you!” Mrs. Tanner put in briskly. “Ann Clapham’s going to get yon house—not you!”—and Mrs. James snorted “Ay, I should think so, indeed!” terribly rankled about the lordship; and other comments followed at which Martha bridled and brazened and wilted by turn. When they had all finished, Emma began again in her expressionless tones.

“Ay, Ann Clapham ’ll get it; there’s no doubt about that.... I don’t say but what I couldn’t have had it myself, but there, thanks be, I don’t need other folks’ brass. Ann Clapham’s had a hard life, though, and deserves a bit o’ quiet. I don’t know as she’ll take to it just at first—being a lady and all that; but there, I reckon she knows her own business best.... She isn’t as young as she was, neither, and folks as works over hard wear out ter’ble fast. Ay, she’ll get t’ house, will Ann Clapham; there’s no doubt about that.”

There was another uncomfortable pause when she had finished, and Mrs. Clapham cast an uneasy glance at her over her shoulder. What Emma was saying sounded all right—at least, for Emma—so she was at a loss to understand why it should fill her with apprehension. Yet, instead of strengthening her own conviction of coming fortune, in some mysterious fashion it undermined it. She began to feel that, if Emma continued to say that sort of thing, she would not only lose all confidence in her luck, but would find it lacking in flavour if established. She really wished now that she had been patient enough to await the news indoors, and was even beginning to turn on her heel when she was called to attention by Mrs. James. “There he is!” the latter was saying from under the feathers, disappointed yet thrilled. “Look ye! Look ye, Mrs. Clapham! There he is! There’s t’ post!”

The uniformed figure of the postman had suddenly appeared round the curve of the street, and at once Mrs. Clapham and Martha drew together, as if conscious that neither for the lucky nor the unlucky would it be possible to meet this moment alone. Mrs. James slipped her hand through Mrs. Clapham’s arm and gave it an excited squeeze, and the charwoman flushed a deep crimson and paled slowly again. Martha Jane, however, to whom excitement was the breath of life itself, looked for the moment strangely brisk and young. A hint of the old rose-colour came into her cheek, and a youthfully brilliant sparkle into her eye. Mrs. Tanner and her colleagues broke into little twitters and chirps.... “Eh, but he’s taken his time!... Which on ’em will it be?... Eh, but I’m right thrilled!...” While at the back of them all, where she stood silent and still a little apart, Emma uncrossed her hands and let them drop to her sides.

And still the postman was taking his time, rapping at this door, and poking papers through that; handing in letters, when he did hand them, as if he were meting out orders of execution. He was a dour, silent person, who seemed to regard letters as an unnecessary luxury, for which the recipients should be made to pay; and though during the War he had gone so far as to admit the need of the post to mothers and wives, he seemed to expect them to do without it now that the War was over. It was impossible that he should not have noticed the thrilled group of waiting women, even if he had not felt the current of excitement sweeping towards him down the street; but, for all the attention he paid them, they might not have existed. He stayed quite a long time at Mr. Baines’s office at the foot of the street, grumpily handing in document after document, and (apparently) concealing the last of them in his bag. Even the gaze of seven passionately interested females did not seem able to hurry him by a second.

“Ay, he’s taking his time!” Mrs. Tanner repeated sardonically, after a short pause, and in the tenseness of the atmosphere every one of the others jumped. The electric tremors passing between them ran and raced like sunlight on flashing wires as the postman finally turned and came heading towards them. Even now, however, he seemed quite oblivious of their existence, and on a sudden impulse Mrs. James stepped out from under the feathers as if to block the way with her arms. But before anything could be said he was up to them, by them, and then unmistakably past. “Nowt for none o’ ye!” he snapped, without even turning his head, and vanished up the alley that led to the “Black Bull.”

Martha Jane’s laugh led the chaos of sound into which the disgruntled Chorus broke, but, brazen though it was, it was also slightly relieved. The passing of the post left her with still another chance, still another moment in which to preen herself on her possible success.

Mrs. James was asseverating—“Didn’t I say it wouldn’t be t’ post? You mark my words now!... It’ll be Mr. Baines ...” and Mrs. Tanner was chirping—“Did you ever see such manners? He might ha’ given us a word!” with the twittering anger of a furious wren. Mrs. Clapham said nothing, but her mouth dropped at the corners like that of a disappointed child, and behind her Emma lifted her arms and folded them slowly again across her waist....

“I always said he’d bring it himself!” Mrs. James’s voice was happy and high. “Not because of the stamp and suchlike rubbish—Mr. Baines ain’t the sort to stick at a stamp—but because he’s a gentleman and likes everything just so. Folks can’t be more than gentlemen, nohow,” she finished, glaring at Martha Jane, “even if they do happen to be lordships an’ all!”

The flaw in the last sentence passed Martha Jane by, but she was ready for battle, nevertheless.

“You wouldn’t expect lordships to be doing clurk’s work, I reckon?” she demanded scornfully, “or handing in notes as if they hadn’t a footman to their name?... He says he’ll call when I’m in and see as I’m properly tret,” she delivered her final blow; “and I shouldn’t wonder if he stopped for a cup o’ tea!”

A fresh spasm, evidenced by pursed lips, went round the shocked throng, exactly as if they had been drilled by some rapped-out word of command. Mrs. James looked at Mrs. Tanner, and Mrs. Airey at Mrs. Dunn. Martha Jane went furiously red, and tossed her head so violently that a hairpin flew out. Only in the background Emma went on smiling her Mona Lisa smile.... “Lordships and suchlike have their own way o’ doing things,” said her expressionless voice. “Seems to me calling on such as you is more a parson’s job than a lord’s.... But there, no doubt he knows his own business best....”

“Anyway, I’ll lay my best new rubber hot water bottle as it’ll be Mr. Baines!” Mrs. James was still faithful and valiant, but her voice sounded a little flat. It was a bitter pill not to be able to fling back the statement that Mr. Baines would be calling on her. Martha Jane might be lying, of course—and probably was—but still there was no knowing what lordships might choose to do. For the first time Mrs. Clapham’s friends began to entertain doubts as to her divine right, and to wonder whether by any possible chance Martha Jane could come out top. Mrs. Clapham must have felt the doubt in the air, for she turned again as if meaning to steal home. Once more, however, she was arrested by Mrs. James’s voice, and this time there was no mistaking its unmixed pleasure. In the tone of a herald proclaiming some royalty to a waiting court, Mrs. James made her announcement of “Mr. Baines!”

Once again the group drew together, breathless and tense, though always with the exception of Emma, a little in the rear. Mrs. Tanner broke into a fresh series of excited chirps, and for the second time the years fell away from Martha Jane. Mrs. Clapham, however, uttered a sharp sigh, as if aware that repeated drama on this scale was hardly the thing for a doubtful heart; and Emma behind her neither chirruped nor sighed, but again unfolded her arms and let them hang by her sides.

Mr. Baines had suddenly appeared at the bottom of the street on the way to his office, holding a skipping little girl by a fatherly hand. He was a well-dressed, pleasant-looking man, with a buttonhole and a smile; and the little girl was pretty and pink and fair, with a sky-coloured silk jersey over her little white frock. When they reached the office he let go her hand and pointed in the direction from which they had come, and she stood on one leg and pouted, and then suddenly skipped again. They argued a moment or two, with more pointing and pouting and skipping, and then both their heads turned as if pulled by a string. Forgetting their differences, they stood looking up towards the women in the street.

Mr. Baines laughed when he saw them and put up his pince-nez, while the child stared at them gravely, a finger seeking her mouth. Mr. Baines hesitated a moment, blushed, looked at his office-door as if thinking of his clerk, and then back again at the breathless group. To the two at the bottom of the street there was something almost intimidating in the concentrated expectancy of the obviously set piece. Mr. Baines pushed his hat slightly to the back of his head, feeling embarrassed and perplexed. Really, he hardly felt equal at that early hour to facing a posse of seven women, and with both the almshouse candidates there to boot!

At last, drawing a letter from his pocket—(“The letter!” gasped the impassioned Chorus)—he stooped and gave it to the child, obviously issuing instructions, and pointing delicately to the set piece. The little girl looked reluctant at first and then suddenly eager; nodded her comprehension and poised herself for flight; while Mr. Baines, smiling and blushing again all over his clean face, took off his hat with a wave to the set piece, and vanished thankfully into his office.

The child came speeding up the street, serious, and clutching the letter tight; and suddenly the tension of the women broke in a general smile. From doors and windows faces came peeping again, and they, too, smiled at the flying messenger. Even Mrs. James smiled, hurt though she was by the unexpected and—almost—cowardly defection of Mr. Baines, and trying to console herself with the assurance that the wave had undoubtedly been meant for her. Martha Jane smiled wistfully, ingratiatingly, wilting in every limb, in case either Mr. Baines or his clerk should be looking out of the office window. As for Mrs. Clapham, she smiled through a blur of tears, because the little child skimming towards her reminded her so of Tibbie; while in the background Emma continued to smile, too, though with an amazing difference of expression. Unheard by the others, her breath came in short gasps, and her hands twitched as they hung at her stiff sides....

She alone stood firm as the group broke to receive the child, so that, carried along by her rush, the latter ran almost into her arms. Emma laid a hand on her shoulder and bent to look at the note, but the child backed away so sharply that the hand tore the frill at her neck. “Not you!” she exclaimed, frowning and clutching the letter, and actually looking at Emma as if she hated her. Nevertheless, Mrs. Catterall did not seem disturbed. The smile on her lips seemed suddenly to hold some added element of satisfaction, and slowly her hands came up from her sides and fell placidly into place....

The contact, however, seemed to have upset the little girl, for she stood looking around the group with dubious eyes. The women waited patiently, smiling kindly at her confusion. Once, indeed, Mrs. Dunn began “Now then, dearie”—in her colourless tone, but was instantly elbowed into silence by her sister. Again the child looked round, caught Martha Jane’s appealing glance, and broke into a brilliant smile. Darting forward with the same butterfly lightness, she thrust the note into her uncertain hand.

The world swung round Mrs. Clapham; the ground tilted under her feet. As for the Chorus, its feelings had vent in an actual scream, which was followed at once by a paralysed silence. Only Emma retained her satisfied air, and her hands stayed quiet at her waist.... And then, out of the mists surrounding and overwhelming her, Mrs. Clapham heard Martha Jane’s laugh....

“’Tain’t for me, dearie ... you’ve made a mistake; thanking you kindly, all the same!...” The laugh was nearer this time, and a thin, long-fingered hand came under the charwoman’s nose. “No use being dishonest under the circs!” said Martha Jane. “Here, Ann Clapham! You may as well have what’s your own.”

The thin hand thrust the letter into the groping plump one, and then Martha’s face backed away with a twisted smile. “Sorry I can’t come scrubbing your floors,” she finished, discordantly cheerful, “but I don’t mind going so far as to wish you luck!”

Her voice broke on a note like that of a cracked dish, and she edged quickly away with trembling lips. The child ran after her, however, saying “She tore my frill! Look, my frill’s all torn!” and casting angry glances at the imperturbable Emma; and Martha Jane, stopped by the clutching hands, made a valiant effort to struggle with her tears, and bent herself to the woes of little Miss Baines.

Right over Mrs. Clapham and to the ends of the earth the sun came out for ever and ever. Her hands shook as they tried to open the envelope and failed, and the Chorus grabbed it and did it for her. In the same piecemeal way they read the letter aloud, peering over her elbow and under her arm, while she laughed and wept and gasped, and thanked God and the governors and the world in general. Of what was actually in the letter she heard very little, except the fact that the house was undoubtedly hers. Mrs. James, of course, was inclined to dwell upon the flowers of speech which she guessed to have emanated from Mr. Baines, expressing the Committee’s appreciation of the successful candidate’s worth, and wishing her happiness under her new roof. The other women, not being burdened by an ideal, dwelt practically if ecstatically upon such details as the allowance and the coal; but Mrs. Clapham heard little of either. All she did was to exclaim “Ain’t that grand, now? That’s real nice! Ay, that’s right kind!” whenever the rising voices seemed to expect it. All that mattered for the moment was the fact that the dream had not failed her, that never for an instant had her confidence been misplaced. She had been sure that the right things happened in the right way at exactly the right time, and now she could go on being sure as long as she lived. People got what they wanted all right if only they had enough faith—that was another beautiful thing that the letter had proved true. She forgot the long wait and Martha’s clowning and Emma’s sinister looks, and only remembered that all was right with the world and God emphatically in His smiling heaven.

And in the background Martha Jane bent to the complaining child, murmuring soothingly and making quaint little jokes with quivering lips. Taking the crooked gilt pin from her own dirty lace, she fastened the snowy frill of little Miss Baines. It had been a bad moment for Martha Jane when she was offered the letter by mistake, but there was no sense in blaming the child. She wasn’t “the almshouse sort,” she reminded herself again; and again, because she wasn’t the almshouse sort, was able to raise a smile....

She pressed the pin-point into a safe place (pricking herself again), and the little girl, with a word of thanks, skipped away down the street. The women around Mrs. Clapham were falling silent at last, too exhausted to find anything fresh to read or invent. Behind them Emma was receding rapidly up the hill, making her way back to the dark house and the dying ferns.... Martha Jane braced herself for a final effort.

“Off again, are you?” she called after the retreating figure. “The vanishing trick, eh? as per usual?... Ay, well, you got all you wanted, I reckon!” she laughed harshly. “You were in at the death-rattle, after all!”

Emma, now on her steps, turned at the last words, and it seemed to her tormentor that her smile deepened. That was all the answer she made, however—if it could be called an answer. Even as Martha Jane watched, she began to fade, dwindling and gleaming and glooming, until at last she was out of sight.

PART II
THANK-OFFERING

CHAPTER I

By the time the Chorus had talked itself to rags and a dribbling finish, and Mrs. James had remembered her pudding and Mrs. Airey her hot irons; and Mrs. Clapham had had time to think of her knee, and how she was tired with standing, and how it would be just as easy to enjoy the news sitting down—both Emma and Martha Jane had vanished utterly from the scene. It was the charwoman who noticed their disappearance first, wiping away the last glad tears from her shining, glorified face.

“Eh, now, if Martha Jane hasn’t made off, and I never thought on to say I was sorry she’d lost! I was that taken up wi’ t’ letter I couldn’t think of nowt else. She’ll be feeling bad about it, I reckon, will poor Martha Jane. I wish I’d had a word wi’ her before she slipped away!”

“I shouldn’t worry myself.... Likely she’ll go whingeing to yon lordship of hers, and get summat instead!” Mrs. James looked back from between her pillars, anxious, in spite of her pudding, for a last slap at Martha Jane. “Anyway, I was right about Mr. Baines bringing the news,” she went on proudly; “or next best thing to Mr. Baines! A bonny little thing, that little girl, isn’t she now?—and that like him an’ all!... Ay, well, Mrs. Clapham, I’m main glad it come out right, and there’s a deal more I’d like to know if it wasn’t for yon pan....”

“Eh, and yon irons o’ mine’ll be fit to scorch!” ... Mrs. Airey bestirred herself also at the departure of Mrs. James. “I’m as throng as I can be to-day, an’ all. Folks is that put about if they don’t get their washing on the tick, you’d think they’d only a shirt and a pillow-slip to their names!... Step along in with her, Maggie, and get her a cup o’ tea,” she added to Mrs. Tanner, as she and her sister moved away. “She’s a bit upset wi’ it all, and a cup o’ tea’ll pull her together. Folks is easy put out about good news—I cried a deal more when my Teddy come back from t’ War than I ever did when he went—even if they don’t all get strokes and suchlike just by clapping an eye on poor Baines!”

There was a last burst of laughter in the street at that, the last that it was to hear that morning, the last, perhaps, that it was to hear that day.... “Ay, Emma was right creepy with her nasty tales!” Mrs. Clapham concluded meditatively, when the sisters had gone. “(I can manage right enough, Maggie. Don’t you put yourself out!) She’s cleared off again, I notice, and with never a word. She must just ha’ waited to hear the news, and then made back.”

“There was summat queer about her ever coming at all!” ... Mrs. Tanner lingered, cogitating, in the empty street. “What, she never stirred foot even for t’ Coronation, you’ll think on—(Edward was it, or George?). You and she have never been that thick, I’m sure, that she should turn out to wish you luck!”

“She talked that strange, too,” the charwoman puzzled, thinking back, “praising me up and so on, and yet wi’ a scrat in it all the time! She fair made me begin to think things was going to go all wrong.”

“It’s that way she has of making you feel she knows summat important as you don’t. It’s like as if she give you plenty o’ rope to hang yourself, and then stood about smiling, waiting for the pull. Ay, and what you’d feel right sore about when it come to it wouldn’t be as you was hung, but feeling you’d made a fool o’ yourself with yon woman a-looking on!”

“Ay, that’s summat like it,” Mrs. Clapham murmured. “That’s it, I reckon....” She threw a glance up the street at the silent, ill-omened house. “It’s no wonder she made such a wreck o’ Poor Stephen.”

The Saga of Poor Stephen who had fallen in the War began all over again, with precisely the same zest as if sung for the first time. It was a sort of duet into which they fell quite naturally whenever they happened to meet, and however often it was repeated it never palled. Conversation is almost the only form of artistic expression open to most of the poor, and on this subject at least these two had reached a high level. The Saga of Poor Stephen was, indeed, their star performance. Knowing it like their prayers, they played up to each other with mechanical ease, yet found always some shade of inflection which might possibly be bettered, some sentence introduced or eliminated which shed new light upon the whole. And always, as soon as they had parted, their minds set to work again upon the scene they had just played, half consciously rehearsing it for its next public appearance, and seeking some fresh touch which should cause it to live anew.

However, they rang the curtain down at length, and drifted apart—Mrs. Tanner backing towards her door with that almost unconscious movement of street-gossips—as if she was pulled by a string—and the charwoman turning joyously home to her own dwelling. She reached it in less than a dozen strides, but even in that short distance she produced the effect of a full-rigged ship coming buoyantly into port. Crossing the step, she had a passing twinge of remorse because she had neglected to give it its second scrub; and then she was once again in the little kitchen, with the door closing behind her back.

It was a wonderful moment for Mrs. Clapham when she came back again to her home, bearing her sheaves with her. The early morning had been wonderful, too, but in a totally different way. It had been splendid, of course, full of rapture and hope, but she knew now that at the back of everything there had been a fear. That sudden bout of laughter and tears had testified to the strain. The early morning phase had been bought at its own price. But this moment was all splendour without terror, glory without pain. Steeped in wonder, it was yet perfect in satisfaction; shot with ecstasy, it was yet peace....

Presently, perhaps, when the supreme moment had passed, she would wish for that earlier phase all over again. That would seem the supreme moment to her, looking back, the most poignant, the most dramatic, the most worth having because of its thrills. She would forget the scorch of the chariot of fire in which she had left the earth, and only remember the sweep of it as she ascended to heaven. Nevertheless, this was the really great hour of her beautiful day, and she recognised it while she had it. There is no moment like that in which one runs home through a shining world to hide behind a shut door with the glad fulfilment of an innocent dream.

With it, however, came the realisation of what she would have felt if things had happened the other way about, and even the thought of it was so terrible that it turned her faint. Reaching the rocking-chair, she dropped into it with a thankful sigh, and the anything but thankful chair uttered a protesting creak. But the horror soon passed and the glory returned, so that she hardly knew whether the gold motes dancing in the kitchen were made by the sun, or whether the whole world had turned golden in essence because of the splendour in her brain.

With smiling lips, and half-closed, tear-wet eyes, she sat rocking herself to and fro, while the overburdened chair uttered its almost human shrieks of protesting rage. But she was too happy to notice it, too happy to move; too happy even to get herself the cup of tea which she dearly craved. She knew vaguely that her head ached as well as her back and her bad knee, but these also were beyond notice. The most they could do was to force her to own, chuckling, that it was a good thing miracles didn’t happen every day of the week. But then she did not want them to happen every day; she did not want them ever to happen again. Once was all she had asked for in the whole of her life, and that once was proving itself most gloriously enough.

Undoubtedly her chief joy, half-conscious though it was, lay in the supreme confidence with which she was filled in the workings of fate. Human beings are never so happy, so soothed and so unafraid, as when they seem to identify themselves with the Ruling Mind. The soul, swerving blindly from fear to fear, clings thankfully to the least vestige of a plan, whether for good or ill. It was not often that Mrs. Clapham had felt afraid of life, but it seemed to her at this moment that she would never feel afraid again. It was muddle that frightened people, she thought to herself, torn edges and jagged ends, suddenly-twisted threads that on every count should have run straight, and meaningless blows from a vague dark. Mrs. Clapham was of those who prefer to be hit firmly on the head by an Absolute Will, rather than to be sent flying into space by the blind bursting of a mindless shell.

But for her, at all events, life had proved itself faithful up to the very hilt. Week after week, year after year, she had held to her great belief, and in the due moment of promise it had been fulfilled. The right thing came at the right time and in the right way—always she came back again to that. A little earlier, perhaps, or a little later, and the whole thing would have been less perfect; would not have found her so ready or left her so secure. Even a splendidly-sudden surprise would not have been really so splendid, because unable to fix in her this precious certainty of success. Sudden surprises are wonderful in their way, opening the doors of fairylands and heavens, but they do not create security or make for peace. On the contrary, they, too, suggest chaos after their own magnificent fashion. The highest pinnacle is that which is reached after earnest endeavour, patient provision, humble yet certain hope. The charwoman felt satisfied in every inch, seeing life and the justice of things fitting each other like lock and key. She felt as one feels at the end of a sunset or the close of a song. She felt as one feels when one shuts the door of a room in which a child has fallen asleep....

She wished that the man who had thought of her long ago could know that both his wish and hers were going to be fulfilled at last. He, too, had been one of those who find their greatest pleasure in watching the Universe work out even, so that the news that his forty-year-old plan was coming into effect would have afforded him a personal satisfaction. She felt sure that he would have nodded his head with his grim smile, saying, “Right you are, Jones! Meant you to have it. Pleased. D—d glad!” feeling that, in this one thing at least, he had been able to give the sometimes recalcitrant cosmos a shove on the right road.

She thought gratefully, too, of those who had voted her the house, trying to call up, though with a touch of shyness, the kindly things which they must have said, not only in committee but in the privacy of their homes. Some of them must have gone into the letter which they had written through Mr. Baines, but so far she had heard so little of that wonderful letter! It was still in her hand, of course, too precious to put down, and presently she would find her glasses and read it with quivering joy. But for the moment she needed no further stimulant for her happy mind. The ecstasy in her soul required no extra assistance from the elegant phrasing of Mr. Baines.

She thought also of the body of public opinion which was said to be at her back, and felt for the time being as if every soul in the place was a personal friend. It was wonderful, even for a short time, to feel the thoughts of all those well-wishers turned simultaneously towards herself. That was another thing she felt certain she would never mistrust again—the genuine joy of the many in the genuine joy of the one. There were the four women, for instance, who had stayed with her so long, swelling her triumph, when it came, by the mere fact of their kindly presence. They had, as it were, lifted her in their eager arms, ready to thrust her into the chariot before it had touched the ground. They had been like children, with a fifth who had won or was winning a coveted prize; like bridesmaids, speeding and cheering a happy but trepidant bride....

That last word made her think of Miss Marigold up in town, who would even now be getting ready for church. Her mother would be helping and watching her, no doubt, as Tibbie’s mother had once watched and helped. Miss Marigold, however, was no longer young, while Tibbie had been young as a first summer bird. Miss Marigold was to wear the uninteresting garments which so many brides wore now, but Tibbie herself had been dressed in white. Not satin, of course, or a wreath, or the overgrand ornament of a veil—both Tibbie and her mother were too sensible for that. But nobody who had seen Tibbie that day, whether in London or Timbuctoo, would have been stupid enough to take her for anything but a bride. She was the real, loving, loved bridal thing that trod actually on air, so that one seemed, as it were, to see her spurning the earth, and to hear all about her the uprush of fine wings....

The picture of Tibbie in her wedding-white was so present to her mind that she was surprised, when she opened her eyes, not to see her there in the flesh. She was so puzzled, indeed, that she stopped rocking and sat up, until presently, as her glance strayed about the room, the knowledge came to her that it was Tibbie’s photograph that she sought. She did not seem able to visualise it in its usual place, and she got to her feet, wondering whether the emotion through which she had just passed had somehow shortened her sight. The photograph was there, however, she found, when she moved across, but had slipped on the shelf and lay on its back. She set it up again and stood looking at it, and Tibbie looked, too, but it hardly seemed to her that that was Tibbie’s face. Tibbie’s real face was the one she had just seen when she was half asleep, which had hung above her and kissed her ... and laughed ... and kissed her again....

The photographs of the children were as usual stiffly erect, but she scarcely glanced at them as she turned away. It was impossible, with that vision of laughing girlhood still in her eyes, to think of them as belonging to Tibbie. Indeed, their utter unlikeness to her—always a source of grief—turned them, at this particular moment, into actual strangers. They were so tragically the counterparts of that unfortunate Poor Stephen, to whose comfort and help Tibbie had rushed like an indignant angel. There seemed little but pity and the attraction of opposites to account for the strange marriage, for the young couple had been like creatures out of two totally different spheres. Tibbie had come out of a House of Laughter and Stephen out of a House of Pain; and in spite of their love it was the image of pain that still looked out of their children’s eyes....

Her mind went back at that to her late talk with Mrs. Tanner, conning its weak points, and preparing it once more for the next occasion when they should be called upon to “say their piece.” She was busy with it all the time she was brewing and drawing the tea, and even while, glasses at length unearthed, she pored joyously over the letter. Between her gasps of pleasure at each newly discovered tribute, such as “hard-working citizen,” “good neighbour,” “praiseworthy mother,” and “kind friend,” some door in her mind kept swinging and standing ajar, showing her the pale-faced little boy who had lived through Heaven knew what misery in the house at the top of the street.

In the confidence born of the perfect happening at the perfect moment in the perfect way, Mrs. Clapham wondered how it had been possible for anybody to be as much afraid as Poor Stephen. She was almost inclined to feel impatient with him, looking back, though she had been sorry enough, and even fiercely indignant, at the time. In common with others in the street, she had done her best to see that Stephen was fed, that his clothes were mended and brushed before he went off to school, that there was a fire for him to sit by in cold weather when he chose, and sometimes a penny slipped in his pocket for buying sweets. But Stephen had been hard to help, as are all early-abused, early-cowed young things, and it was not often that he could be decoyed into other people’s houses even for his good. It was almost as if the contrast between what he found there and what was waiting—or wasn’t waiting—for him at home, was more than his wounded spirit was able to bear. In any case, he had avoided their kindly designs whenever he could, choosing his moment to slip past when they weren’t looking, or creeping back again at night with ears deaf to their shrill calls. Often and often she had seen him stealing by in the winter dusk, resolutely turning his eyes from their open, fire-streaming doors. Even in the September sunshine Mrs. Clapham shivered at the thought of that going home, back to the dreary house in which he had been born afraid.

It was many a year now since she had set foot in Emma’s house, but, gradually feeling back, she got its atmosphere again. She could remember little, indeed, of how it had looked; she could only remember how it had felt. Going into Emma’s was not so much going into a house as letting yourself into the four walls of Emma Catterall’s mind. Everything that was in it looked as it did because of Emma, so that the tables hardly seemed tables, or the chairs chairs, or the beds beds. Even Emma’s husband had somehow had that effect, had suffered a sea-change simply because he was Emma’s. Jemmy Catterall had been weak and foolish as a young man, but he had not been the inhuman monster he appeared later. Marriage with Emma had turned him shortly into a sullen brute, subject to fits of fury which stamped him wrong in the head. That undependableness of mood had been a sorry atmosphere for Stephen, combined with that terrible sensing of something that wasn’t sane.

Yet Jemmy—or so at least Mrs. Clapham had been known to insist—would have been right enough but for Emma. He was never a star, of course, either in looks or brains, but he was right enough as men went, seeing that in most cases they didn’t go far. It was hardly credible that he should have turned into the mad skeleton of his later years, peering at people from behind the ferns, or, later still, from a room upstairs. When he wasn’t peering he was emptying water-jugs upon callers’ heads, or throwing things at the passers-by. It seemed an eternity that he had leered and peered, until finally his amusements had come to an end behind the shut door of a coffin-lid....

Well, that had been Stephen’s father—not much of a father for anybody, if it came to that, but least of all for one so inexpressibly in need of help. Yet, even at his worst (and it was a most unpleasant worst), it was unanimously agreed that he was nothing to Emma. Mrs. Clapham could remember how they had all been afraid of her, even as a girl, because of that thing in her mind which watched and hid. Tibbie, too, had complained that Emma spied on her while she slept, just as her own babies had cried themselves sick about it, later on. But the child out of the House of Laughter had not troubled herself about Emma for very long; quite early the obsession had turned into interest in Poor Stephen. Even in those days she used to talk to her mother about the little boy who was always afraid; later still, when they were going to the same school; and later again, when they were grown up and gone to work. And then suddenly the happy, chattering voice had stopped of its own accord, dumb in that last, sweet, waiting stillness before the rushing confession of love....

Upon that desolate Poor Stephen, sunk in his misery and mental murk, Tibbie’s choice had had the effect of a silver clarion in the dark. The conferring of her love was like the conferring of a kingly robe and crown. The change in him was so startling that it was almost as if one saw the gold and the jewels shimmer about him as he moved. Tibbie was a strength-giver, just as Emma was a strength-stealer, but she did a great deal more for Stephen than that. She drew out of him by degrees the courage that was in himself, as well as the graces and charm which make a man loved wherever he goes. The long-latent strength, crushed and shrivelled in youth, had gathered itself at last into that splendid battle-deed; but when the time came for her to lose him, as she had known it would have to come, it was the fact that he had been loved by his fellows that Tibbie had valued most.

Taken altogether, it was a strange tale of the breeding of pluck, especially such pluck as had set Stephen’s name in newspapers without end, on Rolls of Honour and brasses, memorial crosses and shrines; even on the rough little wooden cross which the Germans had raised to him themselves. Only on rare occasions had Tibbie tried to tell her mother what Stephen had suffered in the past, and then it was always by request. It had been hard enough, even, for Stephen to tell his wife, and it was harder still for Tibbie to pass it on. Then, too, it seemed like sending him back to the house of bondage again, to keep even a hint of it in their thoughts. And it was all such a story of patches when it was told, a dreary and mean muddle like streaks on a sordid pane. They were such queer, quiet, sinister things that Emma had chosen to do—things that were yet as demoralising in their effect as any of Jemmy’s wild water-jug-throwing moods. What the other children had suffered only in imagination had really happened to Poor Stephen, for his mother had actually spied upon him while he slept. Night after night he had started awake to find her in the room, a motionless dark figure set at the foot of his bed. She had said nothing; she had done nothing; she had just stood in the shadow and smiled; and he, gasping with fear in the bed, had yet managed to keep silence, too. Quite early he had known her for his enemy, both by night and day, but in the shadow at the foot of the bed she was something worse. The whole sinister powers of darkness seemed to be concentrated in her form, coming to brood above him while he was sound in his first sleep....

This horrible travesty of motherly tenderness had frightened Tibbie Clapham as nothing else had frightened her in life, turning her, even in its recital, into a bitter, white-faced woman whom her mother hardly knew. Evil is never so sinister as when it touches the beautiful natural things and makes them strange. The story of those nights had impressed Tibbie with such cruel force that there was a time when she was almost afraid to approach her own children as they lay and slept....

The nights had been hardest to bear, so Stephen had said, but Emma had watched him everywhere else as well. Indeed, after a while, he had grown to feel that even distance could make no difference; that, no matter where he went, he would never be free of her eyes. The whole circumstances of his life, with their lack of comfort and food, contributed to the obsession, doing their share in keeping his nerves unnourished and his bodily strength low. Then, too, there was the miserable meanness which hid whatever he needed and watched his face while he sought it; that murmured alike whether he was at home or abroad; that crept upon him or made sudden noises; that hinted at evil in connection with every name that he knew, sliding back, in the final event, to hint at it also with his own....

But it was always the watching that he minded most, and that would have finished him in the end, sending him, but for Tibbie and marriage, either to suicide or drink. Even when he had left the place and was happily settled somewhere else, Emma’s eyes had seemed to go with him. Not until long after he was married, Tibbie had said, had he ceased to feel that he was being watched.

“But he never felt it in France,” she said to her mother, after Stephen was dead. “He told me—he even wrote about it—that he never felt it there. It was as if there was some big angel between them, making her keep away. Oh, mother, it was harder than words can say to let him go, but I used to feel so glad for him when he was in France!...”

CHAPTER II

The rocking had begun again, the slow, rhythmic rocking that seemed to draw the past out like a charm, in spite of the continuous protest of the angry chair. It altered in character, however, after a while, the swing of the rocker dwindling at times until it almost stopped, and then beginning again with a gentle push. It was as soothing as the sleepy surge of a summer sea, urged by some impulse into a gentle swell, only to smooth itself out into stillness and slumber again. Even the angry chair seemed to be getting drowsy as well, and was silent at times for as much as a minute. At the end of the minute it would break out again into a raucous yelp, like the spasmodic effort of a tired dog. Gradually, however, both rocker and rocked came to a trance-like quiet. In the gold of the morning sun and of her own special private glory, Mrs. Clapham sat and slept.

She slept for about an hour, and was unaware that more than one person had been near her while she dreamed, peeping in at her through the window, or laying a gentle hand on the loose latch. Members of the Chorus appeared from time to time, only to back away again with a portentous finger on their lips. Mrs. James, indeed, at a second attempt, had actually penetrated into the sacred place, with infinite care setting at Mrs. Clapham’s elbow a covered plate of soup. The young school teachers had looked in for a word on their way home, and had gone on again with hushed steps, taking with them that vision of tired thankfulness and infinite peace. Mrs. Clapham, of course, knew nothing of all this, but it soothed her even in sleep. The atmosphere of kindly interest, combined with the sun, lay softly about her like a silken shawl.

It was the rush of the children that awoke her at last, the feet of the home-coming children on the hill. Twice a day they streamed past Mrs. Clapham’s cottage, and always the sound of their coming was like the sound of a river in spate. One said to oneself, “What is it? What is it?” and then knew it to be the feet of the new generation on the road. The patter and clatter of those feet wove themselves into the last of Mrs. Clapham’s dream. She heard the clink of clogged soles, the lighter slither of leather, the whistles and cries of the boys, the running chatter of little girls. And, long after the stream had passed on, it seemed to her that she heard other feet on the hill—the thin little dragging feet of little Libby and Baby Steve....

She was almost sorry when she found that she had slept, for there is no divider, either in joy or sorrow, so great as sleep. The first ecstasy of her pleasure was over and gone. She felt almost as if the tremendous event had happened yesterday instead of to-day, and was vexed to have missed even a moment of the precious thrill. At the same time, she felt better for the rest, both in body and mind. Both her back and her knee had ceased to ache, and her head felt business-like and cool. The pleasure was still there, of course, and would rise to transport again, but just for the moment her brain was at work upon it rather than her soul.

It is true that the sense of miracle came hurrying back when she discovered the plate of smoking soup. The poor, however, are accustomed to presents of this kindly sort, and it was only important because it had happened to-day, when kindness kept adding itself to kindness, and beauty to beauty, and joy to joy. She knew it was Mrs. James who had brought the soup because it had come in Mrs. James’s best wedding-present china. That was the miracle, if you like; the thing that would not have happened on any other day, but that simply couldn’t help happening on a day like this. Mrs. Clapham felt touched almost to tears by this exhibition of delicate taste, running her fingers appreciatively over the flowered border. It was like Mrs. James’s refined ways to have brought her the best china, knowing that even the best food tastes better out of a beautiful dish.

She drank the soup gratefully, glad that she had no need to set about any cooking for herself, and ate a piece of her own excellent currant bread. Her currant loaves, indeed, were quite famous in the district, so much so that there were people who ordered them from her every week. Miss Marigold was fond of them, too, and so was Tibbie—Tibbie, who wrote that even the children said she could not make them like Granny! Miss Marigold was to have a loaf as a wedding-gift when next she came home; in the excitement of moving she must not forget that. But once up at the new house she would have plenty of time for her loaves—loaves fit to set before the King, if by any chance the King, or the local gentry, who unconsciously ranked so much higher in her country mind, should honour her with a call.

She felt so energetic after the sleep and the soup that she longed to begin pulling the cottage to pieces at once. The almshouse was furnished, of course, and after a fashion that took your breath, but she had no doubt that there would be room for her few bits of sticks as well. They would be Tibbie’s and the children’s after she was gone, and in any case she did not want to part with them just yet. The apparently lifeless furnishings of a house register always the joys and sorrows of those to whom they belong, and everything in the cottage was beautiful to Mrs. Clapham because here Tibbie had lived and laughed.

But of course there could be no moving for a day or two yet, even although already she was hungering to be off. It would seem almost indecent to grab at the house like that; greedy, anyhow, and not quite nice. In any case, she felt sure it would have to be cleaned first, just as the spot she was leaving would have to be scrubbed throughout. Still, there was no reason why she shouldn’t take a look at the place, and amuse herself by making her joyful plans. Her heart rose and danced again at the pleasing prospect, as the motes danced in the silently passing sun. With hands that trembled a little she washed Mrs. James’s china and set it aside to return, and then climbed the stairs to the little bedroom to tidy herself and change.

She took off the print dress and put on the gown that Tibbie had made for her long ago, a soft black gown with a little white at the throat and wrists. Even on Mrs. Clapham’s large figure it fell into the graceful lines which seemed to come as a matter of course into everything that Tibbie touched, even the cheapest satin or the harshest serge. Yet, although it was Tibbie’s work and a labour of love, Mrs. Clapham couldn’t help feeling that it was rather funereal to-day. She had worn it at Tibbie’s wedding, and it had seemed gay enough then, but at this moment of coloured splendour it seemed almost sad. She felt that she wanted to flaunt forth in something light—something more like Miss Marigold’s pale blue crêpe de Chine! The thought of herself, however, clad after that fashion, reduced her to helpless mirth, and after shaking with laughter until she actually shook the room, she relinquished the crêpe de Chine and recaptured her common sense.

She felt even more restless upstairs than she had felt down, and it was all she could do to keep from dragging the battered tin trunk from under the bed and beginning to pack. All the time she was dressing she kept looking about, telling herself to remember this and not to forget that. It was absurd, she said to herself, to feel as if she were leaving that very day! It wasn’t as if she hated the cottage and was thankful to go; it was more than likely that she would weep her heart out when the time came to say good-bye. Already she was inclined to be jealous of the future tenant, wondering if she would keep it as it ought to be kept. Not that she could possibly keep it as Mrs. Clapham had done; that was beyond hope. The most that could be looked for was that she wouldn’t make it an actual by-word in the row.

She planted a bonnet—the generic Bonnet, black, with a bit of velvet, a bit of ribbon, a bit of feather, a bit of jet—on the silvery smoothness of her parted hair, and was ready at last to set forth on her triumphant journey. With a humorous laugh she told herself that it was just as well she had changed her gown, or she would have been scrubbing that almshouse before she knew! Her promise to Martha Jane came back to her with the thought, making her realise how confident she had been. As if she would ever be likely to scrub floors for a woman like Martha Jane!... But again she was conscious of the narrow line that divides fortune from misfortune, triumph from disappointment, victory from defeat; and in the light of that rash promise was more thankful than ever for her escape.

With all her glory about her, however, she could afford to feel sorry for Martha Jane, and now that she had begun to think about her again, she did feel dreadfully sorry. It would have been unbecoming in a generous victor not to throw her a pitying thought, and Mrs. Clapham did more than that. She began to cast about in her mind for an olive branch of sorts, but could think of nothing available but a currant loaf. It was a small enough offering, of course, but currants were currants, nowadays, and flour was flour; and in any case a loaf of her baking would have its own prestige. In its homely way it would convey the same delicate touch that Mrs. James’s wedding-present china had conveyed so pleasingly to herself.

Making up her mind at last, she wrapped the loaf in a cloth and went briskly out. The morning sun was beginning to leave the street as she emerged, tending to become an afternoon sun and moving slowly towards the west. Nevertheless, she did not feel that it was deserting her because it was passing on. It had stayed with her all the morning, like a royal guest at a humble feast; now it was going before her to shine for her in her new home.

Exalted though she was by her recent great success, she could not help feeling a little nervous about her visit. Martha Jane might possibly refuse to let her in, insult her, perhaps, or, at the very least, try to take the gloss off her conquest with ribald jeers. On the other hand, she might possibly find her crying—a lonely, unwanted woman, hurt by another of life’s jars. Mrs. Clapham felt like crying herself when she thought of that. Of course she might have gone out to pour the tale of her wrongs into some sympathetic ear, and in that case there would be nothing for the bearer of branches to do but to turn again in her tracks. But the latter had scarcely swung round on her step before she became aware that at least she must be at home, for, outside the kitchen window that was almost level with the road, Emma was standing, bending and peering in.

Fear, devastating and intense, came upon Mrs. Clapham when she beheld Emma. There was something almost gloating in the way she stooped to the low window, something of the intent Roman waiting for “thumbs down.” So interested was she that she did not hear the closing thud of Mrs. Clapham’s door, or even the sound of her footsteps coming up the street. There was no smile on her lips as she stooped and stared, and for once its absence was actually more alarming than its presence. Mrs. Clapham’s picture of Martha Jane crying or cursing gave place to others infinitely worse. Now she beheld her dangling from a hook in the ceiling or prostrate with prussic acid on the floor. Her heart beat so violently that she could scarcely breathe, and her stout arms dithered so that she nearly dropped the loaf....

She was close upon Emma when the latter suddenly saw her and straightened herself with the click of a clasped knife. “Eh, but you give me a fright!” she began, gaspingly, and then stopped. An extraordinary change came over her as her eyes fastened themselves on Mrs. Clapham’s bonnet and gown. Her arms dropped to her sides as if torn away by some unseen hand. Her mouth opened, her jaw dropped ... her eyes went dead, her face white....

Mrs. Clapham was more frightened than ever when she saw Emma looking like that. “There’s nowt wrong, is there?” she cried at her sharply, shaking with fear. “What’s making you look so strange, Emma? Is owt wrong with Martha Jane?”

But the amazing transformation which had come upon Mrs. Catterall had passed even before she had finished. The dull colour came back into Emma’s face and the watchful yet blank look into her eyes. Her arms came up slowly and folded themselves to their usual place. And then, as Mrs. Clapham still stood panting and shaking, she started her slow smile....

“I don’t know as you’d call it wrong,” she answered her gently, in her expressionless tones, “though I wasn’t brought up myself to consider it right. But there, I reckon everyone knows their own business best,” she went on, moving to one side. “Anyway, as you’re here, you’ll happen look for yourself....”

CHAPTER III

Feeling slightly ashamed of herself, but too frightened and curious to refrain, the charwoman stepped forward and took Emma’s place.

The hill, rising beside the window, seemed to surge along its sill as a rising wave surges along the bows of a vessel, and she had to bend almost double to see through the dirty panes. Even then she could discern nothing at first because of the brightness without, but gradually, as she stared, the figure of Martha Jane came into being. She was seated beside the table, with her head laid on her arms, and her flushed face, twisted towards them, showed her sunk in a sodden sleep. Her hair was coming down, her blouse had slipped up, and she had lost a shoe; while the lace collar which she had robbed of its pin for little Miss Baines, was hanging airily down her back. Within reach of her outstretched hands stood a bottle without a cork, from which they seemed only this moment to have slipped away.... Mrs. Clapham clicked her tongue between her teeth when she saw that bottle. There could be no mistake about Martha Jane....

“The right sort for almshouses, I don’t think!” Emma was saying in smug tones behind the charwoman’s back. “Seems to me mighty queer they should ever have thought her in the running at all; but there, I suppose they reckon they know their own business best....”