"You'd have had me say nowt, neither, yon day we was wed,--give her a kiss, happen, and praise her gown----?"

"Nay, then, I wouldn't, I tell you! Blast you! Nowt o' the sort!"

Simon was fairly shouting now. He thumped at the table in his rage. "I wish to Gox I could ha' gitten my hands round her throat wi'out having to swing!"

Sarah looked at his prancing shape with the same ironic smile.

"Nay, my lad, there's better ways than that wi' Eliza, by a deal. D'ye think I haven't gitten a bit o' my own back, now and then? I've had my knife in her deep,--ay, deep!--time and again. There's better ways wi'

Eliza than just twisting her neck. What, this very day I've made her weep tears as she's never wept afore,--tears as near tears o' blood as Eliza'll ever weep...." She stopped, recalling the scene in which Nature had shone like a star in Eliza just for once.... "Nay, Simon,"

she went on quietly, "there's no sense in our getting mad. It's over late to go preaching love atween Eliza and me. Men don't know what hate can be between women when it's gitten hold. It's a thing best let alone,--never mentioned,--let alone. It's a big thing, caged-like, as was small once, and then comes full-grown. It's over late to go trying to stroke it through the bars."

"I n.o.bbut wanted to make the best o' things," Simon muttered, ashamed.

"The Lord knows I'd give my hand to put you top-dog of Eliza just for once. But I'm not denying I'm terble thankful to ha' fixed things up.

I reckon I'll sleep to-night as I haven't for weeks. I'm right sorry, though, if you're taking it hard."

"I'll take it right enough when it's here," Sarah said gently, turning away. "I won't make no bother about it, don't you fret."

She picked up the kettle and set it on the fire, as if she meant to put an end to the talk. Simon lingered, however, casting uneasy glances at her face.

"I've a job in t'far shuppon to see to," he said at last, and lighted the old lantern that swung against the wall.... "Yon's tide, surely?"

he added suddenly, as he took it down.... "Nay, it's over soon."

He lifted the lantern to look at the table above the shelf, but Sarah shook her head.

"Yon's an old table, think on. It's no use looking there. Tide's six o'clock, it you want to know."

He said, "Oh, ay. I'd clean forgot," and still stood on the hearth, as if reluctant to go. Presently he spoke humbly, twisting the lantern in his hand.

"It's real hard on you, Sarah, to come down like this. I don't know as I like it myself, but it's worse for you. But we've been right kind wi'

each other all these years. You'll not think shame on me when I'm a hired man?"

She turned back to him, then, trying to see his face, and it seemed to him that she really saw him for the first time in many months. But, in point of fact, it was the eyes of the mind that were looking at the eyes of the mind.... And then, unexpectedly, he saw her smile.

"Nay, my lad," she said strongly, "you mun be wrong in t'garrets to think that! If there's owt to think shame on it'll be stuff like yon.

You're the same lad to me as when we was wed, just as Eliza's the same cruel, jibing la.s.s. I reckon that's where the trouble lies, if it come to that. Love and hate don't change, neither on 'em, all our lives.

D'you think I'd ha' kept my hate so warm if I hadn't ha' kept love?"

He nodded doubtfully in reply, and began slowly to edge away. But before he had reached the threshold he paused again.

"Anyway, we've had the best on't!" he cried triumphantly, as if inspired. "Eliza's had what looks most, but we've had the real things, you and me!" And then, as she did not speak, the spirit died in him, and his head drooped. "Ay, well, we mun do what we can," he finished lamely. "We mun do what we can. 'Tisn't as if it'll be so long for either on us, after all."

"Shall I see to t'milk for you?" he added diffidently, but was refused.

"Nay," Sarah said. "I can manage right well. I know they milk-pans better than my face. I'd like to stick to my job as long as I can."

Simon said--"Ay, well, then, I'll be off!" and looked at the door; and stared at the door, and said--"Ay, well, I'll be off!" again. He had an uneasy feeling that he ought to stay, but there was that job in the far shippon he wanted to do. He wandered uncertainly towards the outer door, and then, almost as if the door had pushed him, stumbled into the yard.

II

Sarah stood thinking after Simon had gone, following with ease the troubled workings of his mind. The smile came back to her lips as she recalled his obvious sense of guilt. Behind all his anger and chafing humiliation it was easy to see his growing pleasure and relief. It was more than likely, indeed, that he would be priding himself on his new position before so long. Perhaps age, which has a merciful as well as a cruel blindness of its own, might prevent him from ever realising where he stood. She could picture him lording it over the gentler-natured Will, and even coming in time to dominate the farm. It was only for her that there would be no lording it,--and open sight. It was only on her account that he was still ashamed.

It was cruel to grudge him the little solace he had left, but the thing which eased the position for him would form a double cross for her.

Hitherto, they had stood together in their hatred of Blindbeck and its female head, and in the very depth of their darkness still had each other to soothe their shame. But now Simon's att.i.tude was bound to alter at least towards the farm. There would come a day when he would turn upon her for some chance remark, and from that hour he would be openly on Blindbeck's side. The new tie would make him forget those bitter upheavals of jealous rage. Slowly the place would come between them until she was left to hate alone.

For her, the change would simply deliver her, blind and bound, into Eliza's hand. She could have laughed as she saw how the thing she had fought against all her life had captured her at last. Even with Eliza dead or gone, Blindbeck would still have stifled her as with unbreathable air. Her spirit and Eliza's would have lived their battles again, and even over a grave she would have suffered and struggled afresh. But Eliza was neither dead nor mercifully removed, but was already snuffing the battle-smoke from afar. The whole account of their lives would come up in full, and be settled against the under-dog for good. It was as whipping-boy to Eliza that she would go to the house by Blindbeck gates.

At the present moment, however, she neither suffered nor rebelled.

Physically, she had reached the point at which the mind detaches itself resolutely from further emotional strain. The flame of hate burnt steadily but without effort, and with almost as pure a light as the flame of love itself. Like all great pa.s.sions, it lifted her out of herself, lending her for the time being a still, majestic strength.

There is little to choose at the farthest point of all between the exaltation of holiness and the pure ecstasy of hate. To the outside eye they show the same shining serenity, almost the same air of smiling peace. It is the strangest quality in the strange character of this peculiarly self-destroying sin. Because of it she was able to go about her evening tasks with ease, to speak gently to Simon in the little scene which had just pa.s.sed, and even to dwell on his methods with a humorous smile upon her lips.

In the clarified state of her mind pictures rose sharply before her, covering all the years, yet remaining aloof as pictures, and never stirring her pulse. So clear they were that they might have been splashed on the canvas that instant with a new-filled brush. They sprang into being as a group springs under the white circle of a lamp, as the scenes the alive and lit brain makes for itself on the dark curtain of the night. The few journeys she had taken in life she travelled over again,--rare visits to Lancashire and Yorkshire ...

Grasmere ... Brough Hill Fair. They had stayed in her mind because of the slow means by which they were achieved, but they counted for very little in the tale of things. It is not of these casual experiences that the countryman thinks when the time comes for a steady reviewing of his life, that intent, fascinated returning upon tracks which is the soul's preparation for the next great change. They flit to and fro, indeed, like exotic birds against a landscape with which they have nothing to do, but it is the landscape itself which holds the eye, and from which comes the great, silent magic that is called memory, and mostly means youth. It is the little events of everyday life that obsess a man at the last, the commonplace, circular come-and-go that runs between the cradle and the grave. Not public health problems, or new inventions, or even the upheavals of great wars, but marriage, birth and death, the coming of strangers destined to be friends, the changing of tenants in houses which mean so much more than they ever mean themselves. Binding all is the rich thread of the seasons, with its many-coloured strands; and, backing all, the increasing knowledge of Nature and her ways, that revolving wheel of beauty growing ever more complex and yet more clear, more splendid and yet more simple as the pulses slow to a close.

She loved the plain, beautiful farming life that a man may take up in his hand because it is all of a piece, and see the links of the chain run even from end to end. Even now she could see the fair-haired child she had been still running about her home, the child that we all of us leave behind in our sacred place. She could hear the clatter of clogs in her father's yard, and all about her the sound of voices which the daisied earth had stopped. It was strange, when she came to think of it, that she never heard her own. In all her memories of the child it seemed to her lip-locked, listening and dumb. Perhaps it was because she was shut in the child's brain that she could not hear it speak. She could hear her mother's voice, light and a little sharp, and her father's a deep rumble in a beard. Even in the swift pictures flashing by her he looked slow, drifting with steady purpose from house to farm.

Because of his slowness he seemed to her more alive than his wife; there was more time, somehow, to look at him as he pa.s.sed. Her bustling, energetic mother had become little more than a voice, while the seldom-speaking man was a vital impression that remained.

Rising up between the shadows that blotted them out was a certain old woolly sheep-dog and the red torch of the flowering currant beside the door. There was also a nook in the curve of the garden wall, where, under a young moon, she had seen the cattle coming across the fields, sunk to their horns in a fairy-silver mist....

It was an open-air life that took her long miles to school, clogging on frozen roads, through slanting rain or fighting against the wind.

School itself seemed patched in a rather meaningless fashion on that life, much as the books in the parlour on the busy, unthinking house. A life of constant and steadily increasing work, from errands of all sorts, feeding the hens and fetching home the cows, to the heavier labour of washing and baking, milking, helping with the stock.

Presently there had been the excitement of the first shy dance, and then the gradual drawing towards marriage as the tide draws to the moon.

And all the time there had been Eliza making part of her life, from the plump little girl whom people stopped to admire to the bold intruder at the altar-rail. Looking back, she could see herself as a stiff and grave-eyed child, grimly regarding the round-faced giggler from the start. Even then she had always been the dumb man in the stocks, of whom the street-urchin that was Eliza made mock as she danced and played. Only once had she ever definitely got the better of her, and it had had to last her all her life. Eliza had had many lovers, drawn by the counterfeit kindliness which hid her callous soul, but when she had chosen at last, it was Simon who was her choice. Perhaps the one gleam of romance in Eliza's life had been when she looked at Simon ... and Simon had looked away. Quite early he had fixed his affections on Sarah, and during their long courtship he had never swerved. Plain, business-like Sarah had drawn him after her as the moon draws the willing tide....

She began to put away the things she had bought in Witham, stowing them in a cupboard between the pot-rail and the door. During the morning she had felt royally that she was buying half the town, but now she saw how small her share of the marketing had been. There was a troubled feeling at the back of her mind that something had been missed, and even though she was sure of her purchases, she counted them again. Afterwards, she stood muttering worriedly through the list ... tea, candles, a reel of cotton ... and the rest. And then, suddenly, without any help from the candles and cotton, she remembered what it was, and smiled at the childish memory that would not stay asleep.

More than twenty years, she reminded herself,--and yet she still looked for the fairing that Geordie had brought her on Martinmas Day! There had scarcely been any special season,--Christmas, Whitsun, Easter or Mid-Lent,--but he had remembered to mark it by some frolicsome gift. He had always withheld it from her until the last, and then had stood by her laughing while she unwrapped some foolish monkey on dancing wires.

All the time he was saying how splendid the fairing was going to be,--"It's gold, mother, real gold,--as bright as the King's crown!"

And when she had opened it, she would pretend to be cast down, and then put it snugly away and say it was "real grand!"

Jim had had his fairings for her, too, but she was trying her very hardest not to remember those. Jim's had been prettier and more thoughtful,--often of real use, but she had long since forgotten what the things were like. A mug with her name on it, a handkerchief, a brooch,--long ago broken or lost, or even given away. But every ridiculous object of Geordie's was under lock and key, with even a bit of camphor to keep the monkey from the moth....

She stood there smiling, softly folding her hands, as if she laid them lightly over some sudden gift. On either side of her was a laughing face, and even she found it hard to tell which was which. She was very still as she made that perfect transition into the past, and the only sound in her ears was through the lips that laughed. And then, into that full stillness, in which no step moved or voice called or bird flew, there came the cry of a heron outside the door.

III

It did not reach her at first. She heard it, indeed, coming back to the present with the sound, but that Was all. The thing behind it had to travel after her over twenty years. The cry of the heron was natural enough, with a famous heronry so near, and it was only because of the exceptional stillness of the night that it drew her attention now. Her mind went mechanically to the high wood behind the Hall, to the long-necked, slender-legged birds going home to the tall trees that on this unstirred evening would be stiff as a witch's broom. She even had time to remember the old legend of their battle with the rooks, before the thing that had been running for twenty years entered her consciousness with a rush.

She stiffened then. From being softly still she became a rigid thing, stiller than sleep, stiller than death, because it was pa.s.sionate will-power that held her still. It was already a moment or two since the sound had pa.s.sed, but it still rang in the ear which had seemed to refuse to take it in. It had flashed through her brain like a bright sword flung in a high arc through a night without a star, but the truth that was behind it she held rigidly from her even as it tried to step within. She knew that it was too low for a bird's call, too sharp and clear in that m.u.f.fle of mist, but she shut the knowledge out. She would not let herself either breathe or think until she had heard the sound again.

The shock was as great the second time, but it had a different effect.