It was one of those things that seem as if they might happen so easily, and never do,--never do. Simon returned presently, accompanied by Will, and they entered the house as usual through the old stone porch. No dog even looked aside at them as they crossed to the kitchen door. No portent of coming wonder shed a sudden sunlight on the day. The old trap was tipped on its shafts behind a sheltering wall. The old horse, himself mere waiting food for the nearest hounds, munched his way happily through his feed of Blindbeck corn.

Will talked shyly as he led the way, trying to brighten the melancholy pair.

"You must have a sup o' tea before we get to business," he said to his brother, "and Sarah can rest herself while we have our crack. We're over soon wi' tea to-day, but I reckon you won't mind that. You'll be tired likely, and it's none so warm. I'll be bound Simon'll have a thirst on him anyway!" he smiled to Sarah. "He's done a deal o' tattling, Simon has, to-day!"

He could not get any response from them, however; indeed, they scarcely seemed to hear. The fear of Eliza was upon them, that was always so strong until they were actually in her presence, the same fear that had sent them scuttling like scared rabbits out of the Witham inn. Sarah was struggling with the usual jealous ache as they entered the s.p.a.cious, cleanly place, with the kindly smell of new-baked bread filling the whole house. She knew as well as the mistress where the kitchen things were kept, the special glories such as the bread-maker, the fruit-bottler, and the aluminium pans. The Blindbeck motto had always been that nothing beats the best. Half her own tools at home were either broken or gone, and there was only a blind woman to make shift with the rest as well as she could. Little need, indeed, for a great array, with the little they had to cook; and little heart in either cooking or eating since Geordie had gone away....

Will opened the door of the main kitchen, and at once the warmth and jollity sweeping out of it smote the shrinking visitors like an actual blast. The party were already at table, as he had said, and met the late-comers with a single, focussed stare. It was one of their chief bitternesses, indeed, that they always seemed to arrive late. Eliza was at the back of it, they felt almost sure, but they had never been able to discover how. No matter how they hurried the old horse, asked the hour of pa.s.sers-by, or had Simon's old watch put as right as it would allow, they never seemed to arrive at the right time. They could not be certain, of course, that she had watched for them from upstairs, and at the first sign of their coming had hustled the party into tea, but somehow or other they knew it in their bones. Things happened like that, they would have told you, when you were up against Mrs. Will; things that never by any chance would have happened with anybody else.

The room was cloudy to Sarah as she went in, but jealousy had long ago printed its details on her mind. She knew what the vivid wall-paper was like, the modern furniture and the slow-combustion grate. Once it had been a beautiful old houseplace with a great fire-spot and a crane, an ingle-nook, a bacon-loft, and a chimney down which both sun and moon could slant a way. Eliza, however, had soon seen to it that these absurdities were changed, and Sarah, though she affected contempt, approved of the changes in her heart. It was true that she always returned to Sandholes with a great relief, but she did not know that its bare austerity soothed her finer taste. She only knew that her mind expanded and her nerves eased, and, though grief went with her over every flag and board, a cool hand reached to her forehead as she went in.

Simon included in one surly glance the faces round the loaded table, the bright flowers, the china with the gilded rim, and the new window-curtains which he would never even have seen in any house but this. "Plush, by the look on 'em, and the price of a five pun note!" he thought resentfully, as he stood waiting to be given a place, and wondering which of the people present he disliked the most. There were the two Swainson la.s.ses from the nearest farm, with their young duke of a brother, who was in a Witham bank. There was a Lancashire youth whom Will had taken as pupil, and Stephen Addison and his missis, who were both of them preaching-mad. He held forth at chapel and she at Inst.i.tute meetings and the like, and folk said they kept each other awake at nights, practising which of them could do it best. There was Sam Battersby of Kitty Fold, who never knew where his own heaf ended and other people's began, and the familiar smug cousin, long since formally pledged to Eliza's eldest la.s.s. There was a grandchild or two, and of course the Blindbeck brood, with the exception of a couple of married daughters and the obliterated Jim.... It was small wonder, indeed, that, after all those years, n.o.body missed him in that upcoming crowd.

Eliza's hearty voice, that was never hearty at core, rose like a strong-winged, evil bird at the unwanted guests. The sight of them seemed to surprise her so much that she dropped a gold-rimmed cup.

"Surely to goodness, Simon and Sarah, yon's never you! I'd give you up an hour back or more, I had indeed. You've been a terble while on t'road, surely,--a terble while after us? But there,--I always forget how fast yon grand little mare of ours gets over t'ground! You'd need to start sooner than most folk wi' your poor old crock."

She broke off to throw a remonstrance at Will, who was bundling two of his daughters out of their seats to make room for their uncle and aunt.

"Nay, now, Will," she called vexedly down the table. "What d'ye think you're at? Leave t'la.s.ses alone, can't you? Let the poor things be!

If it's a chair you're wanting, there's one here by me as'll suit Sarah just grand. Sarah can't abide a chair wi' a cane bottom,--says it rubs her gown. It's right enough, too, I'm sure, wi' velvet and the like,--(I made a bonny mess o' yon grand gown I had when Annie Belle was wed),--but I can't see as it'll do any harm to a bit o' poorish serge.

Anyway, Sarah can have the best plush to set on, if she sets here, and, as for Simon, you're for ever sticking him where I can't so much as see the end of his nose! You're never thinking I'm still sweet on him, surely," she added, laughing, "or that happen he'll be making sheep's eyes at me, as he used to do?"

She looked at the young folk, and chuckled and winked, and they nudged each other and laughed, too. But Sarah did not laugh as she waited behind the chairs, or Simon, red to the ears, and recalling the machinations of Eliza's youth. He pushed one of his nieces roughly out of his way and took her place, while Sarah went slowly to seat herself on the red plush chair that was warranted not to hurt her poor patched gown.

"I hope there's summat for you, I'm sure!" Eliza went on, when the giggling and whispering had died down, and Simon's thin cheeks had lost their furious red. She cast an anxious glance down the well-filled table, but her tone was complacency itself. "Folks as come late can't expect to find everything just so.... Ay, I give you up a long while back. Sally here'll tell you I give you up. 'Sally,' I says to her, 'likely yon old horse'll be put to it to do the extra bit, and so they've happen thought better on't, and gone straight home. You're that used to good horses, Sally,' I says, 'you don't rightly know how poor folks has to shift. Not but what they'll get a deal better tea here than they will at home, Sally,' I says, 'and though I says it as shouldn't, that's the truth! Ay, they'll come to tea, I'll be bound, Sally,' I says, but I changed my mind when I thought on the old horse."

Sarah said nothing in reply to this, partly because her brain was swimming with the heat of the room, but chiefly because she never did say anything until Eliza was well ahead in the race for speech. This particular method helped her to reserve her strength, but at the same time it deepened the bitterness in her heart. It would have been better for both of them if they could have got the inevitable tussle over at the start; exhaustion on both sides might have brought at least a pretence at amity in its train. But it had always been Sarah's instinct to hold herself back, and time had turned the instinct into a fixed need. For the moment, at least, her strength was certainly to sit still.

"I doubt there's no tea for you just this minute, Sarah," Eliza said, affecting great concern as she lifted the tea-pot lid. "Sally, my la.s.s, you'd best see about mashing another pot. There'll be a deal o' folk sending up for more in a brace o' shakes, and we can't have them saying they're not as well-tret at Blindbeck as they're used. Not as anybody's ever said it yet as I've heard tell, though you never know what folks'll do for spite. Most on 'em get through their three cups afore they're done, and me like as not just barely through my first. Eh, but I used to be terble bothered, just at the start, keeping folks filled and their mugs as they rightly should! You bairns wasn't up then, of course, but we'd farm-lads in the house, and wi' a rare twist to 'em an' all! Yon's a thing you've never been bothered with, Sarah, wi' such a small spot and lile or nowt in the way o' work. You'd n.o.bbut a couple o' hands at any time, had you, and not them when you'd Geordie-an'-Jim? You've a deal to be thankful for, I'm sure, you have that! You've always been able to set down comfortable to your meat, instead o' fretting yourself to skin and bone seeing as other folk had their wants."

Here Mrs. Addison offered to pa.s.s her cup, and then thought better of it, remembering the new brew. Eliza, however, urged it forward.

Apparently she had discovered concealed virtue under the tea-pot lid.

"Nay, now, Mrs. Addison, there's a sup in the pot yet! You've no call to look shy about it,--I wasn't talking at you! ... Pa.s.s Mrs. Addison the cream, Mary Phyllis, and waken up and look sharp about it!

Blindbeck tea's none the worse, I reckon, for a drop o' Blindbeck cream...." She returned the cup, smiling benignly, and then pretended to have lost Sarah and suddenly found her again. "Losh, Mrs. Simon, you're that whyet I'd clean forgot you were there! You'll not want to be waiting on Sally and the fresh brew. I'll wet leaves again for you just to be going on with!"

So Sarah got the bottom of the pot after a little more talk, a hunt for a clean cup and an address on the value of the spoons. Half a cup--consisting chiefly of tea-leaves--was pa.s.sed to Simon, but was intercepted on its way by Will. Simon did not notice the manoeuvre, being busy glowering at a niece's shoulder turned sulkily on him from the left; but Eliza saw it from her end of the table and turned an angry red. She never forgot Simon's indifference to her as a girl, and would have made him pay for the insult if she could. She could not always reach him, however, because of the family tie which nothing seemed able to break. But Sarah, at least, it was always consoling to think, could be made to pay. There were times when all her reserve could not hide from a gleeful Eliza that she paid....

So Simon got the new brew without even knowing that it was new, while Sarah drank the unpleasant concoction that was weak at the top and bitter as sea-water at the bottom. Sally came in with another great brown pot, and sat down languidly at her aunt's side. She and the smug cousin had been engaged for years, but there seemed little prospect of the wedding taking place. She had been a handsome girl, and was good to look at still, but there were handsomer Thornthwaites growing and grown up, as apparently the cousin was quick enough to perceive. To-day he had found a seat for himself beside Mary Phyllis, who kept glancing across at her sister with defiant pride. Sally had a cheap town-look nowadays, the cousin thought, not knowing that she had a.s.sumed it long ago to please himself. Now that he was more mature, he preferred the purer country type of Mary Phyllis, as well as the fresher atmosphere of her youth. Sally talked to young Swainson, and pretended not to care, but she was too unhappy to bother about her aunt. The Simon Thornthwaites were boring at any time, like most permanently unlucky people, and to-day she was too worried even to try to be kind. So Sarah, after whom she was called, and who was her G.o.dmother to boot, got very little to eat and only the dregs of things to drink; and n.o.body at all rose up to deliver her from Eliza.

Mrs. Addison had opened her mouth very impressively more than once, but it was only now that she got a chance to speak. In spite of their boasted fluency, both she and her husband had always to yield the palm to Mrs. Will. Mrs. Addison, however, always watched her chance, while Stephen was simply flabby, and did not try. She and Eliza in the same room were like firmly opposing currents, flowing strongly in the same stream.

"Mr. Addison's to preach at this mission they're having, next week," she announced proudly. "There's to be a Service for men only, and our Stephen's to give 'em a talk. I won't say but what he'll do as well as a real minister, even though I do happen to be his wife. Likely you'll think on about it, and send some of your lads along, Mrs. Will?"

Eliza was quite unable to conceal her disgust at a distinction achieved by somebody not her own.

"I'll do my best, I'm sure," she a.s.sented casually and without looking at her, "though I doubt they'll want coaxing a bit wi' a broom-handle or a clout!" She disliked being called Mrs. Will, and knew that Mrs.

Addison did it with fell intent. It was galling to be reminded that, in spite of his success, Will had still not managed to make himself into the elder son.... "I can't say they're that set on either church or chapel unless it's to see a la.s.s," she went on, busy with the cups, "and I doubt they don't reckon much o' sermons unless they're good. They've been better eddicated than most folk, you'll think on, so they're hard to suit. 'Tisn't likely they could do wi' second-hand preaching from some as happen never went to school at all."

Mr. A'ddison made a sudden attempt to speak, but choked instead, while Eliza looked as innocent as a large-sized lamb.

"Ay, I've heard a deal o' sermons as was just waste breath," she went on kindly, "and that's the truth. All the same, I'll likely look in at Mission myself, one o' these days, if I can get away. I'm always glad to set still after a hard week, and to get a look at other folks'

jackets and hats. Not that there's much to crack on at chapel, that way.... I'm a deal fonder o' church. I was wed at St. Michael's, you'll think on,--ay, and Sarah an' all. Eh, I could laugh even yet at yon march we stole on her, me an' Will!"

Sally moved impatiently at her aunt's elbow, and muttered something under her breath. She was tired of the old story, and disapproved of it as well. Sarah had lifted her cup to her lips, but now she set it down....

Mary Phyllis stopped giggling a moment, and leaned forward to speak.

"I was telling Cousin Elliman about it only this morning," she said noisily, "and he says it's the funniest thing he ever heard! I thought everybody knew about it, but he says he didn't. He said it was real smart of you, Mother, and he wished he could have been there...."

"I'll be bound Sarah didn't think it smart!" Eliza chuckled, but without glancing at her victim's face. She had a trick of discussing people when they were present, as Sarah knew. She could tell by the trend of Eliza's voice that she spoke without turning her head.

"Smart? Nay! Sarah was real wild, you take my word! I spoke to her in t'vestry when the show was through, and she give me a look as was more like a dog's bite. Eh, well, I reckon poor Sarah was jealous o' my gown, seeing her own was nowt to crack on,--and nowt then! I'd always settled to be real smart when I got wed, and my own la.s.ses was just the same. None o' my folk can do wi' owt as isn't first-cla.s.s and happen a bit over. Yon's the photo we had took at Annie Belle's wedding," she added, turning to point, "and there's another of Alice Evelyn's in the parlour."

The cousin and Mary Phyllis left their seats to giggle together over the stiff figures, and presently the girl turned to her sister with a malicious taunt.

"I say, our Sally, you'd best look out when you _do_ get wed, or happen I'll play a trick on you, same as mother did Aunt Sarah! You'll be rarely riled if I come marching up the aisle with a fine young man, taking all the shine out of you and Elliman!"

The cousin said something in a low tone which made her flush and laugh, and Sally guessed at it quickly enough, though it did not reach her ears. The tears came into her eyes, and on an impulse of fellow-feeling she turned towards her aunt. She was asking after May Fleming when her mother broke across her talk.

"Eh, now, Sarah, yon was never May, was it, along wi' you in Witham?

I'll be bound I'd never have known her if she hadn't been with you, but there's not that many you're seen about with nowadays at market.

'Tisn't like me, as can't stir a step without somebody wanting a crack or hanging on to my gown. But May's changed out of all knowledge,--I was fair bothered to see her look so old! I'll swear our Annie Belle looks as young again, for all she's been wed a dozen year at least. Ay, I thought May terble old, and terble unmannerly as well. I'd be shammed to think as any la.s.s o' mine had suchlike ways. You weren't over-pleasant spoken yourself, Sarah, if it comes to that. The folk in the caif were laughing a deal after you'd gone out, and saying you must be wrong in the garrets to act so queer."

Sarah had regained her spirit a little, in spite of her poor tea. She straightened herself on the plush chair and answered calmly.

"They can say what suits 'em and welcome, as long as they let me be.

You know what put me about, Eliza, and n.o.body to thank for it but yourself. As for folks laughing and making game o' me and suchlike, it was you they was sn.i.g.g.e.ring at plain enough when I come out."

Eliza's colour rose, but she struggled to keep her virtuous air. She looked at Sarah with a sorrowful eye.

"I wouldn't get telling lies about it, Sarah," she observed kindly, "I wouldn't indeed! Mrs. Addison's listening, think on, and she'll be rarely shocked at suchlike ways. Caif-folk were shocked more than a deal, an' me just having a friendly talk an' all!"

"It's a queer sort o' friendliness as puts folk to open shame!" Sarah's colour was flying a flag, too. "It's n.o.bbut a queer sort o' friend as goes shouting your private business at the end of a bell!"

"There isn't a deal that's private, surely, about the mess o' things you've made on the marsh?..." The fight was really begun now, and Eliza turned in her seat, fixing her adversary with merciless eyes. Sarah could see very little but a monstrous blur, but she felt her malignant atmosphere in every nerve. She could hear the big, solid presence creaking with malice as it breathed, and had an impression of strained whalebone and stretching cloth. But it was always Eliza's most cherished garments that she visioned when they fought,--the velvet gown that was folded away upstairs ... gloves, furs, and a feathered hat; furthest of all, the wedding-gown and the flaunting veil....

"Private!" Eliza repeated the sneered word as if it were something too precious to let go. "There can't be that much private about things as we've all on us known for years. What, folks has puzzled no end why you've never ended in t'bankruptcy court long since! Will and me could likely ha' tellt them about it, though, couldn't we, Sarah? Will an' me could easy ha' tellt 'em why! Will and me could ha' tellt where bra.s.s come from as was keeping you on t'rails----"

Will had been lending a careful ear to Simon's surly talk, but he lifted his head at the sound of his name.

"Now, missis, just you let Mrs. Simon be!" he admonished, with a troubled frown. "You're over fond of other folks' business by a deal."

"I'll let her be and welcome, if she'll keep a civil tongue in her head!" Eliza cried. She went redder than ever, and slapped a tea-spoon angrily on the cloth. "But if our bra.s.s isn't our business, I'd like to know what is, and as for this stir about quitting Sandholes, it's nothing fresh, I'm sure! We all on us know it's a marvel landlord didn't get shot on 'em long ago."

The last remark galvanised Battersby into lively speech. Hitherto he had been busily concentrated on his food, but now his mean little features sharpened and his mean little eyes shone. He bent eagerly forward, leaning on the cloth, knife and fork erect like stakes in a s.n.a.t.c.hed plot.