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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13278 ***
+
+Women of the Country
+
+
+THE ROADMENDER SERIES
+_Uniform with this Volume_
+
+The Roadmender. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+The Gathering of Brother Hilarius. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+The Grey Brethren. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+A Modern Mystic's Way. (Dedicated to Michael Fairless.)
+Magic Casements. By ARTHUR S. CRIPPS.
+Thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci,
+    as recorded in his Note-Books. Edited by EDWARD MCCURDY.
+The Sea Charm of Venice. By STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
+Longings. By W.D. MCKAY.
+From the Forest. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Pilgrim Man. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Winter and Spring. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Michael Fairless: Life and Writings.
+    By W. SCOTT PALMER and A.M. HAGGARD.
+Vagrom Men. By A.T. STORY.
+Light and Twilight. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+Rest and Unrest. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+Rose Acre Papers: including Horæ Solitaræ. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Women of the Country
+
+By
+
+Gertrude Bone
+
+With Frontispiece by Muirhead Bone
+
+
+
+
+London
+
+Duckworth & Co.
+
+Henrietta Street, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+_Published 1913_
+
+
+
+
+
+WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+When I was a child I lived in a small sea-coast town, with wide, flat
+sands. The only beautiful thing in the place--a town of no
+distinction--were the sunsets over this vast, level expanse. I remember
+them at intervals, as one recalls things seen passing in a train through
+a solitary landscape. I seem to see myself, a child with a child's
+imagination, standing on those wet sands, looking out over their purple
+immensity to the glittering line of the tide on the horizon, and to see
+again the sun in such a wide heaven that it seemed to have the world to
+itself, and to watch the changes in the sky as it sank, drawing with it
+the light. These great sands were dangerous at times, shifting in
+whirling and irresistible rushes of water, and changing the course of
+the channel, which was unaltered by the tide and which always lay out a
+gleaming artery from the almost invisible sea.
+
+It was Sunday morning--a day observed with such precision in that little
+town that I was almost alone out of doors. A string of cart-horses,
+their day of rest well-earned, were being led across the sands from the
+level tide. The sand, uncovered by the sea for weeks, was bleached to an
+intolerable whiteness, but there was no wind to lift it, and the sea was
+tranquil, its little waves all hastening in one direction, like a shoal
+of fish making for a haven. The sun was already changing its early glory
+to heat. All the erections for amusement on the shore looked a little
+foolish in that solitude. I returned to the town along the empty asphalt
+roads and went with my companions to church. It was a church whose
+pretensions were high and genteel. Nothing of a personal nature was ever
+heard from its well-bred pulpit. The hymns were discreetly chosen to
+avoid excitement, and a conversion would have given offence. The
+minister for that day was a young man from the poorer end of the town,
+and I remember, even as a child, being disturbed by the announcement of
+his first hymn, "Rock of Ages." Even the organ blundered as it played so
+common a tune as Rousseau's Dream, and I, who learning counterpoint,
+feared to be seen singing so ordinary a melody, lest it should set me
+down as unmusical for ever. But soon my concern was with the unfortunate
+young man, for he was, I felt sure, quite ignorant of the habits of such
+congregations as ours, and would certainly offend our best people. For
+after that we read the parable of the Prodigal Son and sang, "The Sands
+of Time are Sinking." Then I forgot even this curious lapse from our
+Sunday custom, so clearly did the tale now begun by the preacher bring
+again before my eyes those inhuman sands, that lonely sky, and the
+unstayed power of the sea.
+
+He had chosen, so he said, for his service this morning the favourite
+hymns, Scripture, and text of an obscure member of the congregation
+taken from earth in a strange manner the day before. For more years than
+he could remember, there had come and gone in that congregation an old
+blind man. He had heard him spoken of from time to time in a kindly
+contemptuous, way as "Old Born Again," and it was by that nickname he
+would speak of him this morning, but he could find no place in his
+intelligence for contempt, for Old Born Again now saw and knew the
+things which prophets and kings desire to look into.
+
+He had lived for many years thus. He was a widower living with a married
+daughter, whose husband was a fisherman. She herself kept a
+greengrocer's shop of the poorer kind. She had five children, the
+eldest, a boy of thirteen, earning his living with her in the shop. He
+and his blind grandfather went round the district every day with a small
+cart and horse, selling their vegetables from house to house and thus
+enlarging their custom. The boy guided the horse and his grandfather
+helped with the selling and the money. In the early morning at the end
+of each week they drove the horse and cart to the sea's edge to wash
+them, making always for the steady channel which ran unaltering through
+the empty sand, when the tide was down. This morning they had gone as
+usual, and when they reached the water (the old man was blind you will
+remember, and his companion a child), they knew no difference in its
+appearance. A man who was gathering cockles at a distance knew and
+called to them, running towards them, but the old man did not see and
+the boy was intent upon guiding the horse and cart into the water.
+
+That night the sand, so unstable, had moved beneath the pressure of an
+unusual tide. The course of the channel had changed, and when the horse,
+treading confidently, had approached the edge, it stepped straight into
+deep water and, losing its balance, being also impeded by the cart,
+dragged with it the vehicle, the old blind man and the child to
+unavoidable death. Their bodies had been recovered but too late. "Let us
+pray," added the minister, "for the mourners."
+
+To a child the fact of death is not very terrible, because the fact of
+life is not yet understood; but I never see in imagination the level and
+sad-coloured country of my childhood, stretching out of sight to the sea
+across an expanse of sand, a country whose pomp was in the heavens,
+whose hills were the clouds, without seeing also, journeying across it,
+an old blind man, a child, and a dumb creature, to disappear for ever
+under the wide sky, beneath the sun, within that great waste of waters.
+
+The life of the poor, coloured outwardly with the same passivity and
+acceptance of their lot as the rest of visible nature, disciplined by
+the same forces which break the floods and the earth, remains for most
+of us querulous, ignoble, disappointing. What can be said suggestive or
+profound of the life that is born, that labours its full day with its
+face to the ground, from which it looks for its sustenance, and at last
+is carried, spent, to the square ground which holds the memory and
+remains of the dead.
+
+Yet one day the sun which has risen, stirring the only emotion in the
+landscape, will rise upon a tragic, significant, or patient human group,
+for whom sun and seasons and the wide heavens are small, whose emotion
+is yet contained within the room of a mean dwelling and whose destiny is
+accomplished within a tilled field.
+
+Under a sky that is infinite and a heaven accessible to all, the poor
+"work for their living," bowed always a little towards tragedy yet
+understanding joy, from the bitterness of life and death and the added
+anguish of ignorance drinking often their safety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was evening in the country at harvest-time, at that moment towards
+sundown when the light, about to be withdrawn, glows with a fulness of
+gold which makes it seem impossible that it can ever die. The earth was
+heavy with fruition, every square field brimful of the ungathered
+harvest. The heavy corn swayed almost by reason of its own weight. A
+thunderstorm would beat it prostrate in an hour. All the crops were full
+and good, some almost level with the low hedges. Heat seemed to radiate
+from the yellow mass, that scorching heat which in autumn never seems to
+leave the earth, but to linger about the ground, surrounding the
+responsive and standing corn. But the day had brought no heaviness to
+the sky, blue without a cloud, only a grave and increasing heat, a sun
+which blinded the eyes and seemed to take no account of anything save
+its steady purpose of ripening the fruit and grain.
+
+Looking round one saw that it was not an impressive country. There were
+no hills, no grandeurs, no proximity to the sea. It was a country whose
+pageants were made, not by great heights or sombre woods, but by the
+orderly and coloured procession of the harvests; where one recovered the
+preoccupied sight of little children, seeing so much to absorb one near
+the ground that one did not seek the horizon; where matters were
+measured and done not by the clock but by the sun's height, by midday
+heat and darkness, by the lowing of cows or the calling of lambs.
+
+A woman, well on the way to middle age, sat in the house-place of a
+small cottage on the white high-road. Everything had been done for the
+night, the pigs and pony fed; the cow milked and the milk strained; the
+churn cleaned and the cream standing. The hens had been driven in and
+were almost asleep on their perches. The wood was ready for the morning
+and the clock had been wound up. She had not had her supper yet she did
+not remove her sun-bonnet or yard-boots. She cut herself a slice of
+stale bread and a large piece of cheese, dipped a cup in the barrel of
+buttermilk and sat down on a low stool with the bread and cheese in one
+hand and the cup of milk in the other. She was evidently in great
+perturbation, for at times she forgot to eat altogether and sat with the
+bread and cheese suspended in her hand while she thought deeply. Her
+rather large plain features had a dignity of expression which was
+pleasing, though it betrayed a tendency to melancholy. She had no frown,
+for her blue eyes were of excellent strength and one does not sit up
+late in the country. She was tall and rather bony, a strong peasant
+woman.
+
+Presently she rose, her supper still unfinished, and took from a shelf,
+from among a medley of herbs and medicine bottles, a penny bottle of ink
+with a pen sticking in it. Searching in a drawer of the round table she
+found a large envelope on which was written, "Giant pennyworth of note."
+She took from it one of the thin bluish sheets of paper, and sitting at
+the table, her sun-bonnet making a grotesque shadow behind her, she
+began to write. She wrote with little hesitation, urged by the strength
+of some feeling. Her handwriting was large and she made long loops to
+her g's.
+
+      "DEAR SIR,--Though you passed by my cottage yesterday you are so
+      unknown to me by sight, that I have only just discovered who it
+      was that was brought to such a pitiable condition before me.
+      First, sir, let me describe to you what a sight I saw before me,
+      when, hearing a great plunging and shouting in the road, I came
+      out from the shippon to see what was the matter.
+
+     "I saw, sir, a strong, well-looking, well-dressed young man of
+     twenty-six lying in the mud of the road, his foot in one stirrup of
+     his horse, he, mad with drink cursing, first the poor horse (a very
+     quiet stallion), then the road (a very easy one) and last, the
+     Almighty God of love. The horse, dragged everywhere by the efforts
+     of the young man to gain a footing, was rewarded for its patience
+     when its master at last, by my help, regained his feet, by severe
+     kicks in the belly, and I, a poor woman, was abused and called evil
+     names.
+
+     "Sir! if instead of cursing the good-tempered beast or the God of
+     love above you, you had cursed the origin of such a spectacle as
+     you then were, your clothes covered with mud, your mouth full of
+     blaspheming, staggering about the road pulling at the mouth of your
+     horse--_strong drink_--you would have been a more reasonable being.
+
+     "What, sir, had the horse done to you? What had this poor woman
+     done to you? What, sir, had your heavenly Father done to you, that
+     you should fill your mouth with curses against us all? Your enemy
+     was none of us, but that viper, strong drink.
+
+     "O sir! shun your enemy I beseech you. I am a woman who has had no
+     children, but, sir, if I had been the mother of so strong and
+     good-looking a man as you, it would have broken my heart to see you
+     lying there muddy and cursing, a poorer sight under God's sky than
+     the poor dumb beast that bore you.--Your obedient servant,
+
+     Ann Hilton."
+
+The woman folded and fastened the letter and then wiped her eyes with
+the corner of her apron. She looked round the room as if to see that
+everything was done and went to shut the door for the night. She looked
+out into the lane. The cottage a little lower down had a light in the
+window and here and there lights shewed along the road. The night when
+one can no longer work out of doors matters little in the country, yet
+the ample stillness with distant rustling sounds pleased her and she
+lingered. Two young men carrying shapeless bundles on their shoulders
+wished her good-night as they passed home from work. Everyone seemed to
+have finished with out of doors. Even the cat from the yard rubbed
+against her as it ran into the house, stealthily and crouching as if in
+fear. She turned indoors and lit the lamp, fastened the door with a
+wooden bolt and drew the blind before the diamond-paned window.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Anne Hilton was one of those women who have so little knowledge of the
+practical thoughts of those round about them, that they pass their lives
+half-disliked, partly respected, and mostly avoided. She had lived alone
+now for two years, her father, whom she had nursed, having died of the
+saddest human malady. He had ("as anyone might have had with such a
+daughter," declared the neighbours), harboured a great contempt for
+women, and though, being uninclined to tread the heights himself, he
+feared his daughter's uprightness of character, he had never lost an
+occasion of pouring scorn on her unpractical ways.
+
+"Can you take it home for me, James?" would ask a neighbour, handing up
+a case of eggs to the cart, where James sat preparing to leave the
+market.
+
+"There's no women in the cart," James would reply, and supposed he had
+given the required assent.
+
+The "round-about ways of doing things," which had been the butt of her
+shrewd old father, had brought upon Anne a customary air of
+half-readiness, so that going in suddenly, she might be found with her
+bonnet on and her handkerchief on the table, but one perceived she was
+still in her petticoat, and was making a pie for dinner. Meals, indeed,
+she considered as things to be got out of the way, both her own, and, to
+their expressed discomfort, those of other people. She herself often ate
+them as she went about her work, pausing to take a spoonful from a plate
+on the table or from the saucepan itself.
+
+Taking the Scripture as the literal rule of the smallest details of her
+life, she never wore a mixture of wool and cotton, as that was forbidden
+to the Jews, nor would she wear any imitation of linen for the same
+reason. In consequence, her clothes, which were of sound material, never
+looked common, but always out-of-date.
+
+She could be got (not that many people had tried to do so) to do nothing
+quite like other people, not from perversity as some readily declared,
+or a desire to "be different," but from inability to acquire the point
+of view from which the most ordinary actions are done. She took no money
+on Sunday, and this becoming known to her ne'er-do-well neighbours, they
+made a point of forgetting to come for milk on Saturday.
+
+"You must tell your mother I never sell milk on Sunday."
+
+"Yes, Miss Hilton."
+
+"I'll give you a little to go on with, but next week you must come for
+it on Saturday."
+
+And the child, having got what she wanted, would run off with the jug of
+milk and the money which should have paid for it, to repeat exactly the
+same offence the following week. Her reputation for queerness let her be
+considered fair game, and so convinced is the ordinary person that
+queerness is of necessity contemptible, that when she did anything which
+was unusual, its reason was never examined, nor did the possibility that
+it might be better done in that way occur to anybody. It was merely a
+new evidence of her oddity.
+
+But it was especially in those points in which she felt herself moved by
+her religious convictions that she was most suspected. For in spite and
+over all her eccentricities of belief, she was genuinely religious,
+having the two great religious virtues, charity in judgment and sorrow
+for the failures of others. But again she was "different," as it is
+evident in this world that the failures of other people are entirely
+their own fault, and to be gentle in judgment is more than other people
+will be to you, and therefore unnecessary. So that, without being in
+intention a reformer, she suffered the suspicion and dislike of the
+reformer, being, in fact, however she might disguise it, "different"
+from other people.
+
+This constant clashing with the steadfast ideas of every one had in time
+produced a timidity and secretiveness in the most ordinary actions,
+though where she believed herself to be directed by the Spirit, she had
+no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be kept
+secret she would do her utmost to make them so. She would send the reply
+to an invitation to tea half over the country before it reached its
+destination. Yet she would often pray in the prayer-meeting, and had
+been known to do unusually bold actions as a matter of course.
+
+When it became known that she had written a letter to the son of Squire
+Nuttall asking him to give up his dissipated habits, which were the
+scandal of the country, no one was surprised, though many were shocked,
+and the poorer tenants of the estate alarmed lest some indirect wrath
+might fall upon them. When neither Squire nor son took the smallest
+notice of the letter she was blamed universally as having gone too far,
+as if this chorus of subterranean condemnation might somehow reach the
+Squire, who would know that the rest of his tenants had no hand in the
+matter nor sympathy with the writer.
+
+On the contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances,
+she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of books, or
+even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that English
+equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling behind
+in sympathy with sinners that she fell into the unusual error of
+treating them better than the saints. She was fond of doing small
+generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but
+who would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them
+stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that
+in some sedate and mysterious way they had a friend.
+
+She would send presents to young people whose conduct had pleased her,
+gifts which always excited surprise and sometimes derision. Once she
+sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband and
+wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection, because,
+not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool, with the
+result that it burst open on the station platform before it reached its
+destination.
+
+A number of books, some of an old-fashioned theology, had been left to
+Anne by an aunt who had had a son a Methodist preacher. This aunt had
+also left her a black silk dress, which Anne had received with the
+joyful exclamation that she knew she was really a king's daughter. The
+books she read ardently and critically, underlining and marking, and
+with them also she embarrassed the vicar to whom she lent them. He,
+being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's
+indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was
+in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older
+men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young
+men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought _them_
+absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads
+were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was
+overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any meanness or injustice,
+which seemed to arouse in her a Biblical passion of righteous fury.
+
+A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done it
+herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some butter and
+returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had
+been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have
+been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business
+errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself
+incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.
+
+"You know my sister Jane's son?" said a farmer's wife, who had stopped
+her trap at the cottage to pick up a lidded wisket in which some
+earthenware had been packed. "He's getting a good-looking young man and
+he's all for bettering himself. Well, he went and got his photo taken at
+Drayton and brought them in to show his mother. She was making jam at
+the time, and she's not an easy tongue at the best o' times. 'What's
+that?' she says; 'you don't mean to say that's a likeness o' thee? It
+looks fool enough.' She says she never saw 'em again, he went straight
+out and burnt 'em."
+
+"He chose the wrong minit," said her husband beside her. "If he knew as
+much about women as _I_ do, for instance."
+
+"Just you mind," said his wife, warningly. "Why, Miss Hilton, whatever's
+the matter?" she added, catching sight of Anne's face.
+
+"It is such a painful story," rejoined Anne. "I cannot bear to think of
+the poor young man's discomfiture."
+
+"Well, I never!" ejaculated the farmer, as they drove away. "She's very
+good, but, my word, she's very peculiar."
+
+"If she was _really_ very good she'd try not to _be_ so peculiar,"
+retorted his wife, nettled at the failure of her story. "Did you ever
+see such a figure, with her dress all unbuttoned at the back showing her
+stays."
+
+"She's not got a husband to fasten the middle buttons," said the farmer
+slyly. "She can't very well ask the pig, you know."
+
+"Well, no, she can't," said his wife, good-naturedly; "but she tries my
+patience pretty often."
+
+"That's not so hard as it sounds," said the farmer, looking innocently
+in front of him.
+
+"Now, then," said his wife, "who wanted a potato-pie for supper?"
+
+"I expect it was our Joseph," said the farmer.
+
+"Not it," retorted his wife.
+
+"Well, myself, I prefer women who aren't so peculiar," said the farmer.
+"Even if they're not so good," he added.
+
+"Take care," replied his wife. "That potato-pie isn't in the oven yet!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Anne Hilton got up when the sky was tinged with the sunrise, feeling
+anew the security of recovered daylight after the stillness of the
+lonely house during the night. There was little to put in order about
+her house. "Where no oxen are the crib is clean," she would often quote.
+There was absolute silence in the cottage, and as she opened the windows
+she saw the first thin smoke, the incense of labour, rising from other
+houses. The garden was fragrant with flowers, soon to be gathered and
+made into bunches for the market. The increasing glory of the sky
+promised another fine day for the harvest. She read the text on the
+Calendar and made it the subject of her prayer, which she uttered aloud
+with great fervour. Then she went down the stairs, which entered
+directly into the kitchen, and lit the fire for her breakfast. The day
+following was market-day, the day on which she depended for her living,
+and to-day the butter for which she was justly celebrated had to be
+made. Beyond the kitchen was a dairy with a stone shelf round three
+sides of it, a churn in the middle, large earthenware mugs of cream, and
+a great tub of buttermilk in the corner. The sunlight never fell on this
+side of the house until late afternoon, so that, though the day was
+already hot, the shadow of the dairy and the yard beyond with its shed
+for tools looked tranquil and cool.
+
+Taking one of the tin pails and a milking-stool, she set off across the
+fields to the pasture in which her two cows were grazing. Everything
+within her sight as she passed--hedges, grass, corn, even the trodden
+path across the field--gleamed with the radiance of the risen sun. The
+sky, intolerably splendid and untroubled by clouds, was filled by the
+sun. Even the thin smoke from the cottages flickered and was
+illuminated. The trees had the leaves of Paradise. The world seemed to
+hold nothing but the sun, and to be bewildered.
+
+At the end of two fields' length she stayed by the pasture-gate and
+rattled her can loudly. Two cows, gigantic against the sun, came slowly
+to the gate. She tied their tails in turn, and settled on her stool
+beside the dripping hedge. When her pail was full and frothing she set
+them free, and with a flick of her apron sent them from the gate, which
+she opened, setting her can down while she tied the hatch. Then she
+returned over the two fields with the full and heavy can. The pony
+snickered as she came into the yard, and the hens ran in a foolish crowd
+across her way. She scattered them as she went, setting down her burden
+within the dairy. She overturned the stale buttermilk into the pig's
+trough, fed the hens, and drove the pony into lane, throwing stones and
+tufts of grass after it until she saw it turn into the open gate of the
+paddock. It would be joined soon by others, and the boy who brought them
+would shut the gate. Then she scalded the churn anew, filled it, and
+settled to the slow turning which was to occupy the greater part of her
+morning. The churning became heavier and heavier. She raised the lid to
+scrape the butter from its sides, and as she did so heard footsteps
+coming across the yard, footsteps a little unusual in sound, each
+seeming to be taken very deliberately, and going straight forward
+without discrimination of the path.
+
+"Here's Mary!" said Anne Hilton aloud, turning towards the door and
+moving a chair. A woman of about forty-three, with a basket on one arm
+and walking with a strong stick, came steadily towards the door. She
+would have been comely if it had not been for a fixed frown which seemed
+odd on her pleasant, good-tempered face. She wore a print bodice, with a
+point back and front, and a short bunchy stuff skirt. Though Sarah was
+well in sight she took no notice of her, but walked straight on towards
+her, until the latter said with evident pleasure--
+
+"It's you, Mary!"
+
+"Yes!" answered Mary, with a slight start.
+
+"How are you?"
+
+"Quite well," said Sarah. "Here's the door." She laid her hand over that
+of the other woman and set it on the side of the post, at the same time
+taking her basket, which was full of eggs, and only partially covered by
+a cloth.
+
+"How many?" she asked. "Have you counted?"
+
+"Four dozen," replied Mary. "Have you finished your butter?"
+
+"It's coming," said Anne, taking the handle again.
+
+"Let _me_ try," said Mary. "I often think I could manage butter nicely."
+
+"Don't get too clever," said Anne. "You do a wonderful lot already. Stop
+and sit a bit, won't you? Let me see if you know where your chair is."
+
+The woman stepped into the dairy, turned to the left of the door, and
+sat down without hesitation in the chair which Sarah had moved on first
+perceiving her approach, and as she did so one could see that the frown,
+so out of place on her steady and tranquil face, had an origin of
+tragedy. She was blind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mary Colton was one of the most esteemed women possible in any
+country-side. She had scarcely been beyond the few miles which
+surrounded her home, and since she was a girl had never set foot in a
+train. She had not been born blind, but had had her sight until she was
+seventeen, when an illness darkened the world for ever. "A pretty girl
+she was too," said those who remembered. Of the prettiness she retained
+now only the essence, that of her pleasant goodness, yet her appearance
+was still attractive in spite of her thick figure and contracted brows.
+She had not that unearthly exalted expression so familiar to one in the
+blind, who look upwards for the light and search in vain. Rather, unless
+one looked narrowly, one would take her for a middle-aged woman of good
+health and steady temper, who was a little short-sighted. She used a
+stick out of doors, and when she went very long distances she took with
+her a small terrier, which warned her of the difficult parts of the
+road. But indoors she moved about freely, knowing to an inch how much
+room each piece of furniture occupied, and seldom knocking against
+anything as she moved about her work.
+
+She lived entirely alone and supported herself, not by any of the
+special kinds of work which are supposed generally to be possible to the
+blind, but by exactly the same means as other women of her age and
+class. All the work in the house was done by herself, even to the making
+of the toffee and bulls'-eyes, which she sold at the cricket-matches and
+fairs of the districts. She kept hens and turkeys, and worked in her
+garden, feeling her way about the beds and bushes with her feet. She
+sold the vegetables and the currants and gooseberries which grew in the
+little patch of garden, and her friend, Anne Hilton, carried her eggs to
+the market-town for her every week, where she disposed of them to a
+provision-dealer of the same denomination. Even the hen-run had been
+made by the blind woman, who was a continual source of astonishment and
+questioning from the neighbours. But in this wonder, she not unnaturally
+found a pathetic pleasure.
+
+"How do you know when you've got all your hens in?" asked a child once.
+
+"I count them at night when they're asleep on their perches," answered
+Mary, with a joyful little chuckle.
+
+"But it's dark!" objected the child.
+
+"So it is," replied Mary. "I didn't think of that."
+
+She never referred to her blindness, and so complete a victory over
+misfortune and circumstance gained its fit respect in the country. No
+one considered that it was "doing a charity" to Mary to drive past her
+cottage on the way from market to give her news of a football match or
+fair about to be held in the district. Women would send their children
+on their way to school to give similar news, and the boy who brought her
+the roll of newspapers, which she sold at the station every morning,
+would often wheel her barrow for her. She had a large, clumsy chest on
+the frame of an old perambulator, in which she wheeled about her store
+of aerated waters, toffee, and newspapers. She would place herself at
+the gate of the cricket ground on Saturday afternoon. The sliding lid of
+her chest made a counter on which she set her scales and her neatly cut
+pile of paper for wrapping up the toffee. She had no rivals in the
+district, for the most avaricious small shop-keeper would have been
+ashamed to confuse or trouble the simple, good, courageous woman.
+Perhaps the most complete sign of her triumph over her disability was,
+that no one dreamed of calling her "Poor Mary." Like her friend, Anne
+Hilton, she was a member of the little wayside chapel, which, with all
+that it meant, made a centre of warmth and fellowship for both lonely
+women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+So placid and unimpressive was the country which lay about Anne Hilton's
+cottage, that in the lanes which branched from it one seldom thought of
+any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few
+shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech
+leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of
+the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the
+banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the
+young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky
+would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day,
+a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter
+for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden
+from beginning to end. The sun had risen without mist and set in a sky
+without a cloud, seeming, as it sank, to draw with it all the colour
+from the heavens, as if it had cast a golden net in the morning and now
+drew it home again behind the hill.
+
+As the warm light ebbed, a coolness, as of an actual atmosphere
+distilled into the cottage, became apparent in the kitchen. Now that the
+sunlight had gone, one could see the objects in the room with a new
+distinctness. It was serious, quiet, and orderly in this grave light,
+like the room of some saint shown in piety to pilgrims.
+
+A tall, half-grown youth came to the kitchen door, and, knocking twice,
+entered and sat down lumpily on the wooden armchair, slipping a basket
+from his arm on to the table as he did so. He looked round him, pleased
+unconsciously by the grave light and the orderly room.
+
+"You've a quiet life of it here," he said, rising to shake hands with
+Anne, who came into the room at the same moment, bending a little as she
+walked with the slightly anxious expression of one preoccupied with
+pain.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "it's very pleasant in the kitchen when the sun goes
+off. Nearly every evening at this time something about the room brings
+to my mind the hymn--
+
+"When quiet in my house I sit,
+Thy book be my companion still."
+
+The youth looked uncomfortable, thinking that he had brought upon
+himself a sermon unawares, and that being actually inside the house, and
+having sat down, he might have difficulty in extricating himself. So he
+said, rather to turn the conversation from its personal character, than
+from any sense of the fitness of his remarks.
+
+"It's sad about Jane Evans, isn't it?"
+
+"What's sad, Dick?" asked Anne, still standing, and resting both hands
+on the table. "Excuse my not sitting down, I've got a bad turn of
+rheumatism."
+
+"That's bad," said Dick. "I once had a bit in my back, and it was as
+much as I wanted."
+
+"But what about Jane?" asked Anne. "I've scarcely seen her or her sister
+since the old grandmother died. I seldom get so far away. The Ashley
+road doesn't go near that side, and that's the one that sees me
+oftenest."
+
+"Well, it seems," replied Dick, finding it, after all, an awkward
+subject to talk of to a woman, "she's gone to live with that
+horse-breeder who's taken Burton's farm."
+
+"But he's a married man," said Anne, not comprehending.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Dick, with an embarrassed laugh, but Anne did not
+hear. She had understood.
+
+"She was a good, respectable girl," she said. "However can she have
+forgotten herself like that? Where's her sister Annie?"
+
+"They do say she's nearly as bad," replied Dick. "He's rather a taking
+man--good-looking and hearty, and dresses better than the farmers, and
+his wife went off with a trainer too."
+
+"Her grandmother's only been dead two years, and she's been allowed to
+go wrong like that," exclaimed Anne, with condemnation of herself in her
+voice.
+
+"Well, you know," expostulated Dick, "I don't know as it's anybody's
+business. Everybody's got their own affairs to attend to."
+
+"Oh yes! I know," said Anne. "It's never anybody's business to try to
+prevent such things, but it'll be everybody's business to throw stones
+at the girl very soon, if the man tires of her."
+
+"I don't know about preventing," returned Dick; "she seemed pretty set
+on him herself. I think myself it's a pity. Here's the eggs from Mary
+Colton, Miss Hilton--three dozen," he added, as a diversion from the
+conversation, which he found more embarrassing than the sermon he had
+successfully avoided. With that he escaped from the chair with a jerk,
+scuffled his feet once or twice on the floor, took his cap out of his
+pocket, and ejaculated "Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," replied Anne, still preoccupied. "Thank you for bringing
+the eggs;" and she sat down with a slight groan.
+
+"Why, it might be herself," reflected Dick, looking back at the dejected
+figure in the darkening room. Being a simple youth, he felt vaguely
+uncomfortable at the sight of such trouble over the doings of one who
+was no relation, and began to take a little blame to himself for
+thinking lightly of the girl's downfall.
+
+"Well, she's very good," he concluded in his thoughts, "but she's
+peculiar;" and he tramped heavily through the yard into the lane.
+
+Anne did not stir. She was so shocked that her bodily faculties seemed
+to have ceased, and her mind to have remained sorrowing and awake. This
+lapse was even worse than that of Sir Richard's son, because it seemed
+irretrievable. Then, too, it had happened before she knew anything about
+it, whereas, in the other case, she had been active, and able to
+expostulate and screen the young man's fall. And then, too, there was
+the surprise of a middle-aged woman at the lapses of "young, strong
+people," just as, if one of more maturity had fallen, the comment of the
+young would have been equally certain, "an old thing like her."
+
+To Anne, whose temptations were of the kind that betray rather than
+assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity--a man's
+gluttony or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not
+shock her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the
+grandmother who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease
+that they might not run wild as many girls do, but might grow up girls
+of good character. Since the grandmother died, Jane, who was young and
+pretty, had tried to support herself. Anne did not know Richard Burton,
+but he was older and a "married man," which, of itself, implied
+responsibility to her mind. With the passion for justice, in which her
+intellectual faculties found material for exercise, she declared that
+Burton must be more to blame than Jane. He had money and position in the
+country-side. But equally as he was more to blame he would be less
+blamed. No one would dare to tell _him_ he was wrong. They would wait,
+stone in hand, for the girl who had been a child among them, and when
+she was forsaken and alone would throw and strike. Anne lived apart, but
+she knew _that_. "It will be visited on the girl," she thought; and
+indignation at Richard Burton rose steadily in her thoughts.
+
+After a while she stirred, and, lighting a candle, slowly stooped and
+raised the lid of the bread-mug. Pulling out half a loaf, she cut a
+thick piece for supper. She ate it slowly, with a piece of cold bacon,
+then, taking the candle, her shadow growing gigantic behind her, she
+fastened the door without looking outside, and climbed the stairs,
+heavily and sorrowfully, to her solitary bedroom, her shadow with one
+jerk filling the whole room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+There was no covered market even in so considerable a town as Haybarn.
+From end to end of the rectangular market-place were set wooden tables
+on movable trestles, and over these were stretched frames of canvas, the
+whole assembly looking like a fantastic toy village set in the middle of
+the substantial brick houses, banks, and inns of the square, or like a
+child's erections amid the solid furniture on a nursery floor.
+
+On each side of the square, with their backs to the stalls and facing
+the shops whose goods and attractions overflowed to the pavement as if
+offering themselves at the feet of the passers-by, stood a row of
+countrywomen and girls with market baskets of butter and eggs, plucked
+fowls, red currants, plums, curds, tight nosegays of pinks, stocks,
+wall-flowers, or anything else saleable or in season which a cottage
+garden produces. In and about among these, pushed women of all degrees
+and ages, tasting butter, holding eggs to the light, or placing them
+against their lips to test their freshness, stopping now and then to
+feel the wearing quality of some piece of dress-stuff or flannel, draped
+and ticketed alluringly at a shop door; all moving with the slow,
+ungainly pace of those unaccustomed to walking and impeded by bundles
+and purchases in both arms. Here and there a younger woman, dressed in
+the fashion of the best shop in the town, with a basket of rather more
+elegant shape, went about her marketing with equal decision, if more
+fashion: the wife of some tradesman who lived in one of the numerous new
+villas with small gardens increasing every year on the fringe of the old
+town, who still liked the stir of the market and a bargain, but whose
+chief reason for marketing herself would be given to a friend as, "you
+can't trust those girls. They'll take anything that's given 'em and pay
+double."
+
+Farmers with that curious planted-and-not-to-be-up-rooted air which
+distinguishes a man brought up to farming everywhere stood about the
+corners of the market in groups, or greeted friends on the steps and in
+the passages of the inns. The cattle-market was on the outskirts of the
+town, and the business there was over early in the day. For the rest of
+the day they exchanged and completed their bargains, or, supported by a
+friend and with an air of determination not to be cheated, entered the
+shops of hatters and tailors, or examined the bundles of canes and
+walking-sticks hanging by their heads at the shop door, fingering stuffs
+in the same manner as the women, but with a more helpless air, as if
+hoping that some good fortune beyond their own fingers would make clear
+to them the difference and wearing quality of each.
+
+Older men, with the solidity of girth which successful farming produces,
+stood planted on the pavements with the air of spectators who enjoyed
+everything, being free from the embarrassment of the younger men, who
+found themselves after a week of solitude in the midst of a crowd of
+their fellow-creatures, who, all and any, might happen to look at one
+critically, giving rise to a red flush which in its turn might provoke
+the jokes of one's companions; ordeals which made for many a young
+countryman a day of adventure and perspiring, but one to be recalled
+during the remainder of the week as a day about town spent suitably by a
+man of spirit.
+
+In the market Anne was a woman reputed for the excellence of her butter.
+She had even taken prizes at local cattle-shows. She had an established
+stand at one of the covered stalls, and her regular customers appeared
+one by one as they were at liberty. It was largely a matter of waiting
+through the morning till all had been supplied. To-day she had placed
+mechanically in the cart a basket of Victoria plums, which had been
+ordered by the wife of a neighbouring farmer, and as she found her
+butter and chickens sold, and was about to collect her baskets together,
+she saw this, and remembered that one of the servants at that farm had
+sprained her wrist in lifting a cheese, so that the mistress, not having
+appeared earlier in the day, might be safely assumed not to be coming to
+the market. Anne stowed her empty baskets under the stall of a woman who
+sold smallwares, and began to make her meagre purchases for the week.
+Then she took her baskets and made for the yard of the inn behind the
+market-square, where she had left the pony and cart.
+
+The farmer's wife to whom Anne had arranged to carry the plums was known
+among her acquaintances as a "worry." She had two daughters, one of whom
+was delicate, and the farm was neither large nor productive. Her husband
+also was reputed to be stingy.
+
+Anne found her sitting sewing with the two girls, who were making a rag
+hearthrug. With the nervousness of women of anxious temperaments she
+began to explain their occupation, talking quickly in a voice with a
+shrill recurring note.
+
+"There's no waste in this house you see, Anne, and no drones in the
+'ive. This bit of stuff was my grandmother's." She took up a fragment of
+striped linsey, which one of the girls had just laid her hands upon. The
+girl's sulky expression did not escape her.
+
+"_Now_ then, what's the matter? _You're_ too proud, Miss. Keep a thing
+seven years and it's sure to come in, _I_ say, and keep girls working,
+and then they'll not get into trouble. Did you ever hear of anything so
+disgraceful as that Jane Evans? She ought to be sent out of the place
+with her servant and all. If it was a daughter o' mine, she'd travel far
+enough before she saw her home again."
+
+"It's very sad," replied Anne, "She's been led astray;" but the woman
+interrupted, full of her virtue.
+
+"Astray! She didn't want much leading I should think, sly thing! I know
+those quiet ones. They're generally pretty deep. No! I've no
+consideration whatever for a girl who gets herself into trouble. She's
+nearly always to blame somewhere. You just take notice of _that_," she
+added, turning to her daughters who were listening eagerly for details.
+
+"I wonder she's the face to go about," said the elder girl, a very
+pretty young woman of twenty, who, being engaged to a young carpenter,
+assumed the virtue of a girl who'd no need to seek about for lovers, and
+of a class whose sensibilities were shocked by this lapse. Her mother
+looked mollified, and gazed at the girl's pretty face with satisfaction
+in its comeliness for a few moments in silence. She was a delicate
+woman, fretted by her nerves and the difficulty of making ends meet, but
+she had real pleasure in her two girls, whose good looks and clever
+taste in their clothes, made them always presentable.
+
+"Some one ought to go and tell her what people think of her," said the
+younger girl, who already showed her mother's nervous expression.
+
+"Do it yourself," said her sister with a careless laugh.
+
+"Nay, _I_ shan't interfere," replied the girl.
+
+"You'd better not," said the mother. "You keep out of such things and
+it'll be better for you. Well, here's Anne sitting with her plums.
+You're very lucky to have a good tree like that," she added, as she
+uncovered the basket. "We haven't a single good tree in the orchard. I
+often say to James that we shouldn't have much less fruit, if they was
+all cut down to-morrow."
+
+Anne emptied the basket of plums into a basin the elder girl brought,
+and received the money mechanically. She was thinking all the time of
+Jane Evans and the careless laugh of the elder girl. Some one should
+tell her. That was quite plain. But it was nobody's business. She shook
+hands with the fortunate girl and her delicate sister, and, accompanied
+by the mother, made her way through the yard to the gate, where the pony
+had been eating as much of the hedge as he could manage with the bit in
+his mouth. Before she had taken her seat Anne was aware of the weight on
+her mind, which told her that she was "appointed" to go and reason with
+Jane Evans, and, if possible, to persuade her to leave the man.
+
+She was discouraged by the unstinting condemnation of the mother and
+girls, and began to be sore that she had not received a word of sympathy
+for the girl.
+
+"There'll be a good many to throw stones," she said, as she drove into
+her own yard and set about feeding the pony. When she had finished, her
+mind was so overcharged that she had recourse to her usual outlet. She
+began to pray aloud, not removing her bonnet or necktie, and seated as
+always on the stool at the fireplace.
+
+"O God, my heavenly Father, I thank Thee that I may come to Thee however
+full of sin, and find Thee always ready. And I come to Thee again
+to-night, repenting of my sin of omission in Thy sight. For, O God my
+Father, I have not prayed for souls as I ought, and one soul who had
+little earthly guidance has gone astray from the flock. If Thou hadst
+left _me_, O my Saviour, in what a state of misery I should be found
+to-night. Yet I have been over-anxious about my own salvation, and
+forgotten those who are in temptation. Have mercy upon me, and save
+them. Give me, O loving Father, a mouth and wisdom. Help me to point out
+to this soul the error of her ways. Help me, more than all, to 'hate the
+sin with all my heart, but still the sinner love,' and grant that there
+may be joy in the presence of the angels of God over a returning and
+repenting soul, for Thy mercy's sake. Amen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Next day Anne arose to be at once aware of the heavy task before her. As
+she set her house in order she would stop abstractedly and sit down to
+think what was best to be done. Then she would work feverishly as if
+_that_, at any rate, was a thing that could be accomplished.
+
+It was a wet day, chilly and rueful. There were not even clouds in the
+sky to vary the steady grey, and the heaven itself seemed to have
+slipped from its height and to be close upon the earth. Trees, grass,
+hedges were drenched, and remained motionless with leaves drooping under
+an added weight. The ditches were noisy, but beyond the occasional
+rattle of a cart there was no other sound than the rain, a sound so
+unvaried that it presently became as a silence, and one imagined that
+the world had ceased to have a voice. Anne opened the door many times
+and looked out to see always the same grey sheet before her. The gutter
+on the shippon splashing its overflow on the flags of the yard, the hens
+crowding dejectedly within the open door of the henhouse, and the water
+lying green between the cobble-stones of the path. Nothing could be done
+in the garden. The sodden flowers would not be fit for to-morrow's
+market. The pony had cast its shoe and must be shod before next day.
+
+"This is more important than the pony," Anne said to herself, putting on
+her market-cloak and drawing on with difficulty her elastic-sided boots.
+She fastened her skirt high with an old silk cord and took her umbrella.
+Remembering that she had not covered the fire, and that it would have
+burnt away before she returned, she took a bucket out to the coal-house.
+The wet dross hissed and smoked as she covered the fire. She drew out
+the damper to heat the water, turned back the rag hearthrug lest a
+cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her
+umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail on the cupboard door, went
+out into the rain. She locked the door on the outside, and hid the big
+key on the ledge of the manger in the shippon. Then she was outside in
+the steady rain, on the gritty turnpike road washed clean to the stones.
+As she set off, it was a small relief to her that she would not be
+noticed, unless when she passed the cottages, because there were few
+workers in the fields, and none who could help it out of doors.
+
+It was a walk of five miles which was before her, and soon the sinking
+of heart with which she had set out, began to disappear before the
+necessity of setting one foot before the other in a steady walk. The
+irritating pain of rheumatism began, too, to vex her and distract her
+thoughts. It was not a very familiar country to her after she had passed
+the Ashley high road. There were fewer houses. The farms were larger,
+and portions of an old forest remained here and there uncut. But there
+was no variation in the gloom of the sky or the folding curtain of rain.
+She grew tired and hot, and a little breathless, and as again the
+dryness of her throat and tightness of her lips reminded her of the
+humiliation of her unsought and unaided errand, she saw before her about
+a quarter of a mile on the high road which led to Marwell, the new red
+brick house with stucco ornaments, built by the horse-breeder, Burton.
+She went towards it with lagging feet.
+
+It was a prosperous and vulgar building, with a beautiful garden, for
+his garden was Burton's pride. Even in the sodden wet the flowers, not
+wholly beaten down, showed how well cared for and excellent their
+quality. The sward was even and trim, and the fruit-trees on the side of
+the house had yielded prizes to their owner. The path to the door was of
+new red tiles, and two large red pots held standard rose trees on either
+side of the stained-glass entrance. Anne rang the new bell which clanged
+loudly and followed the servant (a girl from a distance), to the showy
+drawing-room, chilly and unused in its atmosphere. It was the kind of
+house which impressed the country people by its "improvements," and at
+which Anne went to the side door to leave her butter. But she was so
+absorbed in her duty to the girl that she gave no thought to this, which
+at another time she would have considered to be "taking a liberty." She
+alone of the girl's old friends seemed to have this burden laid upon
+her, and as she entered the house she was overwhelmed with the blame of
+its having happened, and the difficulty now of recovering innocence
+lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+She had scarcely had time to recover breath before Burton, the
+horse-breeder, came into the room--a big-bearded man, of heavy build,
+with a familiar loudness and fussiness which would have been better in
+the open air, than even in the new vulgarity of his drawing-room. His
+weight was the first thing one thought of. It would have taken a
+powerful horse to carry him. He always wore his hat, whether indoors or
+out, and bright tan leggings, with riding-breeches. Among his men and
+the neighbours he passed as a good master, and free with his money,
+standing for local purposes (as, indeed, he himself considered), in
+place of the lord of the manor who owned a more interesting house in
+another shire of the country. Like the rest of mankind he earned a
+reputation for generosity by being liberal with those things by which he
+set little store. He was neither avaricious nor surly, and, being in
+full health and vigour himself, was able to spare a rough chivalry to
+women which made allowance for their weaker bodies and greater
+difficulty in coping with existence. It was probably this
+soft-heartedness which, in the first place, had stirred a vague pity for
+the pretty blonde dressmaker, and this quality which the pliable girl
+had interpreted into the hope that he'd do her justice. He had, indeed,
+often stood up for Anne Hilton herself when her peculiarities had been
+discussed, and it was with the warm feeling of being rather a friend of
+hers, and not being the man to hear a single woman abused, that he came
+into the room and shook hands noisily.
+
+"Well, Miss Hilton! I am very pleased to see you. You've come a long way
+in the wet. You must have a glass of something hot. Jane! Jane!" he
+shouted, stamping to the door and looking up the staircase. There was a
+sudden clatter, and Jane appeared in the doorway laughing, because she
+had run downstairs so quickly that she had almost fallen.
+
+"That's smart work," said Burton.
+
+"These stairs is so steep it's the easiest way of coming down 'em," said
+Jane with an air of proprietorship, with the familiarity and importance
+also of one who knows she is welcome, and, whatever other people may
+think, has a power which no one else present has with the only man in
+the room.
+
+"Well, you have chosen a wet day to pay us a visit, Miss Hilton," she
+said, with a hospitality too effusive to be spontaneous.
+
+She was a very attractive girl, with fair hair and pretty eyes, made for
+affection and to take a spoiling prettily. At present she had no
+misgiving about her lover's good intentions, and this gave her the
+confidence which naturally she lacked. Besides, she had never thought
+Anne Hilton important. Anne, seeing the handsome room, the gaiety of
+Jane, and affection of Burton, found herself wishing that there were no
+reason why it should not continue so, to all appearance a happy home of
+newly-married people. She saw none of the signs of shame in Jane which
+she herself had suffered.
+
+"I've not just come to pay you a visit, Jane, my dear," she said. "I've
+come in the place of your grandmother who's dead, to take you away with
+me."
+
+"Whatever for?" exclaimed Burton, loudly. "Do you think I can't make her
+comfortable? She's never been so happy in her life, have you, Jane?"
+
+"No!" returned Jane, very red. "And I don't see what Miss Hilton's got
+to do with it anyway."
+
+"No more don't I," returned Burton, with a laugh. "But let's hear what
+she's got to say about it. So you want Jane to go back to starving at
+dressmaking, Miss Hilton? She's a lot more comfortable here, I can tell
+you. She's got a servant, and she can have her dresses made out. She's
+no need to do anything but fancy work."
+
+"It's the sin of a good, respectable girl taking such things for a
+price," interrupted Anne, "and of you, Mr Burton, to entice her to it,
+and keep her like this. It's not on _you_ the judgment'll fall, but on
+_her_. How's she to face the neighbours and everybody she's known from a
+child when you've done with her?"
+
+"I've not done with her yet by a good way," said Burton. "Don't you
+worry yourself, Miss Hilton."
+
+"You're a man of money and position, and a newcomer in the
+neighbourhood," went on Anne, "and the neighbours are afraid to say
+anything before you. But they say plenty about Jane, whom they've known
+all their life. Young people she used to play with talk of her with
+shame, and when you've finished with her she'll not have a friend to go
+to."
+
+"But I tell you I've not done with her yet, and shan't for many a good
+while," repeated Burton. "I dare say she'll be tired first if it comes
+to that."
+
+"Can you ever give her back what you've taken from her?" asked Anne
+breathlessly, trying to pierce the self-confidence she did not
+understand.
+
+"Well, it was something like slaving all one day and then starving the
+next before," said Burton, "and she lives like a lady now. You should
+just see the fancy-work she gets through--no dressmaking now!"
+
+Anne turned to Jane, who was sitting flushed and resentfully embarrassed
+in the satin armchair, looking expectantly to Richard to see her
+through, shocked, too, and ready to cry at this first contact and
+opinion of her neighbours upon her doings.
+
+"Where's your sister Lizzie, Jane?" she asked.
+
+"Out at service," replied Jane, unwillingly, fidgetting with her hands
+and feet.
+
+"So your coming here has meant that _she's_ got no home," said Anne.
+
+"She could have had one if she'd liked," said Burton. "The house is big
+enough for us all."
+
+"Thank God for His protecting grace!" said Anne, "she was able to resist
+the temptation."
+
+"She'd have had to go out to service in any case," said Jane,
+spitefully; "the neighbours was so very kind to two girls."
+
+"Jane, I knew your grandmother," said Anne, "and I know how hard she had
+to work to keep you two girls respectably dressed and cared for. I know
+you think I'm an interfering, peculiar woman and an old maid, but your
+grandmother was no old maid. She lost your mother who'd have worked and
+kept her when she was old, and instead of having an arm to lean on,
+she'd to work morning, noon, and night, to give you two girls a home.
+She was working when other people was sleeping. It's better even to go
+to the Union than to do as you've done."
+
+Jane, after twisting her fingers together, pulled out her handkerchief
+with a jerk and began to cry, thus rousing the indolent anger of Richard
+Burton, who, with a blustering tone, as though he wanted to shout down
+an opponent, burst out--
+
+"Well, she's here now and she's not going away. And you can tell the
+kind neighbours that we can look after ourselves without their
+assistance. And as for them good girls that used to play with Jane, I
+know several who wouldn't have been slow to take the place. _I'll_ look
+after Jane all right. And we're much obliged for your visit, Miss
+Hilton," he continued, ironically. "We can spare you for quite a long
+time now. You can save yourself the walk another time. If you want to be
+home for dinner-time, you'd better be starting, don't you think?"
+
+Anne rose stiffly, limping with rheumatism.
+
+"Jane love, come with me," she said; "I can shelter you for a time, I
+can give you--"
+
+"No I won't," retorted Jane, petulantly, turning her back.
+
+Anne went slowly out of the room. Richard Burton accompanied her with
+offensive heartiness.
+
+"Well, good morning, Miss Hilton," he said, opening the door with the
+stained glass window, and stepping into the red-tiled porch, he looked
+up at the sky. "I believe it's stopped raining--all the better for your
+rheumatism, eh? Well! give my love to the neighbours you think so much
+of," he shouted with a laugh, and shut the door. Anne opened the wooden
+gate with brass nails, and shutting it behind her stood again in the
+dripping lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The stirring of anger at Richard Burton's callousness gave way almost at
+once to a feeling of fatigue and defeat as she started on her return
+home, and a persistent image of Jane, a little girl playing
+skipping-ropes in red stockings, kept coming before her eyes. One or two
+gigs passed her, splashing among the pools of the road. The birds began
+to sing with a clarity as sweet as that of the purified air. There was
+still a tinkling of running water from every side, but the clouds were
+in shreds, and patches of blue sky were uncovered here and there.
+
+Three-quarters of the way to her home she passed a fair sized cottage,
+in front of which a tall grey-haired woman was sweeping the standing
+water from the path with a yard brush. She stopped brushing as she heard
+footsteps and looked over the gate.
+
+"Why, it's Miss Hilton," she exclaimed. "What a wet walk you've had.
+Come in and stop a bit before you go further," she said, with the
+eagerness of an active, talkative woman, who had seen no one to speak to
+all day. She took the drenched umbrella and set it on its end in the
+doorway, and Anne, tired, hot, and discouraged, sat down gladly on the
+chair she offered her.
+
+It was a comfortable kitchen, full of furniture, and bearing evident
+signs of men in the house. There were hats hanging behind the door and
+two guns over the fireplace. Such furniture as was placed there must
+have been long ago settled in its position. No one could mistake the
+room for that of young people. There was something in the multitude of
+worn objects, their solidity, their position in the room, each
+accommodating the other so that one could think of no other place for
+any of them, in the polish which had worn into the heart of the wood by
+constant rubbing which betrayed the presence and passage of many people
+through the room for many years; a used, comfortable, taken-care-of
+appearance, very pleasant to feel around one, a room from which one
+would not easily take oneself away at night and which seemed to Anne
+Hilton to set around her the company of many cheerful people.
+
+Mrs Crowther was too much occupied with her own affairs, and too eager
+to talk to enquire what had brought Anne Hilton that way. She was a
+tall, spare, robust woman, the mother of nine children, all grown up and
+well placed. She was a "worker." She had considered the bearing and
+rearing of her children as a piece of work to be done, in the same way
+in which she looked upon the spring-cleaning of her house. It had been
+done to her satisfaction, and done well. She had had little time for
+sentiment in her married life, but now, still active, strong, and with
+only the work of her house and garden, the meals for her four sons who
+still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to
+express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her
+imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which
+all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of
+judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among
+women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity
+of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town
+florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. She began
+to tell Anne Hilton how they had first come to the country.
+
+"There was _my_ mother first and then _his_, both at us. First _one_
+said, 'You don't know what it is to live in the country, you that have
+been used to going about under the gas-lamps at night'; and then the
+_other_, 'You don't know what it is to be shut in to the lamp at night
+and have no one but your two selves to look at.' It was always the same.
+'You don't know what it is,' or 'You'll be lonely.' And Thomas and I
+always said the same thing back. 'Well,' we said, 'we can but try.'
+Well, we _did_ try, and we found that cottage up Somer's Lane, and when
+I came with him the first day I began to think, what if my mother was
+right. It was so silent as if something was going to happen. I kept
+looking out of the window to see if it was, but nothing did, and the
+next morning his mother came down with the bedding and the five children
+we had then, and I've never felt lonely since. Nine children, all
+living, keep you on your feet."
+
+"Be thankful they've all turned out well," said Anne, with a sigh,
+thinking of the house she had left.
+
+"Trust 'em! that's what _I_ say," returned Mrs Crowther. "Plenty of
+good, plain food, and plenty of good, warm, woollen underclothing, and
+there'll not go much wrong with their bodies, and trust 'em for their
+characters. I was talking to Mrs Hankworth the other day--she's done
+better than me, she's had twelve--'I never was one for much whipping,'
+she said. 'I never found you did much good by it. You can break the
+spirit of a horse by whipping, but you can't change its character. Give
+'em all plenty of occupation at home, and they'll not want to go out in
+the evenings.' I was glad to hear her say so, for I've always felt like
+that myself. There was Ted had his fret-saw, and William was always one
+for making collections of butterflies or birds' eggs, and John was
+always one for politics. He'd sit reading any newspaper he could get
+hold of, and arguing with his father. I always knew he'd not stop in the
+country. He was always for the things that was doing in the town at
+meetings and unions, and he took no interest in farming or country work.
+It was always railways or politics with him. He was the first to go,"
+said Mrs Crowther, her face taking that fixed serious expression,
+betraying the inward attitude which in another woman would have meant
+tears. "You've a lot of work to do when they're little, but you can shut
+the door at night and know they're all inside with you; but there's a
+day comes to gentle as well as simple, when you shut the door at night
+and some of them's outside. Sometimes you wake in the night and you
+wonder if there's anything more you could have done for 'em, and you vex
+yourself a lot more over them when they've gone from you than you ever
+do when they're with you. You have a feeling when they're at home, that
+if they want you you're there. But it's another matter when they can't
+get at you for all their wanting or yours either for that matter."
+
+"Be thankful you've been spared the sorrow of one going astray," said
+Anne. "It's a proud thing to have a lot of sons all honest, good men."
+
+As if she had divined Anne's thoughts, or something in her words had
+suggested it to her, Mrs Crowther said suddenly--
+
+"You've heard about that Burton getting hold of Jane Evans, have you?"
+
+"I've just come back from there now," said Anne. "I only heard of it the
+other day, and I went to see if I could get her away. I blame myself
+sadly for its having happened."
+
+"He's a bad effect in the country, that Burton, with his horses and
+money," said Mrs Crowther decidedly. "It's bad for young men to see
+money got so easily. He doesn't drink, I fancy. At least I said to
+Matthew, 'What's wrong with that Burton, does he drink?' 'No,' he says.
+'At least, I don't think so,' he says; 'but he takes it out in eating.
+He's an easy liver,' he says. And what a foolish girl that is to give
+away her character for a man like him. If she was in trouble she might
+have come to any of us, and we'd have done anything in reason."
+
+"I suppose that was just it," said Anne. "He was there before we were
+ready, and the poor girl thought he was her only friend."
+
+"Well! she's a foolish girl," repeated Mrs Crowther, in the tone of one
+who having young people to protect could take no part in excuses. "Why,
+there's that young Wilkinson, that's booking-clerk at the station, said
+to our John, 'I was a bit sweet on that girl myself,' he said, 'but if
+that's the sort she is, I'm not having any.' He's a bit conceited, and
+thinks a lot of his clothes, but he's steady enough. Had she the face to
+come and see you when you went?" she added with curiosity.
+
+"I saw them both," said Anne, sadly. "She's quite under his influence. I
+can't do much for her now. Perhaps she'll come of her own accord if we
+show her we're her friends."
+
+"Well, I don't know as you can ever do much for people that will have
+their own way."
+
+"If she isn't driven any further--" began Anne.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs Crowther, with emphasis; "you _must_ make a
+difference. There's plenty of girls kept themselves decent who were just
+as poor, and if everybody's to be treated the same, no matter how they
+behave, it's very hard on _them_. I don't believe in that sort o' thing.
+If you do wrong you must bear the consequences, or what's the good of
+keeping honest. It's confusing to young people to get such ideas, and it
+does a lot of harm, Miss Hilton. You never had any young people to bring
+up. It's _that_ that alters your mind about those things. There's our
+William. He's not one for saying much. He's one of the old-fashioned
+kind. He's a kind of serious way of talking. Many a time we laugh at
+him, and say, 'For goodness sake, do stir up and laugh a bit.' I says to
+him privately, 'What do you think of it, William?' 'I've no respect for
+her whatever,' he says. 'If a sister of mine was to go that way, she'd
+have seen the last of her brother.' That's how they think you see, Miss
+Hilton, and you can't say they shouldn't."
+
+"I suppose not," replied Anne, wearily. "Nobody seems to get any nearer
+not judging their neighbours after all this time."
+
+"Well, you can't make the world over again, however you try," said Mrs
+Crowther. "You've to take things as you find 'em, and make the best of
+'em. It's hard enough for them that's kept straight without petting them
+that's weak and foolish enough to go wrong. You'll never be able to
+alter it, Miss Hilton, so you better take it so."
+
+"I can't do anything more at present," said Anne; "but I must be getting
+home again. The pony'll be wondering what's become of me. I'm very much
+obliged to you for the rest, Mrs Crowther. You don't think it's raining
+now, do you?"
+
+"No! I don't think so!" said Mrs Crowther. "How's Mary, Miss Hilton?
+She'll have been sadly hindered with all this rain. They put off two
+cricket-matches this week. They're not playing football yet, or else the
+weather wouldn't matter so much. They say the wet weather keeps their
+joints supple. It's the dry weather and frost that's so hard to play in.
+Ted's always one for a lot of sport, specially football. Such a mess as
+he comes home sometimes. 'You must clean your own clothes,' I always
+says to him. We have a joke at him, that when he wins one of these
+competitions (he's always one for going in for these guessing
+competitions that promises such a lot of money if you put in an odd word
+somewhere). He's always bound to win every time he goes in, and we tell
+him that when he wins it, he can keep a servant to clean his trousers
+after every football match. 'I shan't let any of you have any of it you
+don't take care,' he says; 'I'll be laughing at you before long, see if
+I'm not. Wait till you all come asking for rides on my motor-bike;
+what'll you say then?' he says. 'Eh!' says his father, 'I shall say
+there's more fools in the world than one!' Well Miss Hilton, good
+morning; I'm very glad to see you any time. I'm alone a good lot now,
+you know. It's not like it was once with children all round the kitchen.
+I'm glad of a bit of company now sometimes. Why, it's beautiful now!"
+she concluded, opening the door and stepping out in front of Anne,
+looking round the sky with eyes which blinked a little under the strong
+light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Next day at daybreak the country was whitened by a light mist. The birds
+sang incessantly with long ecstatic calling from throats which had drunk
+the air of the dawn and retained something of its quality. Coolness
+refreshed the day and strengthened the eyes, and one's ears were opened
+to hear from every side the chorus which in a more varied landscape one
+took as a part of the glittering moving world outside the house.
+
+Anne unbolted the house-door. The dog rose from the hearth and stretched
+itself slowly, yawning and shutting its mouth with a snap. Then it
+walked to the door, waiting until it was dragged open grating on the
+sand of the floor. The cool morning air came in like a visitor. The old
+dog pushed against Anne as she stepped outside, sneezed, yawned again,
+and lay down in the sunshine to finish his nap.
+
+"Haven't you had enough sleep yet, Lion?" said Anne. "Look, what a
+beautiful day it is! Why, there's Mary on the road already," she added,
+looking over the low gate.
+
+Mary was coming straight down the middle of the road, her
+black-and-white terrier sniffing on all sides and pulling the cord by
+which she held him. When he perceived the presence of the other dog he
+began to advance by leaps, uttering little yelps between each like a
+child's jumping toy. Lion, with the superiority of a larger dog, raised
+himself without hurry and advanced to meet the terrier, who excitedly
+whined and sniffed about him.
+
+"Good morning," said Anne, "you're out early."
+
+"Yes," replied Mary, standing quite still in the position in which she
+had halted. "I came over the fields. The grass is very wet though.
+There's a mist, surely."
+
+"Yes, a thick one," said Anne, "but the sun's coming through. Listen to
+the birds. Did you ever hear anything like them?"
+
+"I was out collecting the eggs at five o'clock this morning," returned
+Mary, "and I think I never heard them so busy. The earth was all a-hum
+with them. They seemed as though they _must_ be listened to, whatever
+happened."
+
+Both women stood listening.
+
+"I came this way because I was going to leave my shilling for Lord
+Axton's wedding present," said Mary, after a moment's silence.
+
+"Did they come and ask _you_ for one?" said Anne. "I think they ought to
+be ashamed of themselves."
+
+"There's been some grumbling about it," said Mary. "I think myself the
+agent should have left it to those who wanted. I suppose we could have
+said No, but nobody likes to. It isn't as if people like them want any
+wedding presents we can give them, and a shilling means a lot to some
+people."
+
+"It's the agent that wants to make a show," said Anne. "I think
+sometimes that if those rich people knew how their wedding presents were
+procured," she went on in the stilted manner habitual to her when
+wishing to express a formal thought, "they would find little pleasure in
+them."
+
+"Mr Burton's given £10," said Mary. "They'll have a good sum." She
+paused, distrustful.
+
+Mary, who was known to all the country side, and who could do nothing
+secretly, seldom spoke of the affairs of her neighbours. Whether she was
+by nature a little taciturn, or whether her blindness, before which so
+much passed unobserved, which cut her off from the possibility of
+forming a judgment, had increased her natural modesty and diffidence,
+she drew back into silence where others were discussed. But the actual
+difficulties of living, which she daily and silently surmounted, brought
+her so closely into touch with reality that she invariably saw, not the
+fault or its circumstances, but the practical difficulties issuing from
+it. But she had unthinkingly stumbled upon the scandal, and she went on,
+"I was sorry to hear of Jane Evans forgetting herself like she has."
+
+"Poor girl," said Anne; "she seems so certain that it'll last. What was
+so sad to me, was that a girl brought up as she was by her grandmother
+should have so little sense of her position."
+
+"She's happy, I suppose," said Mary, "and there's no need to look
+further. She'll find it hard to earn a living if he gets tired of her."
+
+"He's not an ill-natured man," said Anne. "You feel as though if he'd
+been brought up to have a respect for good behaviour he wouldn't have
+got loose so easily. He thinks he's doing a generous thing, and giving
+Jane a good time, without thinking what the result must be to her good
+character. He doesn't like to see people unhappy, as he calls
+unhappiness. He hasn't learnt the results of sin in his own experience,
+and won't look at them in others. He kept on telling me she'd got a
+servant of her own, and needn't do anything but fancy-work. They'd
+neither of them hear anything I could say. I can't understand how they
+came to know one another at the beginning. It seems to have come about
+without anyone's knowing till it was too late."
+
+"He seems a joking sort of man," said Mary. "Once he came up to buy a
+paper, and gave me half a sovereign instead of sixpence to change, and
+when I told him he'd made a mistake he laughed a lot, and said he wanted
+to know if I could tell the difference. He never sees me now without
+speaking of it and laughing."
+
+"Yes," said Anne; "he's fond of rough jokes of his own making, and
+thinks that giving people material things makes them happy," she
+continued in her bookish manner. "I remember just such another man as
+him, a boisterous sort of man, whose old father was dying, who took the
+old man out to look at a new grand-stand they were making. Poor old man!
+It was pitiful to see him in the presence of eternity, looking at a new
+grand-stand."
+
+"I suppose, being as I am," said Mary, "there's a lot of temptations
+been spared to me."
+
+"I wish we were all as kind and charitable as you," said Anne. "I never
+heard you say a hard thing of anybody all the years I've known you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Winter hastens his pace when the harvest is gathered, and it was one of
+those serene winter days on which, if one sat in a sheltered place full
+of sunshine, one might believe that the spring had begun; as if winter,
+secure in his domination of the frozen earth, could afford to relax his
+vigour and admit the approaches of the sun, like a playful child whom
+one could banish at will. A line of white clouds, with purple bases,
+were drawn about the horizon, standing like anger, as it were, within
+call. The sky on every side was of that deep transparency seen after
+many days of rain. The colours of the earth and grass were deepened and
+intense from the same cause. In many places in the fields, sheets of
+water showed above the grass, vivid as a wet rock just washed by the sea
+and colour hidden at other times glowed from the steeped ground.
+Villages and houses showed from a great distance as if some obscuring
+medium had been removed, and the remote country lay a deep band of
+indigo beneath the horizon, like a distant sea escaping under a light
+and infinite heaven.
+
+Anne Hilton set off after the evening milking to visit a bed-ridden
+woman of her acquaintance who lived in a cottage in one of the numerous
+by-lanes intersecting the now bared fields. She was a woman who had lain
+many years in the kitchen, whose narrow, hot space was all she saw of
+the world. She was not a cheerful invalid, but peevish and querulous.
+The irritation with which she always lived, waking from sleep to be at
+once aware of it, and to know no pause during her waking hours, had worn
+away a temperament which might almost have been gay. At very rare
+intervals Anne had heard her laugh, and the laugh had such a note of
+gaiety in it that she surmised the nature that had been, as it were,
+knawed thin by this never-sleeping worm. It was pity for something
+imprisoned and smothered which made Anne a steadfast friend to the
+unhappy woman, whose other friends had long tired of her incessant
+complaints and down-cast mind.
+
+Elizabeth Richardson had never any hesitation in expressing her
+opinions, and Anne had scarcely seated herself by the bed of the
+unfortunate woman, whose harrowed face told of the torment within, than
+she began to ask questions of the disgrace of Jane Evans, whom, she had
+heard, was to have a child to crown all. But contrary to Anne's
+expectations the bed-ridden woman was friendly to the girl. The habit of
+neglect and scarcely-veiled impatience with which she had for many years
+been treated, and of which she had been fully and silently aware, had
+produced in her tortured mind an exasperated rebellion against the
+opinions of her neighbours, who were unable to see anything beyond their
+own comfort. She knew that she had so much the worst of it; that even
+attending perfunctorily to another's human necessity was not so hard a
+task as to be there day after day in the company of a pain which never
+ceased, and beneath whose increasing shadow the world had slowly
+darkened.
+
+"They're all afraid of the trouble to themselves about the girl," she
+said, with her bitter intonation. "They're afraid they'll be called on
+to do something for her sooner or later."
+
+She turned over with a groan, lying still and worried.
+
+"Have you tried a bag of hot salt?" asked Anne, after a few minutes'
+silence.
+
+"Yes! I tried once or twice," replied the woman, "but you know it's a
+bit of extra trouble, and no one likes that."
+
+"If you could tell me where to get a bit of red flannel I'll make one
+for you now," said Anne.
+
+"The bag's here," said the woman, her face drawn and her mouth gasping.
+She tried to feel under the pillow.
+
+"Lie you still. I'll get it," said Anne. She drew out a bag of red
+flannel, evidently the remnant of an old flannel petticoat, for the tuck
+still remained like a grotesque attempt at ornament across the middle of
+the bag. The salt slid heavily to one end as Anne drew it out.
+
+"The oven's still warm," she said opening the door and putting her hand
+inside. "I'll just slip it in for a few minutes."
+
+"Well," said the woman, "there's not many cares about a bad-tempered,
+bed-ridden woman, but you're one of them that's been kind. I don't _say_
+much, but I _know_."
+
+"You make me nearly cry," said Anne, drawing the bag out of the oven and
+feeling its temperature. Holding it against her chest, as if to keep in
+its heat, she drew back the bed-clothes and unbuttoned the flannelette
+night-gown of the invalid, laying the poultice against her wasted side.
+The woman gave a sob and lay still for a minute.
+
+"It's a lot better," she said.
+
+"Perhaps you could sleep a bit," suggested Anne.
+
+"I'd like a cup o' tea," said the woman, "but it's a lot of trouble.
+Can't you look where you're going!" she broke out impatiently, as Anne,
+turning quickly, caught her foot in the chair, overturning it with a
+crash. "You made me jump so."
+
+"Well, I am sorry," said Anne, humbly.
+
+"Never mind," said the bed-ridden woman, her impatience exhausted. At
+that moment the door opened with a bang and a stout, middle-aged woman
+entered noisily.
+
+"What a noise you make!" said the bed-ridden woman peevishly. "You're
+getting too fat."
+
+"Fat people's better-tempered than thin ones," retorted the other
+carelessly. "Good evening, Miss Hilton! Has she been telling you all
+she's got to put up with more than other people?"
+
+"Well now," returned Anne with decisive heartiness, "I don't think we've
+been speaking about herself at all, except to express gratitude for a
+very little service that I did her. We've spent a pleasant hour
+together."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said the woman, going to the fire and rattling
+the irons noisily between the bars.
+
+"You noisy thing. Can't you make a less din!" said the bed-ridden woman,
+biting her lip.
+
+"Other people's got to live in the house besides you," said the woman.
+"If you want so much attention, you know where you can get it."
+
+The bed-ridden woman shut her eyes and lay still at this threat of the
+workhouse, that confession of failure, in a world where ability to work
+becomes a kind of morality, and lack of physical strength to procure the
+means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden
+against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one
+most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come
+to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or
+more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be
+acknowledged publicly a failure.
+
+When this last pride is taken away, there sometimes appears a kind of
+patience which is not really that of despair, but which is nearer to
+that attained by great saints after long effort and discipline--the
+mental equilibrium which is the result of desire quenched, of
+expectation for further good for oneself at an end. What the saints
+attain by a painful and mortifying life, the poor receive as a gift from
+the tender mercies of the world, receiving also the passionate pity of
+Jesus, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."
+
+"If she could only work as she used, and be 'beholden' to nobody." She
+sighed and lay still, her mind an abyss of bitterness.
+
+The stout newcomer, step-daughter to the unfortunate woman, turned to
+Anne, jerking her head backwards to indicate the other woman in bed with
+an expression of satisfaction which said quite plainly, "That's the way
+to settle _her_." Then she ignored her totally, except that she moved as
+noisily, and spoke as loudly as she could.
+
+She was a rather pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an obstinate
+mouth. There was, so to speak, "no nonsense about her." She was one of
+those women of coarse fibre, whose chief diversion consists in annoying
+the sensibilities of others. They exist more frequently in the
+middleclass than among the poor, whose common dependence teaches them
+forebearance if not pity, but they exist also among the poor, more
+terrible if not more merciless. Such women almost always find material
+to torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative,
+sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant
+wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a
+self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure
+in hatred, which appears outwardly as good-humour.
+
+The indignation which always awoke in Anne at the sight and expression
+of injustice flared suddenly upwards. Facing the still satisfied woman,
+who now drew a chair across the flagged floor with the screech of its
+wooden legs upon the stone, she said:
+
+"How can _you_, a strong, active woman, take pleasure in worrying a sick
+and ailing fellow-creature. Suppose you were in her place. How can you
+expect to find mercy from God in the day of judgment if you have no
+mercy on others?"
+
+The woman stared incredulously, and then broke into a loud laugh.
+
+"And I thought you was such a quiet piece. Fancy spitting out like
+that." Then her brutality of temper asserted itself.
+
+"_I've_ nothing to do with the day of judgment. I don't see why I should
+be called to look after a woman with the temper of a vixen that wants to
+be a spoiled darling. The Union's made for such as her and she ought to
+be in it. It's just her spite that keeps her out."
+
+"Have you no pity?" said Anne. "_You_ may not always be strong and
+able-bodied. The day may come when _you_ need help and comfort, and how
+will you deserve it from God, if you torment your unfortunate sister in
+this way!"
+
+The woman's answer was a laugh.
+
+"You're as queer as they make 'em," she said, with a slow, impudent
+stare from Anne's out-of-date immense bonnet to her elastic-sided boots,
+as if looking for a point at which she might begin to torment a new
+victim. But Anne's sensibilities lay far beyond her understanding.
+
+"Have you wore out all your grandmother's clothes yet?" she demanded
+with her contemptuous, impudent look, "you're a proper figure of fun in
+that bonnet!"
+
+"Be quiet and be done with it, you coarse lump!" interrupted the
+bed-ridden woman in so loud and authoritative a tone that the woman
+turned slowly and stupidly round to look at her. "This time next week
+I'll be in the Union and you'll have no one to torment. You can make
+arrangements when you like, the sooner the better."
+
+"All right! it can't be too soon for me," retorted the woman with her
+incessant, stupid laugh, which this time did not hide the fact that she
+had received a shock at this taking of affairs out of her hands. "But
+perhaps you'd rather I didn't do it since you've so many friends."
+
+"No, you needn't bother yourself about me," said the bed-ridden woman.
+"I'll have done with you soon."
+
+"_Couldn't_ you?" said Anne, turning to face the woman and speaking with
+great earnestness, and as always, when moved, with great preciseness.
+"_Couldn't_ you for this last week do your best to be considerate and
+kind? A week is not a very long portion of eternity. It is so painful to
+think of two people separating for ever in hatred. You _have_ one week
+left. Could you not make the most of it?"
+
+"It's a week too much!" said the woman, with careless brutality. "Are
+you always so fond of making long calls?" she added, staring at Anne.
+
+Anne turned to the bed-ridden woman, saying, "On Thursday I shall be
+going in to market and I'll call at the Union Infirmary and see the
+Matron. I think you'll be better looked after there and have peace and
+quietness."
+
+"It couldn't be worse than this," said the woman. "I think perhaps I've
+been foolish to stay here so long."
+
+"I'll see the Matron for you on Thursday," said Anne. "Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, and thank you," returned the sick woman, turning wearily away
+from her fellow-lodger and settling down to the silence and endurance in
+which she habitually lived.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs Wright," said Anne to the other woman as she opened
+the door. The woman stared in a way meant to put Anne out of
+countenance, making no reply, while Anne, going outside, shut the door
+gently behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+For three months Anne had prayed constantly for Jane. Living alone in an
+orderly and quiet house with one window open towards her Invisible
+Friend, she had spoken with Him of her desire for Jane's recovery, until
+it appeared to her that He too must yearn as she did for this definite
+thing. Elizabeth Richardson had been removed to the Infirmary and was at
+peace, so that Anne's thoughts were of little else than Jane and her
+re-instatement in the country. It was not the chagrin of the failure of
+her visit to Burton's house which troubled her, but her helplessness. If
+she went again she could do no more than plead as she had done before.
+But it might be that the girl had by this time felt her need of outside
+friends. It was fully three months ago. As Anne was returning from the
+nearest village one afternoon in the solemn winter sunshine, she
+determined suddenly to pay a second visit to Jane. And she would try to
+be less hard on Burton, which would perhaps draw Jane to her. It might
+be that she needed a friend by now. Half a mile from her own cottage she
+came to a three-cornered patch of the way where several roads met. By
+one side was a pond with two posts painted white as a mark for drivers
+at night-time. The sloping edge of the pond was trodden into mud by the
+feet of horses stopping to drink, and as Anne, crossing the road to
+avoid the mud, arrived opposite one of the posts, she saw a bill posted
+upon it announcing a sale.
+
+"I must see what it is," she said. "Perhaps it's something for Mary."
+She read the heading. "Sale of Bankrupt Stock."
+
+"It seems to be nothing but horses," she said as she read the list. Two
+men carrying forks on their shoulders came at that moment from the
+Ashley Road and joined her, looking over her shoulder at the bill.
+
+"I heard about it this morning," said one. "I thought he couldn't last
+long at that rate. It was always spending and making a show."
+
+"There was someone else in it," said the other. "They say Burton's done
+a moonlight flitting and gone to America."
+
+Anne, whose thoughts had been engrossed by a new opportunity for Mary,
+became aware of calamity of a new sort. She turned to the men.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked, though even as she spoke she had grasped
+it all. The man, a young, fair-haired man of twenty-six, with great
+breadth of chest and long straight legs, answered with the willingness
+of a countryman to spread news.
+
+"Why, that Richard Burton's gone bankrupt and made a bolt. They say
+it'll take the house as well as the horses to pay it all up. The
+bailiffs was in to-day as I passed taking it all down. It's a bad job
+for _somebody_, I heard," he said winking at the other man. He, glancing
+at Anne, looked embarrassed and pretended not to see.
+
+"Can either of you tell me where the girl who was living there has gone?
+Is she still there?" she asked the latter man.
+
+"Not she!" answered the former.
+
+"They say she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man.
+"She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.
+It's a good eight miles of a walk."
+
+"Do her good," said the younger man; and they began to discuss the list
+and quality of the horses for sale.
+
+Anne walked on. It had come then, and sooner than it was looked for.
+Jane's fancy-work and "lady-like" life seemed like the play-things of a
+baby by the side of a scaffold, as helpless and as foolish.
+
+"I was going to the Union to-morrow anyway for Elizabeth Richardson,"
+said Anne, as she unlocked her door, trying not to see Jane Evans
+walking all alone, with no new house or protector, through the darkness
+of which she was afraid, to the formidable iron gate of the Union.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+In the afternoon of the following day Anne entered the common room of
+the Infirmary. In this large room, with high windows spotlessly clean, a
+fireplace at one end in which a sufficiently generous fire was burning,
+and before which were two wicker cradles; women for the most part in
+extreme old age of body rather than years were sitting in every possible
+attitude on the wooden seat which ran round the wall on three sides of
+the room. At the far end, near the fire, a blind woman was knitting
+men's stockings. Two very old women sat with their chins in their hands
+and heads bent, motionless, neither hearing nor seeing anything outward.
+Three others, their white pleated caps nodding at different angles, were
+making aprons. A young woman with a healthy but sullen face was nursing
+a large baby. Another, younger, but early-developed, as girls are in the
+country, sat nearest the fire, a shawl half off her shoulders, her foot
+rocking one of the cradles. There seemed no trace of coarseness in her
+face, refined now by illness and days indoors; only an infinite
+ignorance and bewilderment. She seemed not more than seventeen. The tone
+of the Matron in speaking to her was not unkind, but had in it the
+mixture of impatience and contempt, which sensible middle-aged women
+have for foolish girls who can't look after themselves. There was, too,
+unknown to herself, for she would have looked upon herself as a kind
+woman, a slight feeling of satisfaction that, though the silly girl was
+sheltered in this place and everyone was kind to her, she'd find out
+what it meant to get herself in that state when she went outside. In the
+meantime, being really kind, if sensible, she said.
+
+"Keep your shawl over your shoulders, Maggie. You mustn't catch cold
+your first day out of bed!"
+
+"She doesn't look fit for much does she?" said the other young mother
+contemptuously. "Ten days and then to be as washed out as that."
+
+One of the old women, who had remained motionless, got up slowly and
+stretched out her hand, pointing at the girl vindictively.
+
+"That girl's next the fire! That was _my_ place before she come."
+
+"Oh, you're all right, mother," said the Matron cheerfully, pushing her
+gently back to her seat. The old woman mumbled to herself as she sank
+back into the same stupor, in the midst of which she brooded on her
+grievance. The other old woman began in a hard, high voice without
+raising her head:
+
+"That's the way they do in this place. Push out the old ones."
+
+"Now you two don't begin talking and grumbling," interrupted the Matron
+decidedly. "You're as well treated as anyone else."
+
+At this moment Anne made a movement in the corner where she had stood
+unnoticed. From every bench withered hands were thrust at her, some
+grasping her arm, some her mantle, some were held open at her face.
+
+"Give me a ha'penny--just a ha'penny!" screamed a dozen old voices. "A
+ha'penny! Spare a ha'penny!"
+
+"Now then," interrupted the Matron, taking two of the women and leading
+them back to their places. "What good would a ha'penny do to _any_ of
+you?" She touched two other women, and they retired grumbling to their
+seats, all except one tall, bony old creature, with a frightful palsy,
+who kept hold of Anne by the arm, repeating in a voice which was more
+like an angry scream than the whisper which her deaf ears imagined it to
+be.
+
+"Those other women'll all beg from you. They'd take the bread out of
+anybody's mouth. Give me a ha'penny Missis, only a ha'penny," and her
+avaricious, bony hand pinched Anne's arm tightly as though she already
+clutched the coin. The Matron, using both her own hands, unfastened her
+hands as she might have done a knot. The old woman shook with rage and
+palsy, and fell rather than sat down on her seat under the flowering
+geraniums in the window.
+
+"Now, I _knew_ there was somebody strange in the room," said the blind
+woman. "Just let me have a look at her."
+
+She tucked her knitting needles into her apron-string. She had been for
+many years in the workhouse infirmary, where she knitted and repaired
+the thick stockings worn by the inmates. She had become a kind of pride
+of the ward. Beyond the misfortune of her blindness she had no defect,
+and her mind was alert and cheerful.
+
+"She calls it 'looking,'" said the Matron with a laugh. "Just you see
+her knitting, Miss Hilton. She's re-footing those stockings. See if you
+can tell where she's patched them." She took up a bright blue stocking
+from the bench. The blind woman took the other end and felt it
+carefully.
+
+"That's not _my_ work," she said with amused contempt. "It's too like
+patchwork. Here's mine."
+
+Anne took the stocking and looked. "It's beautiful," she said. "I could
+never have told there was a join." The blind woman's hand touched her
+arm and wandered slowly upwards, over her face and neck and head.
+
+"I've not seen you before, have I?" she said. "No, I don't think I
+have."
+
+The Matron had already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind
+woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered
+inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women,
+the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman,
+to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned for ever.
+
+She followed the Matron into the courtyard. Several men in bottle-green
+corduroys loitered there, and a tiny old woman shrivelled and imbecile,
+who ran to Anne the moment she appeared, holding her skirts high to her
+knees, skipping on one foot and then on the other.
+
+"I'll dance for a ha'penny! I'll dance for a ha'penny!" she whined.
+
+"Go on! dance, old lady," said one of the men who was carrying an empty
+drawer, which had just been scrubbed, to dry in the sunshine of the
+yard. He set it down, end upwards, and stood expectantly. The two other
+men paused also.
+
+"Go on! Aren't you going to begin?" said one of them.
+
+"She's a funny old thing, this one," said the Matron to Anne, stopping
+to watch, as the old woman, holding her skirts to her knees, her clogs
+clacking, and with a smile of imbecility fixed on her face, began to hop
+from one thin leg to the other, stamping slowly round on her heels in
+the artless manner of a child. All at once she stopped, and, pulling up
+her apron, put a corner of it in her mouth, hanging her head and
+giggling.
+
+"They're all looking at me, all them men," she giggled. "Fancy me
+dancing with all them men looking." One of the men broke into a laugh,
+which was changed immediately into an attack of asthma.
+
+"Dance again, old lady!" called a younger man, with the effects of hard
+drinking visible in his face.
+
+The shrunken and pitiful figure revolved several times, stamping on her
+heels, then stopped with the same grotesque coquetry.
+
+"She's a funny old thing, isn't she?" said the Matron to Anne. "She
+gives us many a laugh."
+
+"It's too humbling to look at. I cannot laugh," said Anne. "Poor old
+thing, to have come to that."
+
+
+"She doesn't know, you know," said the Matron. "You're wasting your
+pity. They're most of them better off in the infirmary here than they
+were outside. You've no idea what a dirty state _she_ was found in for
+one."
+
+"It's the painfulness of such a sight--age without honour," repeated
+Anne.
+
+"I've no time to think of that sort of thing," replied the Matron, as
+they began to ascend the wide stairs to the bed rooms, a woman, who was
+scrubbing the steps with sand, standing aside to let them pass.
+
+Several women were sitting up in bed, with starched night-caps nodding
+at different angles. Over the fireplace was a lithograph of Queen
+Victoria giving the Bible as the source of England's greatness to an
+Indian potentate, and beneath it, sitting very still in a large
+armchair, was Jane Evans staring into the fire. She was very quiet,
+broken, and helplessly docile. Her stillness was alarming. She seemed to
+be already dead in spirit. Even the child soon to be separated from her
+scarcely concerned her. She was quite neat. Thin and fatigued as her
+face was, she did not appear to have suffered greatly in health.
+
+"Jane, my dear, I've not come to blame you," began Anne, "I've come to
+see if there's anything I can do to make it easier for you to face the
+future and what's coming. I only heard of you coming here by accident or
+you shouldn't have been left alone. You mustn't think everybody's
+forsaken you and you've no friend left to you. It's often the case that
+you know your true friends in trouble," she continued sententiously.
+"And if only you could find the best Friend of all now when you need Him
+most." Her prim phrasing changed to earnestness. "There was a woman once
+that they dragged out in front of everybody for evil-doing. But He
+wouldn't have it. He put them to silence, and then when she was all
+alone with Him He showed her how tender He was to them that do wrong. If
+you only knew Him and His kindness, and how He can understand any kind
+of trouble. There's a good deal you think none of us can understand, but
+_He_ can if you tell Him." She wiped her eyes. Jane did not seem to have
+heard.
+
+"I don't want to worry you," continued Anne; "you've got a good deal to
+bear and to think of, and you've got to keep up for the sake of the
+child. He'll need you to be father and mother both. Matron thinks you'll
+be better here for the present, but you mustn't give up and think you're
+to stay in the Union all your life. But try to think of the child, and
+how God'll help you if you try to do the right."
+
+It was like speaking to a person a very long way off, and Anne desisted.
+
+"She's very quiet, isn't she?" said the Matron. "That'll have to break
+down soon. The doctor thinks she'll be all right when the child comes.
+The labour'll give her a shock and rouse her. She comes of a better
+class than the usual ones. It's the disgrace she can't get over. She'll
+do anything she's told to do. I sometimes get tired of making the other
+women do as they're told, but I wish sometimes she'd be a bit more like
+them. You'll be ready for your tea soon, won't you, Jane?" she added in
+the cheerful professional tone intended to deceive the sick.
+
+"Yes, please," said Jane, without looking round.
+
+"Here's Miss Hilton come all this way to see you," said the Matron a
+little more sharply. "Can't you say anything to her? you may not have so
+many friends come to see you as you expect, you know."
+
+There was no echo from the abyss of misery in which Jane was sunken. She
+neither replied nor stirred. With the flight of Burton all hope had been
+killed within her; and without hope she had fallen like a bird with one
+wing broken. She was defenceless, and her misery laid open to all. She
+could only keep still, lest it should be tortured by being handled.
+
+"You must think of the child, you know," said the Matron. "He'll depend
+on you altogether, and you mustn't give in like this. She doesn't care,"
+she added to Anne as Jane still sat without a tremor of understanding.
+"It's a bad sign. I can't even rouse her with speaking of Burton. She's
+given up hope of him. It's like as if something's dead inside her.
+Doctor says it's shock."
+
+"I should say it's temper," said a voice from one of the beds. "Petting
+and spoiling all day long." The voice came from an old woman, with a
+soft, withered face and infantile blue eyes.
+
+"Now then, where did you hide that thermometer?" said the Matron, with a
+good-natured laugh. "You know, Miss Hilton, this old lady's a famous
+hand at taking anything that's about, and keeping it for herself. She
+doesn't call it stealing, don't you see. Why, the other day she was
+having her temperature taken, and when the nurse turned her head away
+there was no thermometer to be seen. 'What have you done with it?' she
+says. 'Why, I declare, I must have etten it,' says this old lady. What
+do you think of that?"
+
+The old woman turned over in bed, and her innocent eyes closed with a
+patient expression.
+
+"I don't know what people are allowed to come talking here for when it
+isn't visiting day," she said. "Nobody can go to sleep for such
+talking."
+
+Anne sat down beside Jane and began to sing--
+
+"I was a wandering sheep;
+I did not love the fold."
+
+The Matron watched with an air of curiosity. Jane did not cease staring
+into the fire.
+
+"It's no use, Miss Hilton. I daresay the old lady's a bit right. There's
+a slice of temper in it too. But we can't waste all day over her."
+
+Anne took Jane's hand. "I'll come and see you again in a little while,"
+she said. "And remember, there's always One that'll hear all that you
+can't tell to any one else. He's with you here waiting to hear and help
+you." She lingered. There was no response. The Matron walked briskly
+towards the door.
+
+"Well, the old ones are easier to manage," she said. She led the way
+downstairs and left Anne on the doorstep of the big front door. The
+porter shut it with a clang.
+
+The pony was pawing the gravel outside the gate and pulling hard with
+his head. He backed the cart vigorously into the road as Anne untied his
+head, and set off at a good pace towards the town.
+
+"I'll go up to-morrow and see Mrs Hankworth," said Anne. "She'll perhaps
+be able to say something to help."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mrs Hankworth lived at one of the largest farms in the country, some
+three miles away from Anne Hilton's cottage. The farmstead was, contrary
+to the usual custom, not placed near the high road for convenience, but
+on an eminence in the midst of its own lands. A road had been cut to it
+between cornfields, so that in the time of springing corn a man walking
+on this road seemed to be wading to the knees in a green undulating sea,
+which had risen and submerged the hill. The farm itself was large, with
+a garden unusually well kept, a sign that the mistress counted in the
+establishment. Old rose trees grew almost to the roof of the wide
+building, and the thick turf bore token to the richness of the soil.
+
+Inside, the passage, the stairs, the rooms, were all spacious, and, in
+spite of the rattling of cans and the sound of voices in the kitchen,
+the place retained an atmosphere of quiet and tranquillity, not of
+isolation or desertion, but of that comfortable restfulness which one
+recalls as a child, when, having been ill, one is left at home when the
+others have gone to school, and remains in a quiet house, watching
+contentedly the leisurely cheerful movements of one's mother.
+
+Mrs Hankworth, the mistress of the best farm in the country, was an
+enormously stout but very active woman. Her husband, a man half her size
+and an excellent farmer, exhibited only one trait of nervousness, and
+that on her account. If she went to market without him he was uneasy
+until she came back lest something should have happened to her. In all
+the fifteen years of their married life they had never slept out of
+their own bed, and they had had no honeymoon.
+
+With the contentment of a woman of sound health and of active useful
+life, who was fully aware that her good sense and management were as
+necessary to the farm, her husband and twelve children, as his own
+knowledge of farming, she looked upon this as a just sense of her own
+value, as indeed it was, and the reward of the confidence which she so
+completely deserved from her husband. She was generous to her poorer
+neighbours even when they cheated her. Not taking it very deeply to
+heart nor expecting much otherwise, she was yet able to remember that
+her lot was an affluent one compared with theirs, and was ready to
+excuse even while being perfectly aware of human fraility. Who, when she
+had sent to an old woman of the village who lived discontentedly on such
+pickings as she could induce her neighbours to leave her, and who had
+constantly profited by the liberality of this well-established mistress,
+a ticket for a large tea, and was informed by some officious person that
+the husband also had procured a ticket at her expense, said, "He's a
+poor old crab-stick. It'll do him no harm to have a good tea for once."
+
+She was a contented woman, entirely satisfied with the position which
+life had allotted to her, a position in which all her faculties had full
+scope, and were to the full appreciated by those with whom she had most
+to do, and being of a really kind heart she was a good friend to the
+poor. When Anne arrived at the door of the dairy, she found its mistress
+seated before a tin pail containing a mass of butter which she was
+dividing into prints. With white sleeves and apron, a bucket of scalding
+water on one side of her and a pail of cold on the other, her ample
+knees spread apart for balance as she sat on a low chair, her bulky and
+capable hands moved with decision and practice about her work. She
+looked up as Anne appeared in the doorway, but her hands did not cease
+working.
+
+"It's not often we have to do this," she said, "but they sent down word
+that there was no milk wanted yesterday, so we had to set to."
+
+"It looks nice butter," said Anne, with the judgment of a connoisseur.
+
+"_You_ ought to know what good butter is," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I've
+just been having a laugh over that Peter Molesworth. He wrote on his
+account, "17 pints." Did you ever hear such a thing! It took me quite a
+long time to know what 17 pints was. Him and his 17 pints!"
+
+"He's not very clever, Peter," said Anne, "but I don't know what his
+poor mother would do without him."
+
+"No," returned Mrs Hankworth, "he's hard-working if he's stupid, and
+that's better than the other way round."
+
+"Mrs Hankworth," began Anne, "I know what a good friend you've always
+been to those that have got into trouble, and I came to ask your advice
+about that poor Jane Evans."
+
+"I just heard of it the other day," replied Mrs Hankworth, letting the
+butter-prints sink on her lap. "I don't know how it was I came to know
+of it so late. I'd no idea till the other day that she'd ever gone to
+live with that Burton. I wonder how she got acquainted with him. There's
+no men goes about their house. What's she doing now?"
+
+"She's in the Union," said Anne, "and she sits there without speaking,
+staring into the fire. Nobody can rouse her. She seems to have no life
+left in her. It's pitiful to see her, and to think of what's coming to
+her."
+
+"She's been foolish," said Mrs Hankworth, "and I expect she'll find
+plenty to make her pay for her foolishness. But I see no reason why she
+shouldn't do all the better for a lesson. She'll have to work though.
+There'll be no sitting round in silk blouses doing fancy-work. You
+needn't be troubled about her moping when she's got the baby. They don't
+leave you much time for that," she added with a laugh of retrospection.
+"But your first baby's as much trouble as ten. If she can earn a living
+when she comes out she'll be better without that Burton. He's no better
+than a child's balloon. He's up, and you prick him with a pin and he's
+down! She's provided in the Union, I suppose?"
+
+"I think so, since they never asked anything about it," said Anne.
+
+"What sort of a place is it, Miss Hilton?" asked Mrs Hankworth in the
+tone of one who might be enquiring after a prison or worse.
+
+"They'd a nice big fire," said Anne, "and until you came to look at the
+people, it looked quite comfortable. But when you came to look at those
+poor things, and thought that that was all they had to expect, it made
+your heart ache."
+
+"She's a good matron I've heard," said Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"She's a kind woman," returned Anne, heartily, "and I suppose it's a
+good thing they've got such a place to shelter them. But it seems a poor
+end somehow, and not a place for young people. There seems to be no hope
+in it, and yet it's clean, and they've got good food."
+
+"Other people's bread doesn't taste like your own to them that's been
+used to having any," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I expect, if you've never
+had any of your own, you're glad to get anything. I suppose Burton's out
+of the country."
+
+"Nobody seems to know rightly," said Anne. "Jane says not a word. I
+don't suppose she really knows anything."
+
+"She'll come to see that she's better without him," said Mrs Hankworth,
+taking up the prints and working the butter emphatically. "But she must
+work like the rest of us. It's generally the long clothes that gets left
+over," she added, "the short ones get worn out by some of them, but I'll
+look and see what I can find. It'll be rather nice to be looking out
+baby-things again. There's nothing you miss more than a baby, when
+you've had one or other about for a good many years. But she'd never do
+any good with that Burton about."
+
+It seemed not so much the fact that a girl would give up her reputation
+for a man, that impressed Mrs Hankworth unpleasantly, but that she would
+give it into the keeping of _such_ a man. She did not expect impossible
+things of anybody. No one belonging to her had ever made a slip, and
+such a happening seemed to be so remote a possibility for anyone
+"connected," that she could spare great charity for the rest of the
+world. Nor did she believe in "driving people." If a girl had made a
+mistake, that was no reason why everyone else should make another, and
+her good sense revolted against a perpetually drawn-out punishment for
+any fault. Her disgust at this fault, not very deep, being submerged
+almost as it arose, by the immediate necessity for doing something, and
+a reminiscent understanding of the timidity and dread with which the
+first child-bearing might be regarded by an ignorant and forsaken girl.
+Her position as the reputable and capable mother of a family being
+unassailable, no one could consider that kindness to the girl implied
+any countenancing of her offence. Anne, puzzled and baffled by the
+things which she had seen, felt herself in a larger sphere which could
+consider the fact of birth as a small matter for everyday occurrence and
+preparation, happen however it might.
+
+"You can't do anything by worrying, Miss Hilton, you know," said Mrs
+Hankworth. "You've got to wait. There's nothing _anybody_ can do but
+wait. There's our John. I think he gets more nervous every child we
+have. I always say to him that he can't help anything by worrying, and
+in any case _I'm_ the person who's got to go through it; but it makes no
+difference. He can't be satisfied till he sees me walking about again.
+The girl'll be quite right when she's got the baby to work for. She's
+nothing to do now but wait and think about it and herself. You'll see
+when she's up and about again she'll be another thing. I hope the baby's
+a boy. It'll be sooner forgotten about if he is."
+
+"I'm afraid," said Anne, growing expansive beneath the good sense which
+attacked every practical side of the matter, and dissolved difficulties
+as soon as they arose, "that she'll get little work to do when she comes
+out. People talk unkindly, and say that you must make a difference
+between her and other girls."
+
+"Oh! there'll always be some clever folk like that," said Mrs Hankworth,
+drily. "The difference that anyone can see if they use their eyes is,
+that _she'll_ have a child to keep and _they_ won't. She's no idea where
+she'll go, I suppose?"
+
+"She doesn't seem to know where she is now," replied Anne. "It's
+terrible to see anybody drinking such bitter waters as that poor girl.
+She thinks we're all against her, and I'm a religious old maid. So she
+shuts herself up, and doesn't say a word."
+
+"Don't you worry, Miss Hilton," said Mrs Hankworth; "she'll look for
+friends when the baby comes. She'll stir herself for his sake, if she
+won't for her own. We're going to have Mr Charter to stop to-morrow
+night. You'll be going to the Home Missions, won't you?" she said, as if
+all had been said that could be.
+
+"It'll be a great treat to hear Mr Charter," said Anne. "He's such a
+kind way of talking about everybody. It's a season of grace and sweet
+delight when he comes."
+
+"He's got such a way with children and young people," said Mrs
+Hankworth, steering away from "experiences." "There's my big lad
+William! He'll follow him round from place to place till he's out of
+walking distance. 'What do you do it for, William?' I says to him, and
+he stands on one leg and then on the other, and says 'I don't know,' he
+says. 'I like hearing him,' he says. He's a great attraction for him."
+
+"I hope there'll be a good meeting," said Anne, rising to go. "Don't you
+get up. It's been a great relief to me to have a chat with you."
+
+"I'll go down myself and have a look at Jane," said Mrs Hankworth.
+"Perhaps in a week or so she'll have got a bit used to her position, and
+see that she can't go on like that long."
+
+"It'll be a real work of charity," said Anne earnestly. "Young people
+think a lot of married women. She thinks, you know, that I'm an old maid
+and don't know anything about it."
+
+"Well, I'll go," said Mrs Hankworth, gratified. "Good morning, then. We
+shall see you at the meeting."
+
+"God willing," replied Anne, and turned to go, comforted by the
+confidence and ample views of this well-to-do woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The little grey chapel at the corner of two roads was lighted and
+already hot with steam on the windows. The wooden pews, set on steps
+which rose evenly to the window-sill at the back of the tiny building,
+seemed to precipitate themselves upon the mean wooden pulpit. Three
+benches set endwise to the platform served for the choir, and there was
+a small harmonium. The girl (a daughter of a prosperous farmer) who
+played it was already in her place, and a group of children had taken
+possession of the front pew. These were playing under the book-rest and
+frequent giggles burst from their number. At last one of them threw a
+hat so much too high that it dropped into the next pew, and a
+preter-natural silence fell upon the group, who all wriggled themselves
+erect on their seats and looked apprehensively round. The girl at the
+harmonium bent back to look at the clock and then pulled out her stops
+and began to play. The door clicked, and burst open to admit a cold
+breeze and a big farm boy in his Sunday clothes, whose head and
+shoulders came in before the rest of him was ready to follow, and who
+held on to the door as he entered as if for protection. Every child
+turned its head and watched him while he ducked his head on to the
+book-board for a second, and then sat upright, adjusting his neck into
+his collar. The farmer, whose daughter played the organ, came next with
+his wife, who made her way with an air of ownership to her seat, and
+having covered her face with her hand for a moment, untied her
+bonnet-strings and fanned her hot face. Every other moment now the door
+burst open, and admitted someone from the dark blue outside--a group of
+clumsy youths who flung themselves upon the pew doors as if they had
+formed the deliberate purpose of keeping them out, some girls in their
+finery nodding to acquaintances as they entered, some labourers in
+unaccustomed clothes, and last Mary Colton who walked with her
+calculating step to the nearest choir bench. Then a larger group
+hesitated at the door and the evangelist entered, mounting the pulpit
+with a confident tread, the minister taking a seat in the choir benches
+and the stewards sitting behind him. There was some whispering between
+the evangelist and the minister, then the evangelist remained seated and
+the minister rose and gave out a hymn--
+
+"Rescue the perishing, care for the dying."
+
+Those who did not know the words knew and shouted the chorus. It was a
+rousing beginning. As the hymn came to a final shout, Anne Hilton in a
+black bonnet and old-fashioned mantle with a bead fringe at the
+shoulders, with one black cotton glove half on and the other wholly off,
+entered the chapel and sat just within the door.
+
+The evangelist glanced round his congregation and found himself able to
+believe the report that the country districts were apathetic. He was an
+ugly little man with straggling brown whiskers and unruly hair, and had
+no great appearance of illumination, yet he was a true evangelist,
+labouring hard to pull souls from the pit of social and moral
+corruption. That was why he had been sent to the task of addressing the
+country congregations. He was not working with an eye to romance, nor
+for the glory which comes to those who work in the slums. He thought
+with the thoughts of those among whom he worked. He had known what it
+was to be hungry. He had known the crucifixion of standing idle when
+every limb ached to be working. He knew that pregnant women are
+sometimes beaten and kicked by the clogs of their husbands. He knew what
+little children felt like when they cried from cold. His heart was
+incessantly burning, but he had worked now for fifteen years and it was
+no longer burning with indignation. He had found others, not Christians,
+as he thought, who would be indignant, who would plan with pity and
+sympathy and with more efficiency and foresight that he could ever
+control, build up and organise ways of escape for much that he saw. He
+could meet them too. But his work was to understand, and from his
+understanding to attract and heal. The others had nothing to say to a
+woman whose husband died, or whose son became crippled at work, to a man
+who lost his right hand, or a girl whose sweetheart was drowned two days
+before the wedding, and these things were always happening.
+
+He looked round. He thought of his various speeches. It was no use
+telling these people how many more women were arrested for drunkenness
+in the streets this year than last, nor how many families lived in
+cellars, nor how many men were without work. Their imaginations, never
+straying into large numbers, would be blank. He would tell them stories
+of men and women like themselves, and of how _they_ managed when
+calamity came. He had sheaves of such stories and a ready tongue. He
+might strike a spark of understanding. His voice, as he began to speak,
+belied his appearance. It was sonorous and beautiful and it immediately
+controlled his audience.
+
+"My dear friends! Just round the corner from the house where I live,
+there's a street called 'Paradise Street,' but I can tell you as I came
+along here this morning in the lanes by the chapel, it seemed to me a
+good deal more like Paradise than that street. It was a treat to smell
+hawthorn hedges again, and to see some clear sky again, after the
+foundries of stone-work, and I don't know what it is that makes people
+give names like Angel Meadow, Paradise Row, Greenfield Street to the
+dirtiest and smelliest streets in all the town. But I've got some very
+good friends in this particular Paradise Street I was talking of, and if
+they don't get an abundant entrance into the Paradise of our Saviour
+when their time comes, I've mistaken His loving-kindness very sadly.
+
+"Now, you'd hardly think that an old woman could be very happy living in
+a cellar, without even a proper window to put a plant in, and six steps
+to come up and down every time she went out and in, and drunken men
+cursing and blaspheming up above in the street! Well! I'm going to tell
+you a tale of one of the happiest old women I know, but I'm afraid it's
+got to be about a day on which she wasn't happy at all.
+
+"Her name's Jane Clark, and she lives in that cellar I'm speaking of on
+2s. 6d. a week she has from the parish. She's a widow, and some of you
+women know what that means. She pays 1s. 3d. for her share of the
+cellar, for you know in towns such as I come from, we're building so
+many factories, and railway sheds, and what not, that we've no room left
+to live in, so Mrs Clark had to share even her cellar. Many a time when
+I passed down that dreadful street and hadn't time to go in, I'd just
+shout down the cellar and she'd have an answer back in no time. I used
+to go down for a few minutes, just to cheer myself up a bit, for there's
+a lot of discouraging things happen in our sort of work, and she always
+made me ashamed. She was so content, never wanting more and always
+thankful for what she had.
+
+"Well! one day I was in Paradise Street. It was wet and cold, and the
+beer-shops were full of drunken men and women, and even the children
+were shouting foul language.
+
+"'O God,' I said, ready to cry out in the street, 'How long will the
+power of the devil last in this town?' However, I thought of Mrs Clark
+down there, and how she had to live in it all, so I went down the steps,
+and there she was, but I could see that even she had been crying.
+
+"'Now, Mrs Clark!' I said, 'you don't mean to tell me that it's your
+turn to be cheered up?'
+
+"'No!' she said, 'not now! I've got it done already!'
+
+"'Well, now!' I said, 'it's so unusual to see you with those red eyes
+that you make me quite curious. That is, if it's nothing that'll hurt
+you to tell,' I said.
+
+"'No!' she said, 'it'll not hurt me. I'm a silly old woman,' she said.
+She didn't speak for a minute, and then she went on:
+
+"'You know it's my birthday to-day, Mr Charter. I'm sixty this very
+Friday. Well, you know, I always say to myself, "Short commons on
+Friday," I says, "because 1s. 6d. won't last for ever." But somehow, with
+its being my birthday I suppose, and me being sixty, I got it into my
+head that the Lord would perhaps remember me. I've gone on loving Him
+for over forty years, and it did seem hard that on my birthday and me
+sixty, He should have left me with only a crust of bread to my tea.
+However, I sat down to eat my crust, but when I began to say a blessing
+over it, I just began to cry like a silly child. Well, what do you
+think! I'd just taken the first bite, when a child, whose mother I know,
+came running in and put a little newspaper parcel on the table. "Mrs
+Clark," she says, "my mother was out working to-day, and the lady gave
+her a big pot of dripping, so she sent a bit round for your tea!" She
+run straight away, and when that child had gone, I cried a good bit
+more, and then I laughed and laughed, and says over and over again to
+myself, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."'"
+
+The evangelist looked at his watch, and took a drink of water. One or
+two men shifted their attitude from one side to the other, and all
+waited as children do for an absorbing story. A momentary look of
+satisfaction came over the face of the evangelist, and he began again
+with zest.
+
+"I'm afraid the next tale I've got to tell you will take a good deal of
+time." ("We're here to listen," interrupted the minister.)
+
+"Thank you! but you don't know me when I begin to talk! I can hardly
+tell this tale in a public meeting, it comes so near home. It's about a
+friend of mine, we'll call him Joe, and whenever I think about him there
+always comes into my mind the verse we put up over him, 'Blessed is he,
+whosoever shall not be offended in Me,' for Joe hadn't an easy lot. I'll
+tell you what his trade was, though it may make you laugh to hear he was
+a sweep! Now, I don't know what there is about a sweep that makes little
+rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but
+that's the curious fact. As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in
+the street, there's a crowd of little rascals round him at once. I've
+seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black
+face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ''Weep, 'weep!' behind
+him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about
+where he lived. 'Eh! never mind 'em, Mr Charter,' he used to say. 'It
+pleases the children, and it doesn't hurt me.' That was the sort of man
+he was, you see, humble and content.
+
+"He was married, was Joe, to a good, hard-working little wife, and
+they'd had one daughter. She married a young plumber who got work at
+Peterhead, and she had three little boys that their grandfather had
+never seen. He had a photograph of them on the mantleshelf with their
+mother, that she'd sent him one Christmas. Now one day, an idea came
+into his head, that if he put by threepence a week, after a good long
+time, he and his wife could go by a cheap excursion to see those little
+grandchildren and their mother, just once before they died. He prayed
+about it, and then week by week, they began saving up, and the nearer
+they came to having £3, the more real those little grandchildren of
+theirs became. The daughter, you see, wasn't to be told till all was
+ready, and then there was going to be a grand surprise. Well, you know,
+I got as interested in that saving-up as though it was me that was going
+the excursion!
+
+"Now Joe, he had the young men's class in the Sunday-school (all of 'em
+who weren't too high up in world to be taught by the sweep), and one day
+I was looking in at a foundry as I passed, when a young man who was
+standing out at the door said to me, 'Have you heard about Joe?'
+
+"'No!' I said, rather startled, for he's a frail old man at the best,
+'What about him?'
+
+"'Oh, it's nothing wrong with himself,' he said, 'but a week ago when he
+was going out in the early morning--last Saturday was wet, wasn't
+it?--he found one of them poor street girls fallen down in a faint a few
+yards away from his house. He called the missis, and they got her into
+the kitchen and gave her a cup of tea and put her to bed, and she'll
+never get up again, it seems. She was in a consumption too bad for them
+to take her at the hospital, so Joe's keeping her till she wants it no
+more.'
+
+"I said good-bye to the young man and set off straight to see Joe. It
+was afternoon, so he was in when I got there. He didn't say much, but we
+went in to see the girl (she'd got the bed, and the missis slept on the
+sofa and Joe in the armchair), a poor, breathless, young thing, very
+near to death. I began to talk to her of the love of our Saviour, but
+she stopped me. 'Nobody's ever loved _me_!' she said, 'nobody'll care if
+I die or not. I never believed there was any kindness in the world till
+I met these two.' We left her gasping there and went into the kitchen.
+
+"'Poor lost lamb,' said Joe, 'them's sad words to hear.'
+
+"'Sadder to feel they're true about so many others as well,' I said.
+'But, Joe, be open with me,' I said, 'have you spent your savings on
+this poor soul?'
+
+"'Yes!' he said, 'all but a few shillings. She must have milk and
+nourishment, you know.'
+
+"'Yes, I know that,' I said, 'and for the present I can't help you, but
+you mustn't be allowed to spend all you've saved.'
+
+"'Nay,' he said, 'it was a bitter cross the Lord of Glory carried for my
+sins. I can at least do this for one of His lost ones.'
+
+"I knew he'd say that, or something like it, but in my own mind I'd
+determined to get it back again from somewhere for him, but you'll hear
+how I was prevented. I noticed that he looked a bit tired and thin as I
+went out, and I said to him, 'You're not looking very grand! You must
+take care of yourself too."
+
+"'No! I don't feel very well,' he said. 'I've been feeling my age a bit
+lately,' he said laughing.
+
+"'I'll look in to-morrow again,' I said as I went away, and about the
+same time next day I went back to find him sitting still on one side of
+the fireplace and the wife on the other. The girl had died suddenly in
+the night. They'd got the photograph of the little grandchildren, and I
+could see the old woman had been crying.
+
+"'We shan't see them in this world now,' said Joe.
+
+"I thought he was considering the money and began to talk.
+
+"'No!' he said, 'it isn't that. The money was a bit of a sacrifice at
+the time, but I can see now why He asked me for it, and how thankful I
+am, as things have turned out, that I didn't refuse to do that little
+thing for Him. After you'd gone yesterday,' he went on, 'I felt so
+poorly that when the doctor came to see that poor girl I told him what I
+felt like. He looked a bit queer at first, and then he said:
+
+"'"Well, Joe," he said, "I know very well that you're not afraid of
+death, so I won't beat about the bush," he said.
+
+"'Thank you, doctor,' I said.
+
+"'"Of course," he said, "I can't be certain, but I'm afraid it's cancer,
+and I can only say that I'll make it as easy for you as I can." He's a
+kind man, Mr Charter, though he's reckoned rough. Well, you can imagine
+how my first feeling was of thankfulness that I'd been kept in the love
+of God, and not held back for my own pleasure the money he was needing.
+_He_ knew, you see, that I shouldn't want it, and he sent that poor girl
+to be looked after by someone as had money to spare.
+
+  '"I'll bless the Hand that guided,
+  I'll bless the Heart that planned,
+  When throned where glory dwelleth,
+  In Immanuel's Land."
+
+So my summons is come, Mr Charter, though I'd no idea it was so near.'
+
+"There's not a great deal you can say at such times, and my heart was
+very full as I listened to him, though I knew that it was well with him.
+I'm not going to tell you about the way he went through the valley,
+beautiful though it was, but I'll tell you just this before I sit down.
+Those young men of Joe's Sunday class got together and talked, and
+though they were young working-men with not much of a wage, they each
+gave sixpence a week and the old man had ten shillings a week as long as
+he lived, and every time he got the ten shillings he'd cry, and say,
+that he didn't know anybody in the world who'd had so much kindness
+shown to them all their life long as _he_ had."
+
+The evangelist glanced round the chapel as the minister gave out the
+hymn. The heads of the boys were bent over their hymn-books, searching,
+with whispering, among the pages which they turned with wet thumbs.
+There was no apathy now. All the slow sun-burnt faces showed signs of
+having understood. One or two men sat with their eyes fixed on the
+evangelist as if waiting for more. A woman wiped her eyes and sighed.
+There was no restlessness. He had succeeded in making all these people,
+so different from the driven, excited, underfed congregation he
+constantly saw, think from beginning to end of his poor people, and had
+succeeded in making them sorry. He was content.
+
+With that inarticulate desire to come into close contact with those who
+have moved them, which one knows among the poor, many of the
+congregation crowded round the pulpit to shake hands with the evangelist
+who leaned over the side, gripping hand after hand.
+
+"A very good meeting," said the steward, looking round with an air of
+satisfaction.
+
+"You've made me feel very small, sir," said a young man to the
+evangelist. "I've a good deal further to go yet."
+
+"It's true of us all," replied the evangelist, shaking his hand
+fervently.
+
+Anne Hilton had returned from the farmer to whom she had sold one of her
+pigs, and fed the animals, but had not taken off the linen pocket which
+she tied round her waist under her petticoat, and which held her money.
+She was trying to get at it now in the narrow pew. She knocked down a
+hymn-book and several pennies rolled under the feet of the out-going
+congregation. A young woman, with roses in her best hat, nudged another
+and laughed. A big boy stooped to pick up two, and restored them with a
+purple face. Anne replaced them in the linen pocket, shook her skirt
+down again, wrapped something in a piece of an old envelope, and
+beckoning the steward gave it to him, then followed the others through
+the blue square of the doorway. The steward approached the evangelist
+with a rather embarrassed smile.
+
+"Our good sister's a bit queer," he said. "I don't know why she couldn't
+put it in the collection box."
+
+The evangelist unwrapped the envelope and disclosed a sovereign. He
+paused.
+
+"It's a big gift for a poor woman," he said in a moment. "She needed to
+make up her mind a bit first. The collection box came too soon."
+
+"I've no doubt you're right," said the minister. "She's a good woman if
+a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part of her week's
+takings."
+
+"I don't think she ought to have given it," said the steward's wife, who
+was waiting for her husband to drive her home. "She'll need help herself
+if she gives away like that. She always _must_ be different from other
+people."
+
+Anne Hilton was walking home in the cool night air. The stars were so
+clear that they seemed to rest on the fields and tree-tops, and the
+rustle of the sleepless corn passed behind every hedge. She walked with
+a certain carefulness as of one who had unexpectedly escaped a physical
+danger; but the peril from which she was conscious of fleeing was
+spiritual. She had been threatened by avarice which had prompted her to
+give a small sum instead of the sovereign, and the evangelist had been
+right in his intuition. It had needed a good deal of "making up her
+mind" to give away the greater part of her earnings, even under the
+warmth of human appeal. She had conquered, but narrowly, and there was
+as much shame as satisfaction in her heart as she left the building, and
+more than all a great fear lest it should be talked about.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was the first day of spring, the season of swift changes. For the
+first time the sky was lighter than the ground. Its brilliant clouds
+threw heavy shadows on the earth, fugitive shadows which ran with the
+warm wind, alert with colour. Nothing was quiet or hidden. There was not
+yet sufficient life to cover or screen. Everything that had budded had a
+world to itself and could be seen. Radiant, innocent, carolling,
+self-revealing, the movement and action of spring were in the earth. The
+running and glittering water, in winter so vivid a feature of the
+fields, had become insignificant in comparison with the splendid and
+vigorous sky. The noise of the wind, too, beat in one's ears louder than
+the water. One had no time for meditation. One was hurried as the wind,
+speeding as the sunshine. Yet the spring more than any other season is
+the time when one thinks of the generations that pass--perhaps from the
+very transitoriness of the visual images, their evanescence and
+momentary changes reminding one so of the dead. In autumn the passage is
+grave and decorous, like the advance of old age. In spring the image is
+lovely and momentary, like the bright passage of those dead young.
+
+Anne Hilton looked out to see what kind of weather it was for the
+market, and with a sudden pang, she remembered her old father, and how,
+on such a day, he would totter to the open door, and there sit in the
+sunshine, grateful for the same warmth for which his old dog was
+grateful. When she came home from the market, she would make a wreath of
+white holly to put on the grave in which he rested. She thought of him
+vividly, of the pathos of his last illness from which she had vainly
+tried to drive the fear and soften the pain. She remembered his slow
+laugh, and the knocking of his stick on the floor. Memory is keener in
+bright sunshine than in the twilight, in vivid enjoyment more poignant
+than in melancholy. The churchyard, with its unvisited green mound and
+dwelling of the silent, became visible to Anne, and with it the dying
+out of joy which returns with that vision and memory. The house, too,
+was very quiet, as she drew in her head, with the stillness of a place
+once lived in and now empty. She had become accustomed to thinking of
+her father with tranquillity, satisfied to believe him at rest. Now the
+pain of loneliness returned with memory.
+
+She harnessed the pony to the cart, and stowed her baskets safely under
+the seat. She was dressed in a purple merino skirt, kilted thickly, a
+black mantle, with a bead fringe, and an antiquated straw bonnet. Round
+her neck she had folded a man's linen handkerchief, and she had
+elastic-sided boots on her feet. She locked the door, and put the keys
+in her linen pocket tied round her waist under her skirt, and climbing
+up by means of the wheel, seated herself on the board which did duty as
+a seat, and took the reins. "Go on, Polly!" she said, and the pony, with
+a good deal of tossing of head and tail, set off obediently towards the
+high road. The clacking of its feet as it trotted on the hard road
+overwhelmed all other sounds. At the corner of the roads an old woman
+tending a cow nodded to her, and one or two field labourers raised
+themselves to see who was going past, remaining upright and staring
+longer than was necessary to satisfy their curiosity. At an open
+field-gate she had to wait until two heavy wagons, their wheels a mass
+of red, soft earth, had emerged, and turned in the direction of the
+town. She passed them, and for some time met no one. An advancing cart
+soon came in sight, accompanied by a great jangling of cans--a milk-cart
+returning from the station, having sent off its supplies to the town,
+now bringing back its empty cans. It was driven by a man whom Anne knew,
+and, instead of drawing to one side to pass, he reined in his horse as
+if to speak. "Good morning, Miss Hilton," he said. Anne checked her
+horse which had gone a few paces past, and turning in her seat to look
+over her shoulder, answered his greeting. The farmer's horse, impatient
+of this check on the way home, made several attempts to start, and at
+last, being held in by his master and scolded loudly, fell to pawing the
+ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned
+in his seat, and looking back at Anne said:
+
+"I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had
+a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you."
+
+"Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment
+retaking them as the pony had started off.
+
+"Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's
+to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you
+when you go in there."
+
+Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be
+dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be
+alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was
+speechless.
+
+"She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again,"
+said the farmer.
+
+Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire
+burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting
+beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed
+dead.
+
+"You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone
+else the responsibility of knowing about it also.
+
+"I'll go up this afternoon," returned Anne, picking up the whip and
+flicking the pony. The farmer said "Good morning," and the rattle of
+milk cans once more filled the road as his horse set off at a gallop
+towards home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+When the business of the market was done, and Anne reached the Union, it
+was late in the afternoon. The roads outside the town were full of
+farmers returning from the market, of women walking with empty baskets,
+and an occasional small herd of cattle, being driven away from the
+terrifying experience of the town, by a purchaser. It was visiting-day
+at the Union, and here and there from the out-going stream, a man or
+woman of middle-age turned aside to enter the gate of the big brick
+building, in whose side-garden men were working, dressed in the
+bottle-green corduroy of the institution.
+
+The presence of spring seemed to surge about the bare building. The
+trees planted about it were old, and belonged to an older building which
+protruded from the back; the weather-stained wall was old also, and the
+sunlight, older than either, shone with an urgent warmth beneath the
+heavy green shade. Rows of green blades were appearing in the border,
+set aside for ornament. The air, the clouds, the light near the ground,
+all seemed alive with the peculiar revival only felt in the spring.
+
+Anne was admitted with others to the corridor, and left while they
+turned to the places they sought.
+
+"She might see the Matron," said the porter, going along with a clatter
+of his feet to the far end of the corridor and knocking at a door. The
+Matron almost immediately emerged carrying a large key.
+
+"It was very sad, wasn't it?" she began at once. "It happened night
+before last. It's a fine boy, though it's a bit too soon. One of the
+young women's got him." She led the way to the wide front stairs and
+began to ascend. Stopping at a half-open door, she entered and Anne
+followed.
+
+It was a smaller room than the big ward, and sunny. It had an air of
+privacy, of comfort given by the sunshine only, for it was uncarpeted,
+and bare like the others. Four young women were sewing the stiff linsey
+skirts worn in the Union.
+
+"How's the baby?" said the Matron.
+
+"Asleep," replied a good-looking, blond young woman, rising willingly
+from her work and going over to the window, beneath which was a
+wicker-cradle covered with a shawl. She drew back the shawl, and Anne
+saw lying on one cheek on the pillow, the tiny, fuzzy, misshapen head
+and creased purple fist of a new baby. The confidence of that tiny
+breathing creature lying asleep seemed strange to Anne, who knew how
+desolate it was. It had already, as it were, taken possession of its
+place in the world, and had no intention of being dislodged.
+
+"He's a healthy little thing," said the Matron.
+
+"Greedy too," said the blond young woman, with a laugh.
+
+"Could I look at Jane?" asked Anne.
+
+"They fastened it up this afternoon," replied the Matron. "There'll be
+two funerals to-morrow. The other's an old man. You can see all there is
+to see."
+
+She covered the baby and left the room, descending the same stairs, and
+going out of a side door. A strong smell of disinfectants came out into
+the warm garden as she opened the door of a glazed brick building. The
+blinds were down to keep out the sun. The building was lined with white
+glazed brick, and two straight burdens lay on a trestle-table.
+
+"Eight o'clock to-morrow," said the Matron, coming out again and locking
+the door.
+
+Jane had gone. She was as confident as the baby in her absence. It was
+that which impressed Anne. Neither of the two so lately one flesh,
+needed or cared for the other. Jane seemed to have shut herself of her
+own accord in that wooden case, so that she would be no longer teased or
+tortured, and the baby was quite happy that it should be so. Their
+disregard one of the other was strange to Anne.
+
+"Elizabeth Richardson was inquiring if you were coming," said the
+Matron. "Will you go up and see her?"
+
+Elizabeth Richardson was lying in the bed that had been Jane's. She
+looked less peevish and more tended. Anne glanced at the fireplace as
+she entered. The armchair had been moved back, and no one sat at the
+fire. She sighed and turned to Elizabeth.
+
+"Yes, it's very comfortable," said Elizabeth. "I'm glad I came. It's
+nice to have the bed made every day. You'll have heard that Jane Evans
+is out of her troubles?"
+
+Anne nodded.
+
+"It's best, I think," said Elizabeth. "The world's none too kind, and
+she was a depending sort of girl. She got out of it easy enough.
+There'll be some disappointed though," she added with her old cynicism.
+
+"Don't let's be hard in our judgments," said Anne, sadly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The habit of working for another is so fixed in the lives of poor women,
+that the interruption of it becomes a kind of second death, almost as
+difficult to bear as the death of the affection which is itself almost a
+kind of habit. When Anne returned from market, and sat down, her house
+seemed to have become a little emptier, because the girl whose welfare
+she had carried with her for so many months was beyond her reach. She
+took down her Bible to read it, and find relief for her trouble. She was
+a woman who had had "experience"--that experience which comes to each as
+a kind of special revelation, a thing so surprising, that it appears
+impossible to think of its having happened before, or to withhold the
+telling; the cynicism, which declares this to be an overwhelming
+interest in one's internal self, being only partially right, it being
+rather the excited and surprised mental condition which is the deep well
+from which all art, all expression, breaks forth. She read slowly,
+trying to find meaning in each phrase, when suddenly a verse struck her
+in its entirety before her lips had finished reading.
+
+"Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to
+visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
+unspotted from the world."
+
+She saw exactly what she would do. There was the child, motherless, and
+worse than fatherless. She would take him and bring him up unspotted
+from the world. It was clearly a leading for her. She had not been
+permitted to save the girl, but she might take and protect the boy. She
+remembered even the commonsense of Mrs Hankworth. "It's soonest
+forgotten about if it's a boy." She was not so much an old maid as a
+woman shut up from issue, and she had no fear of a child. And in the
+midst of her bewilderment about the girl, about death and the hereafter,
+she could see an earthly duty clearly, and pure religion for herself.
+She began to sing:
+
+"Who points the clouds their course,
+  Whom winds and storms obey,
+He shall direct thy wandering feet,
+  He shall point out thy way."
+
+She opened a drawer which held what was left of her father's clothes
+without any feeling of incongruity. There were four shirts of checked
+oxford shirting, two pairs of long stockings, a corduroy jacket, and his
+best suit of black serge bound with braid round the coat. There was a
+revolver, too, a clasp knife, a unused church-warden, an old wide-awake
+hat. To-morrow she would write to the Union, and offer to bring up the
+child when he was weaned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was a cool evening in early summer, full of the leisurely peace of
+the country. The women were out of doors after much perspiring work
+within. It was too early for the shadows, yet a sensible relief to the
+day's ardour, which one was disposed to linger and enjoy, was evident in
+the tranquil atmosphere, and on the relaxed faces of those who lingered
+about the doors of the cottages, or turned the bleaching clothes on the
+hedges. Mrs Hankworth, in a fashionable bonnet and dark green dress,
+which proclaimed a ceremonial visit, was driving beside her husband in a
+light yellow trap, in the unusual direction of Anne Hilton's cottage.
+Her husband, with his eyes on the road, suddenly pulled up the horse.
+
+"Now, where did you two come from?" he ejaculated, jumping from the trap
+and examining the backs of two enormous sows, who were munching and
+rooting in foreign ground with great satisfaction. At the sight of their
+enemy, a man, they began that lumbering but nimble trot, by which their
+tribe elude and disregard anything disagreeable.
+
+"You better get up again," said Mrs Hankworth. "We'll keep up to them
+and perhaps turn 'em in somewhere. Miss Hilton's the nearest."
+
+"I don't recognise 'em," said the farmer, springing up with agility and
+driving the horse carefully after the sows. "Some one must have bought
+them yesterday. We can call at one or two places on the way back and
+inquire. There's William Crowther," he added, standing up in the
+trap--"William!" he shouted, "do you see them sows? Stop 'em at Anne
+Hilton's sty. I don't know whose they are."
+
+"I'll give them a little exercise!" shouted William, setting off in
+pursuit. Anne Hilton looked out from her door to see the farmer standing
+up to bar the road backwards, and shouting directions to William, while
+he at the other side dodged one sow after the other, and Mrs Hankworth
+sat back laughing with enjoyment.
+
+Anne ran to open the yard-gate, and, with management, the sows saw no
+other opening and ran in at a trot, scattering the squealing hens as
+they did so.
+
+"Of all the knowing things!" said Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"Well, Miss Hilton, we're bringing you two sows and ourselves to visit
+you!" said the farmer. "First a baby and then two sows! You'll keep a
+foundling home very soon."
+
+He jumped out, and his wife came slowly over the wheel.
+
+"Somebody'll be sending out to inquire for them soon," said Anne. "I'm
+very pleased to see you, Mrs Hankworth."
+
+"We came to say we'd send you milk for the baby every day," said Mrs
+Hankworth, entering the kitchen. "You'll want yours for the butter."
+
+"It's very kind of you," said Anne. "But he'll want a good deal."
+
+"We've got seventy-five cows, you know," said Mrs Hankworth, with a
+contented laugh. "He'll not make much difference among 'em. Where is he?
+Bless him," she said, as she saw the baby staring at her from the wide
+wooden chair, in which he was tied.
+
+"A fine baby," said the farmer with an ultimate tone.
+
+"He _is_ a nice one!" said his wife. "I _must_ take him," she said,
+picking up the baby and turning him face downwards over her arm while
+she seated herself. She spread open her knees and laid him, docile to
+her practised handling, across them. Anne watched her with the air of
+one taking a lesson.
+
+"Did you have much trouble to get him?" asked Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"No, very little," said Anne. "There were some papers to sign, and one
+or two other things, but I believe they're generally glad to board out
+children if they can."
+
+"Well, he's a healthy child. Oh! I don't know anything that made me so
+full as to hear that poor girl had slipped away like that. I didn't get
+over it for some days. You remember the last time I saw you, I was
+intending to go and see her."
+
+"Yes, we were all making plans," said Anne.
+
+"Here's Mrs Crowther," said the farmer. "Come to see the baby, too, I
+expect. I'll just go and see how the sows is doing," he said,
+approaching the door.
+
+"Well, Mr and Mrs Hankworth, I didn't expect to see you here," said Mrs
+Crowther, coming in. "I came to see how the baby was getting on. Eh, how
+they _do_ get hold of you, don't they, little things. I _must_ have him
+a minute," she said, taking him from Mrs Hankworth's knee. "No, you're
+not the first baby I've had hold of," she added to the little creature,
+who twisted about with protesting noises. She smacked its soft thighs,
+and held its warm head against her cheek. "I'm right down silly over a
+baby!" she exclaimed, laying it back on Mrs Hankworth's knee.
+
+"We can't have any more of our own," said the latter, "we have to make
+the best of other people's."
+
+Anne took a tissue-paper parcel from the shelf, and opening it, showed a
+blue cashmere smock with a ribbon.
+
+"I was so pleased," she said. "Mrs Phillipson's eldest girl that's to be
+married next month brought it in yesterday. It shows how you misjudge
+people. When I went to see them, they seemed so hard upon poor Jane. But
+she brought that pretty frock she'd made herself for the baby. She's a
+good-looking girl, and she'll make a good wife."
+
+"You think on these things at such a time," said Mrs Hankworth. "All
+kinds o' little things you never thought of before come into your mind
+when you're going to be married. But it was nice of her. I shall think
+better of that girl after this."
+
+"That sounds like Mary," said Anne, looking round the open door. "Yes it
+is. Come in, Mary. You'll find some friends here."
+
+Mrs Hankworth laughed uproariously. "The baby's holding a reception,"
+she said, her huge form shaking.
+
+"It's Mrs Hankworth, I know," said Mary.
+
+"And Mrs Crowther," interposed the latter herself; "we're making sillies
+of ourselves over the baby. Here, sit down and take him, Mary."
+
+She set Mary in the chair which she had vacated, and laid the baby on
+her knees carefully placing the blind woman's hands over the little
+body.
+
+"There's not much of him," said Mary. "What does he like? This?" And
+with her hands spread upon the child, she moved her knees backwards and
+forwards, clicking her heels on the floor.
+
+"I could soon do it," she said, with a satisfied chuckle.
+
+"I'm sure you could," said Anne.
+
+"It was Peter Molesworth that told me you was here," said Mary, "so I
+thought I'd come too."
+
+"Whatever _do_ you think that Peter Molesworth came out with in the
+class the other day?" said Mrs Hankworth. "We was having as nice a
+meeting as you could wish, and then Peter gets up to give his
+experience. He says, 'I thank the Lord I've got peace in my home and a
+praying mother' (she's not much o' that, I thought to myself); and then
+he went on, 'You know, when I think of the troubles of others in serving
+Christ, I cannot bear. There's a poor woman I know,' he says, 'that's
+trying to serve Christ, and whenever she kneels down to say her prayers,
+her husband begins to tickle her feet.' Did you ever hear of anybody
+coming out with such a thing before? 'I think this door wants oiling,
+Mrs Hankworth,' he says to me as we was going out. 'Nay, Peter,' I says,
+'it's _thee_ that wants oiling.' 'Why, Mrs Hankworth, what's the
+matter?' he says. 'Whatever made you come out with such a thing in the
+meeting,' I says. 'Why, what was wrong with it?' he says. 'Oh, well!' I
+says, 'if you don't know yourself, _I_ can't tell you,' I says. He's a
+bright one is Peter Molesworth."
+
+"Are you ready, Mother?" shouted Mr Hankworth, putting his head in the
+door. "John Unsworth thinks the sows belongs to Mr Phillipson. He saw
+him bringing some home last night. We can take him on the way home."
+
+"I'm coming," said Mrs Hankworth, rising slowly. "If there's anything
+you need, any advice or that, I'll be very pleased to give it you. Let
+me give him a kiss." "You're a beauty, that's what you are," she said,
+kissing the baby and giving it back to Mary.
+
+"I must go too," said Mrs Crowther. "I'll send down some old flannel
+to-morrow, Anne. One of my girls'll come in and help you sometimes. It's
+well they should get used to a baby."
+
+"She'll not be able to stop away herself," said Mrs Hankworth, shrewdly,
+and laughing together, both women went out, disputing amiably as to
+whether Mrs Crowther would take a seat in the trap and be driven as far
+as the cross roads.
+
+The blind woman was feeling carefully the downy head of the baby.
+
+"He's as soft as a kitten," she said. "I could spare several eggs a week
+out of the basket," she added, "if they'd be any use. I don't know much
+about babies. My brother was bigger than me when we was at home, and, of
+course, since then I've not had much to do with children."
+
+Anne watched the two so helpless and confident. Mary rocked her knees
+steadily, and the child's head lay contentedly.
+
+"I believe you've put him to sleep," said Anne. "Shall I put him in the
+cradle?"
+
+"No, let me have him," said Mary, "I've never nursed a baby before."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Anne was left alone in the cottage with the baby, who slept in the
+clothes-basket she had turned into a cradle. The dog slept, too, having
+made friends with fortune. A late evening glow lit one side of the wall.
+When it faded, the dusk would absorb all the room and its inhabitants.
+Anne, sitting very still lest she should wake the baby, remembered one
+by one the agonies that had been lived through, whose sole result seemed
+to be this peaceful evening and the confidently breathing child. She
+remembered the shock of the disgrace to her, she, who had been a friend
+of the grandmother's, and how she had carried the burden about. She
+remembered the new house, and Jane, pretty, spoiled, and without
+misgiving, caring nothing for the hard judgments of which she herself
+imbibed the bitterness. Then Jane, with the child already striving to be
+free, leaving the new house at night, knowing without being told what
+door was open to her of all the doors in the country, and what place she
+would henceforth take. She saw the girl again, seated by the fire in the
+Infirmary ward, with that strange division between herself and all
+living, removed, as it were, to a distance which could not be bridged.
+Then Jane was no more to be found. There was the boy-child instead, who
+knew nothing except his desire to be kept alive; who met all
+reservations and pity by a determination to be fed. Throughout the whole
+evening, Anne had been struck by the fact that the other women scarcely
+thought of Jane any more than the baby did. It remained to them a very
+simple matter. There was a baby to feed and bring up. Being a boy, other
+things would soon be forgotten. It was too late, she knew, to do
+anything for Jane. The only thing that seemed possible to her in her
+simple reasoning, was to prevent such catastrophes for the future. It
+was not that pity was misplaced when shipwreck came, nor that charity
+ever failed. She understood, without being conscious of it, the ironic
+severity of Jesus, who would have no sudden pity and heart-searching on
+account of His poor. He had come into the world for righteousness and
+for judgment, and the judgment and righteousness both declared, not at
+the time of disaster or human appeal, nor with sudden loud outcries,
+but, "The poor always ye have with you, and _whensoever ye will_, ye may
+do them good."
+
+The baby stirred. Anne lit the candle, and set it on the stairs. She
+stepped over the dog, and took a warm flannel from the oven door.
+Tucking it in at the feet of the child, she lifted the clothes-basket
+and carried it upstairs. The dog raised his head and watched her. She
+returned, covered the fire, and set an earthenware pot of milk on the
+hob. The dog laid his nose between his paws again. Anne, taking the
+candle and leaving the room in darkness, closed the staircase door and
+went upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Women of the Country, by Gertrude Bone
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13278 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Women of the Country, by Gertrude Bone
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Women of the Country
+
+Author: Gertrude Bone
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13278]
+
+Language: English
+
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY ***
+
+
+
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+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Melissa Er-Raqabi and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
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+
+
+Women of the Country
+
+
+THE ROADMENDER SERIES
+_Uniform with this Volume_
+
+The Roadmender. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+The Gathering of Brother Hilarius. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+The Grey Brethren. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+A Modern Mystic's Way. (Dedicated to Michael Fairless.)
+Magic Casements. By ARTHUR S. CRIPPS.
+Thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci,
+    as recorded in his Note-Books. Edited by EDWARD MCCURDY.
+The Sea Charm of Venice. By STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
+Longings. By W.D. MCKAY.
+From the Forest. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Pilgrim Man. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Winter and Spring. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Michael Fairless: Life and Writings.
+    By W. SCOTT PALMER and A.M. HAGGARD.
+Vagrom Men. By A.T. STORY.
+Light and Twilight. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+Rest and Unrest. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+Rose Acre Papers: including Horæ Solitaræ. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Women of the Country
+
+By
+
+Gertrude Bone
+
+With Frontispiece by Muirhead Bone
+
+
+
+
+London
+
+Duckworth & Co.
+
+Henrietta Street, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+_Published 1913_
+
+
+
+
+
+WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+When I was a child I lived in a small sea-coast town, with wide, flat
+sands. The only beautiful thing in the place--a town of no
+distinction--were the sunsets over this vast, level expanse. I remember
+them at intervals, as one recalls things seen passing in a train through
+a solitary landscape. I seem to see myself, a child with a child's
+imagination, standing on those wet sands, looking out over their purple
+immensity to the glittering line of the tide on the horizon, and to see
+again the sun in such a wide heaven that it seemed to have the world to
+itself, and to watch the changes in the sky as it sank, drawing with it
+the light. These great sands were dangerous at times, shifting in
+whirling and irresistible rushes of water, and changing the course of
+the channel, which was unaltered by the tide and which always lay out a
+gleaming artery from the almost invisible sea.
+
+It was Sunday morning--a day observed with such precision in that little
+town that I was almost alone out of doors. A string of cart-horses,
+their day of rest well-earned, were being led across the sands from the
+level tide. The sand, uncovered by the sea for weeks, was bleached to an
+intolerable whiteness, but there was no wind to lift it, and the sea was
+tranquil, its little waves all hastening in one direction, like a shoal
+of fish making for a haven. The sun was already changing its early glory
+to heat. All the erections for amusement on the shore looked a little
+foolish in that solitude. I returned to the town along the empty asphalt
+roads and went with my companions to church. It was a church whose
+pretensions were high and genteel. Nothing of a personal nature was ever
+heard from its well-bred pulpit. The hymns were discreetly chosen to
+avoid excitement, and a conversion would have given offence. The
+minister for that day was a young man from the poorer end of the town,
+and I remember, even as a child, being disturbed by the announcement of
+his first hymn, "Rock of Ages." Even the organ blundered as it played so
+common a tune as Rousseau's Dream, and I, who learning counterpoint,
+feared to be seen singing so ordinary a melody, lest it should set me
+down as unmusical for ever. But soon my concern was with the unfortunate
+young man, for he was, I felt sure, quite ignorant of the habits of such
+congregations as ours, and would certainly offend our best people. For
+after that we read the parable of the Prodigal Son and sang, "The Sands
+of Time are Sinking." Then I forgot even this curious lapse from our
+Sunday custom, so clearly did the tale now begun by the preacher bring
+again before my eyes those inhuman sands, that lonely sky, and the
+unstayed power of the sea.
+
+He had chosen, so he said, for his service this morning the favourite
+hymns, Scripture, and text of an obscure member of the congregation
+taken from earth in a strange manner the day before. For more years than
+he could remember, there had come and gone in that congregation an old
+blind man. He had heard him spoken of from time to time in a kindly
+contemptuous, way as "Old Born Again," and it was by that nickname he
+would speak of him this morning, but he could find no place in his
+intelligence for contempt, for Old Born Again now saw and knew the
+things which prophets and kings desire to look into.
+
+He had lived for many years thus. He was a widower living with a married
+daughter, whose husband was a fisherman. She herself kept a
+greengrocer's shop of the poorer kind. She had five children, the
+eldest, a boy of thirteen, earning his living with her in the shop. He
+and his blind grandfather went round the district every day with a small
+cart and horse, selling their vegetables from house to house and thus
+enlarging their custom. The boy guided the horse and his grandfather
+helped with the selling and the money. In the early morning at the end
+of each week they drove the horse and cart to the sea's edge to wash
+them, making always for the steady channel which ran unaltering through
+the empty sand, when the tide was down. This morning they had gone as
+usual, and when they reached the water (the old man was blind you will
+remember, and his companion a child), they knew no difference in its
+appearance. A man who was gathering cockles at a distance knew and
+called to them, running towards them, but the old man did not see and
+the boy was intent upon guiding the horse and cart into the water.
+
+That night the sand, so unstable, had moved beneath the pressure of an
+unusual tide. The course of the channel had changed, and when the horse,
+treading confidently, had approached the edge, it stepped straight into
+deep water and, losing its balance, being also impeded by the cart,
+dragged with it the vehicle, the old blind man and the child to
+unavoidable death. Their bodies had been recovered but too late. "Let us
+pray," added the minister, "for the mourners."
+
+To a child the fact of death is not very terrible, because the fact of
+life is not yet understood; but I never see in imagination the level and
+sad-coloured country of my childhood, stretching out of sight to the sea
+across an expanse of sand, a country whose pomp was in the heavens,
+whose hills were the clouds, without seeing also, journeying across it,
+an old blind man, a child, and a dumb creature, to disappear for ever
+under the wide sky, beneath the sun, within that great waste of waters.
+
+The life of the poor, coloured outwardly with the same passivity and
+acceptance of their lot as the rest of visible nature, disciplined by
+the same forces which break the floods and the earth, remains for most
+of us querulous, ignoble, disappointing. What can be said suggestive or
+profound of the life that is born, that labours its full day with its
+face to the ground, from which it looks for its sustenance, and at last
+is carried, spent, to the square ground which holds the memory and
+remains of the dead.
+
+Yet one day the sun which has risen, stirring the only emotion in the
+landscape, will rise upon a tragic, significant, or patient human group,
+for whom sun and seasons and the wide heavens are small, whose emotion
+is yet contained within the room of a mean dwelling and whose destiny is
+accomplished within a tilled field.
+
+Under a sky that is infinite and a heaven accessible to all, the poor
+"work for their living," bowed always a little towards tragedy yet
+understanding joy, from the bitterness of life and death and the added
+anguish of ignorance drinking often their safety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was evening in the country at harvest-time, at that moment towards
+sundown when the light, about to be withdrawn, glows with a fulness of
+gold which makes it seem impossible that it can ever die. The earth was
+heavy with fruition, every square field brimful of the ungathered
+harvest. The heavy corn swayed almost by reason of its own weight. A
+thunderstorm would beat it prostrate in an hour. All the crops were full
+and good, some almost level with the low hedges. Heat seemed to radiate
+from the yellow mass, that scorching heat which in autumn never seems to
+leave the earth, but to linger about the ground, surrounding the
+responsive and standing corn. But the day had brought no heaviness to
+the sky, blue without a cloud, only a grave and increasing heat, a sun
+which blinded the eyes and seemed to take no account of anything save
+its steady purpose of ripening the fruit and grain.
+
+Looking round one saw that it was not an impressive country. There were
+no hills, no grandeurs, no proximity to the sea. It was a country whose
+pageants were made, not by great heights or sombre woods, but by the
+orderly and coloured procession of the harvests; where one recovered the
+preoccupied sight of little children, seeing so much to absorb one near
+the ground that one did not seek the horizon; where matters were
+measured and done not by the clock but by the sun's height, by midday
+heat and darkness, by the lowing of cows or the calling of lambs.
+
+A woman, well on the way to middle age, sat in the house-place of a
+small cottage on the white high-road. Everything had been done for the
+night, the pigs and pony fed; the cow milked and the milk strained; the
+churn cleaned and the cream standing. The hens had been driven in and
+were almost asleep on their perches. The wood was ready for the morning
+and the clock had been wound up. She had not had her supper yet she did
+not remove her sun-bonnet or yard-boots. She cut herself a slice of
+stale bread and a large piece of cheese, dipped a cup in the barrel of
+buttermilk and sat down on a low stool with the bread and cheese in one
+hand and the cup of milk in the other. She was evidently in great
+perturbation, for at times she forgot to eat altogether and sat with the
+bread and cheese suspended in her hand while she thought deeply. Her
+rather large plain features had a dignity of expression which was
+pleasing, though it betrayed a tendency to melancholy. She had no frown,
+for her blue eyes were of excellent strength and one does not sit up
+late in the country. She was tall and rather bony, a strong peasant
+woman.
+
+Presently she rose, her supper still unfinished, and took from a shelf,
+from among a medley of herbs and medicine bottles, a penny bottle of ink
+with a pen sticking in it. Searching in a drawer of the round table she
+found a large envelope on which was written, "Giant pennyworth of note."
+She took from it one of the thin bluish sheets of paper, and sitting at
+the table, her sun-bonnet making a grotesque shadow behind her, she
+began to write. She wrote with little hesitation, urged by the strength
+of some feeling. Her handwriting was large and she made long loops to
+her g's.
+
+      "DEAR SIR,--Though you passed by my cottage yesterday you are so
+      unknown to me by sight, that I have only just discovered who it
+      was that was brought to such a pitiable condition before me.
+      First, sir, let me describe to you what a sight I saw before me,
+      when, hearing a great plunging and shouting in the road, I came
+      out from the shippon to see what was the matter.
+
+     "I saw, sir, a strong, well-looking, well-dressed young man of
+     twenty-six lying in the mud of the road, his foot in one stirrup of
+     his horse, he, mad with drink cursing, first the poor horse (a very
+     quiet stallion), then the road (a very easy one) and last, the
+     Almighty God of love. The horse, dragged everywhere by the efforts
+     of the young man to gain a footing, was rewarded for its patience
+     when its master at last, by my help, regained his feet, by severe
+     kicks in the belly, and I, a poor woman, was abused and called evil
+     names.
+
+     "Sir! if instead of cursing the good-tempered beast or the God of
+     love above you, you had cursed the origin of such a spectacle as
+     you then were, your clothes covered with mud, your mouth full of
+     blaspheming, staggering about the road pulling at the mouth of your
+     horse--_strong drink_--you would have been a more reasonable being.
+
+     "What, sir, had the horse done to you? What had this poor woman
+     done to you? What, sir, had your heavenly Father done to you, that
+     you should fill your mouth with curses against us all? Your enemy
+     was none of us, but that viper, strong drink.
+
+     "O sir! shun your enemy I beseech you. I am a woman who has had no
+     children, but, sir, if I had been the mother of so strong and
+     good-looking a man as you, it would have broken my heart to see you
+     lying there muddy and cursing, a poorer sight under God's sky than
+     the poor dumb beast that bore you.--Your obedient servant,
+
+     Ann Hilton."
+
+The woman folded and fastened the letter and then wiped her eyes with
+the corner of her apron. She looked round the room as if to see that
+everything was done and went to shut the door for the night. She looked
+out into the lane. The cottage a little lower down had a light in the
+window and here and there lights shewed along the road. The night when
+one can no longer work out of doors matters little in the country, yet
+the ample stillness with distant rustling sounds pleased her and she
+lingered. Two young men carrying shapeless bundles on their shoulders
+wished her good-night as they passed home from work. Everyone seemed to
+have finished with out of doors. Even the cat from the yard rubbed
+against her as it ran into the house, stealthily and crouching as if in
+fear. She turned indoors and lit the lamp, fastened the door with a
+wooden bolt and drew the blind before the diamond-paned window.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Anne Hilton was one of those women who have so little knowledge of the
+practical thoughts of those round about them, that they pass their lives
+half-disliked, partly respected, and mostly avoided. She had lived alone
+now for two years, her father, whom she had nursed, having died of the
+saddest human malady. He had ("as anyone might have had with such a
+daughter," declared the neighbours), harboured a great contempt for
+women, and though, being uninclined to tread the heights himself, he
+feared his daughter's uprightness of character, he had never lost an
+occasion of pouring scorn on her unpractical ways.
+
+"Can you take it home for me, James?" would ask a neighbour, handing up
+a case of eggs to the cart, where James sat preparing to leave the
+market.
+
+"There's no women in the cart," James would reply, and supposed he had
+given the required assent.
+
+The "round-about ways of doing things," which had been the butt of her
+shrewd old father, had brought upon Anne a customary air of
+half-readiness, so that going in suddenly, she might be found with her
+bonnet on and her handkerchief on the table, but one perceived she was
+still in her petticoat, and was making a pie for dinner. Meals, indeed,
+she considered as things to be got out of the way, both her own, and, to
+their expressed discomfort, those of other people. She herself often ate
+them as she went about her work, pausing to take a spoonful from a plate
+on the table or from the saucepan itself.
+
+Taking the Scripture as the literal rule of the smallest details of her
+life, she never wore a mixture of wool and cotton, as that was forbidden
+to the Jews, nor would she wear any imitation of linen for the same
+reason. In consequence, her clothes, which were of sound material, never
+looked common, but always out-of-date.
+
+She could be got (not that many people had tried to do so) to do nothing
+quite like other people, not from perversity as some readily declared,
+or a desire to "be different," but from inability to acquire the point
+of view from which the most ordinary actions are done. She took no money
+on Sunday, and this becoming known to her ne'er-do-well neighbours, they
+made a point of forgetting to come for milk on Saturday.
+
+"You must tell your mother I never sell milk on Sunday."
+
+"Yes, Miss Hilton."
+
+"I'll give you a little to go on with, but next week you must come for
+it on Saturday."
+
+And the child, having got what she wanted, would run off with the jug of
+milk and the money which should have paid for it, to repeat exactly the
+same offence the following week. Her reputation for queerness let her be
+considered fair game, and so convinced is the ordinary person that
+queerness is of necessity contemptible, that when she did anything which
+was unusual, its reason was never examined, nor did the possibility that
+it might be better done in that way occur to anybody. It was merely a
+new evidence of her oddity.
+
+But it was especially in those points in which she felt herself moved by
+her religious convictions that she was most suspected. For in spite and
+over all her eccentricities of belief, she was genuinely religious,
+having the two great religious virtues, charity in judgment and sorrow
+for the failures of others. But again she was "different," as it is
+evident in this world that the failures of other people are entirely
+their own fault, and to be gentle in judgment is more than other people
+will be to you, and therefore unnecessary. So that, without being in
+intention a reformer, she suffered the suspicion and dislike of the
+reformer, being, in fact, however she might disguise it, "different"
+from other people.
+
+This constant clashing with the steadfast ideas of every one had in time
+produced a timidity and secretiveness in the most ordinary actions,
+though where she believed herself to be directed by the Spirit, she had
+no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be kept
+secret she would do her utmost to make them so. She would send the reply
+to an invitation to tea half over the country before it reached its
+destination. Yet she would often pray in the prayer-meeting, and had
+been known to do unusually bold actions as a matter of course.
+
+When it became known that she had written a letter to the son of Squire
+Nuttall asking him to give up his dissipated habits, which were the
+scandal of the country, no one was surprised, though many were shocked,
+and the poorer tenants of the estate alarmed lest some indirect wrath
+might fall upon them. When neither Squire nor son took the smallest
+notice of the letter she was blamed universally as having gone too far,
+as if this chorus of subterranean condemnation might somehow reach the
+Squire, who would know that the rest of his tenants had no hand in the
+matter nor sympathy with the writer.
+
+On the contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances,
+she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of books, or
+even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that English
+equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling behind
+in sympathy with sinners that she fell into the unusual error of
+treating them better than the saints. She was fond of doing small
+generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but
+who would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them
+stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that
+in some sedate and mysterious way they had a friend.
+
+She would send presents to young people whose conduct had pleased her,
+gifts which always excited surprise and sometimes derision. Once she
+sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband and
+wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection, because,
+not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool, with the
+result that it burst open on the station platform before it reached its
+destination.
+
+A number of books, some of an old-fashioned theology, had been left to
+Anne by an aunt who had had a son a Methodist preacher. This aunt had
+also left her a black silk dress, which Anne had received with the
+joyful exclamation that she knew she was really a king's daughter. The
+books she read ardently and critically, underlining and marking, and
+with them also she embarrassed the vicar to whom she lent them. He,
+being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's
+indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was
+in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older
+men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young
+men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought _them_
+absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads
+were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was
+overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any meanness or injustice,
+which seemed to arouse in her a Biblical passion of righteous fury.
+
+A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done it
+herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some butter and
+returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had
+been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have
+been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business
+errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself
+incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.
+
+"You know my sister Jane's son?" said a farmer's wife, who had stopped
+her trap at the cottage to pick up a lidded wisket in which some
+earthenware had been packed. "He's getting a good-looking young man and
+he's all for bettering himself. Well, he went and got his photo taken at
+Drayton and brought them in to show his mother. She was making jam at
+the time, and she's not an easy tongue at the best o' times. 'What's
+that?' she says; 'you don't mean to say that's a likeness o' thee? It
+looks fool enough.' She says she never saw 'em again, he went straight
+out and burnt 'em."
+
+"He chose the wrong minit," said her husband beside her. "If he knew as
+much about women as _I_ do, for instance."
+
+"Just you mind," said his wife, warningly. "Why, Miss Hilton, whatever's
+the matter?" she added, catching sight of Anne's face.
+
+"It is such a painful story," rejoined Anne. "I cannot bear to think of
+the poor young man's discomfiture."
+
+"Well, I never!" ejaculated the farmer, as they drove away. "She's very
+good, but, my word, she's very peculiar."
+
+"If she was _really_ very good she'd try not to _be_ so peculiar,"
+retorted his wife, nettled at the failure of her story. "Did you ever
+see such a figure, with her dress all unbuttoned at the back showing her
+stays."
+
+"She's not got a husband to fasten the middle buttons," said the farmer
+slyly. "She can't very well ask the pig, you know."
+
+"Well, no, she can't," said his wife, good-naturedly; "but she tries my
+patience pretty often."
+
+"That's not so hard as it sounds," said the farmer, looking innocently
+in front of him.
+
+"Now, then," said his wife, "who wanted a potato-pie for supper?"
+
+"I expect it was our Joseph," said the farmer.
+
+"Not it," retorted his wife.
+
+"Well, myself, I prefer women who aren't so peculiar," said the farmer.
+"Even if they're not so good," he added.
+
+"Take care," replied his wife. "That potato-pie isn't in the oven yet!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Anne Hilton got up when the sky was tinged with the sunrise, feeling
+anew the security of recovered daylight after the stillness of the
+lonely house during the night. There was little to put in order about
+her house. "Where no oxen are the crib is clean," she would often quote.
+There was absolute silence in the cottage, and as she opened the windows
+she saw the first thin smoke, the incense of labour, rising from other
+houses. The garden was fragrant with flowers, soon to be gathered and
+made into bunches for the market. The increasing glory of the sky
+promised another fine day for the harvest. She read the text on the
+Calendar and made it the subject of her prayer, which she uttered aloud
+with great fervour. Then she went down the stairs, which entered
+directly into the kitchen, and lit the fire for her breakfast. The day
+following was market-day, the day on which she depended for her living,
+and to-day the butter for which she was justly celebrated had to be
+made. Beyond the kitchen was a dairy with a stone shelf round three
+sides of it, a churn in the middle, large earthenware mugs of cream, and
+a great tub of buttermilk in the corner. The sunlight never fell on this
+side of the house until late afternoon, so that, though the day was
+already hot, the shadow of the dairy and the yard beyond with its shed
+for tools looked tranquil and cool.
+
+Taking one of the tin pails and a milking-stool, she set off across the
+fields to the pasture in which her two cows were grazing. Everything
+within her sight as she passed--hedges, grass, corn, even the trodden
+path across the field--gleamed with the radiance of the risen sun. The
+sky, intolerably splendid and untroubled by clouds, was filled by the
+sun. Even the thin smoke from the cottages flickered and was
+illuminated. The trees had the leaves of Paradise. The world seemed to
+hold nothing but the sun, and to be bewildered.
+
+At the end of two fields' length she stayed by the pasture-gate and
+rattled her can loudly. Two cows, gigantic against the sun, came slowly
+to the gate. She tied their tails in turn, and settled on her stool
+beside the dripping hedge. When her pail was full and frothing she set
+them free, and with a flick of her apron sent them from the gate, which
+she opened, setting her can down while she tied the hatch. Then she
+returned over the two fields with the full and heavy can. The pony
+snickered as she came into the yard, and the hens ran in a foolish crowd
+across her way. She scattered them as she went, setting down her burden
+within the dairy. She overturned the stale buttermilk into the pig's
+trough, fed the hens, and drove the pony into lane, throwing stones and
+tufts of grass after it until she saw it turn into the open gate of the
+paddock. It would be joined soon by others, and the boy who brought them
+would shut the gate. Then she scalded the churn anew, filled it, and
+settled to the slow turning which was to occupy the greater part of her
+morning. The churning became heavier and heavier. She raised the lid to
+scrape the butter from its sides, and as she did so heard footsteps
+coming across the yard, footsteps a little unusual in sound, each
+seeming to be taken very deliberately, and going straight forward
+without discrimination of the path.
+
+"Here's Mary!" said Anne Hilton aloud, turning towards the door and
+moving a chair. A woman of about forty-three, with a basket on one arm
+and walking with a strong stick, came steadily towards the door. She
+would have been comely if it had not been for a fixed frown which seemed
+odd on her pleasant, good-tempered face. She wore a print bodice, with a
+point back and front, and a short bunchy stuff skirt. Though Sarah was
+well in sight she took no notice of her, but walked straight on towards
+her, until the latter said with evident pleasure--
+
+"It's you, Mary!"
+
+"Yes!" answered Mary, with a slight start.
+
+"How are you?"
+
+"Quite well," said Sarah. "Here's the door." She laid her hand over that
+of the other woman and set it on the side of the post, at the same time
+taking her basket, which was full of eggs, and only partially covered by
+a cloth.
+
+"How many?" she asked. "Have you counted?"
+
+"Four dozen," replied Mary. "Have you finished your butter?"
+
+"It's coming," said Anne, taking the handle again.
+
+"Let _me_ try," said Mary. "I often think I could manage butter nicely."
+
+"Don't get too clever," said Anne. "You do a wonderful lot already. Stop
+and sit a bit, won't you? Let me see if you know where your chair is."
+
+The woman stepped into the dairy, turned to the left of the door, and
+sat down without hesitation in the chair which Sarah had moved on first
+perceiving her approach, and as she did so one could see that the frown,
+so out of place on her steady and tranquil face, had an origin of
+tragedy. She was blind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mary Colton was one of the most esteemed women possible in any
+country-side. She had scarcely been beyond the few miles which
+surrounded her home, and since she was a girl had never set foot in a
+train. She had not been born blind, but had had her sight until she was
+seventeen, when an illness darkened the world for ever. "A pretty girl
+she was too," said those who remembered. Of the prettiness she retained
+now only the essence, that of her pleasant goodness, yet her appearance
+was still attractive in spite of her thick figure and contracted brows.
+She had not that unearthly exalted expression so familiar to one in the
+blind, who look upwards for the light and search in vain. Rather, unless
+one looked narrowly, one would take her for a middle-aged woman of good
+health and steady temper, who was a little short-sighted. She used a
+stick out of doors, and when she went very long distances she took with
+her a small terrier, which warned her of the difficult parts of the
+road. But indoors she moved about freely, knowing to an inch how much
+room each piece of furniture occupied, and seldom knocking against
+anything as she moved about her work.
+
+She lived entirely alone and supported herself, not by any of the
+special kinds of work which are supposed generally to be possible to the
+blind, but by exactly the same means as other women of her age and
+class. All the work in the house was done by herself, even to the making
+of the toffee and bulls'-eyes, which she sold at the cricket-matches and
+fairs of the districts. She kept hens and turkeys, and worked in her
+garden, feeling her way about the beds and bushes with her feet. She
+sold the vegetables and the currants and gooseberries which grew in the
+little patch of garden, and her friend, Anne Hilton, carried her eggs to
+the market-town for her every week, where she disposed of them to a
+provision-dealer of the same denomination. Even the hen-run had been
+made by the blind woman, who was a continual source of astonishment and
+questioning from the neighbours. But in this wonder, she not unnaturally
+found a pathetic pleasure.
+
+"How do you know when you've got all your hens in?" asked a child once.
+
+"I count them at night when they're asleep on their perches," answered
+Mary, with a joyful little chuckle.
+
+"But it's dark!" objected the child.
+
+"So it is," replied Mary. "I didn't think of that."
+
+She never referred to her blindness, and so complete a victory over
+misfortune and circumstance gained its fit respect in the country. No
+one considered that it was "doing a charity" to Mary to drive past her
+cottage on the way from market to give her news of a football match or
+fair about to be held in the district. Women would send their children
+on their way to school to give similar news, and the boy who brought her
+the roll of newspapers, which she sold at the station every morning,
+would often wheel her barrow for her. She had a large, clumsy chest on
+the frame of an old perambulator, in which she wheeled about her store
+of aerated waters, toffee, and newspapers. She would place herself at
+the gate of the cricket ground on Saturday afternoon. The sliding lid of
+her chest made a counter on which she set her scales and her neatly cut
+pile of paper for wrapping up the toffee. She had no rivals in the
+district, for the most avaricious small shop-keeper would have been
+ashamed to confuse or trouble the simple, good, courageous woman.
+Perhaps the most complete sign of her triumph over her disability was,
+that no one dreamed of calling her "Poor Mary." Like her friend, Anne
+Hilton, she was a member of the little wayside chapel, which, with all
+that it meant, made a centre of warmth and fellowship for both lonely
+women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+So placid and unimpressive was the country which lay about Anne Hilton's
+cottage, that in the lanes which branched from it one seldom thought of
+any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few
+shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech
+leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of
+the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the
+banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the
+young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky
+would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day,
+a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter
+for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden
+from beginning to end. The sun had risen without mist and set in a sky
+without a cloud, seeming, as it sank, to draw with it all the colour
+from the heavens, as if it had cast a golden net in the morning and now
+drew it home again behind the hill.
+
+As the warm light ebbed, a coolness, as of an actual atmosphere
+distilled into the cottage, became apparent in the kitchen. Now that the
+sunlight had gone, one could see the objects in the room with a new
+distinctness. It was serious, quiet, and orderly in this grave light,
+like the room of some saint shown in piety to pilgrims.
+
+A tall, half-grown youth came to the kitchen door, and, knocking twice,
+entered and sat down lumpily on the wooden armchair, slipping a basket
+from his arm on to the table as he did so. He looked round him, pleased
+unconsciously by the grave light and the orderly room.
+
+"You've a quiet life of it here," he said, rising to shake hands with
+Anne, who came into the room at the same moment, bending a little as she
+walked with the slightly anxious expression of one preoccupied with
+pain.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "it's very pleasant in the kitchen when the sun goes
+off. Nearly every evening at this time something about the room brings
+to my mind the hymn--
+
+"When quiet in my house I sit,
+Thy book be my companion still."
+
+The youth looked uncomfortable, thinking that he had brought upon
+himself a sermon unawares, and that being actually inside the house, and
+having sat down, he might have difficulty in extricating himself. So he
+said, rather to turn the conversation from its personal character, than
+from any sense of the fitness of his remarks.
+
+"It's sad about Jane Evans, isn't it?"
+
+"What's sad, Dick?" asked Anne, still standing, and resting both hands
+on the table. "Excuse my not sitting down, I've got a bad turn of
+rheumatism."
+
+"That's bad," said Dick. "I once had a bit in my back, and it was as
+much as I wanted."
+
+"But what about Jane?" asked Anne. "I've scarcely seen her or her sister
+since the old grandmother died. I seldom get so far away. The Ashley
+road doesn't go near that side, and that's the one that sees me
+oftenest."
+
+"Well, it seems," replied Dick, finding it, after all, an awkward
+subject to talk of to a woman, "she's gone to live with that
+horse-breeder who's taken Burton's farm."
+
+"But he's a married man," said Anne, not comprehending.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Dick, with an embarrassed laugh, but Anne did not
+hear. She had understood.
+
+"She was a good, respectable girl," she said. "However can she have
+forgotten herself like that? Where's her sister Annie?"
+
+"They do say she's nearly as bad," replied Dick. "He's rather a taking
+man--good-looking and hearty, and dresses better than the farmers, and
+his wife went off with a trainer too."
+
+"Her grandmother's only been dead two years, and she's been allowed to
+go wrong like that," exclaimed Anne, with condemnation of herself in her
+voice.
+
+"Well, you know," expostulated Dick, "I don't know as it's anybody's
+business. Everybody's got their own affairs to attend to."
+
+"Oh yes! I know," said Anne. "It's never anybody's business to try to
+prevent such things, but it'll be everybody's business to throw stones
+at the girl very soon, if the man tires of her."
+
+"I don't know about preventing," returned Dick; "she seemed pretty set
+on him herself. I think myself it's a pity. Here's the eggs from Mary
+Colton, Miss Hilton--three dozen," he added, as a diversion from the
+conversation, which he found more embarrassing than the sermon he had
+successfully avoided. With that he escaped from the chair with a jerk,
+scuffled his feet once or twice on the floor, took his cap out of his
+pocket, and ejaculated "Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," replied Anne, still preoccupied. "Thank you for bringing
+the eggs;" and she sat down with a slight groan.
+
+"Why, it might be herself," reflected Dick, looking back at the dejected
+figure in the darkening room. Being a simple youth, he felt vaguely
+uncomfortable at the sight of such trouble over the doings of one who
+was no relation, and began to take a little blame to himself for
+thinking lightly of the girl's downfall.
+
+"Well, she's very good," he concluded in his thoughts, "but she's
+peculiar;" and he tramped heavily through the yard into the lane.
+
+Anne did not stir. She was so shocked that her bodily faculties seemed
+to have ceased, and her mind to have remained sorrowing and awake. This
+lapse was even worse than that of Sir Richard's son, because it seemed
+irretrievable. Then, too, it had happened before she knew anything about
+it, whereas, in the other case, she had been active, and able to
+expostulate and screen the young man's fall. And then, too, there was
+the surprise of a middle-aged woman at the lapses of "young, strong
+people," just as, if one of more maturity had fallen, the comment of the
+young would have been equally certain, "an old thing like her."
+
+To Anne, whose temptations were of the kind that betray rather than
+assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity--a man's
+gluttony or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not
+shock her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the
+grandmother who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease
+that they might not run wild as many girls do, but might grow up girls
+of good character. Since the grandmother died, Jane, who was young and
+pretty, had tried to support herself. Anne did not know Richard Burton,
+but he was older and a "married man," which, of itself, implied
+responsibility to her mind. With the passion for justice, in which her
+intellectual faculties found material for exercise, she declared that
+Burton must be more to blame than Jane. He had money and position in the
+country-side. But equally as he was more to blame he would be less
+blamed. No one would dare to tell _him_ he was wrong. They would wait,
+stone in hand, for the girl who had been a child among them, and when
+she was forsaken and alone would throw and strike. Anne lived apart, but
+she knew _that_. "It will be visited on the girl," she thought; and
+indignation at Richard Burton rose steadily in her thoughts.
+
+After a while she stirred, and, lighting a candle, slowly stooped and
+raised the lid of the bread-mug. Pulling out half a loaf, she cut a
+thick piece for supper. She ate it slowly, with a piece of cold bacon,
+then, taking the candle, her shadow growing gigantic behind her, she
+fastened the door without looking outside, and climbed the stairs,
+heavily and sorrowfully, to her solitary bedroom, her shadow with one
+jerk filling the whole room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+There was no covered market even in so considerable a town as Haybarn.
+From end to end of the rectangular market-place were set wooden tables
+on movable trestles, and over these were stretched frames of canvas, the
+whole assembly looking like a fantastic toy village set in the middle of
+the substantial brick houses, banks, and inns of the square, or like a
+child's erections amid the solid furniture on a nursery floor.
+
+On each side of the square, with their backs to the stalls and facing
+the shops whose goods and attractions overflowed to the pavement as if
+offering themselves at the feet of the passers-by, stood a row of
+countrywomen and girls with market baskets of butter and eggs, plucked
+fowls, red currants, plums, curds, tight nosegays of pinks, stocks,
+wall-flowers, or anything else saleable or in season which a cottage
+garden produces. In and about among these, pushed women of all degrees
+and ages, tasting butter, holding eggs to the light, or placing them
+against their lips to test their freshness, stopping now and then to
+feel the wearing quality of some piece of dress-stuff or flannel, draped
+and ticketed alluringly at a shop door; all moving with the slow,
+ungainly pace of those unaccustomed to walking and impeded by bundles
+and purchases in both arms. Here and there a younger woman, dressed in
+the fashion of the best shop in the town, with a basket of rather more
+elegant shape, went about her marketing with equal decision, if more
+fashion: the wife of some tradesman who lived in one of the numerous new
+villas with small gardens increasing every year on the fringe of the old
+town, who still liked the stir of the market and a bargain, but whose
+chief reason for marketing herself would be given to a friend as, "you
+can't trust those girls. They'll take anything that's given 'em and pay
+double."
+
+Farmers with that curious planted-and-not-to-be-up-rooted air which
+distinguishes a man brought up to farming everywhere stood about the
+corners of the market in groups, or greeted friends on the steps and in
+the passages of the inns. The cattle-market was on the outskirts of the
+town, and the business there was over early in the day. For the rest of
+the day they exchanged and completed their bargains, or, supported by a
+friend and with an air of determination not to be cheated, entered the
+shops of hatters and tailors, or examined the bundles of canes and
+walking-sticks hanging by their heads at the shop door, fingering stuffs
+in the same manner as the women, but with a more helpless air, as if
+hoping that some good fortune beyond their own fingers would make clear
+to them the difference and wearing quality of each.
+
+Older men, with the solidity of girth which successful farming produces,
+stood planted on the pavements with the air of spectators who enjoyed
+everything, being free from the embarrassment of the younger men, who
+found themselves after a week of solitude in the midst of a crowd of
+their fellow-creatures, who, all and any, might happen to look at one
+critically, giving rise to a red flush which in its turn might provoke
+the jokes of one's companions; ordeals which made for many a young
+countryman a day of adventure and perspiring, but one to be recalled
+during the remainder of the week as a day about town spent suitably by a
+man of spirit.
+
+In the market Anne was a woman reputed for the excellence of her butter.
+She had even taken prizes at local cattle-shows. She had an established
+stand at one of the covered stalls, and her regular customers appeared
+one by one as they were at liberty. It was largely a matter of waiting
+through the morning till all had been supplied. To-day she had placed
+mechanically in the cart a basket of Victoria plums, which had been
+ordered by the wife of a neighbouring farmer, and as she found her
+butter and chickens sold, and was about to collect her baskets together,
+she saw this, and remembered that one of the servants at that farm had
+sprained her wrist in lifting a cheese, so that the mistress, not having
+appeared earlier in the day, might be safely assumed not to be coming to
+the market. Anne stowed her empty baskets under the stall of a woman who
+sold smallwares, and began to make her meagre purchases for the week.
+Then she took her baskets and made for the yard of the inn behind the
+market-square, where she had left the pony and cart.
+
+The farmer's wife to whom Anne had arranged to carry the plums was known
+among her acquaintances as a "worry." She had two daughters, one of whom
+was delicate, and the farm was neither large nor productive. Her husband
+also was reputed to be stingy.
+
+Anne found her sitting sewing with the two girls, who were making a rag
+hearthrug. With the nervousness of women of anxious temperaments she
+began to explain their occupation, talking quickly in a voice with a
+shrill recurring note.
+
+"There's no waste in this house you see, Anne, and no drones in the
+'ive. This bit of stuff was my grandmother's." She took up a fragment of
+striped linsey, which one of the girls had just laid her hands upon. The
+girl's sulky expression did not escape her.
+
+"_Now_ then, what's the matter? _You're_ too proud, Miss. Keep a thing
+seven years and it's sure to come in, _I_ say, and keep girls working,
+and then they'll not get into trouble. Did you ever hear of anything so
+disgraceful as that Jane Evans? She ought to be sent out of the place
+with her servant and all. If it was a daughter o' mine, she'd travel far
+enough before she saw her home again."
+
+"It's very sad," replied Anne, "She's been led astray;" but the woman
+interrupted, full of her virtue.
+
+"Astray! She didn't want much leading I should think, sly thing! I know
+those quiet ones. They're generally pretty deep. No! I've no
+consideration whatever for a girl who gets herself into trouble. She's
+nearly always to blame somewhere. You just take notice of _that_," she
+added, turning to her daughters who were listening eagerly for details.
+
+"I wonder she's the face to go about," said the elder girl, a very
+pretty young woman of twenty, who, being engaged to a young carpenter,
+assumed the virtue of a girl who'd no need to seek about for lovers, and
+of a class whose sensibilities were shocked by this lapse. Her mother
+looked mollified, and gazed at the girl's pretty face with satisfaction
+in its comeliness for a few moments in silence. She was a delicate
+woman, fretted by her nerves and the difficulty of making ends meet, but
+she had real pleasure in her two girls, whose good looks and clever
+taste in their clothes, made them always presentable.
+
+"Some one ought to go and tell her what people think of her," said the
+younger girl, who already showed her mother's nervous expression.
+
+"Do it yourself," said her sister with a careless laugh.
+
+"Nay, _I_ shan't interfere," replied the girl.
+
+"You'd better not," said the mother. "You keep out of such things and
+it'll be better for you. Well, here's Anne sitting with her plums.
+You're very lucky to have a good tree like that," she added, as she
+uncovered the basket. "We haven't a single good tree in the orchard. I
+often say to James that we shouldn't have much less fruit, if they was
+all cut down to-morrow."
+
+Anne emptied the basket of plums into a basin the elder girl brought,
+and received the money mechanically. She was thinking all the time of
+Jane Evans and the careless laugh of the elder girl. Some one should
+tell her. That was quite plain. But it was nobody's business. She shook
+hands with the fortunate girl and her delicate sister, and, accompanied
+by the mother, made her way through the yard to the gate, where the pony
+had been eating as much of the hedge as he could manage with the bit in
+his mouth. Before she had taken her seat Anne was aware of the weight on
+her mind, which told her that she was "appointed" to go and reason with
+Jane Evans, and, if possible, to persuade her to leave the man.
+
+She was discouraged by the unstinting condemnation of the mother and
+girls, and began to be sore that she had not received a word of sympathy
+for the girl.
+
+"There'll be a good many to throw stones," she said, as she drove into
+her own yard and set about feeding the pony. When she had finished, her
+mind was so overcharged that she had recourse to her usual outlet. She
+began to pray aloud, not removing her bonnet or necktie, and seated as
+always on the stool at the fireplace.
+
+"O God, my heavenly Father, I thank Thee that I may come to Thee however
+full of sin, and find Thee always ready. And I come to Thee again
+to-night, repenting of my sin of omission in Thy sight. For, O God my
+Father, I have not prayed for souls as I ought, and one soul who had
+little earthly guidance has gone astray from the flock. If Thou hadst
+left _me_, O my Saviour, in what a state of misery I should be found
+to-night. Yet I have been over-anxious about my own salvation, and
+forgotten those who are in temptation. Have mercy upon me, and save
+them. Give me, O loving Father, a mouth and wisdom. Help me to point out
+to this soul the error of her ways. Help me, more than all, to 'hate the
+sin with all my heart, but still the sinner love,' and grant that there
+may be joy in the presence of the angels of God over a returning and
+repenting soul, for Thy mercy's sake. Amen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Next day Anne arose to be at once aware of the heavy task before her. As
+she set her house in order she would stop abstractedly and sit down to
+think what was best to be done. Then she would work feverishly as if
+_that_, at any rate, was a thing that could be accomplished.
+
+It was a wet day, chilly and rueful. There were not even clouds in the
+sky to vary the steady grey, and the heaven itself seemed to have
+slipped from its height and to be close upon the earth. Trees, grass,
+hedges were drenched, and remained motionless with leaves drooping under
+an added weight. The ditches were noisy, but beyond the occasional
+rattle of a cart there was no other sound than the rain, a sound so
+unvaried that it presently became as a silence, and one imagined that
+the world had ceased to have a voice. Anne opened the door many times
+and looked out to see always the same grey sheet before her. The gutter
+on the shippon splashing its overflow on the flags of the yard, the hens
+crowding dejectedly within the open door of the henhouse, and the water
+lying green between the cobble-stones of the path. Nothing could be done
+in the garden. The sodden flowers would not be fit for to-morrow's
+market. The pony had cast its shoe and must be shod before next day.
+
+"This is more important than the pony," Anne said to herself, putting on
+her market-cloak and drawing on with difficulty her elastic-sided boots.
+She fastened her skirt high with an old silk cord and took her umbrella.
+Remembering that she had not covered the fire, and that it would have
+burnt away before she returned, she took a bucket out to the coal-house.
+The wet dross hissed and smoked as she covered the fire. She drew out
+the damper to heat the water, turned back the rag hearthrug lest a
+cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her
+umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail on the cupboard door, went
+out into the rain. She locked the door on the outside, and hid the big
+key on the ledge of the manger in the shippon. Then she was outside in
+the steady rain, on the gritty turnpike road washed clean to the stones.
+As she set off, it was a small relief to her that she would not be
+noticed, unless when she passed the cottages, because there were few
+workers in the fields, and none who could help it out of doors.
+
+It was a walk of five miles which was before her, and soon the sinking
+of heart with which she had set out, began to disappear before the
+necessity of setting one foot before the other in a steady walk. The
+irritating pain of rheumatism began, too, to vex her and distract her
+thoughts. It was not a very familiar country to her after she had passed
+the Ashley high road. There were fewer houses. The farms were larger,
+and portions of an old forest remained here and there uncut. But there
+was no variation in the gloom of the sky or the folding curtain of rain.
+She grew tired and hot, and a little breathless, and as again the
+dryness of her throat and tightness of her lips reminded her of the
+humiliation of her unsought and unaided errand, she saw before her about
+a quarter of a mile on the high road which led to Marwell, the new red
+brick house with stucco ornaments, built by the horse-breeder, Burton.
+She went towards it with lagging feet.
+
+It was a prosperous and vulgar building, with a beautiful garden, for
+his garden was Burton's pride. Even in the sodden wet the flowers, not
+wholly beaten down, showed how well cared for and excellent their
+quality. The sward was even and trim, and the fruit-trees on the side of
+the house had yielded prizes to their owner. The path to the door was of
+new red tiles, and two large red pots held standard rose trees on either
+side of the stained-glass entrance. Anne rang the new bell which clanged
+loudly and followed the servant (a girl from a distance), to the showy
+drawing-room, chilly and unused in its atmosphere. It was the kind of
+house which impressed the country people by its "improvements," and at
+which Anne went to the side door to leave her butter. But she was so
+absorbed in her duty to the girl that she gave no thought to this, which
+at another time she would have considered to be "taking a liberty." She
+alone of the girl's old friends seemed to have this burden laid upon
+her, and as she entered the house she was overwhelmed with the blame of
+its having happened, and the difficulty now of recovering innocence
+lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+She had scarcely had time to recover breath before Burton, the
+horse-breeder, came into the room--a big-bearded man, of heavy build,
+with a familiar loudness and fussiness which would have been better in
+the open air, than even in the new vulgarity of his drawing-room. His
+weight was the first thing one thought of. It would have taken a
+powerful horse to carry him. He always wore his hat, whether indoors or
+out, and bright tan leggings, with riding-breeches. Among his men and
+the neighbours he passed as a good master, and free with his money,
+standing for local purposes (as, indeed, he himself considered), in
+place of the lord of the manor who owned a more interesting house in
+another shire of the country. Like the rest of mankind he earned a
+reputation for generosity by being liberal with those things by which he
+set little store. He was neither avaricious nor surly, and, being in
+full health and vigour himself, was able to spare a rough chivalry to
+women which made allowance for their weaker bodies and greater
+difficulty in coping with existence. It was probably this
+soft-heartedness which, in the first place, had stirred a vague pity for
+the pretty blonde dressmaker, and this quality which the pliable girl
+had interpreted into the hope that he'd do her justice. He had, indeed,
+often stood up for Anne Hilton herself when her peculiarities had been
+discussed, and it was with the warm feeling of being rather a friend of
+hers, and not being the man to hear a single woman abused, that he came
+into the room and shook hands noisily.
+
+"Well, Miss Hilton! I am very pleased to see you. You've come a long way
+in the wet. You must have a glass of something hot. Jane! Jane!" he
+shouted, stamping to the door and looking up the staircase. There was a
+sudden clatter, and Jane appeared in the doorway laughing, because she
+had run downstairs so quickly that she had almost fallen.
+
+"That's smart work," said Burton.
+
+"These stairs is so steep it's the easiest way of coming down 'em," said
+Jane with an air of proprietorship, with the familiarity and importance
+also of one who knows she is welcome, and, whatever other people may
+think, has a power which no one else present has with the only man in
+the room.
+
+"Well, you have chosen a wet day to pay us a visit, Miss Hilton," she
+said, with a hospitality too effusive to be spontaneous.
+
+She was a very attractive girl, with fair hair and pretty eyes, made for
+affection and to take a spoiling prettily. At present she had no
+misgiving about her lover's good intentions, and this gave her the
+confidence which naturally she lacked. Besides, she had never thought
+Anne Hilton important. Anne, seeing the handsome room, the gaiety of
+Jane, and affection of Burton, found herself wishing that there were no
+reason why it should not continue so, to all appearance a happy home of
+newly-married people. She saw none of the signs of shame in Jane which
+she herself had suffered.
+
+"I've not just come to pay you a visit, Jane, my dear," she said. "I've
+come in the place of your grandmother who's dead, to take you away with
+me."
+
+"Whatever for?" exclaimed Burton, loudly. "Do you think I can't make her
+comfortable? She's never been so happy in her life, have you, Jane?"
+
+"No!" returned Jane, very red. "And I don't see what Miss Hilton's got
+to do with it anyway."
+
+"No more don't I," returned Burton, with a laugh. "But let's hear what
+she's got to say about it. So you want Jane to go back to starving at
+dressmaking, Miss Hilton? She's a lot more comfortable here, I can tell
+you. She's got a servant, and she can have her dresses made out. She's
+no need to do anything but fancy work."
+
+"It's the sin of a good, respectable girl taking such things for a
+price," interrupted Anne, "and of you, Mr Burton, to entice her to it,
+and keep her like this. It's not on _you_ the judgment'll fall, but on
+_her_. How's she to face the neighbours and everybody she's known from a
+child when you've done with her?"
+
+"I've not done with her yet by a good way," said Burton. "Don't you
+worry yourself, Miss Hilton."
+
+"You're a man of money and position, and a newcomer in the
+neighbourhood," went on Anne, "and the neighbours are afraid to say
+anything before you. But they say plenty about Jane, whom they've known
+all their life. Young people she used to play with talk of her with
+shame, and when you've finished with her she'll not have a friend to go
+to."
+
+"But I tell you I've not done with her yet, and shan't for many a good
+while," repeated Burton. "I dare say she'll be tired first if it comes
+to that."
+
+"Can you ever give her back what you've taken from her?" asked Anne
+breathlessly, trying to pierce the self-confidence she did not
+understand.
+
+"Well, it was something like slaving all one day and then starving the
+next before," said Burton, "and she lives like a lady now. You should
+just see the fancy-work she gets through--no dressmaking now!"
+
+Anne turned to Jane, who was sitting flushed and resentfully embarrassed
+in the satin armchair, looking expectantly to Richard to see her
+through, shocked, too, and ready to cry at this first contact and
+opinion of her neighbours upon her doings.
+
+"Where's your sister Lizzie, Jane?" she asked.
+
+"Out at service," replied Jane, unwillingly, fidgetting with her hands
+and feet.
+
+"So your coming here has meant that _she's_ got no home," said Anne.
+
+"She could have had one if she'd liked," said Burton. "The house is big
+enough for us all."
+
+"Thank God for His protecting grace!" said Anne, "she was able to resist
+the temptation."
+
+"She'd have had to go out to service in any case," said Jane,
+spitefully; "the neighbours was so very kind to two girls."
+
+"Jane, I knew your grandmother," said Anne, "and I know how hard she had
+to work to keep you two girls respectably dressed and cared for. I know
+you think I'm an interfering, peculiar woman and an old maid, but your
+grandmother was no old maid. She lost your mother who'd have worked and
+kept her when she was old, and instead of having an arm to lean on,
+she'd to work morning, noon, and night, to give you two girls a home.
+She was working when other people was sleeping. It's better even to go
+to the Union than to do as you've done."
+
+Jane, after twisting her fingers together, pulled out her handkerchief
+with a jerk and began to cry, thus rousing the indolent anger of Richard
+Burton, who, with a blustering tone, as though he wanted to shout down
+an opponent, burst out--
+
+"Well, she's here now and she's not going away. And you can tell the
+kind neighbours that we can look after ourselves without their
+assistance. And as for them good girls that used to play with Jane, I
+know several who wouldn't have been slow to take the place. _I'll_ look
+after Jane all right. And we're much obliged for your visit, Miss
+Hilton," he continued, ironically. "We can spare you for quite a long
+time now. You can save yourself the walk another time. If you want to be
+home for dinner-time, you'd better be starting, don't you think?"
+
+Anne rose stiffly, limping with rheumatism.
+
+"Jane love, come with me," she said; "I can shelter you for a time, I
+can give you--"
+
+"No I won't," retorted Jane, petulantly, turning her back.
+
+Anne went slowly out of the room. Richard Burton accompanied her with
+offensive heartiness.
+
+"Well, good morning, Miss Hilton," he said, opening the door with the
+stained glass window, and stepping into the red-tiled porch, he looked
+up at the sky. "I believe it's stopped raining--all the better for your
+rheumatism, eh? Well! give my love to the neighbours you think so much
+of," he shouted with a laugh, and shut the door. Anne opened the wooden
+gate with brass nails, and shutting it behind her stood again in the
+dripping lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The stirring of anger at Richard Burton's callousness gave way almost at
+once to a feeling of fatigue and defeat as she started on her return
+home, and a persistent image of Jane, a little girl playing
+skipping-ropes in red stockings, kept coming before her eyes. One or two
+gigs passed her, splashing among the pools of the road. The birds began
+to sing with a clarity as sweet as that of the purified air. There was
+still a tinkling of running water from every side, but the clouds were
+in shreds, and patches of blue sky were uncovered here and there.
+
+Three-quarters of the way to her home she passed a fair sized cottage,
+in front of which a tall grey-haired woman was sweeping the standing
+water from the path with a yard brush. She stopped brushing as she heard
+footsteps and looked over the gate.
+
+"Why, it's Miss Hilton," she exclaimed. "What a wet walk you've had.
+Come in and stop a bit before you go further," she said, with the
+eagerness of an active, talkative woman, who had seen no one to speak to
+all day. She took the drenched umbrella and set it on its end in the
+doorway, and Anne, tired, hot, and discouraged, sat down gladly on the
+chair she offered her.
+
+It was a comfortable kitchen, full of furniture, and bearing evident
+signs of men in the house. There were hats hanging behind the door and
+two guns over the fireplace. Such furniture as was placed there must
+have been long ago settled in its position. No one could mistake the
+room for that of young people. There was something in the multitude of
+worn objects, their solidity, their position in the room, each
+accommodating the other so that one could think of no other place for
+any of them, in the polish which had worn into the heart of the wood by
+constant rubbing which betrayed the presence and passage of many people
+through the room for many years; a used, comfortable, taken-care-of
+appearance, very pleasant to feel around one, a room from which one
+would not easily take oneself away at night and which seemed to Anne
+Hilton to set around her the company of many cheerful people.
+
+Mrs Crowther was too much occupied with her own affairs, and too eager
+to talk to enquire what had brought Anne Hilton that way. She was a
+tall, spare, robust woman, the mother of nine children, all grown up and
+well placed. She was a "worker." She had considered the bearing and
+rearing of her children as a piece of work to be done, in the same way
+in which she looked upon the spring-cleaning of her house. It had been
+done to her satisfaction, and done well. She had had little time for
+sentiment in her married life, but now, still active, strong, and with
+only the work of her house and garden, the meals for her four sons who
+still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to
+express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her
+imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which
+all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of
+judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among
+women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity
+of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town
+florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. She began
+to tell Anne Hilton how they had first come to the country.
+
+"There was _my_ mother first and then _his_, both at us. First _one_
+said, 'You don't know what it is to live in the country, you that have
+been used to going about under the gas-lamps at night'; and then the
+_other_, 'You don't know what it is to be shut in to the lamp at night
+and have no one but your two selves to look at.' It was always the same.
+'You don't know what it is,' or 'You'll be lonely.' And Thomas and I
+always said the same thing back. 'Well,' we said, 'we can but try.'
+Well, we _did_ try, and we found that cottage up Somer's Lane, and when
+I came with him the first day I began to think, what if my mother was
+right. It was so silent as if something was going to happen. I kept
+looking out of the window to see if it was, but nothing did, and the
+next morning his mother came down with the bedding and the five children
+we had then, and I've never felt lonely since. Nine children, all
+living, keep you on your feet."
+
+"Be thankful they've all turned out well," said Anne, with a sigh,
+thinking of the house she had left.
+
+"Trust 'em! that's what _I_ say," returned Mrs Crowther. "Plenty of
+good, plain food, and plenty of good, warm, woollen underclothing, and
+there'll not go much wrong with their bodies, and trust 'em for their
+characters. I was talking to Mrs Hankworth the other day--she's done
+better than me, she's had twelve--'I never was one for much whipping,'
+she said. 'I never found you did much good by it. You can break the
+spirit of a horse by whipping, but you can't change its character. Give
+'em all plenty of occupation at home, and they'll not want to go out in
+the evenings.' I was glad to hear her say so, for I've always felt like
+that myself. There was Ted had his fret-saw, and William was always one
+for making collections of butterflies or birds' eggs, and John was
+always one for politics. He'd sit reading any newspaper he could get
+hold of, and arguing with his father. I always knew he'd not stop in the
+country. He was always for the things that was doing in the town at
+meetings and unions, and he took no interest in farming or country work.
+It was always railways or politics with him. He was the first to go,"
+said Mrs Crowther, her face taking that fixed serious expression,
+betraying the inward attitude which in another woman would have meant
+tears. "You've a lot of work to do when they're little, but you can shut
+the door at night and know they're all inside with you; but there's a
+day comes to gentle as well as simple, when you shut the door at night
+and some of them's outside. Sometimes you wake in the night and you
+wonder if there's anything more you could have done for 'em, and you vex
+yourself a lot more over them when they've gone from you than you ever
+do when they're with you. You have a feeling when they're at home, that
+if they want you you're there. But it's another matter when they can't
+get at you for all their wanting or yours either for that matter."
+
+"Be thankful you've been spared the sorrow of one going astray," said
+Anne. "It's a proud thing to have a lot of sons all honest, good men."
+
+As if she had divined Anne's thoughts, or something in her words had
+suggested it to her, Mrs Crowther said suddenly--
+
+"You've heard about that Burton getting hold of Jane Evans, have you?"
+
+"I've just come back from there now," said Anne. "I only heard of it the
+other day, and I went to see if I could get her away. I blame myself
+sadly for its having happened."
+
+"He's a bad effect in the country, that Burton, with his horses and
+money," said Mrs Crowther decidedly. "It's bad for young men to see
+money got so easily. He doesn't drink, I fancy. At least I said to
+Matthew, 'What's wrong with that Burton, does he drink?' 'No,' he says.
+'At least, I don't think so,' he says; 'but he takes it out in eating.
+He's an easy liver,' he says. And what a foolish girl that is to give
+away her character for a man like him. If she was in trouble she might
+have come to any of us, and we'd have done anything in reason."
+
+"I suppose that was just it," said Anne. "He was there before we were
+ready, and the poor girl thought he was her only friend."
+
+"Well! she's a foolish girl," repeated Mrs Crowther, in the tone of one
+who having young people to protect could take no part in excuses. "Why,
+there's that young Wilkinson, that's booking-clerk at the station, said
+to our John, 'I was a bit sweet on that girl myself,' he said, 'but if
+that's the sort she is, I'm not having any.' He's a bit conceited, and
+thinks a lot of his clothes, but he's steady enough. Had she the face to
+come and see you when you went?" she added with curiosity.
+
+"I saw them both," said Anne, sadly. "She's quite under his influence. I
+can't do much for her now. Perhaps she'll come of her own accord if we
+show her we're her friends."
+
+"Well, I don't know as you can ever do much for people that will have
+their own way."
+
+"If she isn't driven any further--" began Anne.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs Crowther, with emphasis; "you _must_ make a
+difference. There's plenty of girls kept themselves decent who were just
+as poor, and if everybody's to be treated the same, no matter how they
+behave, it's very hard on _them_. I don't believe in that sort o' thing.
+If you do wrong you must bear the consequences, or what's the good of
+keeping honest. It's confusing to young people to get such ideas, and it
+does a lot of harm, Miss Hilton. You never had any young people to bring
+up. It's _that_ that alters your mind about those things. There's our
+William. He's not one for saying much. He's one of the old-fashioned
+kind. He's a kind of serious way of talking. Many a time we laugh at
+him, and say, 'For goodness sake, do stir up and laugh a bit.' I says to
+him privately, 'What do you think of it, William?' 'I've no respect for
+her whatever,' he says. 'If a sister of mine was to go that way, she'd
+have seen the last of her brother.' That's how they think you see, Miss
+Hilton, and you can't say they shouldn't."
+
+"I suppose not," replied Anne, wearily. "Nobody seems to get any nearer
+not judging their neighbours after all this time."
+
+"Well, you can't make the world over again, however you try," said Mrs
+Crowther. "You've to take things as you find 'em, and make the best of
+'em. It's hard enough for them that's kept straight without petting them
+that's weak and foolish enough to go wrong. You'll never be able to
+alter it, Miss Hilton, so you better take it so."
+
+"I can't do anything more at present," said Anne; "but I must be getting
+home again. The pony'll be wondering what's become of me. I'm very much
+obliged to you for the rest, Mrs Crowther. You don't think it's raining
+now, do you?"
+
+"No! I don't think so!" said Mrs Crowther. "How's Mary, Miss Hilton?
+She'll have been sadly hindered with all this rain. They put off two
+cricket-matches this week. They're not playing football yet, or else the
+weather wouldn't matter so much. They say the wet weather keeps their
+joints supple. It's the dry weather and frost that's so hard to play in.
+Ted's always one for a lot of sport, specially football. Such a mess as
+he comes home sometimes. 'You must clean your own clothes,' I always
+says to him. We have a joke at him, that when he wins one of these
+competitions (he's always one for going in for these guessing
+competitions that promises such a lot of money if you put in an odd word
+somewhere). He's always bound to win every time he goes in, and we tell
+him that when he wins it, he can keep a servant to clean his trousers
+after every football match. 'I shan't let any of you have any of it you
+don't take care,' he says; 'I'll be laughing at you before long, see if
+I'm not. Wait till you all come asking for rides on my motor-bike;
+what'll you say then?' he says. 'Eh!' says his father, 'I shall say
+there's more fools in the world than one!' Well Miss Hilton, good
+morning; I'm very glad to see you any time. I'm alone a good lot now,
+you know. It's not like it was once with children all round the kitchen.
+I'm glad of a bit of company now sometimes. Why, it's beautiful now!"
+she concluded, opening the door and stepping out in front of Anne,
+looking round the sky with eyes which blinked a little under the strong
+light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Next day at daybreak the country was whitened by a light mist. The birds
+sang incessantly with long ecstatic calling from throats which had drunk
+the air of the dawn and retained something of its quality. Coolness
+refreshed the day and strengthened the eyes, and one's ears were opened
+to hear from every side the chorus which in a more varied landscape one
+took as a part of the glittering moving world outside the house.
+
+Anne unbolted the house-door. The dog rose from the hearth and stretched
+itself slowly, yawning and shutting its mouth with a snap. Then it
+walked to the door, waiting until it was dragged open grating on the
+sand of the floor. The cool morning air came in like a visitor. The old
+dog pushed against Anne as she stepped outside, sneezed, yawned again,
+and lay down in the sunshine to finish his nap.
+
+"Haven't you had enough sleep yet, Lion?" said Anne. "Look, what a
+beautiful day it is! Why, there's Mary on the road already," she added,
+looking over the low gate.
+
+Mary was coming straight down the middle of the road, her
+black-and-white terrier sniffing on all sides and pulling the cord by
+which she held him. When he perceived the presence of the other dog he
+began to advance by leaps, uttering little yelps between each like a
+child's jumping toy. Lion, with the superiority of a larger dog, raised
+himself without hurry and advanced to meet the terrier, who excitedly
+whined and sniffed about him.
+
+"Good morning," said Anne, "you're out early."
+
+"Yes," replied Mary, standing quite still in the position in which she
+had halted. "I came over the fields. The grass is very wet though.
+There's a mist, surely."
+
+"Yes, a thick one," said Anne, "but the sun's coming through. Listen to
+the birds. Did you ever hear anything like them?"
+
+"I was out collecting the eggs at five o'clock this morning," returned
+Mary, "and I think I never heard them so busy. The earth was all a-hum
+with them. They seemed as though they _must_ be listened to, whatever
+happened."
+
+Both women stood listening.
+
+"I came this way because I was going to leave my shilling for Lord
+Axton's wedding present," said Mary, after a moment's silence.
+
+"Did they come and ask _you_ for one?" said Anne. "I think they ought to
+be ashamed of themselves."
+
+"There's been some grumbling about it," said Mary. "I think myself the
+agent should have left it to those who wanted. I suppose we could have
+said No, but nobody likes to. It isn't as if people like them want any
+wedding presents we can give them, and a shilling means a lot to some
+people."
+
+"It's the agent that wants to make a show," said Anne. "I think
+sometimes that if those rich people knew how their wedding presents were
+procured," she went on in the stilted manner habitual to her when
+wishing to express a formal thought, "they would find little pleasure in
+them."
+
+"Mr Burton's given £10," said Mary. "They'll have a good sum." She
+paused, distrustful.
+
+Mary, who was known to all the country side, and who could do nothing
+secretly, seldom spoke of the affairs of her neighbours. Whether she was
+by nature a little taciturn, or whether her blindness, before which so
+much passed unobserved, which cut her off from the possibility of
+forming a judgment, had increased her natural modesty and diffidence,
+she drew back into silence where others were discussed. But the actual
+difficulties of living, which she daily and silently surmounted, brought
+her so closely into touch with reality that she invariably saw, not the
+fault or its circumstances, but the practical difficulties issuing from
+it. But she had unthinkingly stumbled upon the scandal, and she went on,
+"I was sorry to hear of Jane Evans forgetting herself like she has."
+
+"Poor girl," said Anne; "she seems so certain that it'll last. What was
+so sad to me, was that a girl brought up as she was by her grandmother
+should have so little sense of her position."
+
+"She's happy, I suppose," said Mary, "and there's no need to look
+further. She'll find it hard to earn a living if he gets tired of her."
+
+"He's not an ill-natured man," said Anne. "You feel as though if he'd
+been brought up to have a respect for good behaviour he wouldn't have
+got loose so easily. He thinks he's doing a generous thing, and giving
+Jane a good time, without thinking what the result must be to her good
+character. He doesn't like to see people unhappy, as he calls
+unhappiness. He hasn't learnt the results of sin in his own experience,
+and won't look at them in others. He kept on telling me she'd got a
+servant of her own, and needn't do anything but fancy-work. They'd
+neither of them hear anything I could say. I can't understand how they
+came to know one another at the beginning. It seems to have come about
+without anyone's knowing till it was too late."
+
+"He seems a joking sort of man," said Mary. "Once he came up to buy a
+paper, and gave me half a sovereign instead of sixpence to change, and
+when I told him he'd made a mistake he laughed a lot, and said he wanted
+to know if I could tell the difference. He never sees me now without
+speaking of it and laughing."
+
+"Yes," said Anne; "he's fond of rough jokes of his own making, and
+thinks that giving people material things makes them happy," she
+continued in her bookish manner. "I remember just such another man as
+him, a boisterous sort of man, whose old father was dying, who took the
+old man out to look at a new grand-stand they were making. Poor old man!
+It was pitiful to see him in the presence of eternity, looking at a new
+grand-stand."
+
+"I suppose, being as I am," said Mary, "there's a lot of temptations
+been spared to me."
+
+"I wish we were all as kind and charitable as you," said Anne. "I never
+heard you say a hard thing of anybody all the years I've known you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Winter hastens his pace when the harvest is gathered, and it was one of
+those serene winter days on which, if one sat in a sheltered place full
+of sunshine, one might believe that the spring had begun; as if winter,
+secure in his domination of the frozen earth, could afford to relax his
+vigour and admit the approaches of the sun, like a playful child whom
+one could banish at will. A line of white clouds, with purple bases,
+were drawn about the horizon, standing like anger, as it were, within
+call. The sky on every side was of that deep transparency seen after
+many days of rain. The colours of the earth and grass were deepened and
+intense from the same cause. In many places in the fields, sheets of
+water showed above the grass, vivid as a wet rock just washed by the sea
+and colour hidden at other times glowed from the steeped ground.
+Villages and houses showed from a great distance as if some obscuring
+medium had been removed, and the remote country lay a deep band of
+indigo beneath the horizon, like a distant sea escaping under a light
+and infinite heaven.
+
+Anne Hilton set off after the evening milking to visit a bed-ridden
+woman of her acquaintance who lived in a cottage in one of the numerous
+by-lanes intersecting the now bared fields. She was a woman who had lain
+many years in the kitchen, whose narrow, hot space was all she saw of
+the world. She was not a cheerful invalid, but peevish and querulous.
+The irritation with which she always lived, waking from sleep to be at
+once aware of it, and to know no pause during her waking hours, had worn
+away a temperament which might almost have been gay. At very rare
+intervals Anne had heard her laugh, and the laugh had such a note of
+gaiety in it that she surmised the nature that had been, as it were,
+knawed thin by this never-sleeping worm. It was pity for something
+imprisoned and smothered which made Anne a steadfast friend to the
+unhappy woman, whose other friends had long tired of her incessant
+complaints and down-cast mind.
+
+Elizabeth Richardson had never any hesitation in expressing her
+opinions, and Anne had scarcely seated herself by the bed of the
+unfortunate woman, whose harrowed face told of the torment within, than
+she began to ask questions of the disgrace of Jane Evans, whom, she had
+heard, was to have a child to crown all. But contrary to Anne's
+expectations the bed-ridden woman was friendly to the girl. The habit of
+neglect and scarcely-veiled impatience with which she had for many years
+been treated, and of which she had been fully and silently aware, had
+produced in her tortured mind an exasperated rebellion against the
+opinions of her neighbours, who were unable to see anything beyond their
+own comfort. She knew that she had so much the worst of it; that even
+attending perfunctorily to another's human necessity was not so hard a
+task as to be there day after day in the company of a pain which never
+ceased, and beneath whose increasing shadow the world had slowly
+darkened.
+
+"They're all afraid of the trouble to themselves about the girl," she
+said, with her bitter intonation. "They're afraid they'll be called on
+to do something for her sooner or later."
+
+She turned over with a groan, lying still and worried.
+
+"Have you tried a bag of hot salt?" asked Anne, after a few minutes'
+silence.
+
+"Yes! I tried once or twice," replied the woman, "but you know it's a
+bit of extra trouble, and no one likes that."
+
+"If you could tell me where to get a bit of red flannel I'll make one
+for you now," said Anne.
+
+"The bag's here," said the woman, her face drawn and her mouth gasping.
+She tried to feel under the pillow.
+
+"Lie you still. I'll get it," said Anne. She drew out a bag of red
+flannel, evidently the remnant of an old flannel petticoat, for the tuck
+still remained like a grotesque attempt at ornament across the middle of
+the bag. The salt slid heavily to one end as Anne drew it out.
+
+"The oven's still warm," she said opening the door and putting her hand
+inside. "I'll just slip it in for a few minutes."
+
+"Well," said the woman, "there's not many cares about a bad-tempered,
+bed-ridden woman, but you're one of them that's been kind. I don't _say_
+much, but I _know_."
+
+"You make me nearly cry," said Anne, drawing the bag out of the oven and
+feeling its temperature. Holding it against her chest, as if to keep in
+its heat, she drew back the bed-clothes and unbuttoned the flannelette
+night-gown of the invalid, laying the poultice against her wasted side.
+The woman gave a sob and lay still for a minute.
+
+"It's a lot better," she said.
+
+"Perhaps you could sleep a bit," suggested Anne.
+
+"I'd like a cup o' tea," said the woman, "but it's a lot of trouble.
+Can't you look where you're going!" she broke out impatiently, as Anne,
+turning quickly, caught her foot in the chair, overturning it with a
+crash. "You made me jump so."
+
+"Well, I am sorry," said Anne, humbly.
+
+"Never mind," said the bed-ridden woman, her impatience exhausted. At
+that moment the door opened with a bang and a stout, middle-aged woman
+entered noisily.
+
+"What a noise you make!" said the bed-ridden woman peevishly. "You're
+getting too fat."
+
+"Fat people's better-tempered than thin ones," retorted the other
+carelessly. "Good evening, Miss Hilton! Has she been telling you all
+she's got to put up with more than other people?"
+
+"Well now," returned Anne with decisive heartiness, "I don't think we've
+been speaking about herself at all, except to express gratitude for a
+very little service that I did her. We've spent a pleasant hour
+together."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said the woman, going to the fire and rattling
+the irons noisily between the bars.
+
+"You noisy thing. Can't you make a less din!" said the bed-ridden woman,
+biting her lip.
+
+"Other people's got to live in the house besides you," said the woman.
+"If you want so much attention, you know where you can get it."
+
+The bed-ridden woman shut her eyes and lay still at this threat of the
+workhouse, that confession of failure, in a world where ability to work
+becomes a kind of morality, and lack of physical strength to procure the
+means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden
+against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one
+most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come
+to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or
+more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be
+acknowledged publicly a failure.
+
+When this last pride is taken away, there sometimes appears a kind of
+patience which is not really that of despair, but which is nearer to
+that attained by great saints after long effort and discipline--the
+mental equilibrium which is the result of desire quenched, of
+expectation for further good for oneself at an end. What the saints
+attain by a painful and mortifying life, the poor receive as a gift from
+the tender mercies of the world, receiving also the passionate pity of
+Jesus, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."
+
+"If she could only work as she used, and be 'beholden' to nobody." She
+sighed and lay still, her mind an abyss of bitterness.
+
+The stout newcomer, step-daughter to the unfortunate woman, turned to
+Anne, jerking her head backwards to indicate the other woman in bed with
+an expression of satisfaction which said quite plainly, "That's the way
+to settle _her_." Then she ignored her totally, except that she moved as
+noisily, and spoke as loudly as she could.
+
+She was a rather pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an obstinate
+mouth. There was, so to speak, "no nonsense about her." She was one of
+those women of coarse fibre, whose chief diversion consists in annoying
+the sensibilities of others. They exist more frequently in the
+middleclass than among the poor, whose common dependence teaches them
+forebearance if not pity, but they exist also among the poor, more
+terrible if not more merciless. Such women almost always find material
+to torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative,
+sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant
+wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a
+self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure
+in hatred, which appears outwardly as good-humour.
+
+The indignation which always awoke in Anne at the sight and expression
+of injustice flared suddenly upwards. Facing the still satisfied woman,
+who now drew a chair across the flagged floor with the screech of its
+wooden legs upon the stone, she said:
+
+"How can _you_, a strong, active woman, take pleasure in worrying a sick
+and ailing fellow-creature. Suppose you were in her place. How can you
+expect to find mercy from God in the day of judgment if you have no
+mercy on others?"
+
+The woman stared incredulously, and then broke into a loud laugh.
+
+"And I thought you was such a quiet piece. Fancy spitting out like
+that." Then her brutality of temper asserted itself.
+
+"_I've_ nothing to do with the day of judgment. I don't see why I should
+be called to look after a woman with the temper of a vixen that wants to
+be a spoiled darling. The Union's made for such as her and she ought to
+be in it. It's just her spite that keeps her out."
+
+"Have you no pity?" said Anne. "_You_ may not always be strong and
+able-bodied. The day may come when _you_ need help and comfort, and how
+will you deserve it from God, if you torment your unfortunate sister in
+this way!"
+
+The woman's answer was a laugh.
+
+"You're as queer as they make 'em," she said, with a slow, impudent
+stare from Anne's out-of-date immense bonnet to her elastic-sided boots,
+as if looking for a point at which she might begin to torment a new
+victim. But Anne's sensibilities lay far beyond her understanding.
+
+"Have you wore out all your grandmother's clothes yet?" she demanded
+with her contemptuous, impudent look, "you're a proper figure of fun in
+that bonnet!"
+
+"Be quiet and be done with it, you coarse lump!" interrupted the
+bed-ridden woman in so loud and authoritative a tone that the woman
+turned slowly and stupidly round to look at her. "This time next week
+I'll be in the Union and you'll have no one to torment. You can make
+arrangements when you like, the sooner the better."
+
+"All right! it can't be too soon for me," retorted the woman with her
+incessant, stupid laugh, which this time did not hide the fact that she
+had received a shock at this taking of affairs out of her hands. "But
+perhaps you'd rather I didn't do it since you've so many friends."
+
+"No, you needn't bother yourself about me," said the bed-ridden woman.
+"I'll have done with you soon."
+
+"_Couldn't_ you?" said Anne, turning to face the woman and speaking with
+great earnestness, and as always, when moved, with great preciseness.
+"_Couldn't_ you for this last week do your best to be considerate and
+kind? A week is not a very long portion of eternity. It is so painful to
+think of two people separating for ever in hatred. You _have_ one week
+left. Could you not make the most of it?"
+
+"It's a week too much!" said the woman, with careless brutality. "Are
+you always so fond of making long calls?" she added, staring at Anne.
+
+Anne turned to the bed-ridden woman, saying, "On Thursday I shall be
+going in to market and I'll call at the Union Infirmary and see the
+Matron. I think you'll be better looked after there and have peace and
+quietness."
+
+"It couldn't be worse than this," said the woman. "I think perhaps I've
+been foolish to stay here so long."
+
+"I'll see the Matron for you on Thursday," said Anne. "Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, and thank you," returned the sick woman, turning wearily away
+from her fellow-lodger and settling down to the silence and endurance in
+which she habitually lived.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs Wright," said Anne to the other woman as she opened
+the door. The woman stared in a way meant to put Anne out of
+countenance, making no reply, while Anne, going outside, shut the door
+gently behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+For three months Anne had prayed constantly for Jane. Living alone in an
+orderly and quiet house with one window open towards her Invisible
+Friend, she had spoken with Him of her desire for Jane's recovery, until
+it appeared to her that He too must yearn as she did for this definite
+thing. Elizabeth Richardson had been removed to the Infirmary and was at
+peace, so that Anne's thoughts were of little else than Jane and her
+re-instatement in the country. It was not the chagrin of the failure of
+her visit to Burton's house which troubled her, but her helplessness. If
+she went again she could do no more than plead as she had done before.
+But it might be that the girl had by this time felt her need of outside
+friends. It was fully three months ago. As Anne was returning from the
+nearest village one afternoon in the solemn winter sunshine, she
+determined suddenly to pay a second visit to Jane. And she would try to
+be less hard on Burton, which would perhaps draw Jane to her. It might
+be that she needed a friend by now. Half a mile from her own cottage she
+came to a three-cornered patch of the way where several roads met. By
+one side was a pond with two posts painted white as a mark for drivers
+at night-time. The sloping edge of the pond was trodden into mud by the
+feet of horses stopping to drink, and as Anne, crossing the road to
+avoid the mud, arrived opposite one of the posts, she saw a bill posted
+upon it announcing a sale.
+
+"I must see what it is," she said. "Perhaps it's something for Mary."
+She read the heading. "Sale of Bankrupt Stock."
+
+"It seems to be nothing but horses," she said as she read the list. Two
+men carrying forks on their shoulders came at that moment from the
+Ashley Road and joined her, looking over her shoulder at the bill.
+
+"I heard about it this morning," said one. "I thought he couldn't last
+long at that rate. It was always spending and making a show."
+
+"There was someone else in it," said the other. "They say Burton's done
+a moonlight flitting and gone to America."
+
+Anne, whose thoughts had been engrossed by a new opportunity for Mary,
+became aware of calamity of a new sort. She turned to the men.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked, though even as she spoke she had grasped
+it all. The man, a young, fair-haired man of twenty-six, with great
+breadth of chest and long straight legs, answered with the willingness
+of a countryman to spread news.
+
+"Why, that Richard Burton's gone bankrupt and made a bolt. They say
+it'll take the house as well as the horses to pay it all up. The
+bailiffs was in to-day as I passed taking it all down. It's a bad job
+for _somebody_, I heard," he said winking at the other man. He, glancing
+at Anne, looked embarrassed and pretended not to see.
+
+"Can either of you tell me where the girl who was living there has gone?
+Is she still there?" she asked the latter man.
+
+"Not she!" answered the former.
+
+"They say she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man.
+"She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.
+It's a good eight miles of a walk."
+
+"Do her good," said the younger man; and they began to discuss the list
+and quality of the horses for sale.
+
+Anne walked on. It had come then, and sooner than it was looked for.
+Jane's fancy-work and "lady-like" life seemed like the play-things of a
+baby by the side of a scaffold, as helpless and as foolish.
+
+"I was going to the Union to-morrow anyway for Elizabeth Richardson,"
+said Anne, as she unlocked her door, trying not to see Jane Evans
+walking all alone, with no new house or protector, through the darkness
+of which she was afraid, to the formidable iron gate of the Union.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+In the afternoon of the following day Anne entered the common room of
+the Infirmary. In this large room, with high windows spotlessly clean, a
+fireplace at one end in which a sufficiently generous fire was burning,
+and before which were two wicker cradles; women for the most part in
+extreme old age of body rather than years were sitting in every possible
+attitude on the wooden seat which ran round the wall on three sides of
+the room. At the far end, near the fire, a blind woman was knitting
+men's stockings. Two very old women sat with their chins in their hands
+and heads bent, motionless, neither hearing nor seeing anything outward.
+Three others, their white pleated caps nodding at different angles, were
+making aprons. A young woman with a healthy but sullen face was nursing
+a large baby. Another, younger, but early-developed, as girls are in the
+country, sat nearest the fire, a shawl half off her shoulders, her foot
+rocking one of the cradles. There seemed no trace of coarseness in her
+face, refined now by illness and days indoors; only an infinite
+ignorance and bewilderment. She seemed not more than seventeen. The tone
+of the Matron in speaking to her was not unkind, but had in it the
+mixture of impatience and contempt, which sensible middle-aged women
+have for foolish girls who can't look after themselves. There was, too,
+unknown to herself, for she would have looked upon herself as a kind
+woman, a slight feeling of satisfaction that, though the silly girl was
+sheltered in this place and everyone was kind to her, she'd find out
+what it meant to get herself in that state when she went outside. In the
+meantime, being really kind, if sensible, she said.
+
+"Keep your shawl over your shoulders, Maggie. You mustn't catch cold
+your first day out of bed!"
+
+"She doesn't look fit for much does she?" said the other young mother
+contemptuously. "Ten days and then to be as washed out as that."
+
+One of the old women, who had remained motionless, got up slowly and
+stretched out her hand, pointing at the girl vindictively.
+
+"That girl's next the fire! That was _my_ place before she come."
+
+"Oh, you're all right, mother," said the Matron cheerfully, pushing her
+gently back to her seat. The old woman mumbled to herself as she sank
+back into the same stupor, in the midst of which she brooded on her
+grievance. The other old woman began in a hard, high voice without
+raising her head:
+
+"That's the way they do in this place. Push out the old ones."
+
+"Now you two don't begin talking and grumbling," interrupted the Matron
+decidedly. "You're as well treated as anyone else."
+
+At this moment Anne made a movement in the corner where she had stood
+unnoticed. From every bench withered hands were thrust at her, some
+grasping her arm, some her mantle, some were held open at her face.
+
+"Give me a ha'penny--just a ha'penny!" screamed a dozen old voices. "A
+ha'penny! Spare a ha'penny!"
+
+"Now then," interrupted the Matron, taking two of the women and leading
+them back to their places. "What good would a ha'penny do to _any_ of
+you?" She touched two other women, and they retired grumbling to their
+seats, all except one tall, bony old creature, with a frightful palsy,
+who kept hold of Anne by the arm, repeating in a voice which was more
+like an angry scream than the whisper which her deaf ears imagined it to
+be.
+
+"Those other women'll all beg from you. They'd take the bread out of
+anybody's mouth. Give me a ha'penny Missis, only a ha'penny," and her
+avaricious, bony hand pinched Anne's arm tightly as though she already
+clutched the coin. The Matron, using both her own hands, unfastened her
+hands as she might have done a knot. The old woman shook with rage and
+palsy, and fell rather than sat down on her seat under the flowering
+geraniums in the window.
+
+"Now, I _knew_ there was somebody strange in the room," said the blind
+woman. "Just let me have a look at her."
+
+She tucked her knitting needles into her apron-string. She had been for
+many years in the workhouse infirmary, where she knitted and repaired
+the thick stockings worn by the inmates. She had become a kind of pride
+of the ward. Beyond the misfortune of her blindness she had no defect,
+and her mind was alert and cheerful.
+
+"She calls it 'looking,'" said the Matron with a laugh. "Just you see
+her knitting, Miss Hilton. She's re-footing those stockings. See if you
+can tell where she's patched them." She took up a bright blue stocking
+from the bench. The blind woman took the other end and felt it
+carefully.
+
+"That's not _my_ work," she said with amused contempt. "It's too like
+patchwork. Here's mine."
+
+Anne took the stocking and looked. "It's beautiful," she said. "I could
+never have told there was a join." The blind woman's hand touched her
+arm and wandered slowly upwards, over her face and neck and head.
+
+"I've not seen you before, have I?" she said. "No, I don't think I
+have."
+
+The Matron had already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind
+woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered
+inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women,
+the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman,
+to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned for ever.
+
+She followed the Matron into the courtyard. Several men in bottle-green
+corduroys loitered there, and a tiny old woman shrivelled and imbecile,
+who ran to Anne the moment she appeared, holding her skirts high to her
+knees, skipping on one foot and then on the other.
+
+"I'll dance for a ha'penny! I'll dance for a ha'penny!" she whined.
+
+"Go on! dance, old lady," said one of the men who was carrying an empty
+drawer, which had just been scrubbed, to dry in the sunshine of the
+yard. He set it down, end upwards, and stood expectantly. The two other
+men paused also.
+
+"Go on! Aren't you going to begin?" said one of them.
+
+"She's a funny old thing, this one," said the Matron to Anne, stopping
+to watch, as the old woman, holding her skirts to her knees, her clogs
+clacking, and with a smile of imbecility fixed on her face, began to hop
+from one thin leg to the other, stamping slowly round on her heels in
+the artless manner of a child. All at once she stopped, and, pulling up
+her apron, put a corner of it in her mouth, hanging her head and
+giggling.
+
+"They're all looking at me, all them men," she giggled. "Fancy me
+dancing with all them men looking." One of the men broke into a laugh,
+which was changed immediately into an attack of asthma.
+
+"Dance again, old lady!" called a younger man, with the effects of hard
+drinking visible in his face.
+
+The shrunken and pitiful figure revolved several times, stamping on her
+heels, then stopped with the same grotesque coquetry.
+
+"She's a funny old thing, isn't she?" said the Matron to Anne. "She
+gives us many a laugh."
+
+"It's too humbling to look at. I cannot laugh," said Anne. "Poor old
+thing, to have come to that."
+
+
+"She doesn't know, you know," said the Matron. "You're wasting your
+pity. They're most of them better off in the infirmary here than they
+were outside. You've no idea what a dirty state _she_ was found in for
+one."
+
+"It's the painfulness of such a sight--age without honour," repeated
+Anne.
+
+"I've no time to think of that sort of thing," replied the Matron, as
+they began to ascend the wide stairs to the bed rooms, a woman, who was
+scrubbing the steps with sand, standing aside to let them pass.
+
+Several women were sitting up in bed, with starched night-caps nodding
+at different angles. Over the fireplace was a lithograph of Queen
+Victoria giving the Bible as the source of England's greatness to an
+Indian potentate, and beneath it, sitting very still in a large
+armchair, was Jane Evans staring into the fire. She was very quiet,
+broken, and helplessly docile. Her stillness was alarming. She seemed to
+be already dead in spirit. Even the child soon to be separated from her
+scarcely concerned her. She was quite neat. Thin and fatigued as her
+face was, she did not appear to have suffered greatly in health.
+
+"Jane, my dear, I've not come to blame you," began Anne, "I've come to
+see if there's anything I can do to make it easier for you to face the
+future and what's coming. I only heard of you coming here by accident or
+you shouldn't have been left alone. You mustn't think everybody's
+forsaken you and you've no friend left to you. It's often the case that
+you know your true friends in trouble," she continued sententiously.
+"And if only you could find the best Friend of all now when you need Him
+most." Her prim phrasing changed to earnestness. "There was a woman once
+that they dragged out in front of everybody for evil-doing. But He
+wouldn't have it. He put them to silence, and then when she was all
+alone with Him He showed her how tender He was to them that do wrong. If
+you only knew Him and His kindness, and how He can understand any kind
+of trouble. There's a good deal you think none of us can understand, but
+_He_ can if you tell Him." She wiped her eyes. Jane did not seem to have
+heard.
+
+"I don't want to worry you," continued Anne; "you've got a good deal to
+bear and to think of, and you've got to keep up for the sake of the
+child. He'll need you to be father and mother both. Matron thinks you'll
+be better here for the present, but you mustn't give up and think you're
+to stay in the Union all your life. But try to think of the child, and
+how God'll help you if you try to do the right."
+
+It was like speaking to a person a very long way off, and Anne desisted.
+
+"She's very quiet, isn't she?" said the Matron. "That'll have to break
+down soon. The doctor thinks she'll be all right when the child comes.
+The labour'll give her a shock and rouse her. She comes of a better
+class than the usual ones. It's the disgrace she can't get over. She'll
+do anything she's told to do. I sometimes get tired of making the other
+women do as they're told, but I wish sometimes she'd be a bit more like
+them. You'll be ready for your tea soon, won't you, Jane?" she added in
+the cheerful professional tone intended to deceive the sick.
+
+"Yes, please," said Jane, without looking round.
+
+"Here's Miss Hilton come all this way to see you," said the Matron a
+little more sharply. "Can't you say anything to her? you may not have so
+many friends come to see you as you expect, you know."
+
+There was no echo from the abyss of misery in which Jane was sunken. She
+neither replied nor stirred. With the flight of Burton all hope had been
+killed within her; and without hope she had fallen like a bird with one
+wing broken. She was defenceless, and her misery laid open to all. She
+could only keep still, lest it should be tortured by being handled.
+
+"You must think of the child, you know," said the Matron. "He'll depend
+on you altogether, and you mustn't give in like this. She doesn't care,"
+she added to Anne as Jane still sat without a tremor of understanding.
+"It's a bad sign. I can't even rouse her with speaking of Burton. She's
+given up hope of him. It's like as if something's dead inside her.
+Doctor says it's shock."
+
+"I should say it's temper," said a voice from one of the beds. "Petting
+and spoiling all day long." The voice came from an old woman, with a
+soft, withered face and infantile blue eyes.
+
+"Now then, where did you hide that thermometer?" said the Matron, with a
+good-natured laugh. "You know, Miss Hilton, this old lady's a famous
+hand at taking anything that's about, and keeping it for herself. She
+doesn't call it stealing, don't you see. Why, the other day she was
+having her temperature taken, and when the nurse turned her head away
+there was no thermometer to be seen. 'What have you done with it?' she
+says. 'Why, I declare, I must have etten it,' says this old lady. What
+do you think of that?"
+
+The old woman turned over in bed, and her innocent eyes closed with a
+patient expression.
+
+"I don't know what people are allowed to come talking here for when it
+isn't visiting day," she said. "Nobody can go to sleep for such
+talking."
+
+Anne sat down beside Jane and began to sing--
+
+"I was a wandering sheep;
+I did not love the fold."
+
+The Matron watched with an air of curiosity. Jane did not cease staring
+into the fire.
+
+"It's no use, Miss Hilton. I daresay the old lady's a bit right. There's
+a slice of temper in it too. But we can't waste all day over her."
+
+Anne took Jane's hand. "I'll come and see you again in a little while,"
+she said. "And remember, there's always One that'll hear all that you
+can't tell to any one else. He's with you here waiting to hear and help
+you." She lingered. There was no response. The Matron walked briskly
+towards the door.
+
+"Well, the old ones are easier to manage," she said. She led the way
+downstairs and left Anne on the doorstep of the big front door. The
+porter shut it with a clang.
+
+The pony was pawing the gravel outside the gate and pulling hard with
+his head. He backed the cart vigorously into the road as Anne untied his
+head, and set off at a good pace towards the town.
+
+"I'll go up to-morrow and see Mrs Hankworth," said Anne. "She'll perhaps
+be able to say something to help."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mrs Hankworth lived at one of the largest farms in the country, some
+three miles away from Anne Hilton's cottage. The farmstead was, contrary
+to the usual custom, not placed near the high road for convenience, but
+on an eminence in the midst of its own lands. A road had been cut to it
+between cornfields, so that in the time of springing corn a man walking
+on this road seemed to be wading to the knees in a green undulating sea,
+which had risen and submerged the hill. The farm itself was large, with
+a garden unusually well kept, a sign that the mistress counted in the
+establishment. Old rose trees grew almost to the roof of the wide
+building, and the thick turf bore token to the richness of the soil.
+
+Inside, the passage, the stairs, the rooms, were all spacious, and, in
+spite of the rattling of cans and the sound of voices in the kitchen,
+the place retained an atmosphere of quiet and tranquillity, not of
+isolation or desertion, but of that comfortable restfulness which one
+recalls as a child, when, having been ill, one is left at home when the
+others have gone to school, and remains in a quiet house, watching
+contentedly the leisurely cheerful movements of one's mother.
+
+Mrs Hankworth, the mistress of the best farm in the country, was an
+enormously stout but very active woman. Her husband, a man half her size
+and an excellent farmer, exhibited only one trait of nervousness, and
+that on her account. If she went to market without him he was uneasy
+until she came back lest something should have happened to her. In all
+the fifteen years of their married life they had never slept out of
+their own bed, and they had had no honeymoon.
+
+With the contentment of a woman of sound health and of active useful
+life, who was fully aware that her good sense and management were as
+necessary to the farm, her husband and twelve children, as his own
+knowledge of farming, she looked upon this as a just sense of her own
+value, as indeed it was, and the reward of the confidence which she so
+completely deserved from her husband. She was generous to her poorer
+neighbours even when they cheated her. Not taking it very deeply to
+heart nor expecting much otherwise, she was yet able to remember that
+her lot was an affluent one compared with theirs, and was ready to
+excuse even while being perfectly aware of human fraility. Who, when she
+had sent to an old woman of the village who lived discontentedly on such
+pickings as she could induce her neighbours to leave her, and who had
+constantly profited by the liberality of this well-established mistress,
+a ticket for a large tea, and was informed by some officious person that
+the husband also had procured a ticket at her expense, said, "He's a
+poor old crab-stick. It'll do him no harm to have a good tea for once."
+
+She was a contented woman, entirely satisfied with the position which
+life had allotted to her, a position in which all her faculties had full
+scope, and were to the full appreciated by those with whom she had most
+to do, and being of a really kind heart she was a good friend to the
+poor. When Anne arrived at the door of the dairy, she found its mistress
+seated before a tin pail containing a mass of butter which she was
+dividing into prints. With white sleeves and apron, a bucket of scalding
+water on one side of her and a pail of cold on the other, her ample
+knees spread apart for balance as she sat on a low chair, her bulky and
+capable hands moved with decision and practice about her work. She
+looked up as Anne appeared in the doorway, but her hands did not cease
+working.
+
+"It's not often we have to do this," she said, "but they sent down word
+that there was no milk wanted yesterday, so we had to set to."
+
+"It looks nice butter," said Anne, with the judgment of a connoisseur.
+
+"_You_ ought to know what good butter is," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I've
+just been having a laugh over that Peter Molesworth. He wrote on his
+account, "17 pints." Did you ever hear such a thing! It took me quite a
+long time to know what 17 pints was. Him and his 17 pints!"
+
+"He's not very clever, Peter," said Anne, "but I don't know what his
+poor mother would do without him."
+
+"No," returned Mrs Hankworth, "he's hard-working if he's stupid, and
+that's better than the other way round."
+
+"Mrs Hankworth," began Anne, "I know what a good friend you've always
+been to those that have got into trouble, and I came to ask your advice
+about that poor Jane Evans."
+
+"I just heard of it the other day," replied Mrs Hankworth, letting the
+butter-prints sink on her lap. "I don't know how it was I came to know
+of it so late. I'd no idea till the other day that she'd ever gone to
+live with that Burton. I wonder how she got acquainted with him. There's
+no men goes about their house. What's she doing now?"
+
+"She's in the Union," said Anne, "and she sits there without speaking,
+staring into the fire. Nobody can rouse her. She seems to have no life
+left in her. It's pitiful to see her, and to think of what's coming to
+her."
+
+"She's been foolish," said Mrs Hankworth, "and I expect she'll find
+plenty to make her pay for her foolishness. But I see no reason why she
+shouldn't do all the better for a lesson. She'll have to work though.
+There'll be no sitting round in silk blouses doing fancy-work. You
+needn't be troubled about her moping when she's got the baby. They don't
+leave you much time for that," she added with a laugh of retrospection.
+"But your first baby's as much trouble as ten. If she can earn a living
+when she comes out she'll be better without that Burton. He's no better
+than a child's balloon. He's up, and you prick him with a pin and he's
+down! She's provided in the Union, I suppose?"
+
+"I think so, since they never asked anything about it," said Anne.
+
+"What sort of a place is it, Miss Hilton?" asked Mrs Hankworth in the
+tone of one who might be enquiring after a prison or worse.
+
+"They'd a nice big fire," said Anne, "and until you came to look at the
+people, it looked quite comfortable. But when you came to look at those
+poor things, and thought that that was all they had to expect, it made
+your heart ache."
+
+"She's a good matron I've heard," said Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"She's a kind woman," returned Anne, heartily, "and I suppose it's a
+good thing they've got such a place to shelter them. But it seems a poor
+end somehow, and not a place for young people. There seems to be no hope
+in it, and yet it's clean, and they've got good food."
+
+"Other people's bread doesn't taste like your own to them that's been
+used to having any," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I expect, if you've never
+had any of your own, you're glad to get anything. I suppose Burton's out
+of the country."
+
+"Nobody seems to know rightly," said Anne. "Jane says not a word. I
+don't suppose she really knows anything."
+
+"She'll come to see that she's better without him," said Mrs Hankworth,
+taking up the prints and working the butter emphatically. "But she must
+work like the rest of us. It's generally the long clothes that gets left
+over," she added, "the short ones get worn out by some of them, but I'll
+look and see what I can find. It'll be rather nice to be looking out
+baby-things again. There's nothing you miss more than a baby, when
+you've had one or other about for a good many years. But she'd never do
+any good with that Burton about."
+
+It seemed not so much the fact that a girl would give up her reputation
+for a man, that impressed Mrs Hankworth unpleasantly, but that she would
+give it into the keeping of _such_ a man. She did not expect impossible
+things of anybody. No one belonging to her had ever made a slip, and
+such a happening seemed to be so remote a possibility for anyone
+"connected," that she could spare great charity for the rest of the
+world. Nor did she believe in "driving people." If a girl had made a
+mistake, that was no reason why everyone else should make another, and
+her good sense revolted against a perpetually drawn-out punishment for
+any fault. Her disgust at this fault, not very deep, being submerged
+almost as it arose, by the immediate necessity for doing something, and
+a reminiscent understanding of the timidity and dread with which the
+first child-bearing might be regarded by an ignorant and forsaken girl.
+Her position as the reputable and capable mother of a family being
+unassailable, no one could consider that kindness to the girl implied
+any countenancing of her offence. Anne, puzzled and baffled by the
+things which she had seen, felt herself in a larger sphere which could
+consider the fact of birth as a small matter for everyday occurrence and
+preparation, happen however it might.
+
+"You can't do anything by worrying, Miss Hilton, you know," said Mrs
+Hankworth. "You've got to wait. There's nothing _anybody_ can do but
+wait. There's our John. I think he gets more nervous every child we
+have. I always say to him that he can't help anything by worrying, and
+in any case _I'm_ the person who's got to go through it; but it makes no
+difference. He can't be satisfied till he sees me walking about again.
+The girl'll be quite right when she's got the baby to work for. She's
+nothing to do now but wait and think about it and herself. You'll see
+when she's up and about again she'll be another thing. I hope the baby's
+a boy. It'll be sooner forgotten about if he is."
+
+"I'm afraid," said Anne, growing expansive beneath the good sense which
+attacked every practical side of the matter, and dissolved difficulties
+as soon as they arose, "that she'll get little work to do when she comes
+out. People talk unkindly, and say that you must make a difference
+between her and other girls."
+
+"Oh! there'll always be some clever folk like that," said Mrs Hankworth,
+drily. "The difference that anyone can see if they use their eyes is,
+that _she'll_ have a child to keep and _they_ won't. She's no idea where
+she'll go, I suppose?"
+
+"She doesn't seem to know where she is now," replied Anne. "It's
+terrible to see anybody drinking such bitter waters as that poor girl.
+She thinks we're all against her, and I'm a religious old maid. So she
+shuts herself up, and doesn't say a word."
+
+"Don't you worry, Miss Hilton," said Mrs Hankworth; "she'll look for
+friends when the baby comes. She'll stir herself for his sake, if she
+won't for her own. We're going to have Mr Charter to stop to-morrow
+night. You'll be going to the Home Missions, won't you?" she said, as if
+all had been said that could be.
+
+"It'll be a great treat to hear Mr Charter," said Anne. "He's such a
+kind way of talking about everybody. It's a season of grace and sweet
+delight when he comes."
+
+"He's got such a way with children and young people," said Mrs
+Hankworth, steering away from "experiences." "There's my big lad
+William! He'll follow him round from place to place till he's out of
+walking distance. 'What do you do it for, William?' I says to him, and
+he stands on one leg and then on the other, and says 'I don't know,' he
+says. 'I like hearing him,' he says. He's a great attraction for him."
+
+"I hope there'll be a good meeting," said Anne, rising to go. "Don't you
+get up. It's been a great relief to me to have a chat with you."
+
+"I'll go down myself and have a look at Jane," said Mrs Hankworth.
+"Perhaps in a week or so she'll have got a bit used to her position, and
+see that she can't go on like that long."
+
+"It'll be a real work of charity," said Anne earnestly. "Young people
+think a lot of married women. She thinks, you know, that I'm an old maid
+and don't know anything about it."
+
+"Well, I'll go," said Mrs Hankworth, gratified. "Good morning, then. We
+shall see you at the meeting."
+
+"God willing," replied Anne, and turned to go, comforted by the
+confidence and ample views of this well-to-do woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The little grey chapel at the corner of two roads was lighted and
+already hot with steam on the windows. The wooden pews, set on steps
+which rose evenly to the window-sill at the back of the tiny building,
+seemed to precipitate themselves upon the mean wooden pulpit. Three
+benches set endwise to the platform served for the choir, and there was
+a small harmonium. The girl (a daughter of a prosperous farmer) who
+played it was already in her place, and a group of children had taken
+possession of the front pew. These were playing under the book-rest and
+frequent giggles burst from their number. At last one of them threw a
+hat so much too high that it dropped into the next pew, and a
+preter-natural silence fell upon the group, who all wriggled themselves
+erect on their seats and looked apprehensively round. The girl at the
+harmonium bent back to look at the clock and then pulled out her stops
+and began to play. The door clicked, and burst open to admit a cold
+breeze and a big farm boy in his Sunday clothes, whose head and
+shoulders came in before the rest of him was ready to follow, and who
+held on to the door as he entered as if for protection. Every child
+turned its head and watched him while he ducked his head on to the
+book-board for a second, and then sat upright, adjusting his neck into
+his collar. The farmer, whose daughter played the organ, came next with
+his wife, who made her way with an air of ownership to her seat, and
+having covered her face with her hand for a moment, untied her
+bonnet-strings and fanned her hot face. Every other moment now the door
+burst open, and admitted someone from the dark blue outside--a group of
+clumsy youths who flung themselves upon the pew doors as if they had
+formed the deliberate purpose of keeping them out, some girls in their
+finery nodding to acquaintances as they entered, some labourers in
+unaccustomed clothes, and last Mary Colton who walked with her
+calculating step to the nearest choir bench. Then a larger group
+hesitated at the door and the evangelist entered, mounting the pulpit
+with a confident tread, the minister taking a seat in the choir benches
+and the stewards sitting behind him. There was some whispering between
+the evangelist and the minister, then the evangelist remained seated and
+the minister rose and gave out a hymn--
+
+"Rescue the perishing, care for the dying."
+
+Those who did not know the words knew and shouted the chorus. It was a
+rousing beginning. As the hymn came to a final shout, Anne Hilton in a
+black bonnet and old-fashioned mantle with a bead fringe at the
+shoulders, with one black cotton glove half on and the other wholly off,
+entered the chapel and sat just within the door.
+
+The evangelist glanced round his congregation and found himself able to
+believe the report that the country districts were apathetic. He was an
+ugly little man with straggling brown whiskers and unruly hair, and had
+no great appearance of illumination, yet he was a true evangelist,
+labouring hard to pull souls from the pit of social and moral
+corruption. That was why he had been sent to the task of addressing the
+country congregations. He was not working with an eye to romance, nor
+for the glory which comes to those who work in the slums. He thought
+with the thoughts of those among whom he worked. He had known what it
+was to be hungry. He had known the crucifixion of standing idle when
+every limb ached to be working. He knew that pregnant women are
+sometimes beaten and kicked by the clogs of their husbands. He knew what
+little children felt like when they cried from cold. His heart was
+incessantly burning, but he had worked now for fifteen years and it was
+no longer burning with indignation. He had found others, not Christians,
+as he thought, who would be indignant, who would plan with pity and
+sympathy and with more efficiency and foresight that he could ever
+control, build up and organise ways of escape for much that he saw. He
+could meet them too. But his work was to understand, and from his
+understanding to attract and heal. The others had nothing to say to a
+woman whose husband died, or whose son became crippled at work, to a man
+who lost his right hand, or a girl whose sweetheart was drowned two days
+before the wedding, and these things were always happening.
+
+He looked round. He thought of his various speeches. It was no use
+telling these people how many more women were arrested for drunkenness
+in the streets this year than last, nor how many families lived in
+cellars, nor how many men were without work. Their imaginations, never
+straying into large numbers, would be blank. He would tell them stories
+of men and women like themselves, and of how _they_ managed when
+calamity came. He had sheaves of such stories and a ready tongue. He
+might strike a spark of understanding. His voice, as he began to speak,
+belied his appearance. It was sonorous and beautiful and it immediately
+controlled his audience.
+
+"My dear friends! Just round the corner from the house where I live,
+there's a street called 'Paradise Street,' but I can tell you as I came
+along here this morning in the lanes by the chapel, it seemed to me a
+good deal more like Paradise than that street. It was a treat to smell
+hawthorn hedges again, and to see some clear sky again, after the
+foundries of stone-work, and I don't know what it is that makes people
+give names like Angel Meadow, Paradise Row, Greenfield Street to the
+dirtiest and smelliest streets in all the town. But I've got some very
+good friends in this particular Paradise Street I was talking of, and if
+they don't get an abundant entrance into the Paradise of our Saviour
+when their time comes, I've mistaken His loving-kindness very sadly.
+
+"Now, you'd hardly think that an old woman could be very happy living in
+a cellar, without even a proper window to put a plant in, and six steps
+to come up and down every time she went out and in, and drunken men
+cursing and blaspheming up above in the street! Well! I'm going to tell
+you a tale of one of the happiest old women I know, but I'm afraid it's
+got to be about a day on which she wasn't happy at all.
+
+"Her name's Jane Clark, and she lives in that cellar I'm speaking of on
+2s. 6d. a week she has from the parish. She's a widow, and some of you
+women know what that means. She pays 1s. 3d. for her share of the
+cellar, for you know in towns such as I come from, we're building so
+many factories, and railway sheds, and what not, that we've no room left
+to live in, so Mrs Clark had to share even her cellar. Many a time when
+I passed down that dreadful street and hadn't time to go in, I'd just
+shout down the cellar and she'd have an answer back in no time. I used
+to go down for a few minutes, just to cheer myself up a bit, for there's
+a lot of discouraging things happen in our sort of work, and she always
+made me ashamed. She was so content, never wanting more and always
+thankful for what she had.
+
+"Well! one day I was in Paradise Street. It was wet and cold, and the
+beer-shops were full of drunken men and women, and even the children
+were shouting foul language.
+
+"'O God,' I said, ready to cry out in the street, 'How long will the
+power of the devil last in this town?' However, I thought of Mrs Clark
+down there, and how she had to live in it all, so I went down the steps,
+and there she was, but I could see that even she had been crying.
+
+"'Now, Mrs Clark!' I said, 'you don't mean to tell me that it's your
+turn to be cheered up?'
+
+"'No!' she said, 'not now! I've got it done already!'
+
+"'Well, now!' I said, 'it's so unusual to see you with those red eyes
+that you make me quite curious. That is, if it's nothing that'll hurt
+you to tell,' I said.
+
+"'No!' she said, 'it'll not hurt me. I'm a silly old woman,' she said.
+She didn't speak for a minute, and then she went on:
+
+"'You know it's my birthday to-day, Mr Charter. I'm sixty this very
+Friday. Well, you know, I always say to myself, "Short commons on
+Friday," I says, "because 1s. 6d. won't last for ever." But somehow, with
+its being my birthday I suppose, and me being sixty, I got it into my
+head that the Lord would perhaps remember me. I've gone on loving Him
+for over forty years, and it did seem hard that on my birthday and me
+sixty, He should have left me with only a crust of bread to my tea.
+However, I sat down to eat my crust, but when I began to say a blessing
+over it, I just began to cry like a silly child. Well, what do you
+think! I'd just taken the first bite, when a child, whose mother I know,
+came running in and put a little newspaper parcel on the table. "Mrs
+Clark," she says, "my mother was out working to-day, and the lady gave
+her a big pot of dripping, so she sent a bit round for your tea!" She
+run straight away, and when that child had gone, I cried a good bit
+more, and then I laughed and laughed, and says over and over again to
+myself, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."'"
+
+The evangelist looked at his watch, and took a drink of water. One or
+two men shifted their attitude from one side to the other, and all
+waited as children do for an absorbing story. A momentary look of
+satisfaction came over the face of the evangelist, and he began again
+with zest.
+
+"I'm afraid the next tale I've got to tell you will take a good deal of
+time." ("We're here to listen," interrupted the minister.)
+
+"Thank you! but you don't know me when I begin to talk! I can hardly
+tell this tale in a public meeting, it comes so near home. It's about a
+friend of mine, we'll call him Joe, and whenever I think about him there
+always comes into my mind the verse we put up over him, 'Blessed is he,
+whosoever shall not be offended in Me,' for Joe hadn't an easy lot. I'll
+tell you what his trade was, though it may make you laugh to hear he was
+a sweep! Now, I don't know what there is about a sweep that makes little
+rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but
+that's the curious fact. As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in
+the street, there's a crowd of little rascals round him at once. I've
+seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black
+face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ''Weep, 'weep!' behind
+him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about
+where he lived. 'Eh! never mind 'em, Mr Charter,' he used to say. 'It
+pleases the children, and it doesn't hurt me.' That was the sort of man
+he was, you see, humble and content.
+
+"He was married, was Joe, to a good, hard-working little wife, and
+they'd had one daughter. She married a young plumber who got work at
+Peterhead, and she had three little boys that their grandfather had
+never seen. He had a photograph of them on the mantleshelf with their
+mother, that she'd sent him one Christmas. Now one day, an idea came
+into his head, that if he put by threepence a week, after a good long
+time, he and his wife could go by a cheap excursion to see those little
+grandchildren and their mother, just once before they died. He prayed
+about it, and then week by week, they began saving up, and the nearer
+they came to having £3, the more real those little grandchildren of
+theirs became. The daughter, you see, wasn't to be told till all was
+ready, and then there was going to be a grand surprise. Well, you know,
+I got as interested in that saving-up as though it was me that was going
+the excursion!
+
+"Now Joe, he had the young men's class in the Sunday-school (all of 'em
+who weren't too high up in world to be taught by the sweep), and one day
+I was looking in at a foundry as I passed, when a young man who was
+standing out at the door said to me, 'Have you heard about Joe?'
+
+"'No!' I said, rather startled, for he's a frail old man at the best,
+'What about him?'
+
+"'Oh, it's nothing wrong with himself,' he said, 'but a week ago when he
+was going out in the early morning--last Saturday was wet, wasn't
+it?--he found one of them poor street girls fallen down in a faint a few
+yards away from his house. He called the missis, and they got her into
+the kitchen and gave her a cup of tea and put her to bed, and she'll
+never get up again, it seems. She was in a consumption too bad for them
+to take her at the hospital, so Joe's keeping her till she wants it no
+more.'
+
+"I said good-bye to the young man and set off straight to see Joe. It
+was afternoon, so he was in when I got there. He didn't say much, but we
+went in to see the girl (she'd got the bed, and the missis slept on the
+sofa and Joe in the armchair), a poor, breathless, young thing, very
+near to death. I began to talk to her of the love of our Saviour, but
+she stopped me. 'Nobody's ever loved _me_!' she said, 'nobody'll care if
+I die or not. I never believed there was any kindness in the world till
+I met these two.' We left her gasping there and went into the kitchen.
+
+"'Poor lost lamb,' said Joe, 'them's sad words to hear.'
+
+"'Sadder to feel they're true about so many others as well,' I said.
+'But, Joe, be open with me,' I said, 'have you spent your savings on
+this poor soul?'
+
+"'Yes!' he said, 'all but a few shillings. She must have milk and
+nourishment, you know.'
+
+"'Yes, I know that,' I said, 'and for the present I can't help you, but
+you mustn't be allowed to spend all you've saved.'
+
+"'Nay,' he said, 'it was a bitter cross the Lord of Glory carried for my
+sins. I can at least do this for one of His lost ones.'
+
+"I knew he'd say that, or something like it, but in my own mind I'd
+determined to get it back again from somewhere for him, but you'll hear
+how I was prevented. I noticed that he looked a bit tired and thin as I
+went out, and I said to him, 'You're not looking very grand! You must
+take care of yourself too."
+
+"'No! I don't feel very well,' he said. 'I've been feeling my age a bit
+lately,' he said laughing.
+
+"'I'll look in to-morrow again,' I said as I went away, and about the
+same time next day I went back to find him sitting still on one side of
+the fireplace and the wife on the other. The girl had died suddenly in
+the night. They'd got the photograph of the little grandchildren, and I
+could see the old woman had been crying.
+
+"'We shan't see them in this world now,' said Joe.
+
+"I thought he was considering the money and began to talk.
+
+"'No!' he said, 'it isn't that. The money was a bit of a sacrifice at
+the time, but I can see now why He asked me for it, and how thankful I
+am, as things have turned out, that I didn't refuse to do that little
+thing for Him. After you'd gone yesterday,' he went on, 'I felt so
+poorly that when the doctor came to see that poor girl I told him what I
+felt like. He looked a bit queer at first, and then he said:
+
+"'"Well, Joe," he said, "I know very well that you're not afraid of
+death, so I won't beat about the bush," he said.
+
+"'Thank you, doctor,' I said.
+
+"'"Of course," he said, "I can't be certain, but I'm afraid it's cancer,
+and I can only say that I'll make it as easy for you as I can." He's a
+kind man, Mr Charter, though he's reckoned rough. Well, you can imagine
+how my first feeling was of thankfulness that I'd been kept in the love
+of God, and not held back for my own pleasure the money he was needing.
+_He_ knew, you see, that I shouldn't want it, and he sent that poor girl
+to be looked after by someone as had money to spare.
+
+  '"I'll bless the Hand that guided,
+  I'll bless the Heart that planned,
+  When throned where glory dwelleth,
+  In Immanuel's Land."
+
+So my summons is come, Mr Charter, though I'd no idea it was so near.'
+
+"There's not a great deal you can say at such times, and my heart was
+very full as I listened to him, though I knew that it was well with him.
+I'm not going to tell you about the way he went through the valley,
+beautiful though it was, but I'll tell you just this before I sit down.
+Those young men of Joe's Sunday class got together and talked, and
+though they were young working-men with not much of a wage, they each
+gave sixpence a week and the old man had ten shillings a week as long as
+he lived, and every time he got the ten shillings he'd cry, and say,
+that he didn't know anybody in the world who'd had so much kindness
+shown to them all their life long as _he_ had."
+
+The evangelist glanced round the chapel as the minister gave out the
+hymn. The heads of the boys were bent over their hymn-books, searching,
+with whispering, among the pages which they turned with wet thumbs.
+There was no apathy now. All the slow sun-burnt faces showed signs of
+having understood. One or two men sat with their eyes fixed on the
+evangelist as if waiting for more. A woman wiped her eyes and sighed.
+There was no restlessness. He had succeeded in making all these people,
+so different from the driven, excited, underfed congregation he
+constantly saw, think from beginning to end of his poor people, and had
+succeeded in making them sorry. He was content.
+
+With that inarticulate desire to come into close contact with those who
+have moved them, which one knows among the poor, many of the
+congregation crowded round the pulpit to shake hands with the evangelist
+who leaned over the side, gripping hand after hand.
+
+"A very good meeting," said the steward, looking round with an air of
+satisfaction.
+
+"You've made me feel very small, sir," said a young man to the
+evangelist. "I've a good deal further to go yet."
+
+"It's true of us all," replied the evangelist, shaking his hand
+fervently.
+
+Anne Hilton had returned from the farmer to whom she had sold one of her
+pigs, and fed the animals, but had not taken off the linen pocket which
+she tied round her waist under her petticoat, and which held her money.
+She was trying to get at it now in the narrow pew. She knocked down a
+hymn-book and several pennies rolled under the feet of the out-going
+congregation. A young woman, with roses in her best hat, nudged another
+and laughed. A big boy stooped to pick up two, and restored them with a
+purple face. Anne replaced them in the linen pocket, shook her skirt
+down again, wrapped something in a piece of an old envelope, and
+beckoning the steward gave it to him, then followed the others through
+the blue square of the doorway. The steward approached the evangelist
+with a rather embarrassed smile.
+
+"Our good sister's a bit queer," he said. "I don't know why she couldn't
+put it in the collection box."
+
+The evangelist unwrapped the envelope and disclosed a sovereign. He
+paused.
+
+"It's a big gift for a poor woman," he said in a moment. "She needed to
+make up her mind a bit first. The collection box came too soon."
+
+"I've no doubt you're right," said the minister. "She's a good woman if
+a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part of her week's
+takings."
+
+"I don't think she ought to have given it," said the steward's wife, who
+was waiting for her husband to drive her home. "She'll need help herself
+if she gives away like that. She always _must_ be different from other
+people."
+
+Anne Hilton was walking home in the cool night air. The stars were so
+clear that they seemed to rest on the fields and tree-tops, and the
+rustle of the sleepless corn passed behind every hedge. She walked with
+a certain carefulness as of one who had unexpectedly escaped a physical
+danger; but the peril from which she was conscious of fleeing was
+spiritual. She had been threatened by avarice which had prompted her to
+give a small sum instead of the sovereign, and the evangelist had been
+right in his intuition. It had needed a good deal of "making up her
+mind" to give away the greater part of her earnings, even under the
+warmth of human appeal. She had conquered, but narrowly, and there was
+as much shame as satisfaction in her heart as she left the building, and
+more than all a great fear lest it should be talked about.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was the first day of spring, the season of swift changes. For the
+first time the sky was lighter than the ground. Its brilliant clouds
+threw heavy shadows on the earth, fugitive shadows which ran with the
+warm wind, alert with colour. Nothing was quiet or hidden. There was not
+yet sufficient life to cover or screen. Everything that had budded had a
+world to itself and could be seen. Radiant, innocent, carolling,
+self-revealing, the movement and action of spring were in the earth. The
+running and glittering water, in winter so vivid a feature of the
+fields, had become insignificant in comparison with the splendid and
+vigorous sky. The noise of the wind, too, beat in one's ears louder than
+the water. One had no time for meditation. One was hurried as the wind,
+speeding as the sunshine. Yet the spring more than any other season is
+the time when one thinks of the generations that pass--perhaps from the
+very transitoriness of the visual images, their evanescence and
+momentary changes reminding one so of the dead. In autumn the passage is
+grave and decorous, like the advance of old age. In spring the image is
+lovely and momentary, like the bright passage of those dead young.
+
+Anne Hilton looked out to see what kind of weather it was for the
+market, and with a sudden pang, she remembered her old father, and how,
+on such a day, he would totter to the open door, and there sit in the
+sunshine, grateful for the same warmth for which his old dog was
+grateful. When she came home from the market, she would make a wreath of
+white holly to put on the grave in which he rested. She thought of him
+vividly, of the pathos of his last illness from which she had vainly
+tried to drive the fear and soften the pain. She remembered his slow
+laugh, and the knocking of his stick on the floor. Memory is keener in
+bright sunshine than in the twilight, in vivid enjoyment more poignant
+than in melancholy. The churchyard, with its unvisited green mound and
+dwelling of the silent, became visible to Anne, and with it the dying
+out of joy which returns with that vision and memory. The house, too,
+was very quiet, as she drew in her head, with the stillness of a place
+once lived in and now empty. She had become accustomed to thinking of
+her father with tranquillity, satisfied to believe him at rest. Now the
+pain of loneliness returned with memory.
+
+She harnessed the pony to the cart, and stowed her baskets safely under
+the seat. She was dressed in a purple merino skirt, kilted thickly, a
+black mantle, with a bead fringe, and an antiquated straw bonnet. Round
+her neck she had folded a man's linen handkerchief, and she had
+elastic-sided boots on her feet. She locked the door, and put the keys
+in her linen pocket tied round her waist under her skirt, and climbing
+up by means of the wheel, seated herself on the board which did duty as
+a seat, and took the reins. "Go on, Polly!" she said, and the pony, with
+a good deal of tossing of head and tail, set off obediently towards the
+high road. The clacking of its feet as it trotted on the hard road
+overwhelmed all other sounds. At the corner of the roads an old woman
+tending a cow nodded to her, and one or two field labourers raised
+themselves to see who was going past, remaining upright and staring
+longer than was necessary to satisfy their curiosity. At an open
+field-gate she had to wait until two heavy wagons, their wheels a mass
+of red, soft earth, had emerged, and turned in the direction of the
+town. She passed them, and for some time met no one. An advancing cart
+soon came in sight, accompanied by a great jangling of cans--a milk-cart
+returning from the station, having sent off its supplies to the town,
+now bringing back its empty cans. It was driven by a man whom Anne knew,
+and, instead of drawing to one side to pass, he reined in his horse as
+if to speak. "Good morning, Miss Hilton," he said. Anne checked her
+horse which had gone a few paces past, and turning in her seat to look
+over her shoulder, answered his greeting. The farmer's horse, impatient
+of this check on the way home, made several attempts to start, and at
+last, being held in by his master and scolded loudly, fell to pawing the
+ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned
+in his seat, and looking back at Anne said:
+
+"I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had
+a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you."
+
+"Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment
+retaking them as the pony had started off.
+
+"Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's
+to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you
+when you go in there."
+
+Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be
+dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be
+alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was
+speechless.
+
+"She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again,"
+said the farmer.
+
+Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire
+burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting
+beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed
+dead.
+
+"You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone
+else the responsibility of knowing about it also.
+
+"I'll go up this afternoon," returned Anne, picking up the whip and
+flicking the pony. The farmer said "Good morning," and the rattle of
+milk cans once more filled the road as his horse set off at a gallop
+towards home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+When the business of the market was done, and Anne reached the Union, it
+was late in the afternoon. The roads outside the town were full of
+farmers returning from the market, of women walking with empty baskets,
+and an occasional small herd of cattle, being driven away from the
+terrifying experience of the town, by a purchaser. It was visiting-day
+at the Union, and here and there from the out-going stream, a man or
+woman of middle-age turned aside to enter the gate of the big brick
+building, in whose side-garden men were working, dressed in the
+bottle-green corduroy of the institution.
+
+The presence of spring seemed to surge about the bare building. The
+trees planted about it were old, and belonged to an older building which
+protruded from the back; the weather-stained wall was old also, and the
+sunlight, older than either, shone with an urgent warmth beneath the
+heavy green shade. Rows of green blades were appearing in the border,
+set aside for ornament. The air, the clouds, the light near the ground,
+all seemed alive with the peculiar revival only felt in the spring.
+
+Anne was admitted with others to the corridor, and left while they
+turned to the places they sought.
+
+"She might see the Matron," said the porter, going along with a clatter
+of his feet to the far end of the corridor and knocking at a door. The
+Matron almost immediately emerged carrying a large key.
+
+"It was very sad, wasn't it?" she began at once. "It happened night
+before last. It's a fine boy, though it's a bit too soon. One of the
+young women's got him." She led the way to the wide front stairs and
+began to ascend. Stopping at a half-open door, she entered and Anne
+followed.
+
+It was a smaller room than the big ward, and sunny. It had an air of
+privacy, of comfort given by the sunshine only, for it was uncarpeted,
+and bare like the others. Four young women were sewing the stiff linsey
+skirts worn in the Union.
+
+"How's the baby?" said the Matron.
+
+"Asleep," replied a good-looking, blond young woman, rising willingly
+from her work and going over to the window, beneath which was a
+wicker-cradle covered with a shawl. She drew back the shawl, and Anne
+saw lying on one cheek on the pillow, the tiny, fuzzy, misshapen head
+and creased purple fist of a new baby. The confidence of that tiny
+breathing creature lying asleep seemed strange to Anne, who knew how
+desolate it was. It had already, as it were, taken possession of its
+place in the world, and had no intention of being dislodged.
+
+"He's a healthy little thing," said the Matron.
+
+"Greedy too," said the blond young woman, with a laugh.
+
+"Could I look at Jane?" asked Anne.
+
+"They fastened it up this afternoon," replied the Matron. "There'll be
+two funerals to-morrow. The other's an old man. You can see all there is
+to see."
+
+She covered the baby and left the room, descending the same stairs, and
+going out of a side door. A strong smell of disinfectants came out into
+the warm garden as she opened the door of a glazed brick building. The
+blinds were down to keep out the sun. The building was lined with white
+glazed brick, and two straight burdens lay on a trestle-table.
+
+"Eight o'clock to-morrow," said the Matron, coming out again and locking
+the door.
+
+Jane had gone. She was as confident as the baby in her absence. It was
+that which impressed Anne. Neither of the two so lately one flesh,
+needed or cared for the other. Jane seemed to have shut herself of her
+own accord in that wooden case, so that she would be no longer teased or
+tortured, and the baby was quite happy that it should be so. Their
+disregard one of the other was strange to Anne.
+
+"Elizabeth Richardson was inquiring if you were coming," said the
+Matron. "Will you go up and see her?"
+
+Elizabeth Richardson was lying in the bed that had been Jane's. She
+looked less peevish and more tended. Anne glanced at the fireplace as
+she entered. The armchair had been moved back, and no one sat at the
+fire. She sighed and turned to Elizabeth.
+
+"Yes, it's very comfortable," said Elizabeth. "I'm glad I came. It's
+nice to have the bed made every day. You'll have heard that Jane Evans
+is out of her troubles?"
+
+Anne nodded.
+
+"It's best, I think," said Elizabeth. "The world's none too kind, and
+she was a depending sort of girl. She got out of it easy enough.
+There'll be some disappointed though," she added with her old cynicism.
+
+"Don't let's be hard in our judgments," said Anne, sadly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The habit of working for another is so fixed in the lives of poor women,
+that the interruption of it becomes a kind of second death, almost as
+difficult to bear as the death of the affection which is itself almost a
+kind of habit. When Anne returned from market, and sat down, her house
+seemed to have become a little emptier, because the girl whose welfare
+she had carried with her for so many months was beyond her reach. She
+took down her Bible to read it, and find relief for her trouble. She was
+a woman who had had "experience"--that experience which comes to each as
+a kind of special revelation, a thing so surprising, that it appears
+impossible to think of its having happened before, or to withhold the
+telling; the cynicism, which declares this to be an overwhelming
+interest in one's internal self, being only partially right, it being
+rather the excited and surprised mental condition which is the deep well
+from which all art, all expression, breaks forth. She read slowly,
+trying to find meaning in each phrase, when suddenly a verse struck her
+in its entirety before her lips had finished reading.
+
+"Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to
+visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
+unspotted from the world."
+
+She saw exactly what she would do. There was the child, motherless, and
+worse than fatherless. She would take him and bring him up unspotted
+from the world. It was clearly a leading for her. She had not been
+permitted to save the girl, but she might take and protect the boy. She
+remembered even the commonsense of Mrs Hankworth. "It's soonest
+forgotten about if it's a boy." She was not so much an old maid as a
+woman shut up from issue, and she had no fear of a child. And in the
+midst of her bewilderment about the girl, about death and the hereafter,
+she could see an earthly duty clearly, and pure religion for herself.
+She began to sing:
+
+"Who points the clouds their course,
+  Whom winds and storms obey,
+He shall direct thy wandering feet,
+  He shall point out thy way."
+
+She opened a drawer which held what was left of her father's clothes
+without any feeling of incongruity. There were four shirts of checked
+oxford shirting, two pairs of long stockings, a corduroy jacket, and his
+best suit of black serge bound with braid round the coat. There was a
+revolver, too, a clasp knife, a unused church-warden, an old wide-awake
+hat. To-morrow she would write to the Union, and offer to bring up the
+child when he was weaned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was a cool evening in early summer, full of the leisurely peace of
+the country. The women were out of doors after much perspiring work
+within. It was too early for the shadows, yet a sensible relief to the
+day's ardour, which one was disposed to linger and enjoy, was evident in
+the tranquil atmosphere, and on the relaxed faces of those who lingered
+about the doors of the cottages, or turned the bleaching clothes on the
+hedges. Mrs Hankworth, in a fashionable bonnet and dark green dress,
+which proclaimed a ceremonial visit, was driving beside her husband in a
+light yellow trap, in the unusual direction of Anne Hilton's cottage.
+Her husband, with his eyes on the road, suddenly pulled up the horse.
+
+"Now, where did you two come from?" he ejaculated, jumping from the trap
+and examining the backs of two enormous sows, who were munching and
+rooting in foreign ground with great satisfaction. At the sight of their
+enemy, a man, they began that lumbering but nimble trot, by which their
+tribe elude and disregard anything disagreeable.
+
+"You better get up again," said Mrs Hankworth. "We'll keep up to them
+and perhaps turn 'em in somewhere. Miss Hilton's the nearest."
+
+"I don't recognise 'em," said the farmer, springing up with agility and
+driving the horse carefully after the sows. "Some one must have bought
+them yesterday. We can call at one or two places on the way back and
+inquire. There's William Crowther," he added, standing up in the
+trap--"William!" he shouted, "do you see them sows? Stop 'em at Anne
+Hilton's sty. I don't know whose they are."
+
+"I'll give them a little exercise!" shouted William, setting off in
+pursuit. Anne Hilton looked out from her door to see the farmer standing
+up to bar the road backwards, and shouting directions to William, while
+he at the other side dodged one sow after the other, and Mrs Hankworth
+sat back laughing with enjoyment.
+
+Anne ran to open the yard-gate, and, with management, the sows saw no
+other opening and ran in at a trot, scattering the squealing hens as
+they did so.
+
+"Of all the knowing things!" said Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"Well, Miss Hilton, we're bringing you two sows and ourselves to visit
+you!" said the farmer. "First a baby and then two sows! You'll keep a
+foundling home very soon."
+
+He jumped out, and his wife came slowly over the wheel.
+
+"Somebody'll be sending out to inquire for them soon," said Anne. "I'm
+very pleased to see you, Mrs Hankworth."
+
+"We came to say we'd send you milk for the baby every day," said Mrs
+Hankworth, entering the kitchen. "You'll want yours for the butter."
+
+"It's very kind of you," said Anne. "But he'll want a good deal."
+
+"We've got seventy-five cows, you know," said Mrs Hankworth, with a
+contented laugh. "He'll not make much difference among 'em. Where is he?
+Bless him," she said, as she saw the baby staring at her from the wide
+wooden chair, in which he was tied.
+
+"A fine baby," said the farmer with an ultimate tone.
+
+"He _is_ a nice one!" said his wife. "I _must_ take him," she said,
+picking up the baby and turning him face downwards over her arm while
+she seated herself. She spread open her knees and laid him, docile to
+her practised handling, across them. Anne watched her with the air of
+one taking a lesson.
+
+"Did you have much trouble to get him?" asked Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"No, very little," said Anne. "There were some papers to sign, and one
+or two other things, but I believe they're generally glad to board out
+children if they can."
+
+"Well, he's a healthy child. Oh! I don't know anything that made me so
+full as to hear that poor girl had slipped away like that. I didn't get
+over it for some days. You remember the last time I saw you, I was
+intending to go and see her."
+
+"Yes, we were all making plans," said Anne.
+
+"Here's Mrs Crowther," said the farmer. "Come to see the baby, too, I
+expect. I'll just go and see how the sows is doing," he said,
+approaching the door.
+
+"Well, Mr and Mrs Hankworth, I didn't expect to see you here," said Mrs
+Crowther, coming in. "I came to see how the baby was getting on. Eh, how
+they _do_ get hold of you, don't they, little things. I _must_ have him
+a minute," she said, taking him from Mrs Hankworth's knee. "No, you're
+not the first baby I've had hold of," she added to the little creature,
+who twisted about with protesting noises. She smacked its soft thighs,
+and held its warm head against her cheek. "I'm right down silly over a
+baby!" she exclaimed, laying it back on Mrs Hankworth's knee.
+
+"We can't have any more of our own," said the latter, "we have to make
+the best of other people's."
+
+Anne took a tissue-paper parcel from the shelf, and opening it, showed a
+blue cashmere smock with a ribbon.
+
+"I was so pleased," she said. "Mrs Phillipson's eldest girl that's to be
+married next month brought it in yesterday. It shows how you misjudge
+people. When I went to see them, they seemed so hard upon poor Jane. But
+she brought that pretty frock she'd made herself for the baby. She's a
+good-looking girl, and she'll make a good wife."
+
+"You think on these things at such a time," said Mrs Hankworth. "All
+kinds o' little things you never thought of before come into your mind
+when you're going to be married. But it was nice of her. I shall think
+better of that girl after this."
+
+"That sounds like Mary," said Anne, looking round the open door. "Yes it
+is. Come in, Mary. You'll find some friends here."
+
+Mrs Hankworth laughed uproariously. "The baby's holding a reception,"
+she said, her huge form shaking.
+
+"It's Mrs Hankworth, I know," said Mary.
+
+"And Mrs Crowther," interposed the latter herself; "we're making sillies
+of ourselves over the baby. Here, sit down and take him, Mary."
+
+She set Mary in the chair which she had vacated, and laid the baby on
+her knees carefully placing the blind woman's hands over the little
+body.
+
+"There's not much of him," said Mary. "What does he like? This?" And
+with her hands spread upon the child, she moved her knees backwards and
+forwards, clicking her heels on the floor.
+
+"I could soon do it," she said, with a satisfied chuckle.
+
+"I'm sure you could," said Anne.
+
+"It was Peter Molesworth that told me you was here," said Mary, "so I
+thought I'd come too."
+
+"Whatever _do_ you think that Peter Molesworth came out with in the
+class the other day?" said Mrs Hankworth. "We was having as nice a
+meeting as you could wish, and then Peter gets up to give his
+experience. He says, 'I thank the Lord I've got peace in my home and a
+praying mother' (she's not much o' that, I thought to myself); and then
+he went on, 'You know, when I think of the troubles of others in serving
+Christ, I cannot bear. There's a poor woman I know,' he says, 'that's
+trying to serve Christ, and whenever she kneels down to say her prayers,
+her husband begins to tickle her feet.' Did you ever hear of anybody
+coming out with such a thing before? 'I think this door wants oiling,
+Mrs Hankworth,' he says to me as we was going out. 'Nay, Peter,' I says,
+'it's _thee_ that wants oiling.' 'Why, Mrs Hankworth, what's the
+matter?' he says. 'Whatever made you come out with such a thing in the
+meeting,' I says. 'Why, what was wrong with it?' he says. 'Oh, well!' I
+says, 'if you don't know yourself, _I_ can't tell you,' I says. He's a
+bright one is Peter Molesworth."
+
+"Are you ready, Mother?" shouted Mr Hankworth, putting his head in the
+door. "John Unsworth thinks the sows belongs to Mr Phillipson. He saw
+him bringing some home last night. We can take him on the way home."
+
+"I'm coming," said Mrs Hankworth, rising slowly. "If there's anything
+you need, any advice or that, I'll be very pleased to give it you. Let
+me give him a kiss." "You're a beauty, that's what you are," she said,
+kissing the baby and giving it back to Mary.
+
+"I must go too," said Mrs Crowther. "I'll send down some old flannel
+to-morrow, Anne. One of my girls'll come in and help you sometimes. It's
+well they should get used to a baby."
+
+"She'll not be able to stop away herself," said Mrs Hankworth, shrewdly,
+and laughing together, both women went out, disputing amiably as to
+whether Mrs Crowther would take a seat in the trap and be driven as far
+as the cross roads.
+
+The blind woman was feeling carefully the downy head of the baby.
+
+"He's as soft as a kitten," she said. "I could spare several eggs a week
+out of the basket," she added, "if they'd be any use. I don't know much
+about babies. My brother was bigger than me when we was at home, and, of
+course, since then I've not had much to do with children."
+
+Anne watched the two so helpless and confident. Mary rocked her knees
+steadily, and the child's head lay contentedly.
+
+"I believe you've put him to sleep," said Anne. "Shall I put him in the
+cradle?"
+
+"No, let me have him," said Mary, "I've never nursed a baby before."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Anne was left alone in the cottage with the baby, who slept in the
+clothes-basket she had turned into a cradle. The dog slept, too, having
+made friends with fortune. A late evening glow lit one side of the wall.
+When it faded, the dusk would absorb all the room and its inhabitants.
+Anne, sitting very still lest she should wake the baby, remembered one
+by one the agonies that had been lived through, whose sole result seemed
+to be this peaceful evening and the confidently breathing child. She
+remembered the shock of the disgrace to her, she, who had been a friend
+of the grandmother's, and how she had carried the burden about. She
+remembered the new house, and Jane, pretty, spoiled, and without
+misgiving, caring nothing for the hard judgments of which she herself
+imbibed the bitterness. Then Jane, with the child already striving to be
+free, leaving the new house at night, knowing without being told what
+door was open to her of all the doors in the country, and what place she
+would henceforth take. She saw the girl again, seated by the fire in the
+Infirmary ward, with that strange division between herself and all
+living, removed, as it were, to a distance which could not be bridged.
+Then Jane was no more to be found. There was the boy-child instead, who
+knew nothing except his desire to be kept alive; who met all
+reservations and pity by a determination to be fed. Throughout the whole
+evening, Anne had been struck by the fact that the other women scarcely
+thought of Jane any more than the baby did. It remained to them a very
+simple matter. There was a baby to feed and bring up. Being a boy, other
+things would soon be forgotten. It was too late, she knew, to do
+anything for Jane. The only thing that seemed possible to her in her
+simple reasoning, was to prevent such catastrophes for the future. It
+was not that pity was misplaced when shipwreck came, nor that charity
+ever failed. She understood, without being conscious of it, the ironic
+severity of Jesus, who would have no sudden pity and heart-searching on
+account of His poor. He had come into the world for righteousness and
+for judgment, and the judgment and righteousness both declared, not at
+the time of disaster or human appeal, nor with sudden loud outcries,
+but, "The poor always ye have with you, and _whensoever ye will_, ye may
+do them good."
+
+The baby stirred. Anne lit the candle, and set it on the stairs. She
+stepped over the dog, and took a warm flannel from the oven door.
+Tucking it in at the feet of the child, she lifted the clothes-basket
+and carried it upstairs. The dog raised his head and watched her. She
+returned, covered the fire, and set an earthenware pot of milk on the
+hob. The dog laid his nose between his paws again. Anne, taking the
+candle and leaving the room in darkness, closed the staircase door and
+went upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Women of the Country, by Gertrude Bone
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Women of the Country, by Gertrude Bone
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Women of the Country
+
+Author: Gertrude Bone
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2004 [EBook #13278]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Melissa Er-Raqabi and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+Women of the Country
+
+
+THE ROADMENDER SERIES
+_Uniform with this Volume_
+
+The Roadmender. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+The Gathering of Brother Hilarius. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+The Grey Brethren. By MICHAEL FAIRLESS.
+A Modern Mystic's Way. (Dedicated to Michael Fairless.)
+Magic Casements. By ARTHUR S. CRIPPS.
+Thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci,
+    as recorded in his Note-Books. Edited by EDWARD MCCURDY.
+The Sea Charm of Venice. By STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
+Longings. By W.D. MCKAY.
+From the Forest. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Pilgrim Man. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Winter and Spring. By W. SCOTT PALMER.
+Michael Fairless: Life and Writings.
+    By W. SCOTT PALMER and A.M. HAGGARD.
+Vagrom Men. By A.T. STORY.
+Light and Twilight. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+Rest and Unrest. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+Rose Acre Papers: including Horae Solitarae. By EDWARD THOMAS.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Women of the Country
+
+By
+
+Gertrude Bone
+
+With Frontispiece by Muirhead Bone
+
+
+
+
+London
+
+Duckworth & Co.
+
+Henrietta Street, W.C.
+
+
+
+
+
+_Published 1913_
+
+
+
+
+
+WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+When I was a child I lived in a small sea-coast town, with wide, flat
+sands. The only beautiful thing in the place--a town of no
+distinction--were the sunsets over this vast, level expanse. I remember
+them at intervals, as one recalls things seen passing in a train through
+a solitary landscape. I seem to see myself, a child with a child's
+imagination, standing on those wet sands, looking out over their purple
+immensity to the glittering line of the tide on the horizon, and to see
+again the sun in such a wide heaven that it seemed to have the world to
+itself, and to watch the changes in the sky as it sank, drawing with it
+the light. These great sands were dangerous at times, shifting in
+whirling and irresistible rushes of water, and changing the course of
+the channel, which was unaltered by the tide and which always lay out a
+gleaming artery from the almost invisible sea.
+
+It was Sunday morning--a day observed with such precision in that little
+town that I was almost alone out of doors. A string of cart-horses,
+their day of rest well-earned, were being led across the sands from the
+level tide. The sand, uncovered by the sea for weeks, was bleached to an
+intolerable whiteness, but there was no wind to lift it, and the sea was
+tranquil, its little waves all hastening in one direction, like a shoal
+of fish making for a haven. The sun was already changing its early glory
+to heat. All the erections for amusement on the shore looked a little
+foolish in that solitude. I returned to the town along the empty asphalt
+roads and went with my companions to church. It was a church whose
+pretensions were high and genteel. Nothing of a personal nature was ever
+heard from its well-bred pulpit. The hymns were discreetly chosen to
+avoid excitement, and a conversion would have given offence. The
+minister for that day was a young man from the poorer end of the town,
+and I remember, even as a child, being disturbed by the announcement of
+his first hymn, "Rock of Ages." Even the organ blundered as it played so
+common a tune as Rousseau's Dream, and I, who learning counterpoint,
+feared to be seen singing so ordinary a melody, lest it should set me
+down as unmusical for ever. But soon my concern was with the unfortunate
+young man, for he was, I felt sure, quite ignorant of the habits of such
+congregations as ours, and would certainly offend our best people. For
+after that we read the parable of the Prodigal Son and sang, "The Sands
+of Time are Sinking." Then I forgot even this curious lapse from our
+Sunday custom, so clearly did the tale now begun by the preacher bring
+again before my eyes those inhuman sands, that lonely sky, and the
+unstayed power of the sea.
+
+He had chosen, so he said, for his service this morning the favourite
+hymns, Scripture, and text of an obscure member of the congregation
+taken from earth in a strange manner the day before. For more years than
+he could remember, there had come and gone in that congregation an old
+blind man. He had heard him spoken of from time to time in a kindly
+contemptuous, way as "Old Born Again," and it was by that nickname he
+would speak of him this morning, but he could find no place in his
+intelligence for contempt, for Old Born Again now saw and knew the
+things which prophets and kings desire to look into.
+
+He had lived for many years thus. He was a widower living with a married
+daughter, whose husband was a fisherman. She herself kept a
+greengrocer's shop of the poorer kind. She had five children, the
+eldest, a boy of thirteen, earning his living with her in the shop. He
+and his blind grandfather went round the district every day with a small
+cart and horse, selling their vegetables from house to house and thus
+enlarging their custom. The boy guided the horse and his grandfather
+helped with the selling and the money. In the early morning at the end
+of each week they drove the horse and cart to the sea's edge to wash
+them, making always for the steady channel which ran unaltering through
+the empty sand, when the tide was down. This morning they had gone as
+usual, and when they reached the water (the old man was blind you will
+remember, and his companion a child), they knew no difference in its
+appearance. A man who was gathering cockles at a distance knew and
+called to them, running towards them, but the old man did not see and
+the boy was intent upon guiding the horse and cart into the water.
+
+That night the sand, so unstable, had moved beneath the pressure of an
+unusual tide. The course of the channel had changed, and when the horse,
+treading confidently, had approached the edge, it stepped straight into
+deep water and, losing its balance, being also impeded by the cart,
+dragged with it the vehicle, the old blind man and the child to
+unavoidable death. Their bodies had been recovered but too late. "Let us
+pray," added the minister, "for the mourners."
+
+To a child the fact of death is not very terrible, because the fact of
+life is not yet understood; but I never see in imagination the level and
+sad-coloured country of my childhood, stretching out of sight to the sea
+across an expanse of sand, a country whose pomp was in the heavens,
+whose hills were the clouds, without seeing also, journeying across it,
+an old blind man, a child, and a dumb creature, to disappear for ever
+under the wide sky, beneath the sun, within that great waste of waters.
+
+The life of the poor, coloured outwardly with the same passivity and
+acceptance of their lot as the rest of visible nature, disciplined by
+the same forces which break the floods and the earth, remains for most
+of us querulous, ignoble, disappointing. What can be said suggestive or
+profound of the life that is born, that labours its full day with its
+face to the ground, from which it looks for its sustenance, and at last
+is carried, spent, to the square ground which holds the memory and
+remains of the dead.
+
+Yet one day the sun which has risen, stirring the only emotion in the
+landscape, will rise upon a tragic, significant, or patient human group,
+for whom sun and seasons and the wide heavens are small, whose emotion
+is yet contained within the room of a mean dwelling and whose destiny is
+accomplished within a tilled field.
+
+Under a sky that is infinite and a heaven accessible to all, the poor
+"work for their living," bowed always a little towards tragedy yet
+understanding joy, from the bitterness of life and death and the added
+anguish of ignorance drinking often their safety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was evening in the country at harvest-time, at that moment towards
+sundown when the light, about to be withdrawn, glows with a fulness of
+gold which makes it seem impossible that it can ever die. The earth was
+heavy with fruition, every square field brimful of the ungathered
+harvest. The heavy corn swayed almost by reason of its own weight. A
+thunderstorm would beat it prostrate in an hour. All the crops were full
+and good, some almost level with the low hedges. Heat seemed to radiate
+from the yellow mass, that scorching heat which in autumn never seems to
+leave the earth, but to linger about the ground, surrounding the
+responsive and standing corn. But the day had brought no heaviness to
+the sky, blue without a cloud, only a grave and increasing heat, a sun
+which blinded the eyes and seemed to take no account of anything save
+its steady purpose of ripening the fruit and grain.
+
+Looking round one saw that it was not an impressive country. There were
+no hills, no grandeurs, no proximity to the sea. It was a country whose
+pageants were made, not by great heights or sombre woods, but by the
+orderly and coloured procession of the harvests; where one recovered the
+preoccupied sight of little children, seeing so much to absorb one near
+the ground that one did not seek the horizon; where matters were
+measured and done not by the clock but by the sun's height, by midday
+heat and darkness, by the lowing of cows or the calling of lambs.
+
+A woman, well on the way to middle age, sat in the house-place of a
+small cottage on the white high-road. Everything had been done for the
+night, the pigs and pony fed; the cow milked and the milk strained; the
+churn cleaned and the cream standing. The hens had been driven in and
+were almost asleep on their perches. The wood was ready for the morning
+and the clock had been wound up. She had not had her supper yet she did
+not remove her sun-bonnet or yard-boots. She cut herself a slice of
+stale bread and a large piece of cheese, dipped a cup in the barrel of
+buttermilk and sat down on a low stool with the bread and cheese in one
+hand and the cup of milk in the other. She was evidently in great
+perturbation, for at times she forgot to eat altogether and sat with the
+bread and cheese suspended in her hand while she thought deeply. Her
+rather large plain features had a dignity of expression which was
+pleasing, though it betrayed a tendency to melancholy. She had no frown,
+for her blue eyes were of excellent strength and one does not sit up
+late in the country. She was tall and rather bony, a strong peasant
+woman.
+
+Presently she rose, her supper still unfinished, and took from a shelf,
+from among a medley of herbs and medicine bottles, a penny bottle of ink
+with a pen sticking in it. Searching in a drawer of the round table she
+found a large envelope on which was written, "Giant pennyworth of note."
+She took from it one of the thin bluish sheets of paper, and sitting at
+the table, her sun-bonnet making a grotesque shadow behind her, she
+began to write. She wrote with little hesitation, urged by the strength
+of some feeling. Her handwriting was large and she made long loops to
+her g's.
+
+      "DEAR SIR,--Though you passed by my cottage yesterday you are so
+      unknown to me by sight, that I have only just discovered who it
+      was that was brought to such a pitiable condition before me.
+      First, sir, let me describe to you what a sight I saw before me,
+      when, hearing a great plunging and shouting in the road, I came
+      out from the shippon to see what was the matter.
+
+     "I saw, sir, a strong, well-looking, well-dressed young man of
+     twenty-six lying in the mud of the road, his foot in one stirrup of
+     his horse, he, mad with drink cursing, first the poor horse (a very
+     quiet stallion), then the road (a very easy one) and last, the
+     Almighty God of love. The horse, dragged everywhere by the efforts
+     of the young man to gain a footing, was rewarded for its patience
+     when its master at last, by my help, regained his feet, by severe
+     kicks in the belly, and I, a poor woman, was abused and called evil
+     names.
+
+     "Sir! if instead of cursing the good-tempered beast or the God of
+     love above you, you had cursed the origin of such a spectacle as
+     you then were, your clothes covered with mud, your mouth full of
+     blaspheming, staggering about the road pulling at the mouth of your
+     horse--_strong drink_--you would have been a more reasonable being.
+
+     "What, sir, had the horse done to you? What had this poor woman
+     done to you? What, sir, had your heavenly Father done to you, that
+     you should fill your mouth with curses against us all? Your enemy
+     was none of us, but that viper, strong drink.
+
+     "O sir! shun your enemy I beseech you. I am a woman who has had no
+     children, but, sir, if I had been the mother of so strong and
+     good-looking a man as you, it would have broken my heart to see you
+     lying there muddy and cursing, a poorer sight under God's sky than
+     the poor dumb beast that bore you.--Your obedient servant,
+
+     Ann Hilton."
+
+The woman folded and fastened the letter and then wiped her eyes with
+the corner of her apron. She looked round the room as if to see that
+everything was done and went to shut the door for the night. She looked
+out into the lane. The cottage a little lower down had a light in the
+window and here and there lights shewed along the road. The night when
+one can no longer work out of doors matters little in the country, yet
+the ample stillness with distant rustling sounds pleased her and she
+lingered. Two young men carrying shapeless bundles on their shoulders
+wished her good-night as they passed home from work. Everyone seemed to
+have finished with out of doors. Even the cat from the yard rubbed
+against her as it ran into the house, stealthily and crouching as if in
+fear. She turned indoors and lit the lamp, fastened the door with a
+wooden bolt and drew the blind before the diamond-paned window.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Anne Hilton was one of those women who have so little knowledge of the
+practical thoughts of those round about them, that they pass their lives
+half-disliked, partly respected, and mostly avoided. She had lived alone
+now for two years, her father, whom she had nursed, having died of the
+saddest human malady. He had ("as anyone might have had with such a
+daughter," declared the neighbours), harboured a great contempt for
+women, and though, being uninclined to tread the heights himself, he
+feared his daughter's uprightness of character, he had never lost an
+occasion of pouring scorn on her unpractical ways.
+
+"Can you take it home for me, James?" would ask a neighbour, handing up
+a case of eggs to the cart, where James sat preparing to leave the
+market.
+
+"There's no women in the cart," James would reply, and supposed he had
+given the required assent.
+
+The "round-about ways of doing things," which had been the butt of her
+shrewd old father, had brought upon Anne a customary air of
+half-readiness, so that going in suddenly, she might be found with her
+bonnet on and her handkerchief on the table, but one perceived she was
+still in her petticoat, and was making a pie for dinner. Meals, indeed,
+she considered as things to be got out of the way, both her own, and, to
+their expressed discomfort, those of other people. She herself often ate
+them as she went about her work, pausing to take a spoonful from a plate
+on the table or from the saucepan itself.
+
+Taking the Scripture as the literal rule of the smallest details of her
+life, she never wore a mixture of wool and cotton, as that was forbidden
+to the Jews, nor would she wear any imitation of linen for the same
+reason. In consequence, her clothes, which were of sound material, never
+looked common, but always out-of-date.
+
+She could be got (not that many people had tried to do so) to do nothing
+quite like other people, not from perversity as some readily declared,
+or a desire to "be different," but from inability to acquire the point
+of view from which the most ordinary actions are done. She took no money
+on Sunday, and this becoming known to her ne'er-do-well neighbours, they
+made a point of forgetting to come for milk on Saturday.
+
+"You must tell your mother I never sell milk on Sunday."
+
+"Yes, Miss Hilton."
+
+"I'll give you a little to go on with, but next week you must come for
+it on Saturday."
+
+And the child, having got what she wanted, would run off with the jug of
+milk and the money which should have paid for it, to repeat exactly the
+same offence the following week. Her reputation for queerness let her be
+considered fair game, and so convinced is the ordinary person that
+queerness is of necessity contemptible, that when she did anything which
+was unusual, its reason was never examined, nor did the possibility that
+it might be better done in that way occur to anybody. It was merely a
+new evidence of her oddity.
+
+But it was especially in those points in which she felt herself moved by
+her religious convictions that she was most suspected. For in spite and
+over all her eccentricities of belief, she was genuinely religious,
+having the two great religious virtues, charity in judgment and sorrow
+for the failures of others. But again she was "different," as it is
+evident in this world that the failures of other people are entirely
+their own fault, and to be gentle in judgment is more than other people
+will be to you, and therefore unnecessary. So that, without being in
+intention a reformer, she suffered the suspicion and dislike of the
+reformer, being, in fact, however she might disguise it, "different"
+from other people.
+
+This constant clashing with the steadfast ideas of every one had in time
+produced a timidity and secretiveness in the most ordinary actions,
+though where she believed herself to be directed by the Spirit, she had
+no lack of confidence and determination. If her movements could be kept
+secret she would do her utmost to make them so. She would send the reply
+to an invitation to tea half over the country before it reached its
+destination. Yet she would often pray in the prayer-meeting, and had
+been known to do unusually bold actions as a matter of course.
+
+When it became known that she had written a letter to the son of Squire
+Nuttall asking him to give up his dissipated habits, which were the
+scandal of the country, no one was surprised, though many were shocked,
+and the poorer tenants of the estate alarmed lest some indirect wrath
+might fall upon them. When neither Squire nor son took the smallest
+notice of the letter she was blamed universally as having gone too far,
+as if this chorus of subterranean condemnation might somehow reach the
+Squire, who would know that the rest of his tenants had no hand in the
+matter nor sympathy with the writer.
+
+On the contrary, though she was secretive with her near acquaintances,
+she would become greatly communicative with a casual vendor of books, or
+even a vagrant to whom she had given a cup of tea, that English
+equivalent for a cup of cold water. She was so fearful of falling behind
+in sympathy with sinners that she fell into the unusual error of
+treating them better than the saints. She was fond of doing small
+generosities, especially to children, who were half afraid of her but
+who would eat the big Victoria plums she gave them (leading them
+stealthily round to the back of the house to do so), and recognize that
+in some sedate and mysterious way they had a friend.
+
+She would send presents to young people whose conduct had pleased her,
+gifts which always excited surprise and sometimes derision. Once she
+sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband and
+wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection, because,
+not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool, with the
+result that it burst open on the station platform before it reached its
+destination.
+
+A number of books, some of an old-fashioned theology, had been left to
+Anne by an aunt who had had a son a Methodist preacher. This aunt had
+also left her a black silk dress, which Anne had received with the
+joyful exclamation that she knew she was really a king's daughter. The
+books she read ardently and critically, underlining and marking, and
+with them also she embarrassed the vicar to whom she lent them. He,
+being a kind man, took the books and her comments in spite of his wife's
+indignation. They had formed the standard of her conversation, which was
+in ceremonial moments antiquated and dignified. Young women, and older
+men with wives to guide their perceptions, thought her absurd, but young
+men seldom did so. Perhaps that was because she seldom thought _them_
+absurd, and understood something of the ambitions with which their heads
+were filled. They were not, indeed, unlike those with which her own was
+overflowing. Whenever she was angry it was at any meanness or injustice,
+which seemed to arouse in her a Biblical passion of righteous fury.
+
+A small meanness in another depressed her as much as if she had done it
+herself. Once she had walked five miles to deliver some butter and
+returned utterly dejected, not alone from fatigue, but because she had
+been offered nothing to eat or drink after her long tramp. It would have
+been useless to point out to her that she had gone on a purely business
+errand. It was one of those small meannesses of which she was herself
+incapable, and a proportion of warmth had died out of her belief.
+
+"You know my sister Jane's son?" said a farmer's wife, who had stopped
+her trap at the cottage to pick up a lidded wisket in which some
+earthenware had been packed. "He's getting a good-looking young man and
+he's all for bettering himself. Well, he went and got his photo taken at
+Drayton and brought them in to show his mother. She was making jam at
+the time, and she's not an easy tongue at the best o' times. 'What's
+that?' she says; 'you don't mean to say that's a likeness o' thee? It
+looks fool enough.' She says she never saw 'em again, he went straight
+out and burnt 'em."
+
+"He chose the wrong minit," said her husband beside her. "If he knew as
+much about women as _I_ do, for instance."
+
+"Just you mind," said his wife, warningly. "Why, Miss Hilton, whatever's
+the matter?" she added, catching sight of Anne's face.
+
+"It is such a painful story," rejoined Anne. "I cannot bear to think of
+the poor young man's discomfiture."
+
+"Well, I never!" ejaculated the farmer, as they drove away. "She's very
+good, but, my word, she's very peculiar."
+
+"If she was _really_ very good she'd try not to _be_ so peculiar,"
+retorted his wife, nettled at the failure of her story. "Did you ever
+see such a figure, with her dress all unbuttoned at the back showing her
+stays."
+
+"She's not got a husband to fasten the middle buttons," said the farmer
+slyly. "She can't very well ask the pig, you know."
+
+"Well, no, she can't," said his wife, good-naturedly; "but she tries my
+patience pretty often."
+
+"That's not so hard as it sounds," said the farmer, looking innocently
+in front of him.
+
+"Now, then," said his wife, "who wanted a potato-pie for supper?"
+
+"I expect it was our Joseph," said the farmer.
+
+"Not it," retorted his wife.
+
+"Well, myself, I prefer women who aren't so peculiar," said the farmer.
+"Even if they're not so good," he added.
+
+"Take care," replied his wife. "That potato-pie isn't in the oven yet!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Anne Hilton got up when the sky was tinged with the sunrise, feeling
+anew the security of recovered daylight after the stillness of the
+lonely house during the night. There was little to put in order about
+her house. "Where no oxen are the crib is clean," she would often quote.
+There was absolute silence in the cottage, and as she opened the windows
+she saw the first thin smoke, the incense of labour, rising from other
+houses. The garden was fragrant with flowers, soon to be gathered and
+made into bunches for the market. The increasing glory of the sky
+promised another fine day for the harvest. She read the text on the
+Calendar and made it the subject of her prayer, which she uttered aloud
+with great fervour. Then she went down the stairs, which entered
+directly into the kitchen, and lit the fire for her breakfast. The day
+following was market-day, the day on which she depended for her living,
+and to-day the butter for which she was justly celebrated had to be
+made. Beyond the kitchen was a dairy with a stone shelf round three
+sides of it, a churn in the middle, large earthenware mugs of cream, and
+a great tub of buttermilk in the corner. The sunlight never fell on this
+side of the house until late afternoon, so that, though the day was
+already hot, the shadow of the dairy and the yard beyond with its shed
+for tools looked tranquil and cool.
+
+Taking one of the tin pails and a milking-stool, she set off across the
+fields to the pasture in which her two cows were grazing. Everything
+within her sight as she passed--hedges, grass, corn, even the trodden
+path across the field--gleamed with the radiance of the risen sun. The
+sky, intolerably splendid and untroubled by clouds, was filled by the
+sun. Even the thin smoke from the cottages flickered and was
+illuminated. The trees had the leaves of Paradise. The world seemed to
+hold nothing but the sun, and to be bewildered.
+
+At the end of two fields' length she stayed by the pasture-gate and
+rattled her can loudly. Two cows, gigantic against the sun, came slowly
+to the gate. She tied their tails in turn, and settled on her stool
+beside the dripping hedge. When her pail was full and frothing she set
+them free, and with a flick of her apron sent them from the gate, which
+she opened, setting her can down while she tied the hatch. Then she
+returned over the two fields with the full and heavy can. The pony
+snickered as she came into the yard, and the hens ran in a foolish crowd
+across her way. She scattered them as she went, setting down her burden
+within the dairy. She overturned the stale buttermilk into the pig's
+trough, fed the hens, and drove the pony into lane, throwing stones and
+tufts of grass after it until she saw it turn into the open gate of the
+paddock. It would be joined soon by others, and the boy who brought them
+would shut the gate. Then she scalded the churn anew, filled it, and
+settled to the slow turning which was to occupy the greater part of her
+morning. The churning became heavier and heavier. She raised the lid to
+scrape the butter from its sides, and as she did so heard footsteps
+coming across the yard, footsteps a little unusual in sound, each
+seeming to be taken very deliberately, and going straight forward
+without discrimination of the path.
+
+"Here's Mary!" said Anne Hilton aloud, turning towards the door and
+moving a chair. A woman of about forty-three, with a basket on one arm
+and walking with a strong stick, came steadily towards the door. She
+would have been comely if it had not been for a fixed frown which seemed
+odd on her pleasant, good-tempered face. She wore a print bodice, with a
+point back and front, and a short bunchy stuff skirt. Though Sarah was
+well in sight she took no notice of her, but walked straight on towards
+her, until the latter said with evident pleasure--
+
+"It's you, Mary!"
+
+"Yes!" answered Mary, with a slight start.
+
+"How are you?"
+
+"Quite well," said Sarah. "Here's the door." She laid her hand over that
+of the other woman and set it on the side of the post, at the same time
+taking her basket, which was full of eggs, and only partially covered by
+a cloth.
+
+"How many?" she asked. "Have you counted?"
+
+"Four dozen," replied Mary. "Have you finished your butter?"
+
+"It's coming," said Anne, taking the handle again.
+
+"Let _me_ try," said Mary. "I often think I could manage butter nicely."
+
+"Don't get too clever," said Anne. "You do a wonderful lot already. Stop
+and sit a bit, won't you? Let me see if you know where your chair is."
+
+The woman stepped into the dairy, turned to the left of the door, and
+sat down without hesitation in the chair which Sarah had moved on first
+perceiving her approach, and as she did so one could see that the frown,
+so out of place on her steady and tranquil face, had an origin of
+tragedy. She was blind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mary Colton was one of the most esteemed women possible in any
+country-side. She had scarcely been beyond the few miles which
+surrounded her home, and since she was a girl had never set foot in a
+train. She had not been born blind, but had had her sight until she was
+seventeen, when an illness darkened the world for ever. "A pretty girl
+she was too," said those who remembered. Of the prettiness she retained
+now only the essence, that of her pleasant goodness, yet her appearance
+was still attractive in spite of her thick figure and contracted brows.
+She had not that unearthly exalted expression so familiar to one in the
+blind, who look upwards for the light and search in vain. Rather, unless
+one looked narrowly, one would take her for a middle-aged woman of good
+health and steady temper, who was a little short-sighted. She used a
+stick out of doors, and when she went very long distances she took with
+her a small terrier, which warned her of the difficult parts of the
+road. But indoors she moved about freely, knowing to an inch how much
+room each piece of furniture occupied, and seldom knocking against
+anything as she moved about her work.
+
+She lived entirely alone and supported herself, not by any of the
+special kinds of work which are supposed generally to be possible to the
+blind, but by exactly the same means as other women of her age and
+class. All the work in the house was done by herself, even to the making
+of the toffee and bulls'-eyes, which she sold at the cricket-matches and
+fairs of the districts. She kept hens and turkeys, and worked in her
+garden, feeling her way about the beds and bushes with her feet. She
+sold the vegetables and the currants and gooseberries which grew in the
+little patch of garden, and her friend, Anne Hilton, carried her eggs to
+the market-town for her every week, where she disposed of them to a
+provision-dealer of the same denomination. Even the hen-run had been
+made by the blind woman, who was a continual source of astonishment and
+questioning from the neighbours. But in this wonder, she not unnaturally
+found a pathetic pleasure.
+
+"How do you know when you've got all your hens in?" asked a child once.
+
+"I count them at night when they're asleep on their perches," answered
+Mary, with a joyful little chuckle.
+
+"But it's dark!" objected the child.
+
+"So it is," replied Mary. "I didn't think of that."
+
+She never referred to her blindness, and so complete a victory over
+misfortune and circumstance gained its fit respect in the country. No
+one considered that it was "doing a charity" to Mary to drive past her
+cottage on the way from market to give her news of a football match or
+fair about to be held in the district. Women would send their children
+on their way to school to give similar news, and the boy who brought her
+the roll of newspapers, which she sold at the station every morning,
+would often wheel her barrow for her. She had a large, clumsy chest on
+the frame of an old perambulator, in which she wheeled about her store
+of aerated waters, toffee, and newspapers. She would place herself at
+the gate of the cricket ground on Saturday afternoon. The sliding lid of
+her chest made a counter on which she set her scales and her neatly cut
+pile of paper for wrapping up the toffee. She had no rivals in the
+district, for the most avaricious small shop-keeper would have been
+ashamed to confuse or trouble the simple, good, courageous woman.
+Perhaps the most complete sign of her triumph over her disability was,
+that no one dreamed of calling her "Poor Mary." Like her friend, Anne
+Hilton, she was a member of the little wayside chapel, which, with all
+that it meant, made a centre of warmth and fellowship for both lonely
+women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+So placid and unimpressive was the country which lay about Anne Hilton's
+cottage, that in the lanes which branched from it one seldom thought of
+any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few
+shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech
+leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of
+the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the
+banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the
+young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky
+would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day,
+a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter
+for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden
+from beginning to end. The sun had risen without mist and set in a sky
+without a cloud, seeming, as it sank, to draw with it all the colour
+from the heavens, as if it had cast a golden net in the morning and now
+drew it home again behind the hill.
+
+As the warm light ebbed, a coolness, as of an actual atmosphere
+distilled into the cottage, became apparent in the kitchen. Now that the
+sunlight had gone, one could see the objects in the room with a new
+distinctness. It was serious, quiet, and orderly in this grave light,
+like the room of some saint shown in piety to pilgrims.
+
+A tall, half-grown youth came to the kitchen door, and, knocking twice,
+entered and sat down lumpily on the wooden armchair, slipping a basket
+from his arm on to the table as he did so. He looked round him, pleased
+unconsciously by the grave light and the orderly room.
+
+"You've a quiet life of it here," he said, rising to shake hands with
+Anne, who came into the room at the same moment, bending a little as she
+walked with the slightly anxious expression of one preoccupied with
+pain.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "it's very pleasant in the kitchen when the sun goes
+off. Nearly every evening at this time something about the room brings
+to my mind the hymn--
+
+"When quiet in my house I sit,
+Thy book be my companion still."
+
+The youth looked uncomfortable, thinking that he had brought upon
+himself a sermon unawares, and that being actually inside the house, and
+having sat down, he might have difficulty in extricating himself. So he
+said, rather to turn the conversation from its personal character, than
+from any sense of the fitness of his remarks.
+
+"It's sad about Jane Evans, isn't it?"
+
+"What's sad, Dick?" asked Anne, still standing, and resting both hands
+on the table. "Excuse my not sitting down, I've got a bad turn of
+rheumatism."
+
+"That's bad," said Dick. "I once had a bit in my back, and it was as
+much as I wanted."
+
+"But what about Jane?" asked Anne. "I've scarcely seen her or her sister
+since the old grandmother died. I seldom get so far away. The Ashley
+road doesn't go near that side, and that's the one that sees me
+oftenest."
+
+"Well, it seems," replied Dick, finding it, after all, an awkward
+subject to talk of to a woman, "she's gone to live with that
+horse-breeder who's taken Burton's farm."
+
+"But he's a married man," said Anne, not comprehending.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Dick, with an embarrassed laugh, but Anne did not
+hear. She had understood.
+
+"She was a good, respectable girl," she said. "However can she have
+forgotten herself like that? Where's her sister Annie?"
+
+"They do say she's nearly as bad," replied Dick. "He's rather a taking
+man--good-looking and hearty, and dresses better than the farmers, and
+his wife went off with a trainer too."
+
+"Her grandmother's only been dead two years, and she's been allowed to
+go wrong like that," exclaimed Anne, with condemnation of herself in her
+voice.
+
+"Well, you know," expostulated Dick, "I don't know as it's anybody's
+business. Everybody's got their own affairs to attend to."
+
+"Oh yes! I know," said Anne. "It's never anybody's business to try to
+prevent such things, but it'll be everybody's business to throw stones
+at the girl very soon, if the man tires of her."
+
+"I don't know about preventing," returned Dick; "she seemed pretty set
+on him herself. I think myself it's a pity. Here's the eggs from Mary
+Colton, Miss Hilton--three dozen," he added, as a diversion from the
+conversation, which he found more embarrassing than the sermon he had
+successfully avoided. With that he escaped from the chair with a jerk,
+scuffled his feet once or twice on the floor, took his cap out of his
+pocket, and ejaculated "Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," replied Anne, still preoccupied. "Thank you for bringing
+the eggs;" and she sat down with a slight groan.
+
+"Why, it might be herself," reflected Dick, looking back at the dejected
+figure in the darkening room. Being a simple youth, he felt vaguely
+uncomfortable at the sight of such trouble over the doings of one who
+was no relation, and began to take a little blame to himself for
+thinking lightly of the girl's downfall.
+
+"Well, she's very good," he concluded in his thoughts, "but she's
+peculiar;" and he tramped heavily through the yard into the lane.
+
+Anne did not stir. She was so shocked that her bodily faculties seemed
+to have ceased, and her mind to have remained sorrowing and awake. This
+lapse was even worse than that of Sir Richard's son, because it seemed
+irretrievable. Then, too, it had happened before she knew anything about
+it, whereas, in the other case, she had been active, and able to
+expostulate and screen the young man's fall. And then, too, there was
+the surprise of a middle-aged woman at the lapses of "young, strong
+people," just as, if one of more maturity had fallen, the comment of the
+young would have been equally certain, "an old thing like her."
+
+To Anne, whose temptations were of the kind that betray rather than
+assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity--a man's
+gluttony or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not
+shock her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the
+grandmother who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease
+that they might not run wild as many girls do, but might grow up girls
+of good character. Since the grandmother died, Jane, who was young and
+pretty, had tried to support herself. Anne did not know Richard Burton,
+but he was older and a "married man," which, of itself, implied
+responsibility to her mind. With the passion for justice, in which her
+intellectual faculties found material for exercise, she declared that
+Burton must be more to blame than Jane. He had money and position in the
+country-side. But equally as he was more to blame he would be less
+blamed. No one would dare to tell _him_ he was wrong. They would wait,
+stone in hand, for the girl who had been a child among them, and when
+she was forsaken and alone would throw and strike. Anne lived apart, but
+she knew _that_. "It will be visited on the girl," she thought; and
+indignation at Richard Burton rose steadily in her thoughts.
+
+After a while she stirred, and, lighting a candle, slowly stooped and
+raised the lid of the bread-mug. Pulling out half a loaf, she cut a
+thick piece for supper. She ate it slowly, with a piece of cold bacon,
+then, taking the candle, her shadow growing gigantic behind her, she
+fastened the door without looking outside, and climbed the stairs,
+heavily and sorrowfully, to her solitary bedroom, her shadow with one
+jerk filling the whole room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+There was no covered market even in so considerable a town as Haybarn.
+From end to end of the rectangular market-place were set wooden tables
+on movable trestles, and over these were stretched frames of canvas, the
+whole assembly looking like a fantastic toy village set in the middle of
+the substantial brick houses, banks, and inns of the square, or like a
+child's erections amid the solid furniture on a nursery floor.
+
+On each side of the square, with their backs to the stalls and facing
+the shops whose goods and attractions overflowed to the pavement as if
+offering themselves at the feet of the passers-by, stood a row of
+countrywomen and girls with market baskets of butter and eggs, plucked
+fowls, red currants, plums, curds, tight nosegays of pinks, stocks,
+wall-flowers, or anything else saleable or in season which a cottage
+garden produces. In and about among these, pushed women of all degrees
+and ages, tasting butter, holding eggs to the light, or placing them
+against their lips to test their freshness, stopping now and then to
+feel the wearing quality of some piece of dress-stuff or flannel, draped
+and ticketed alluringly at a shop door; all moving with the slow,
+ungainly pace of those unaccustomed to walking and impeded by bundles
+and purchases in both arms. Here and there a younger woman, dressed in
+the fashion of the best shop in the town, with a basket of rather more
+elegant shape, went about her marketing with equal decision, if more
+fashion: the wife of some tradesman who lived in one of the numerous new
+villas with small gardens increasing every year on the fringe of the old
+town, who still liked the stir of the market and a bargain, but whose
+chief reason for marketing herself would be given to a friend as, "you
+can't trust those girls. They'll take anything that's given 'em and pay
+double."
+
+Farmers with that curious planted-and-not-to-be-up-rooted air which
+distinguishes a man brought up to farming everywhere stood about the
+corners of the market in groups, or greeted friends on the steps and in
+the passages of the inns. The cattle-market was on the outskirts of the
+town, and the business there was over early in the day. For the rest of
+the day they exchanged and completed their bargains, or, supported by a
+friend and with an air of determination not to be cheated, entered the
+shops of hatters and tailors, or examined the bundles of canes and
+walking-sticks hanging by their heads at the shop door, fingering stuffs
+in the same manner as the women, but with a more helpless air, as if
+hoping that some good fortune beyond their own fingers would make clear
+to them the difference and wearing quality of each.
+
+Older men, with the solidity of girth which successful farming produces,
+stood planted on the pavements with the air of spectators who enjoyed
+everything, being free from the embarrassment of the younger men, who
+found themselves after a week of solitude in the midst of a crowd of
+their fellow-creatures, who, all and any, might happen to look at one
+critically, giving rise to a red flush which in its turn might provoke
+the jokes of one's companions; ordeals which made for many a young
+countryman a day of adventure and perspiring, but one to be recalled
+during the remainder of the week as a day about town spent suitably by a
+man of spirit.
+
+In the market Anne was a woman reputed for the excellence of her butter.
+She had even taken prizes at local cattle-shows. She had an established
+stand at one of the covered stalls, and her regular customers appeared
+one by one as they were at liberty. It was largely a matter of waiting
+through the morning till all had been supplied. To-day she had placed
+mechanically in the cart a basket of Victoria plums, which had been
+ordered by the wife of a neighbouring farmer, and as she found her
+butter and chickens sold, and was about to collect her baskets together,
+she saw this, and remembered that one of the servants at that farm had
+sprained her wrist in lifting a cheese, so that the mistress, not having
+appeared earlier in the day, might be safely assumed not to be coming to
+the market. Anne stowed her empty baskets under the stall of a woman who
+sold smallwares, and began to make her meagre purchases for the week.
+Then she took her baskets and made for the yard of the inn behind the
+market-square, where she had left the pony and cart.
+
+The farmer's wife to whom Anne had arranged to carry the plums was known
+among her acquaintances as a "worry." She had two daughters, one of whom
+was delicate, and the farm was neither large nor productive. Her husband
+also was reputed to be stingy.
+
+Anne found her sitting sewing with the two girls, who were making a rag
+hearthrug. With the nervousness of women of anxious temperaments she
+began to explain their occupation, talking quickly in a voice with a
+shrill recurring note.
+
+"There's no waste in this house you see, Anne, and no drones in the
+'ive. This bit of stuff was my grandmother's." She took up a fragment of
+striped linsey, which one of the girls had just laid her hands upon. The
+girl's sulky expression did not escape her.
+
+"_Now_ then, what's the matter? _You're_ too proud, Miss. Keep a thing
+seven years and it's sure to come in, _I_ say, and keep girls working,
+and then they'll not get into trouble. Did you ever hear of anything so
+disgraceful as that Jane Evans? She ought to be sent out of the place
+with her servant and all. If it was a daughter o' mine, she'd travel far
+enough before she saw her home again."
+
+"It's very sad," replied Anne, "She's been led astray;" but the woman
+interrupted, full of her virtue.
+
+"Astray! She didn't want much leading I should think, sly thing! I know
+those quiet ones. They're generally pretty deep. No! I've no
+consideration whatever for a girl who gets herself into trouble. She's
+nearly always to blame somewhere. You just take notice of _that_," she
+added, turning to her daughters who were listening eagerly for details.
+
+"I wonder she's the face to go about," said the elder girl, a very
+pretty young woman of twenty, who, being engaged to a young carpenter,
+assumed the virtue of a girl who'd no need to seek about for lovers, and
+of a class whose sensibilities were shocked by this lapse. Her mother
+looked mollified, and gazed at the girl's pretty face with satisfaction
+in its comeliness for a few moments in silence. She was a delicate
+woman, fretted by her nerves and the difficulty of making ends meet, but
+she had real pleasure in her two girls, whose good looks and clever
+taste in their clothes, made them always presentable.
+
+"Some one ought to go and tell her what people think of her," said the
+younger girl, who already showed her mother's nervous expression.
+
+"Do it yourself," said her sister with a careless laugh.
+
+"Nay, _I_ shan't interfere," replied the girl.
+
+"You'd better not," said the mother. "You keep out of such things and
+it'll be better for you. Well, here's Anne sitting with her plums.
+You're very lucky to have a good tree like that," she added, as she
+uncovered the basket. "We haven't a single good tree in the orchard. I
+often say to James that we shouldn't have much less fruit, if they was
+all cut down to-morrow."
+
+Anne emptied the basket of plums into a basin the elder girl brought,
+and received the money mechanically. She was thinking all the time of
+Jane Evans and the careless laugh of the elder girl. Some one should
+tell her. That was quite plain. But it was nobody's business. She shook
+hands with the fortunate girl and her delicate sister, and, accompanied
+by the mother, made her way through the yard to the gate, where the pony
+had been eating as much of the hedge as he could manage with the bit in
+his mouth. Before she had taken her seat Anne was aware of the weight on
+her mind, which told her that she was "appointed" to go and reason with
+Jane Evans, and, if possible, to persuade her to leave the man.
+
+She was discouraged by the unstinting condemnation of the mother and
+girls, and began to be sore that she had not received a word of sympathy
+for the girl.
+
+"There'll be a good many to throw stones," she said, as she drove into
+her own yard and set about feeding the pony. When she had finished, her
+mind was so overcharged that she had recourse to her usual outlet. She
+began to pray aloud, not removing her bonnet or necktie, and seated as
+always on the stool at the fireplace.
+
+"O God, my heavenly Father, I thank Thee that I may come to Thee however
+full of sin, and find Thee always ready. And I come to Thee again
+to-night, repenting of my sin of omission in Thy sight. For, O God my
+Father, I have not prayed for souls as I ought, and one soul who had
+little earthly guidance has gone astray from the flock. If Thou hadst
+left _me_, O my Saviour, in what a state of misery I should be found
+to-night. Yet I have been over-anxious about my own salvation, and
+forgotten those who are in temptation. Have mercy upon me, and save
+them. Give me, O loving Father, a mouth and wisdom. Help me to point out
+to this soul the error of her ways. Help me, more than all, to 'hate the
+sin with all my heart, but still the sinner love,' and grant that there
+may be joy in the presence of the angels of God over a returning and
+repenting soul, for Thy mercy's sake. Amen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Next day Anne arose to be at once aware of the heavy task before her. As
+she set her house in order she would stop abstractedly and sit down to
+think what was best to be done. Then she would work feverishly as if
+_that_, at any rate, was a thing that could be accomplished.
+
+It was a wet day, chilly and rueful. There were not even clouds in the
+sky to vary the steady grey, and the heaven itself seemed to have
+slipped from its height and to be close upon the earth. Trees, grass,
+hedges were drenched, and remained motionless with leaves drooping under
+an added weight. The ditches were noisy, but beyond the occasional
+rattle of a cart there was no other sound than the rain, a sound so
+unvaried that it presently became as a silence, and one imagined that
+the world had ceased to have a voice. Anne opened the door many times
+and looked out to see always the same grey sheet before her. The gutter
+on the shippon splashing its overflow on the flags of the yard, the hens
+crowding dejectedly within the open door of the henhouse, and the water
+lying green between the cobble-stones of the path. Nothing could be done
+in the garden. The sodden flowers would not be fit for to-morrow's
+market. The pony had cast its shoe and must be shod before next day.
+
+"This is more important than the pony," Anne said to herself, putting on
+her market-cloak and drawing on with difficulty her elastic-sided boots.
+She fastened her skirt high with an old silk cord and took her umbrella.
+Remembering that she had not covered the fire, and that it would have
+burnt away before she returned, she took a bucket out to the coal-house.
+The wet dross hissed and smoked as she covered the fire. She drew out
+the damper to heat the water, turned back the rag hearthrug lest a
+cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her
+umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail on the cupboard door, went
+out into the rain. She locked the door on the outside, and hid the big
+key on the ledge of the manger in the shippon. Then she was outside in
+the steady rain, on the gritty turnpike road washed clean to the stones.
+As she set off, it was a small relief to her that she would not be
+noticed, unless when she passed the cottages, because there were few
+workers in the fields, and none who could help it out of doors.
+
+It was a walk of five miles which was before her, and soon the sinking
+of heart with which she had set out, began to disappear before the
+necessity of setting one foot before the other in a steady walk. The
+irritating pain of rheumatism began, too, to vex her and distract her
+thoughts. It was not a very familiar country to her after she had passed
+the Ashley high road. There were fewer houses. The farms were larger,
+and portions of an old forest remained here and there uncut. But there
+was no variation in the gloom of the sky or the folding curtain of rain.
+She grew tired and hot, and a little breathless, and as again the
+dryness of her throat and tightness of her lips reminded her of the
+humiliation of her unsought and unaided errand, she saw before her about
+a quarter of a mile on the high road which led to Marwell, the new red
+brick house with stucco ornaments, built by the horse-breeder, Burton.
+She went towards it with lagging feet.
+
+It was a prosperous and vulgar building, with a beautiful garden, for
+his garden was Burton's pride. Even in the sodden wet the flowers, not
+wholly beaten down, showed how well cared for and excellent their
+quality. The sward was even and trim, and the fruit-trees on the side of
+the house had yielded prizes to their owner. The path to the door was of
+new red tiles, and two large red pots held standard rose trees on either
+side of the stained-glass entrance. Anne rang the new bell which clanged
+loudly and followed the servant (a girl from a distance), to the showy
+drawing-room, chilly and unused in its atmosphere. It was the kind of
+house which impressed the country people by its "improvements," and at
+which Anne went to the side door to leave her butter. But she was so
+absorbed in her duty to the girl that she gave no thought to this, which
+at another time she would have considered to be "taking a liberty." She
+alone of the girl's old friends seemed to have this burden laid upon
+her, and as she entered the house she was overwhelmed with the blame of
+its having happened, and the difficulty now of recovering innocence
+lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+She had scarcely had time to recover breath before Burton, the
+horse-breeder, came into the room--a big-bearded man, of heavy build,
+with a familiar loudness and fussiness which would have been better in
+the open air, than even in the new vulgarity of his drawing-room. His
+weight was the first thing one thought of. It would have taken a
+powerful horse to carry him. He always wore his hat, whether indoors or
+out, and bright tan leggings, with riding-breeches. Among his men and
+the neighbours he passed as a good master, and free with his money,
+standing for local purposes (as, indeed, he himself considered), in
+place of the lord of the manor who owned a more interesting house in
+another shire of the country. Like the rest of mankind he earned a
+reputation for generosity by being liberal with those things by which he
+set little store. He was neither avaricious nor surly, and, being in
+full health and vigour himself, was able to spare a rough chivalry to
+women which made allowance for their weaker bodies and greater
+difficulty in coping with existence. It was probably this
+soft-heartedness which, in the first place, had stirred a vague pity for
+the pretty blonde dressmaker, and this quality which the pliable girl
+had interpreted into the hope that he'd do her justice. He had, indeed,
+often stood up for Anne Hilton herself when her peculiarities had been
+discussed, and it was with the warm feeling of being rather a friend of
+hers, and not being the man to hear a single woman abused, that he came
+into the room and shook hands noisily.
+
+"Well, Miss Hilton! I am very pleased to see you. You've come a long way
+in the wet. You must have a glass of something hot. Jane! Jane!" he
+shouted, stamping to the door and looking up the staircase. There was a
+sudden clatter, and Jane appeared in the doorway laughing, because she
+had run downstairs so quickly that she had almost fallen.
+
+"That's smart work," said Burton.
+
+"These stairs is so steep it's the easiest way of coming down 'em," said
+Jane with an air of proprietorship, with the familiarity and importance
+also of one who knows she is welcome, and, whatever other people may
+think, has a power which no one else present has with the only man in
+the room.
+
+"Well, you have chosen a wet day to pay us a visit, Miss Hilton," she
+said, with a hospitality too effusive to be spontaneous.
+
+She was a very attractive girl, with fair hair and pretty eyes, made for
+affection and to take a spoiling prettily. At present she had no
+misgiving about her lover's good intentions, and this gave her the
+confidence which naturally she lacked. Besides, she had never thought
+Anne Hilton important. Anne, seeing the handsome room, the gaiety of
+Jane, and affection of Burton, found herself wishing that there were no
+reason why it should not continue so, to all appearance a happy home of
+newly-married people. She saw none of the signs of shame in Jane which
+she herself had suffered.
+
+"I've not just come to pay you a visit, Jane, my dear," she said. "I've
+come in the place of your grandmother who's dead, to take you away with
+me."
+
+"Whatever for?" exclaimed Burton, loudly. "Do you think I can't make her
+comfortable? She's never been so happy in her life, have you, Jane?"
+
+"No!" returned Jane, very red. "And I don't see what Miss Hilton's got
+to do with it anyway."
+
+"No more don't I," returned Burton, with a laugh. "But let's hear what
+she's got to say about it. So you want Jane to go back to starving at
+dressmaking, Miss Hilton? She's a lot more comfortable here, I can tell
+you. She's got a servant, and she can have her dresses made out. She's
+no need to do anything but fancy work."
+
+"It's the sin of a good, respectable girl taking such things for a
+price," interrupted Anne, "and of you, Mr Burton, to entice her to it,
+and keep her like this. It's not on _you_ the judgment'll fall, but on
+_her_. How's she to face the neighbours and everybody she's known from a
+child when you've done with her?"
+
+"I've not done with her yet by a good way," said Burton. "Don't you
+worry yourself, Miss Hilton."
+
+"You're a man of money and position, and a newcomer in the
+neighbourhood," went on Anne, "and the neighbours are afraid to say
+anything before you. But they say plenty about Jane, whom they've known
+all their life. Young people she used to play with talk of her with
+shame, and when you've finished with her she'll not have a friend to go
+to."
+
+"But I tell you I've not done with her yet, and shan't for many a good
+while," repeated Burton. "I dare say she'll be tired first if it comes
+to that."
+
+"Can you ever give her back what you've taken from her?" asked Anne
+breathlessly, trying to pierce the self-confidence she did not
+understand.
+
+"Well, it was something like slaving all one day and then starving the
+next before," said Burton, "and she lives like a lady now. You should
+just see the fancy-work she gets through--no dressmaking now!"
+
+Anne turned to Jane, who was sitting flushed and resentfully embarrassed
+in the satin armchair, looking expectantly to Richard to see her
+through, shocked, too, and ready to cry at this first contact and
+opinion of her neighbours upon her doings.
+
+"Where's your sister Lizzie, Jane?" she asked.
+
+"Out at service," replied Jane, unwillingly, fidgetting with her hands
+and feet.
+
+"So your coming here has meant that _she's_ got no home," said Anne.
+
+"She could have had one if she'd liked," said Burton. "The house is big
+enough for us all."
+
+"Thank God for His protecting grace!" said Anne, "she was able to resist
+the temptation."
+
+"She'd have had to go out to service in any case," said Jane,
+spitefully; "the neighbours was so very kind to two girls."
+
+"Jane, I knew your grandmother," said Anne, "and I know how hard she had
+to work to keep you two girls respectably dressed and cared for. I know
+you think I'm an interfering, peculiar woman and an old maid, but your
+grandmother was no old maid. She lost your mother who'd have worked and
+kept her when she was old, and instead of having an arm to lean on,
+she'd to work morning, noon, and night, to give you two girls a home.
+She was working when other people was sleeping. It's better even to go
+to the Union than to do as you've done."
+
+Jane, after twisting her fingers together, pulled out her handkerchief
+with a jerk and began to cry, thus rousing the indolent anger of Richard
+Burton, who, with a blustering tone, as though he wanted to shout down
+an opponent, burst out--
+
+"Well, she's here now and she's not going away. And you can tell the
+kind neighbours that we can look after ourselves without their
+assistance. And as for them good girls that used to play with Jane, I
+know several who wouldn't have been slow to take the place. _I'll_ look
+after Jane all right. And we're much obliged for your visit, Miss
+Hilton," he continued, ironically. "We can spare you for quite a long
+time now. You can save yourself the walk another time. If you want to be
+home for dinner-time, you'd better be starting, don't you think?"
+
+Anne rose stiffly, limping with rheumatism.
+
+"Jane love, come with me," she said; "I can shelter you for a time, I
+can give you--"
+
+"No I won't," retorted Jane, petulantly, turning her back.
+
+Anne went slowly out of the room. Richard Burton accompanied her with
+offensive heartiness.
+
+"Well, good morning, Miss Hilton," he said, opening the door with the
+stained glass window, and stepping into the red-tiled porch, he looked
+up at the sky. "I believe it's stopped raining--all the better for your
+rheumatism, eh? Well! give my love to the neighbours you think so much
+of," he shouted with a laugh, and shut the door. Anne opened the wooden
+gate with brass nails, and shutting it behind her stood again in the
+dripping lane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The stirring of anger at Richard Burton's callousness gave way almost at
+once to a feeling of fatigue and defeat as she started on her return
+home, and a persistent image of Jane, a little girl playing
+skipping-ropes in red stockings, kept coming before her eyes. One or two
+gigs passed her, splashing among the pools of the road. The birds began
+to sing with a clarity as sweet as that of the purified air. There was
+still a tinkling of running water from every side, but the clouds were
+in shreds, and patches of blue sky were uncovered here and there.
+
+Three-quarters of the way to her home she passed a fair sized cottage,
+in front of which a tall grey-haired woman was sweeping the standing
+water from the path with a yard brush. She stopped brushing as she heard
+footsteps and looked over the gate.
+
+"Why, it's Miss Hilton," she exclaimed. "What a wet walk you've had.
+Come in and stop a bit before you go further," she said, with the
+eagerness of an active, talkative woman, who had seen no one to speak to
+all day. She took the drenched umbrella and set it on its end in the
+doorway, and Anne, tired, hot, and discouraged, sat down gladly on the
+chair she offered her.
+
+It was a comfortable kitchen, full of furniture, and bearing evident
+signs of men in the house. There were hats hanging behind the door and
+two guns over the fireplace. Such furniture as was placed there must
+have been long ago settled in its position. No one could mistake the
+room for that of young people. There was something in the multitude of
+worn objects, their solidity, their position in the room, each
+accommodating the other so that one could think of no other place for
+any of them, in the polish which had worn into the heart of the wood by
+constant rubbing which betrayed the presence and passage of many people
+through the room for many years; a used, comfortable, taken-care-of
+appearance, very pleasant to feel around one, a room from which one
+would not easily take oneself away at night and which seemed to Anne
+Hilton to set around her the company of many cheerful people.
+
+Mrs Crowther was too much occupied with her own affairs, and too eager
+to talk to enquire what had brought Anne Hilton that way. She was a
+tall, spare, robust woman, the mother of nine children, all grown up and
+well placed. She was a "worker." She had considered the bearing and
+rearing of her children as a piece of work to be done, in the same way
+in which she looked upon the spring-cleaning of her house. It had been
+done to her satisfaction, and done well. She had had little time for
+sentiment in her married life, but now, still active, strong, and with
+only the work of her house and garden, the meals for her four sons who
+still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to
+express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her
+imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which
+all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of
+judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among
+women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity
+of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town
+florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. She began
+to tell Anne Hilton how they had first come to the country.
+
+"There was _my_ mother first and then _his_, both at us. First _one_
+said, 'You don't know what it is to live in the country, you that have
+been used to going about under the gas-lamps at night'; and then the
+_other_, 'You don't know what it is to be shut in to the lamp at night
+and have no one but your two selves to look at.' It was always the same.
+'You don't know what it is,' or 'You'll be lonely.' And Thomas and I
+always said the same thing back. 'Well,' we said, 'we can but try.'
+Well, we _did_ try, and we found that cottage up Somer's Lane, and when
+I came with him the first day I began to think, what if my mother was
+right. It was so silent as if something was going to happen. I kept
+looking out of the window to see if it was, but nothing did, and the
+next morning his mother came down with the bedding and the five children
+we had then, and I've never felt lonely since. Nine children, all
+living, keep you on your feet."
+
+"Be thankful they've all turned out well," said Anne, with a sigh,
+thinking of the house she had left.
+
+"Trust 'em! that's what _I_ say," returned Mrs Crowther. "Plenty of
+good, plain food, and plenty of good, warm, woollen underclothing, and
+there'll not go much wrong with their bodies, and trust 'em for their
+characters. I was talking to Mrs Hankworth the other day--she's done
+better than me, she's had twelve--'I never was one for much whipping,'
+she said. 'I never found you did much good by it. You can break the
+spirit of a horse by whipping, but you can't change its character. Give
+'em all plenty of occupation at home, and they'll not want to go out in
+the evenings.' I was glad to hear her say so, for I've always felt like
+that myself. There was Ted had his fret-saw, and William was always one
+for making collections of butterflies or birds' eggs, and John was
+always one for politics. He'd sit reading any newspaper he could get
+hold of, and arguing with his father. I always knew he'd not stop in the
+country. He was always for the things that was doing in the town at
+meetings and unions, and he took no interest in farming or country work.
+It was always railways or politics with him. He was the first to go,"
+said Mrs Crowther, her face taking that fixed serious expression,
+betraying the inward attitude which in another woman would have meant
+tears. "You've a lot of work to do when they're little, but you can shut
+the door at night and know they're all inside with you; but there's a
+day comes to gentle as well as simple, when you shut the door at night
+and some of them's outside. Sometimes you wake in the night and you
+wonder if there's anything more you could have done for 'em, and you vex
+yourself a lot more over them when they've gone from you than you ever
+do when they're with you. You have a feeling when they're at home, that
+if they want you you're there. But it's another matter when they can't
+get at you for all their wanting or yours either for that matter."
+
+"Be thankful you've been spared the sorrow of one going astray," said
+Anne. "It's a proud thing to have a lot of sons all honest, good men."
+
+As if she had divined Anne's thoughts, or something in her words had
+suggested it to her, Mrs Crowther said suddenly--
+
+"You've heard about that Burton getting hold of Jane Evans, have you?"
+
+"I've just come back from there now," said Anne. "I only heard of it the
+other day, and I went to see if I could get her away. I blame myself
+sadly for its having happened."
+
+"He's a bad effect in the country, that Burton, with his horses and
+money," said Mrs Crowther decidedly. "It's bad for young men to see
+money got so easily. He doesn't drink, I fancy. At least I said to
+Matthew, 'What's wrong with that Burton, does he drink?' 'No,' he says.
+'At least, I don't think so,' he says; 'but he takes it out in eating.
+He's an easy liver,' he says. And what a foolish girl that is to give
+away her character for a man like him. If she was in trouble she might
+have come to any of us, and we'd have done anything in reason."
+
+"I suppose that was just it," said Anne. "He was there before we were
+ready, and the poor girl thought he was her only friend."
+
+"Well! she's a foolish girl," repeated Mrs Crowther, in the tone of one
+who having young people to protect could take no part in excuses. "Why,
+there's that young Wilkinson, that's booking-clerk at the station, said
+to our John, 'I was a bit sweet on that girl myself,' he said, 'but if
+that's the sort she is, I'm not having any.' He's a bit conceited, and
+thinks a lot of his clothes, but he's steady enough. Had she the face to
+come and see you when you went?" she added with curiosity.
+
+"I saw them both," said Anne, sadly. "She's quite under his influence. I
+can't do much for her now. Perhaps she'll come of her own accord if we
+show her we're her friends."
+
+"Well, I don't know as you can ever do much for people that will have
+their own way."
+
+"If she isn't driven any further--" began Anne.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs Crowther, with emphasis; "you _must_ make a
+difference. There's plenty of girls kept themselves decent who were just
+as poor, and if everybody's to be treated the same, no matter how they
+behave, it's very hard on _them_. I don't believe in that sort o' thing.
+If you do wrong you must bear the consequences, or what's the good of
+keeping honest. It's confusing to young people to get such ideas, and it
+does a lot of harm, Miss Hilton. You never had any young people to bring
+up. It's _that_ that alters your mind about those things. There's our
+William. He's not one for saying much. He's one of the old-fashioned
+kind. He's a kind of serious way of talking. Many a time we laugh at
+him, and say, 'For goodness sake, do stir up and laugh a bit.' I says to
+him privately, 'What do you think of it, William?' 'I've no respect for
+her whatever,' he says. 'If a sister of mine was to go that way, she'd
+have seen the last of her brother.' That's how they think you see, Miss
+Hilton, and you can't say they shouldn't."
+
+"I suppose not," replied Anne, wearily. "Nobody seems to get any nearer
+not judging their neighbours after all this time."
+
+"Well, you can't make the world over again, however you try," said Mrs
+Crowther. "You've to take things as you find 'em, and make the best of
+'em. It's hard enough for them that's kept straight without petting them
+that's weak and foolish enough to go wrong. You'll never be able to
+alter it, Miss Hilton, so you better take it so."
+
+"I can't do anything more at present," said Anne; "but I must be getting
+home again. The pony'll be wondering what's become of me. I'm very much
+obliged to you for the rest, Mrs Crowther. You don't think it's raining
+now, do you?"
+
+"No! I don't think so!" said Mrs Crowther. "How's Mary, Miss Hilton?
+She'll have been sadly hindered with all this rain. They put off two
+cricket-matches this week. They're not playing football yet, or else the
+weather wouldn't matter so much. They say the wet weather keeps their
+joints supple. It's the dry weather and frost that's so hard to play in.
+Ted's always one for a lot of sport, specially football. Such a mess as
+he comes home sometimes. 'You must clean your own clothes,' I always
+says to him. We have a joke at him, that when he wins one of these
+competitions (he's always one for going in for these guessing
+competitions that promises such a lot of money if you put in an odd word
+somewhere). He's always bound to win every time he goes in, and we tell
+him that when he wins it, he can keep a servant to clean his trousers
+after every football match. 'I shan't let any of you have any of it you
+don't take care,' he says; 'I'll be laughing at you before long, see if
+I'm not. Wait till you all come asking for rides on my motor-bike;
+what'll you say then?' he says. 'Eh!' says his father, 'I shall say
+there's more fools in the world than one!' Well Miss Hilton, good
+morning; I'm very glad to see you any time. I'm alone a good lot now,
+you know. It's not like it was once with children all round the kitchen.
+I'm glad of a bit of company now sometimes. Why, it's beautiful now!"
+she concluded, opening the door and stepping out in front of Anne,
+looking round the sky with eyes which blinked a little under the strong
+light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Next day at daybreak the country was whitened by a light mist. The birds
+sang incessantly with long ecstatic calling from throats which had drunk
+the air of the dawn and retained something of its quality. Coolness
+refreshed the day and strengthened the eyes, and one's ears were opened
+to hear from every side the chorus which in a more varied landscape one
+took as a part of the glittering moving world outside the house.
+
+Anne unbolted the house-door. The dog rose from the hearth and stretched
+itself slowly, yawning and shutting its mouth with a snap. Then it
+walked to the door, waiting until it was dragged open grating on the
+sand of the floor. The cool morning air came in like a visitor. The old
+dog pushed against Anne as she stepped outside, sneezed, yawned again,
+and lay down in the sunshine to finish his nap.
+
+"Haven't you had enough sleep yet, Lion?" said Anne. "Look, what a
+beautiful day it is! Why, there's Mary on the road already," she added,
+looking over the low gate.
+
+Mary was coming straight down the middle of the road, her
+black-and-white terrier sniffing on all sides and pulling the cord by
+which she held him. When he perceived the presence of the other dog he
+began to advance by leaps, uttering little yelps between each like a
+child's jumping toy. Lion, with the superiority of a larger dog, raised
+himself without hurry and advanced to meet the terrier, who excitedly
+whined and sniffed about him.
+
+"Good morning," said Anne, "you're out early."
+
+"Yes," replied Mary, standing quite still in the position in which she
+had halted. "I came over the fields. The grass is very wet though.
+There's a mist, surely."
+
+"Yes, a thick one," said Anne, "but the sun's coming through. Listen to
+the birds. Did you ever hear anything like them?"
+
+"I was out collecting the eggs at five o'clock this morning," returned
+Mary, "and I think I never heard them so busy. The earth was all a-hum
+with them. They seemed as though they _must_ be listened to, whatever
+happened."
+
+Both women stood listening.
+
+"I came this way because I was going to leave my shilling for Lord
+Axton's wedding present," said Mary, after a moment's silence.
+
+"Did they come and ask _you_ for one?" said Anne. "I think they ought to
+be ashamed of themselves."
+
+"There's been some grumbling about it," said Mary. "I think myself the
+agent should have left it to those who wanted. I suppose we could have
+said No, but nobody likes to. It isn't as if people like them want any
+wedding presents we can give them, and a shilling means a lot to some
+people."
+
+"It's the agent that wants to make a show," said Anne. "I think
+sometimes that if those rich people knew how their wedding presents were
+procured," she went on in the stilted manner habitual to her when
+wishing to express a formal thought, "they would find little pleasure in
+them."
+
+"Mr Burton's given L10," said Mary. "They'll have a good sum." She
+paused, distrustful.
+
+Mary, who was known to all the country side, and who could do nothing
+secretly, seldom spoke of the affairs of her neighbours. Whether she was
+by nature a little taciturn, or whether her blindness, before which so
+much passed unobserved, which cut her off from the possibility of
+forming a judgment, had increased her natural modesty and diffidence,
+she drew back into silence where others were discussed. But the actual
+difficulties of living, which she daily and silently surmounted, brought
+her so closely into touch with reality that she invariably saw, not the
+fault or its circumstances, but the practical difficulties issuing from
+it. But she had unthinkingly stumbled upon the scandal, and she went on,
+"I was sorry to hear of Jane Evans forgetting herself like she has."
+
+"Poor girl," said Anne; "she seems so certain that it'll last. What was
+so sad to me, was that a girl brought up as she was by her grandmother
+should have so little sense of her position."
+
+"She's happy, I suppose," said Mary, "and there's no need to look
+further. She'll find it hard to earn a living if he gets tired of her."
+
+"He's not an ill-natured man," said Anne. "You feel as though if he'd
+been brought up to have a respect for good behaviour he wouldn't have
+got loose so easily. He thinks he's doing a generous thing, and giving
+Jane a good time, without thinking what the result must be to her good
+character. He doesn't like to see people unhappy, as he calls
+unhappiness. He hasn't learnt the results of sin in his own experience,
+and won't look at them in others. He kept on telling me she'd got a
+servant of her own, and needn't do anything but fancy-work. They'd
+neither of them hear anything I could say. I can't understand how they
+came to know one another at the beginning. It seems to have come about
+without anyone's knowing till it was too late."
+
+"He seems a joking sort of man," said Mary. "Once he came up to buy a
+paper, and gave me half a sovereign instead of sixpence to change, and
+when I told him he'd made a mistake he laughed a lot, and said he wanted
+to know if I could tell the difference. He never sees me now without
+speaking of it and laughing."
+
+"Yes," said Anne; "he's fond of rough jokes of his own making, and
+thinks that giving people material things makes them happy," she
+continued in her bookish manner. "I remember just such another man as
+him, a boisterous sort of man, whose old father was dying, who took the
+old man out to look at a new grand-stand they were making. Poor old man!
+It was pitiful to see him in the presence of eternity, looking at a new
+grand-stand."
+
+"I suppose, being as I am," said Mary, "there's a lot of temptations
+been spared to me."
+
+"I wish we were all as kind and charitable as you," said Anne. "I never
+heard you say a hard thing of anybody all the years I've known you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Winter hastens his pace when the harvest is gathered, and it was one of
+those serene winter days on which, if one sat in a sheltered place full
+of sunshine, one might believe that the spring had begun; as if winter,
+secure in his domination of the frozen earth, could afford to relax his
+vigour and admit the approaches of the sun, like a playful child whom
+one could banish at will. A line of white clouds, with purple bases,
+were drawn about the horizon, standing like anger, as it were, within
+call. The sky on every side was of that deep transparency seen after
+many days of rain. The colours of the earth and grass were deepened and
+intense from the same cause. In many places in the fields, sheets of
+water showed above the grass, vivid as a wet rock just washed by the sea
+and colour hidden at other times glowed from the steeped ground.
+Villages and houses showed from a great distance as if some obscuring
+medium had been removed, and the remote country lay a deep band of
+indigo beneath the horizon, like a distant sea escaping under a light
+and infinite heaven.
+
+Anne Hilton set off after the evening milking to visit a bed-ridden
+woman of her acquaintance who lived in a cottage in one of the numerous
+by-lanes intersecting the now bared fields. She was a woman who had lain
+many years in the kitchen, whose narrow, hot space was all she saw of
+the world. She was not a cheerful invalid, but peevish and querulous.
+The irritation with which she always lived, waking from sleep to be at
+once aware of it, and to know no pause during her waking hours, had worn
+away a temperament which might almost have been gay. At very rare
+intervals Anne had heard her laugh, and the laugh had such a note of
+gaiety in it that she surmised the nature that had been, as it were,
+knawed thin by this never-sleeping worm. It was pity for something
+imprisoned and smothered which made Anne a steadfast friend to the
+unhappy woman, whose other friends had long tired of her incessant
+complaints and down-cast mind.
+
+Elizabeth Richardson had never any hesitation in expressing her
+opinions, and Anne had scarcely seated herself by the bed of the
+unfortunate woman, whose harrowed face told of the torment within, than
+she began to ask questions of the disgrace of Jane Evans, whom, she had
+heard, was to have a child to crown all. But contrary to Anne's
+expectations the bed-ridden woman was friendly to the girl. The habit of
+neglect and scarcely-veiled impatience with which she had for many years
+been treated, and of which she had been fully and silently aware, had
+produced in her tortured mind an exasperated rebellion against the
+opinions of her neighbours, who were unable to see anything beyond their
+own comfort. She knew that she had so much the worst of it; that even
+attending perfunctorily to another's human necessity was not so hard a
+task as to be there day after day in the company of a pain which never
+ceased, and beneath whose increasing shadow the world had slowly
+darkened.
+
+"They're all afraid of the trouble to themselves about the girl," she
+said, with her bitter intonation. "They're afraid they'll be called on
+to do something for her sooner or later."
+
+She turned over with a groan, lying still and worried.
+
+"Have you tried a bag of hot salt?" asked Anne, after a few minutes'
+silence.
+
+"Yes! I tried once or twice," replied the woman, "but you know it's a
+bit of extra trouble, and no one likes that."
+
+"If you could tell me where to get a bit of red flannel I'll make one
+for you now," said Anne.
+
+"The bag's here," said the woman, her face drawn and her mouth gasping.
+She tried to feel under the pillow.
+
+"Lie you still. I'll get it," said Anne. She drew out a bag of red
+flannel, evidently the remnant of an old flannel petticoat, for the tuck
+still remained like a grotesque attempt at ornament across the middle of
+the bag. The salt slid heavily to one end as Anne drew it out.
+
+"The oven's still warm," she said opening the door and putting her hand
+inside. "I'll just slip it in for a few minutes."
+
+"Well," said the woman, "there's not many cares about a bad-tempered,
+bed-ridden woman, but you're one of them that's been kind. I don't _say_
+much, but I _know_."
+
+"You make me nearly cry," said Anne, drawing the bag out of the oven and
+feeling its temperature. Holding it against her chest, as if to keep in
+its heat, she drew back the bed-clothes and unbuttoned the flannelette
+night-gown of the invalid, laying the poultice against her wasted side.
+The woman gave a sob and lay still for a minute.
+
+"It's a lot better," she said.
+
+"Perhaps you could sleep a bit," suggested Anne.
+
+"I'd like a cup o' tea," said the woman, "but it's a lot of trouble.
+Can't you look where you're going!" she broke out impatiently, as Anne,
+turning quickly, caught her foot in the chair, overturning it with a
+crash. "You made me jump so."
+
+"Well, I am sorry," said Anne, humbly.
+
+"Never mind," said the bed-ridden woman, her impatience exhausted. At
+that moment the door opened with a bang and a stout, middle-aged woman
+entered noisily.
+
+"What a noise you make!" said the bed-ridden woman peevishly. "You're
+getting too fat."
+
+"Fat people's better-tempered than thin ones," retorted the other
+carelessly. "Good evening, Miss Hilton! Has she been telling you all
+she's got to put up with more than other people?"
+
+"Well now," returned Anne with decisive heartiness, "I don't think we've
+been speaking about herself at all, except to express gratitude for a
+very little service that I did her. We've spent a pleasant hour
+together."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said the woman, going to the fire and rattling
+the irons noisily between the bars.
+
+"You noisy thing. Can't you make a less din!" said the bed-ridden woman,
+biting her lip.
+
+"Other people's got to live in the house besides you," said the woman.
+"If you want so much attention, you know where you can get it."
+
+The bed-ridden woman shut her eyes and lay still at this threat of the
+workhouse, that confession of failure, in a world where ability to work
+becomes a kind of morality, and lack of physical strength to procure the
+means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden
+against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one
+most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come
+to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or
+more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be
+acknowledged publicly a failure.
+
+When this last pride is taken away, there sometimes appears a kind of
+patience which is not really that of despair, but which is nearer to
+that attained by great saints after long effort and discipline--the
+mental equilibrium which is the result of desire quenched, of
+expectation for further good for oneself at an end. What the saints
+attain by a painful and mortifying life, the poor receive as a gift from
+the tender mercies of the world, receiving also the passionate pity of
+Jesus, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."
+
+"If she could only work as she used, and be 'beholden' to nobody." She
+sighed and lay still, her mind an abyss of bitterness.
+
+The stout newcomer, step-daughter to the unfortunate woman, turned to
+Anne, jerking her head backwards to indicate the other woman in bed with
+an expression of satisfaction which said quite plainly, "That's the way
+to settle _her_." Then she ignored her totally, except that she moved as
+noisily, and spoke as loudly as she could.
+
+She was a rather pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an obstinate
+mouth. There was, so to speak, "no nonsense about her." She was one of
+those women of coarse fibre, whose chief diversion consists in annoying
+the sensibilities of others. They exist more frequently in the
+middleclass than among the poor, whose common dependence teaches them
+forebearance if not pity, but they exist also among the poor, more
+terrible if not more merciless. Such women almost always find material
+to torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative,
+sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant
+wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a
+self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure
+in hatred, which appears outwardly as good-humour.
+
+The indignation which always awoke in Anne at the sight and expression
+of injustice flared suddenly upwards. Facing the still satisfied woman,
+who now drew a chair across the flagged floor with the screech of its
+wooden legs upon the stone, she said:
+
+"How can _you_, a strong, active woman, take pleasure in worrying a sick
+and ailing fellow-creature. Suppose you were in her place. How can you
+expect to find mercy from God in the day of judgment if you have no
+mercy on others?"
+
+The woman stared incredulously, and then broke into a loud laugh.
+
+"And I thought you was such a quiet piece. Fancy spitting out like
+that." Then her brutality of temper asserted itself.
+
+"_I've_ nothing to do with the day of judgment. I don't see why I should
+be called to look after a woman with the temper of a vixen that wants to
+be a spoiled darling. The Union's made for such as her and she ought to
+be in it. It's just her spite that keeps her out."
+
+"Have you no pity?" said Anne. "_You_ may not always be strong and
+able-bodied. The day may come when _you_ need help and comfort, and how
+will you deserve it from God, if you torment your unfortunate sister in
+this way!"
+
+The woman's answer was a laugh.
+
+"You're as queer as they make 'em," she said, with a slow, impudent
+stare from Anne's out-of-date immense bonnet to her elastic-sided boots,
+as if looking for a point at which she might begin to torment a new
+victim. But Anne's sensibilities lay far beyond her understanding.
+
+"Have you wore out all your grandmother's clothes yet?" she demanded
+with her contemptuous, impudent look, "you're a proper figure of fun in
+that bonnet!"
+
+"Be quiet and be done with it, you coarse lump!" interrupted the
+bed-ridden woman in so loud and authoritative a tone that the woman
+turned slowly and stupidly round to look at her. "This time next week
+I'll be in the Union and you'll have no one to torment. You can make
+arrangements when you like, the sooner the better."
+
+"All right! it can't be too soon for me," retorted the woman with her
+incessant, stupid laugh, which this time did not hide the fact that she
+had received a shock at this taking of affairs out of her hands. "But
+perhaps you'd rather I didn't do it since you've so many friends."
+
+"No, you needn't bother yourself about me," said the bed-ridden woman.
+"I'll have done with you soon."
+
+"_Couldn't_ you?" said Anne, turning to face the woman and speaking with
+great earnestness, and as always, when moved, with great preciseness.
+"_Couldn't_ you for this last week do your best to be considerate and
+kind? A week is not a very long portion of eternity. It is so painful to
+think of two people separating for ever in hatred. You _have_ one week
+left. Could you not make the most of it?"
+
+"It's a week too much!" said the woman, with careless brutality. "Are
+you always so fond of making long calls?" she added, staring at Anne.
+
+Anne turned to the bed-ridden woman, saying, "On Thursday I shall be
+going in to market and I'll call at the Union Infirmary and see the
+Matron. I think you'll be better looked after there and have peace and
+quietness."
+
+"It couldn't be worse than this," said the woman. "I think perhaps I've
+been foolish to stay here so long."
+
+"I'll see the Matron for you on Thursday," said Anne. "Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, and thank you," returned the sick woman, turning wearily away
+from her fellow-lodger and settling down to the silence and endurance in
+which she habitually lived.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs Wright," said Anne to the other woman as she opened
+the door. The woman stared in a way meant to put Anne out of
+countenance, making no reply, while Anne, going outside, shut the door
+gently behind her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+For three months Anne had prayed constantly for Jane. Living alone in an
+orderly and quiet house with one window open towards her Invisible
+Friend, she had spoken with Him of her desire for Jane's recovery, until
+it appeared to her that He too must yearn as she did for this definite
+thing. Elizabeth Richardson had been removed to the Infirmary and was at
+peace, so that Anne's thoughts were of little else than Jane and her
+re-instatement in the country. It was not the chagrin of the failure of
+her visit to Burton's house which troubled her, but her helplessness. If
+she went again she could do no more than plead as she had done before.
+But it might be that the girl had by this time felt her need of outside
+friends. It was fully three months ago. As Anne was returning from the
+nearest village one afternoon in the solemn winter sunshine, she
+determined suddenly to pay a second visit to Jane. And she would try to
+be less hard on Burton, which would perhaps draw Jane to her. It might
+be that she needed a friend by now. Half a mile from her own cottage she
+came to a three-cornered patch of the way where several roads met. By
+one side was a pond with two posts painted white as a mark for drivers
+at night-time. The sloping edge of the pond was trodden into mud by the
+feet of horses stopping to drink, and as Anne, crossing the road to
+avoid the mud, arrived opposite one of the posts, she saw a bill posted
+upon it announcing a sale.
+
+"I must see what it is," she said. "Perhaps it's something for Mary."
+She read the heading. "Sale of Bankrupt Stock."
+
+"It seems to be nothing but horses," she said as she read the list. Two
+men carrying forks on their shoulders came at that moment from the
+Ashley Road and joined her, looking over her shoulder at the bill.
+
+"I heard about it this morning," said one. "I thought he couldn't last
+long at that rate. It was always spending and making a show."
+
+"There was someone else in it," said the other. "They say Burton's done
+a moonlight flitting and gone to America."
+
+Anne, whose thoughts had been engrossed by a new opportunity for Mary,
+became aware of calamity of a new sort. She turned to the men.
+
+"What has happened?" she asked, though even as she spoke she had grasped
+it all. The man, a young, fair-haired man of twenty-six, with great
+breadth of chest and long straight legs, answered with the willingness
+of a countryman to spread news.
+
+"Why, that Richard Burton's gone bankrupt and made a bolt. They say
+it'll take the house as well as the horses to pay it all up. The
+bailiffs was in to-day as I passed taking it all down. It's a bad job
+for _somebody_, I heard," he said winking at the other man. He, glancing
+at Anne, looked embarrassed and pretended not to see.
+
+"Can either of you tell me where the girl who was living there has gone?
+Is she still there?" she asked the latter man.
+
+"Not she!" answered the former.
+
+"They say she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man.
+"She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.
+It's a good eight miles of a walk."
+
+"Do her good," said the younger man; and they began to discuss the list
+and quality of the horses for sale.
+
+Anne walked on. It had come then, and sooner than it was looked for.
+Jane's fancy-work and "lady-like" life seemed like the play-things of a
+baby by the side of a scaffold, as helpless and as foolish.
+
+"I was going to the Union to-morrow anyway for Elizabeth Richardson,"
+said Anne, as she unlocked her door, trying not to see Jane Evans
+walking all alone, with no new house or protector, through the darkness
+of which she was afraid, to the formidable iron gate of the Union.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+In the afternoon of the following day Anne entered the common room of
+the Infirmary. In this large room, with high windows spotlessly clean, a
+fireplace at one end in which a sufficiently generous fire was burning,
+and before which were two wicker cradles; women for the most part in
+extreme old age of body rather than years were sitting in every possible
+attitude on the wooden seat which ran round the wall on three sides of
+the room. At the far end, near the fire, a blind woman was knitting
+men's stockings. Two very old women sat with their chins in their hands
+and heads bent, motionless, neither hearing nor seeing anything outward.
+Three others, their white pleated caps nodding at different angles, were
+making aprons. A young woman with a healthy but sullen face was nursing
+a large baby. Another, younger, but early-developed, as girls are in the
+country, sat nearest the fire, a shawl half off her shoulders, her foot
+rocking one of the cradles. There seemed no trace of coarseness in her
+face, refined now by illness and days indoors; only an infinite
+ignorance and bewilderment. She seemed not more than seventeen. The tone
+of the Matron in speaking to her was not unkind, but had in it the
+mixture of impatience and contempt, which sensible middle-aged women
+have for foolish girls who can't look after themselves. There was, too,
+unknown to herself, for she would have looked upon herself as a kind
+woman, a slight feeling of satisfaction that, though the silly girl was
+sheltered in this place and everyone was kind to her, she'd find out
+what it meant to get herself in that state when she went outside. In the
+meantime, being really kind, if sensible, she said.
+
+"Keep your shawl over your shoulders, Maggie. You mustn't catch cold
+your first day out of bed!"
+
+"She doesn't look fit for much does she?" said the other young mother
+contemptuously. "Ten days and then to be as washed out as that."
+
+One of the old women, who had remained motionless, got up slowly and
+stretched out her hand, pointing at the girl vindictively.
+
+"That girl's next the fire! That was _my_ place before she come."
+
+"Oh, you're all right, mother," said the Matron cheerfully, pushing her
+gently back to her seat. The old woman mumbled to herself as she sank
+back into the same stupor, in the midst of which she brooded on her
+grievance. The other old woman began in a hard, high voice without
+raising her head:
+
+"That's the way they do in this place. Push out the old ones."
+
+"Now you two don't begin talking and grumbling," interrupted the Matron
+decidedly. "You're as well treated as anyone else."
+
+At this moment Anne made a movement in the corner where she had stood
+unnoticed. From every bench withered hands were thrust at her, some
+grasping her arm, some her mantle, some were held open at her face.
+
+"Give me a ha'penny--just a ha'penny!" screamed a dozen old voices. "A
+ha'penny! Spare a ha'penny!"
+
+"Now then," interrupted the Matron, taking two of the women and leading
+them back to their places. "What good would a ha'penny do to _any_ of
+you?" She touched two other women, and they retired grumbling to their
+seats, all except one tall, bony old creature, with a frightful palsy,
+who kept hold of Anne by the arm, repeating in a voice which was more
+like an angry scream than the whisper which her deaf ears imagined it to
+be.
+
+"Those other women'll all beg from you. They'd take the bread out of
+anybody's mouth. Give me a ha'penny Missis, only a ha'penny," and her
+avaricious, bony hand pinched Anne's arm tightly as though she already
+clutched the coin. The Matron, using both her own hands, unfastened her
+hands as she might have done a knot. The old woman shook with rage and
+palsy, and fell rather than sat down on her seat under the flowering
+geraniums in the window.
+
+"Now, I _knew_ there was somebody strange in the room," said the blind
+woman. "Just let me have a look at her."
+
+She tucked her knitting needles into her apron-string. She had been for
+many years in the workhouse infirmary, where she knitted and repaired
+the thick stockings worn by the inmates. She had become a kind of pride
+of the ward. Beyond the misfortune of her blindness she had no defect,
+and her mind was alert and cheerful.
+
+"She calls it 'looking,'" said the Matron with a laugh. "Just you see
+her knitting, Miss Hilton. She's re-footing those stockings. See if you
+can tell where she's patched them." She took up a bright blue stocking
+from the bench. The blind woman took the other end and felt it
+carefully.
+
+"That's not _my_ work," she said with amused contempt. "It's too like
+patchwork. Here's mine."
+
+Anne took the stocking and looked. "It's beautiful," she said. "I could
+never have told there was a join." The blind woman's hand touched her
+arm and wandered slowly upwards, over her face and neck and head.
+
+"I've not seen you before, have I?" she said. "No, I don't think I
+have."
+
+The Matron had already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind
+woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered
+inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women,
+the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman,
+to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned for ever.
+
+She followed the Matron into the courtyard. Several men in bottle-green
+corduroys loitered there, and a tiny old woman shrivelled and imbecile,
+who ran to Anne the moment she appeared, holding her skirts high to her
+knees, skipping on one foot and then on the other.
+
+"I'll dance for a ha'penny! I'll dance for a ha'penny!" she whined.
+
+"Go on! dance, old lady," said one of the men who was carrying an empty
+drawer, which had just been scrubbed, to dry in the sunshine of the
+yard. He set it down, end upwards, and stood expectantly. The two other
+men paused also.
+
+"Go on! Aren't you going to begin?" said one of them.
+
+"She's a funny old thing, this one," said the Matron to Anne, stopping
+to watch, as the old woman, holding her skirts to her knees, her clogs
+clacking, and with a smile of imbecility fixed on her face, began to hop
+from one thin leg to the other, stamping slowly round on her heels in
+the artless manner of a child. All at once she stopped, and, pulling up
+her apron, put a corner of it in her mouth, hanging her head and
+giggling.
+
+"They're all looking at me, all them men," she giggled. "Fancy me
+dancing with all them men looking." One of the men broke into a laugh,
+which was changed immediately into an attack of asthma.
+
+"Dance again, old lady!" called a younger man, with the effects of hard
+drinking visible in his face.
+
+The shrunken and pitiful figure revolved several times, stamping on her
+heels, then stopped with the same grotesque coquetry.
+
+"She's a funny old thing, isn't she?" said the Matron to Anne. "She
+gives us many a laugh."
+
+"It's too humbling to look at. I cannot laugh," said Anne. "Poor old
+thing, to have come to that."
+
+
+"She doesn't know, you know," said the Matron. "You're wasting your
+pity. They're most of them better off in the infirmary here than they
+were outside. You've no idea what a dirty state _she_ was found in for
+one."
+
+"It's the painfulness of such a sight--age without honour," repeated
+Anne.
+
+"I've no time to think of that sort of thing," replied the Matron, as
+they began to ascend the wide stairs to the bed rooms, a woman, who was
+scrubbing the steps with sand, standing aside to let them pass.
+
+Several women were sitting up in bed, with starched night-caps nodding
+at different angles. Over the fireplace was a lithograph of Queen
+Victoria giving the Bible as the source of England's greatness to an
+Indian potentate, and beneath it, sitting very still in a large
+armchair, was Jane Evans staring into the fire. She was very quiet,
+broken, and helplessly docile. Her stillness was alarming. She seemed to
+be already dead in spirit. Even the child soon to be separated from her
+scarcely concerned her. She was quite neat. Thin and fatigued as her
+face was, she did not appear to have suffered greatly in health.
+
+"Jane, my dear, I've not come to blame you," began Anne, "I've come to
+see if there's anything I can do to make it easier for you to face the
+future and what's coming. I only heard of you coming here by accident or
+you shouldn't have been left alone. You mustn't think everybody's
+forsaken you and you've no friend left to you. It's often the case that
+you know your true friends in trouble," she continued sententiously.
+"And if only you could find the best Friend of all now when you need Him
+most." Her prim phrasing changed to earnestness. "There was a woman once
+that they dragged out in front of everybody for evil-doing. But He
+wouldn't have it. He put them to silence, and then when she was all
+alone with Him He showed her how tender He was to them that do wrong. If
+you only knew Him and His kindness, and how He can understand any kind
+of trouble. There's a good deal you think none of us can understand, but
+_He_ can if you tell Him." She wiped her eyes. Jane did not seem to have
+heard.
+
+"I don't want to worry you," continued Anne; "you've got a good deal to
+bear and to think of, and you've got to keep up for the sake of the
+child. He'll need you to be father and mother both. Matron thinks you'll
+be better here for the present, but you mustn't give up and think you're
+to stay in the Union all your life. But try to think of the child, and
+how God'll help you if you try to do the right."
+
+It was like speaking to a person a very long way off, and Anne desisted.
+
+"She's very quiet, isn't she?" said the Matron. "That'll have to break
+down soon. The doctor thinks she'll be all right when the child comes.
+The labour'll give her a shock and rouse her. She comes of a better
+class than the usual ones. It's the disgrace she can't get over. She'll
+do anything she's told to do. I sometimes get tired of making the other
+women do as they're told, but I wish sometimes she'd be a bit more like
+them. You'll be ready for your tea soon, won't you, Jane?" she added in
+the cheerful professional tone intended to deceive the sick.
+
+"Yes, please," said Jane, without looking round.
+
+"Here's Miss Hilton come all this way to see you," said the Matron a
+little more sharply. "Can't you say anything to her? you may not have so
+many friends come to see you as you expect, you know."
+
+There was no echo from the abyss of misery in which Jane was sunken. She
+neither replied nor stirred. With the flight of Burton all hope had been
+killed within her; and without hope she had fallen like a bird with one
+wing broken. She was defenceless, and her misery laid open to all. She
+could only keep still, lest it should be tortured by being handled.
+
+"You must think of the child, you know," said the Matron. "He'll depend
+on you altogether, and you mustn't give in like this. She doesn't care,"
+she added to Anne as Jane still sat without a tremor of understanding.
+"It's a bad sign. I can't even rouse her with speaking of Burton. She's
+given up hope of him. It's like as if something's dead inside her.
+Doctor says it's shock."
+
+"I should say it's temper," said a voice from one of the beds. "Petting
+and spoiling all day long." The voice came from an old woman, with a
+soft, withered face and infantile blue eyes.
+
+"Now then, where did you hide that thermometer?" said the Matron, with a
+good-natured laugh. "You know, Miss Hilton, this old lady's a famous
+hand at taking anything that's about, and keeping it for herself. She
+doesn't call it stealing, don't you see. Why, the other day she was
+having her temperature taken, and when the nurse turned her head away
+there was no thermometer to be seen. 'What have you done with it?' she
+says. 'Why, I declare, I must have etten it,' says this old lady. What
+do you think of that?"
+
+The old woman turned over in bed, and her innocent eyes closed with a
+patient expression.
+
+"I don't know what people are allowed to come talking here for when it
+isn't visiting day," she said. "Nobody can go to sleep for such
+talking."
+
+Anne sat down beside Jane and began to sing--
+
+"I was a wandering sheep;
+I did not love the fold."
+
+The Matron watched with an air of curiosity. Jane did not cease staring
+into the fire.
+
+"It's no use, Miss Hilton. I daresay the old lady's a bit right. There's
+a slice of temper in it too. But we can't waste all day over her."
+
+Anne took Jane's hand. "I'll come and see you again in a little while,"
+she said. "And remember, there's always One that'll hear all that you
+can't tell to any one else. He's with you here waiting to hear and help
+you." She lingered. There was no response. The Matron walked briskly
+towards the door.
+
+"Well, the old ones are easier to manage," she said. She led the way
+downstairs and left Anne on the doorstep of the big front door. The
+porter shut it with a clang.
+
+The pony was pawing the gravel outside the gate and pulling hard with
+his head. He backed the cart vigorously into the road as Anne untied his
+head, and set off at a good pace towards the town.
+
+"I'll go up to-morrow and see Mrs Hankworth," said Anne. "She'll perhaps
+be able to say something to help."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mrs Hankworth lived at one of the largest farms in the country, some
+three miles away from Anne Hilton's cottage. The farmstead was, contrary
+to the usual custom, not placed near the high road for convenience, but
+on an eminence in the midst of its own lands. A road had been cut to it
+between cornfields, so that in the time of springing corn a man walking
+on this road seemed to be wading to the knees in a green undulating sea,
+which had risen and submerged the hill. The farm itself was large, with
+a garden unusually well kept, a sign that the mistress counted in the
+establishment. Old rose trees grew almost to the roof of the wide
+building, and the thick turf bore token to the richness of the soil.
+
+Inside, the passage, the stairs, the rooms, were all spacious, and, in
+spite of the rattling of cans and the sound of voices in the kitchen,
+the place retained an atmosphere of quiet and tranquillity, not of
+isolation or desertion, but of that comfortable restfulness which one
+recalls as a child, when, having been ill, one is left at home when the
+others have gone to school, and remains in a quiet house, watching
+contentedly the leisurely cheerful movements of one's mother.
+
+Mrs Hankworth, the mistress of the best farm in the country, was an
+enormously stout but very active woman. Her husband, a man half her size
+and an excellent farmer, exhibited only one trait of nervousness, and
+that on her account. If she went to market without him he was uneasy
+until she came back lest something should have happened to her. In all
+the fifteen years of their married life they had never slept out of
+their own bed, and they had had no honeymoon.
+
+With the contentment of a woman of sound health and of active useful
+life, who was fully aware that her good sense and management were as
+necessary to the farm, her husband and twelve children, as his own
+knowledge of farming, she looked upon this as a just sense of her own
+value, as indeed it was, and the reward of the confidence which she so
+completely deserved from her husband. She was generous to her poorer
+neighbours even when they cheated her. Not taking it very deeply to
+heart nor expecting much otherwise, she was yet able to remember that
+her lot was an affluent one compared with theirs, and was ready to
+excuse even while being perfectly aware of human fraility. Who, when she
+had sent to an old woman of the village who lived discontentedly on such
+pickings as she could induce her neighbours to leave her, and who had
+constantly profited by the liberality of this well-established mistress,
+a ticket for a large tea, and was informed by some officious person that
+the husband also had procured a ticket at her expense, said, "He's a
+poor old crab-stick. It'll do him no harm to have a good tea for once."
+
+She was a contented woman, entirely satisfied with the position which
+life had allotted to her, a position in which all her faculties had full
+scope, and were to the full appreciated by those with whom she had most
+to do, and being of a really kind heart she was a good friend to the
+poor. When Anne arrived at the door of the dairy, she found its mistress
+seated before a tin pail containing a mass of butter which she was
+dividing into prints. With white sleeves and apron, a bucket of scalding
+water on one side of her and a pail of cold on the other, her ample
+knees spread apart for balance as she sat on a low chair, her bulky and
+capable hands moved with decision and practice about her work. She
+looked up as Anne appeared in the doorway, but her hands did not cease
+working.
+
+"It's not often we have to do this," she said, "but they sent down word
+that there was no milk wanted yesterday, so we had to set to."
+
+"It looks nice butter," said Anne, with the judgment of a connoisseur.
+
+"_You_ ought to know what good butter is," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I've
+just been having a laugh over that Peter Molesworth. He wrote on his
+account, "17 pints." Did you ever hear such a thing! It took me quite a
+long time to know what 17 pints was. Him and his 17 pints!"
+
+"He's not very clever, Peter," said Anne, "but I don't know what his
+poor mother would do without him."
+
+"No," returned Mrs Hankworth, "he's hard-working if he's stupid, and
+that's better than the other way round."
+
+"Mrs Hankworth," began Anne, "I know what a good friend you've always
+been to those that have got into trouble, and I came to ask your advice
+about that poor Jane Evans."
+
+"I just heard of it the other day," replied Mrs Hankworth, letting the
+butter-prints sink on her lap. "I don't know how it was I came to know
+of it so late. I'd no idea till the other day that she'd ever gone to
+live with that Burton. I wonder how she got acquainted with him. There's
+no men goes about their house. What's she doing now?"
+
+"She's in the Union," said Anne, "and she sits there without speaking,
+staring into the fire. Nobody can rouse her. She seems to have no life
+left in her. It's pitiful to see her, and to think of what's coming to
+her."
+
+"She's been foolish," said Mrs Hankworth, "and I expect she'll find
+plenty to make her pay for her foolishness. But I see no reason why she
+shouldn't do all the better for a lesson. She'll have to work though.
+There'll be no sitting round in silk blouses doing fancy-work. You
+needn't be troubled about her moping when she's got the baby. They don't
+leave you much time for that," she added with a laugh of retrospection.
+"But your first baby's as much trouble as ten. If she can earn a living
+when she comes out she'll be better without that Burton. He's no better
+than a child's balloon. He's up, and you prick him with a pin and he's
+down! She's provided in the Union, I suppose?"
+
+"I think so, since they never asked anything about it," said Anne.
+
+"What sort of a place is it, Miss Hilton?" asked Mrs Hankworth in the
+tone of one who might be enquiring after a prison or worse.
+
+"They'd a nice big fire," said Anne, "and until you came to look at the
+people, it looked quite comfortable. But when you came to look at those
+poor things, and thought that that was all they had to expect, it made
+your heart ache."
+
+"She's a good matron I've heard," said Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"She's a kind woman," returned Anne, heartily, "and I suppose it's a
+good thing they've got such a place to shelter them. But it seems a poor
+end somehow, and not a place for young people. There seems to be no hope
+in it, and yet it's clean, and they've got good food."
+
+"Other people's bread doesn't taste like your own to them that's been
+used to having any," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I expect, if you've never
+had any of your own, you're glad to get anything. I suppose Burton's out
+of the country."
+
+"Nobody seems to know rightly," said Anne. "Jane says not a word. I
+don't suppose she really knows anything."
+
+"She'll come to see that she's better without him," said Mrs Hankworth,
+taking up the prints and working the butter emphatically. "But she must
+work like the rest of us. It's generally the long clothes that gets left
+over," she added, "the short ones get worn out by some of them, but I'll
+look and see what I can find. It'll be rather nice to be looking out
+baby-things again. There's nothing you miss more than a baby, when
+you've had one or other about for a good many years. But she'd never do
+any good with that Burton about."
+
+It seemed not so much the fact that a girl would give up her reputation
+for a man, that impressed Mrs Hankworth unpleasantly, but that she would
+give it into the keeping of _such_ a man. She did not expect impossible
+things of anybody. No one belonging to her had ever made a slip, and
+such a happening seemed to be so remote a possibility for anyone
+"connected," that she could spare great charity for the rest of the
+world. Nor did she believe in "driving people." If a girl had made a
+mistake, that was no reason why everyone else should make another, and
+her good sense revolted against a perpetually drawn-out punishment for
+any fault. Her disgust at this fault, not very deep, being submerged
+almost as it arose, by the immediate necessity for doing something, and
+a reminiscent understanding of the timidity and dread with which the
+first child-bearing might be regarded by an ignorant and forsaken girl.
+Her position as the reputable and capable mother of a family being
+unassailable, no one could consider that kindness to the girl implied
+any countenancing of her offence. Anne, puzzled and baffled by the
+things which she had seen, felt herself in a larger sphere which could
+consider the fact of birth as a small matter for everyday occurrence and
+preparation, happen however it might.
+
+"You can't do anything by worrying, Miss Hilton, you know," said Mrs
+Hankworth. "You've got to wait. There's nothing _anybody_ can do but
+wait. There's our John. I think he gets more nervous every child we
+have. I always say to him that he can't help anything by worrying, and
+in any case _I'm_ the person who's got to go through it; but it makes no
+difference. He can't be satisfied till he sees me walking about again.
+The girl'll be quite right when she's got the baby to work for. She's
+nothing to do now but wait and think about it and herself. You'll see
+when she's up and about again she'll be another thing. I hope the baby's
+a boy. It'll be sooner forgotten about if he is."
+
+"I'm afraid," said Anne, growing expansive beneath the good sense which
+attacked every practical side of the matter, and dissolved difficulties
+as soon as they arose, "that she'll get little work to do when she comes
+out. People talk unkindly, and say that you must make a difference
+between her and other girls."
+
+"Oh! there'll always be some clever folk like that," said Mrs Hankworth,
+drily. "The difference that anyone can see if they use their eyes is,
+that _she'll_ have a child to keep and _they_ won't. She's no idea where
+she'll go, I suppose?"
+
+"She doesn't seem to know where she is now," replied Anne. "It's
+terrible to see anybody drinking such bitter waters as that poor girl.
+She thinks we're all against her, and I'm a religious old maid. So she
+shuts herself up, and doesn't say a word."
+
+"Don't you worry, Miss Hilton," said Mrs Hankworth; "she'll look for
+friends when the baby comes. She'll stir herself for his sake, if she
+won't for her own. We're going to have Mr Charter to stop to-morrow
+night. You'll be going to the Home Missions, won't you?" she said, as if
+all had been said that could be.
+
+"It'll be a great treat to hear Mr Charter," said Anne. "He's such a
+kind way of talking about everybody. It's a season of grace and sweet
+delight when he comes."
+
+"He's got such a way with children and young people," said Mrs
+Hankworth, steering away from "experiences." "There's my big lad
+William! He'll follow him round from place to place till he's out of
+walking distance. 'What do you do it for, William?' I says to him, and
+he stands on one leg and then on the other, and says 'I don't know,' he
+says. 'I like hearing him,' he says. He's a great attraction for him."
+
+"I hope there'll be a good meeting," said Anne, rising to go. "Don't you
+get up. It's been a great relief to me to have a chat with you."
+
+"I'll go down myself and have a look at Jane," said Mrs Hankworth.
+"Perhaps in a week or so she'll have got a bit used to her position, and
+see that she can't go on like that long."
+
+"It'll be a real work of charity," said Anne earnestly. "Young people
+think a lot of married women. She thinks, you know, that I'm an old maid
+and don't know anything about it."
+
+"Well, I'll go," said Mrs Hankworth, gratified. "Good morning, then. We
+shall see you at the meeting."
+
+"God willing," replied Anne, and turned to go, comforted by the
+confidence and ample views of this well-to-do woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The little grey chapel at the corner of two roads was lighted and
+already hot with steam on the windows. The wooden pews, set on steps
+which rose evenly to the window-sill at the back of the tiny building,
+seemed to precipitate themselves upon the mean wooden pulpit. Three
+benches set endwise to the platform served for the choir, and there was
+a small harmonium. The girl (a daughter of a prosperous farmer) who
+played it was already in her place, and a group of children had taken
+possession of the front pew. These were playing under the book-rest and
+frequent giggles burst from their number. At last one of them threw a
+hat so much too high that it dropped into the next pew, and a
+preter-natural silence fell upon the group, who all wriggled themselves
+erect on their seats and looked apprehensively round. The girl at the
+harmonium bent back to look at the clock and then pulled out her stops
+and began to play. The door clicked, and burst open to admit a cold
+breeze and a big farm boy in his Sunday clothes, whose head and
+shoulders came in before the rest of him was ready to follow, and who
+held on to the door as he entered as if for protection. Every child
+turned its head and watched him while he ducked his head on to the
+book-board for a second, and then sat upright, adjusting his neck into
+his collar. The farmer, whose daughter played the organ, came next with
+his wife, who made her way with an air of ownership to her seat, and
+having covered her face with her hand for a moment, untied her
+bonnet-strings and fanned her hot face. Every other moment now the door
+burst open, and admitted someone from the dark blue outside--a group of
+clumsy youths who flung themselves upon the pew doors as if they had
+formed the deliberate purpose of keeping them out, some girls in their
+finery nodding to acquaintances as they entered, some labourers in
+unaccustomed clothes, and last Mary Colton who walked with her
+calculating step to the nearest choir bench. Then a larger group
+hesitated at the door and the evangelist entered, mounting the pulpit
+with a confident tread, the minister taking a seat in the choir benches
+and the stewards sitting behind him. There was some whispering between
+the evangelist and the minister, then the evangelist remained seated and
+the minister rose and gave out a hymn--
+
+"Rescue the perishing, care for the dying."
+
+Those who did not know the words knew and shouted the chorus. It was a
+rousing beginning. As the hymn came to a final shout, Anne Hilton in a
+black bonnet and old-fashioned mantle with a bead fringe at the
+shoulders, with one black cotton glove half on and the other wholly off,
+entered the chapel and sat just within the door.
+
+The evangelist glanced round his congregation and found himself able to
+believe the report that the country districts were apathetic. He was an
+ugly little man with straggling brown whiskers and unruly hair, and had
+no great appearance of illumination, yet he was a true evangelist,
+labouring hard to pull souls from the pit of social and moral
+corruption. That was why he had been sent to the task of addressing the
+country congregations. He was not working with an eye to romance, nor
+for the glory which comes to those who work in the slums. He thought
+with the thoughts of those among whom he worked. He had known what it
+was to be hungry. He had known the crucifixion of standing idle when
+every limb ached to be working. He knew that pregnant women are
+sometimes beaten and kicked by the clogs of their husbands. He knew what
+little children felt like when they cried from cold. His heart was
+incessantly burning, but he had worked now for fifteen years and it was
+no longer burning with indignation. He had found others, not Christians,
+as he thought, who would be indignant, who would plan with pity and
+sympathy and with more efficiency and foresight that he could ever
+control, build up and organise ways of escape for much that he saw. He
+could meet them too. But his work was to understand, and from his
+understanding to attract and heal. The others had nothing to say to a
+woman whose husband died, or whose son became crippled at work, to a man
+who lost his right hand, or a girl whose sweetheart was drowned two days
+before the wedding, and these things were always happening.
+
+He looked round. He thought of his various speeches. It was no use
+telling these people how many more women were arrested for drunkenness
+in the streets this year than last, nor how many families lived in
+cellars, nor how many men were without work. Their imaginations, never
+straying into large numbers, would be blank. He would tell them stories
+of men and women like themselves, and of how _they_ managed when
+calamity came. He had sheaves of such stories and a ready tongue. He
+might strike a spark of understanding. His voice, as he began to speak,
+belied his appearance. It was sonorous and beautiful and it immediately
+controlled his audience.
+
+"My dear friends! Just round the corner from the house where I live,
+there's a street called 'Paradise Street,' but I can tell you as I came
+along here this morning in the lanes by the chapel, it seemed to me a
+good deal more like Paradise than that street. It was a treat to smell
+hawthorn hedges again, and to see some clear sky again, after the
+foundries of stone-work, and I don't know what it is that makes people
+give names like Angel Meadow, Paradise Row, Greenfield Street to the
+dirtiest and smelliest streets in all the town. But I've got some very
+good friends in this particular Paradise Street I was talking of, and if
+they don't get an abundant entrance into the Paradise of our Saviour
+when their time comes, I've mistaken His loving-kindness very sadly.
+
+"Now, you'd hardly think that an old woman could be very happy living in
+a cellar, without even a proper window to put a plant in, and six steps
+to come up and down every time she went out and in, and drunken men
+cursing and blaspheming up above in the street! Well! I'm going to tell
+you a tale of one of the happiest old women I know, but I'm afraid it's
+got to be about a day on which she wasn't happy at all.
+
+"Her name's Jane Clark, and she lives in that cellar I'm speaking of on
+2s. 6d. a week she has from the parish. She's a widow, and some of you
+women know what that means. She pays 1s. 3d. for her share of the
+cellar, for you know in towns such as I come from, we're building so
+many factories, and railway sheds, and what not, that we've no room left
+to live in, so Mrs Clark had to share even her cellar. Many a time when
+I passed down that dreadful street and hadn't time to go in, I'd just
+shout down the cellar and she'd have an answer back in no time. I used
+to go down for a few minutes, just to cheer myself up a bit, for there's
+a lot of discouraging things happen in our sort of work, and she always
+made me ashamed. She was so content, never wanting more and always
+thankful for what she had.
+
+"Well! one day I was in Paradise Street. It was wet and cold, and the
+beer-shops were full of drunken men and women, and even the children
+were shouting foul language.
+
+"'O God,' I said, ready to cry out in the street, 'How long will the
+power of the devil last in this town?' However, I thought of Mrs Clark
+down there, and how she had to live in it all, so I went down the steps,
+and there she was, but I could see that even she had been crying.
+
+"'Now, Mrs Clark!' I said, 'you don't mean to tell me that it's your
+turn to be cheered up?'
+
+"'No!' she said, 'not now! I've got it done already!'
+
+"'Well, now!' I said, 'it's so unusual to see you with those red eyes
+that you make me quite curious. That is, if it's nothing that'll hurt
+you to tell,' I said.
+
+"'No!' she said, 'it'll not hurt me. I'm a silly old woman,' she said.
+She didn't speak for a minute, and then she went on:
+
+"'You know it's my birthday to-day, Mr Charter. I'm sixty this very
+Friday. Well, you know, I always say to myself, "Short commons on
+Friday," I says, "because 1s. 6d. won't last for ever." But somehow, with
+its being my birthday I suppose, and me being sixty, I got it into my
+head that the Lord would perhaps remember me. I've gone on loving Him
+for over forty years, and it did seem hard that on my birthday and me
+sixty, He should have left me with only a crust of bread to my tea.
+However, I sat down to eat my crust, but when I began to say a blessing
+over it, I just began to cry like a silly child. Well, what do you
+think! I'd just taken the first bite, when a child, whose mother I know,
+came running in and put a little newspaper parcel on the table. "Mrs
+Clark," she says, "my mother was out working to-day, and the lady gave
+her a big pot of dripping, so she sent a bit round for your tea!" She
+run straight away, and when that child had gone, I cried a good bit
+more, and then I laughed and laughed, and says over and over again to
+myself, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."'"
+
+The evangelist looked at his watch, and took a drink of water. One or
+two men shifted their attitude from one side to the other, and all
+waited as children do for an absorbing story. A momentary look of
+satisfaction came over the face of the evangelist, and he began again
+with zest.
+
+"I'm afraid the next tale I've got to tell you will take a good deal of
+time." ("We're here to listen," interrupted the minister.)
+
+"Thank you! but you don't know me when I begin to talk! I can hardly
+tell this tale in a public meeting, it comes so near home. It's about a
+friend of mine, we'll call him Joe, and whenever I think about him there
+always comes into my mind the verse we put up over him, 'Blessed is he,
+whosoever shall not be offended in Me,' for Joe hadn't an easy lot. I'll
+tell you what his trade was, though it may make you laugh to hear he was
+a sweep! Now, I don't know what there is about a sweep that makes little
+rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but
+that's the curious fact. As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in
+the street, there's a crowd of little rascals round him at once. I've
+seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black
+face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ''Weep, 'weep!' behind
+him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about
+where he lived. 'Eh! never mind 'em, Mr Charter,' he used to say. 'It
+pleases the children, and it doesn't hurt me.' That was the sort of man
+he was, you see, humble and content.
+
+"He was married, was Joe, to a good, hard-working little wife, and
+they'd had one daughter. She married a young plumber who got work at
+Peterhead, and she had three little boys that their grandfather had
+never seen. He had a photograph of them on the mantleshelf with their
+mother, that she'd sent him one Christmas. Now one day, an idea came
+into his head, that if he put by threepence a week, after a good long
+time, he and his wife could go by a cheap excursion to see those little
+grandchildren and their mother, just once before they died. He prayed
+about it, and then week by week, they began saving up, and the nearer
+they came to having L3, the more real those little grandchildren of
+theirs became. The daughter, you see, wasn't to be told till all was
+ready, and then there was going to be a grand surprise. Well, you know,
+I got as interested in that saving-up as though it was me that was going
+the excursion!
+
+"Now Joe, he had the young men's class in the Sunday-school (all of 'em
+who weren't too high up in world to be taught by the sweep), and one day
+I was looking in at a foundry as I passed, when a young man who was
+standing out at the door said to me, 'Have you heard about Joe?'
+
+"'No!' I said, rather startled, for he's a frail old man at the best,
+'What about him?'
+
+"'Oh, it's nothing wrong with himself,' he said, 'but a week ago when he
+was going out in the early morning--last Saturday was wet, wasn't
+it?--he found one of them poor street girls fallen down in a faint a few
+yards away from his house. He called the missis, and they got her into
+the kitchen and gave her a cup of tea and put her to bed, and she'll
+never get up again, it seems. She was in a consumption too bad for them
+to take her at the hospital, so Joe's keeping her till she wants it no
+more.'
+
+"I said good-bye to the young man and set off straight to see Joe. It
+was afternoon, so he was in when I got there. He didn't say much, but we
+went in to see the girl (she'd got the bed, and the missis slept on the
+sofa and Joe in the armchair), a poor, breathless, young thing, very
+near to death. I began to talk to her of the love of our Saviour, but
+she stopped me. 'Nobody's ever loved _me_!' she said, 'nobody'll care if
+I die or not. I never believed there was any kindness in the world till
+I met these two.' We left her gasping there and went into the kitchen.
+
+"'Poor lost lamb,' said Joe, 'them's sad words to hear.'
+
+"'Sadder to feel they're true about so many others as well,' I said.
+'But, Joe, be open with me,' I said, 'have you spent your savings on
+this poor soul?'
+
+"'Yes!' he said, 'all but a few shillings. She must have milk and
+nourishment, you know.'
+
+"'Yes, I know that,' I said, 'and for the present I can't help you, but
+you mustn't be allowed to spend all you've saved.'
+
+"'Nay,' he said, 'it was a bitter cross the Lord of Glory carried for my
+sins. I can at least do this for one of His lost ones.'
+
+"I knew he'd say that, or something like it, but in my own mind I'd
+determined to get it back again from somewhere for him, but you'll hear
+how I was prevented. I noticed that he looked a bit tired and thin as I
+went out, and I said to him, 'You're not looking very grand! You must
+take care of yourself too."
+
+"'No! I don't feel very well,' he said. 'I've been feeling my age a bit
+lately,' he said laughing.
+
+"'I'll look in to-morrow again,' I said as I went away, and about the
+same time next day I went back to find him sitting still on one side of
+the fireplace and the wife on the other. The girl had died suddenly in
+the night. They'd got the photograph of the little grandchildren, and I
+could see the old woman had been crying.
+
+"'We shan't see them in this world now,' said Joe.
+
+"I thought he was considering the money and began to talk.
+
+"'No!' he said, 'it isn't that. The money was a bit of a sacrifice at
+the time, but I can see now why He asked me for it, and how thankful I
+am, as things have turned out, that I didn't refuse to do that little
+thing for Him. After you'd gone yesterday,' he went on, 'I felt so
+poorly that when the doctor came to see that poor girl I told him what I
+felt like. He looked a bit queer at first, and then he said:
+
+"'"Well, Joe," he said, "I know very well that you're not afraid of
+death, so I won't beat about the bush," he said.
+
+"'Thank you, doctor,' I said.
+
+"'"Of course," he said, "I can't be certain, but I'm afraid it's cancer,
+and I can only say that I'll make it as easy for you as I can." He's a
+kind man, Mr Charter, though he's reckoned rough. Well, you can imagine
+how my first feeling was of thankfulness that I'd been kept in the love
+of God, and not held back for my own pleasure the money he was needing.
+_He_ knew, you see, that I shouldn't want it, and he sent that poor girl
+to be looked after by someone as had money to spare.
+
+  '"I'll bless the Hand that guided,
+  I'll bless the Heart that planned,
+  When throned where glory dwelleth,
+  In Immanuel's Land."
+
+So my summons is come, Mr Charter, though I'd no idea it was so near.'
+
+"There's not a great deal you can say at such times, and my heart was
+very full as I listened to him, though I knew that it was well with him.
+I'm not going to tell you about the way he went through the valley,
+beautiful though it was, but I'll tell you just this before I sit down.
+Those young men of Joe's Sunday class got together and talked, and
+though they were young working-men with not much of a wage, they each
+gave sixpence a week and the old man had ten shillings a week as long as
+he lived, and every time he got the ten shillings he'd cry, and say,
+that he didn't know anybody in the world who'd had so much kindness
+shown to them all their life long as _he_ had."
+
+The evangelist glanced round the chapel as the minister gave out the
+hymn. The heads of the boys were bent over their hymn-books, searching,
+with whispering, among the pages which they turned with wet thumbs.
+There was no apathy now. All the slow sun-burnt faces showed signs of
+having understood. One or two men sat with their eyes fixed on the
+evangelist as if waiting for more. A woman wiped her eyes and sighed.
+There was no restlessness. He had succeeded in making all these people,
+so different from the driven, excited, underfed congregation he
+constantly saw, think from beginning to end of his poor people, and had
+succeeded in making them sorry. He was content.
+
+With that inarticulate desire to come into close contact with those who
+have moved them, which one knows among the poor, many of the
+congregation crowded round the pulpit to shake hands with the evangelist
+who leaned over the side, gripping hand after hand.
+
+"A very good meeting," said the steward, looking round with an air of
+satisfaction.
+
+"You've made me feel very small, sir," said a young man to the
+evangelist. "I've a good deal further to go yet."
+
+"It's true of us all," replied the evangelist, shaking his hand
+fervently.
+
+Anne Hilton had returned from the farmer to whom she had sold one of her
+pigs, and fed the animals, but had not taken off the linen pocket which
+she tied round her waist under her petticoat, and which held her money.
+She was trying to get at it now in the narrow pew. She knocked down a
+hymn-book and several pennies rolled under the feet of the out-going
+congregation. A young woman, with roses in her best hat, nudged another
+and laughed. A big boy stooped to pick up two, and restored them with a
+purple face. Anne replaced them in the linen pocket, shook her skirt
+down again, wrapped something in a piece of an old envelope, and
+beckoning the steward gave it to him, then followed the others through
+the blue square of the doorway. The steward approached the evangelist
+with a rather embarrassed smile.
+
+"Our good sister's a bit queer," he said. "I don't know why she couldn't
+put it in the collection box."
+
+The evangelist unwrapped the envelope and disclosed a sovereign. He
+paused.
+
+"It's a big gift for a poor woman," he said in a moment. "She needed to
+make up her mind a bit first. The collection box came too soon."
+
+"I've no doubt you're right," said the minister. "She's a good woman if
+a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part of her week's
+takings."
+
+"I don't think she ought to have given it," said the steward's wife, who
+was waiting for her husband to drive her home. "She'll need help herself
+if she gives away like that. She always _must_ be different from other
+people."
+
+Anne Hilton was walking home in the cool night air. The stars were so
+clear that they seemed to rest on the fields and tree-tops, and the
+rustle of the sleepless corn passed behind every hedge. She walked with
+a certain carefulness as of one who had unexpectedly escaped a physical
+danger; but the peril from which she was conscious of fleeing was
+spiritual. She had been threatened by avarice which had prompted her to
+give a small sum instead of the sovereign, and the evangelist had been
+right in his intuition. It had needed a good deal of "making up her
+mind" to give away the greater part of her earnings, even under the
+warmth of human appeal. She had conquered, but narrowly, and there was
+as much shame as satisfaction in her heart as she left the building, and
+more than all a great fear lest it should be talked about.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+It was the first day of spring, the season of swift changes. For the
+first time the sky was lighter than the ground. Its brilliant clouds
+threw heavy shadows on the earth, fugitive shadows which ran with the
+warm wind, alert with colour. Nothing was quiet or hidden. There was not
+yet sufficient life to cover or screen. Everything that had budded had a
+world to itself and could be seen. Radiant, innocent, carolling,
+self-revealing, the movement and action of spring were in the earth. The
+running and glittering water, in winter so vivid a feature of the
+fields, had become insignificant in comparison with the splendid and
+vigorous sky. The noise of the wind, too, beat in one's ears louder than
+the water. One had no time for meditation. One was hurried as the wind,
+speeding as the sunshine. Yet the spring more than any other season is
+the time when one thinks of the generations that pass--perhaps from the
+very transitoriness of the visual images, their evanescence and
+momentary changes reminding one so of the dead. In autumn the passage is
+grave and decorous, like the advance of old age. In spring the image is
+lovely and momentary, like the bright passage of those dead young.
+
+Anne Hilton looked out to see what kind of weather it was for the
+market, and with a sudden pang, she remembered her old father, and how,
+on such a day, he would totter to the open door, and there sit in the
+sunshine, grateful for the same warmth for which his old dog was
+grateful. When she came home from the market, she would make a wreath of
+white holly to put on the grave in which he rested. She thought of him
+vividly, of the pathos of his last illness from which she had vainly
+tried to drive the fear and soften the pain. She remembered his slow
+laugh, and the knocking of his stick on the floor. Memory is keener in
+bright sunshine than in the twilight, in vivid enjoyment more poignant
+than in melancholy. The churchyard, with its unvisited green mound and
+dwelling of the silent, became visible to Anne, and with it the dying
+out of joy which returns with that vision and memory. The house, too,
+was very quiet, as she drew in her head, with the stillness of a place
+once lived in and now empty. She had become accustomed to thinking of
+her father with tranquillity, satisfied to believe him at rest. Now the
+pain of loneliness returned with memory.
+
+She harnessed the pony to the cart, and stowed her baskets safely under
+the seat. She was dressed in a purple merino skirt, kilted thickly, a
+black mantle, with a bead fringe, and an antiquated straw bonnet. Round
+her neck she had folded a man's linen handkerchief, and she had
+elastic-sided boots on her feet. She locked the door, and put the keys
+in her linen pocket tied round her waist under her skirt, and climbing
+up by means of the wheel, seated herself on the board which did duty as
+a seat, and took the reins. "Go on, Polly!" she said, and the pony, with
+a good deal of tossing of head and tail, set off obediently towards the
+high road. The clacking of its feet as it trotted on the hard road
+overwhelmed all other sounds. At the corner of the roads an old woman
+tending a cow nodded to her, and one or two field labourers raised
+themselves to see who was going past, remaining upright and staring
+longer than was necessary to satisfy their curiosity. At an open
+field-gate she had to wait until two heavy wagons, their wheels a mass
+of red, soft earth, had emerged, and turned in the direction of the
+town. She passed them, and for some time met no one. An advancing cart
+soon came in sight, accompanied by a great jangling of cans--a milk-cart
+returning from the station, having sent off its supplies to the town,
+now bringing back its empty cans. It was driven by a man whom Anne knew,
+and, instead of drawing to one side to pass, he reined in his horse as
+if to speak. "Good morning, Miss Hilton," he said. Anne checked her
+horse which had gone a few paces past, and turning in her seat to look
+over her shoulder, answered his greeting. The farmer's horse, impatient
+of this check on the way home, made several attempts to start, and at
+last, being held in by his master and scolded loudly, fell to pawing the
+ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned
+in his seat, and looking back at Anne said:
+
+"I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had
+a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you."
+
+"Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment
+retaking them as the pony had started off.
+
+"Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's
+to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you
+when you go in there."
+
+Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be
+dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be
+alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was
+speechless.
+
+"She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again,"
+said the farmer.
+
+Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire
+burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting
+beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed
+dead.
+
+"You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone
+else the responsibility of knowing about it also.
+
+"I'll go up this afternoon," returned Anne, picking up the whip and
+flicking the pony. The farmer said "Good morning," and the rattle of
+milk cans once more filled the road as his horse set off at a gallop
+towards home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+When the business of the market was done, and Anne reached the Union, it
+was late in the afternoon. The roads outside the town were full of
+farmers returning from the market, of women walking with empty baskets,
+and an occasional small herd of cattle, being driven away from the
+terrifying experience of the town, by a purchaser. It was visiting-day
+at the Union, and here and there from the out-going stream, a man or
+woman of middle-age turned aside to enter the gate of the big brick
+building, in whose side-garden men were working, dressed in the
+bottle-green corduroy of the institution.
+
+The presence of spring seemed to surge about the bare building. The
+trees planted about it were old, and belonged to an older building which
+protruded from the back; the weather-stained wall was old also, and the
+sunlight, older than either, shone with an urgent warmth beneath the
+heavy green shade. Rows of green blades were appearing in the border,
+set aside for ornament. The air, the clouds, the light near the ground,
+all seemed alive with the peculiar revival only felt in the spring.
+
+Anne was admitted with others to the corridor, and left while they
+turned to the places they sought.
+
+"She might see the Matron," said the porter, going along with a clatter
+of his feet to the far end of the corridor and knocking at a door. The
+Matron almost immediately emerged carrying a large key.
+
+"It was very sad, wasn't it?" she began at once. "It happened night
+before last. It's a fine boy, though it's a bit too soon. One of the
+young women's got him." She led the way to the wide front stairs and
+began to ascend. Stopping at a half-open door, she entered and Anne
+followed.
+
+It was a smaller room than the big ward, and sunny. It had an air of
+privacy, of comfort given by the sunshine only, for it was uncarpeted,
+and bare like the others. Four young women were sewing the stiff linsey
+skirts worn in the Union.
+
+"How's the baby?" said the Matron.
+
+"Asleep," replied a good-looking, blond young woman, rising willingly
+from her work and going over to the window, beneath which was a
+wicker-cradle covered with a shawl. She drew back the shawl, and Anne
+saw lying on one cheek on the pillow, the tiny, fuzzy, misshapen head
+and creased purple fist of a new baby. The confidence of that tiny
+breathing creature lying asleep seemed strange to Anne, who knew how
+desolate it was. It had already, as it were, taken possession of its
+place in the world, and had no intention of being dislodged.
+
+"He's a healthy little thing," said the Matron.
+
+"Greedy too," said the blond young woman, with a laugh.
+
+"Could I look at Jane?" asked Anne.
+
+"They fastened it up this afternoon," replied the Matron. "There'll be
+two funerals to-morrow. The other's an old man. You can see all there is
+to see."
+
+She covered the baby and left the room, descending the same stairs, and
+going out of a side door. A strong smell of disinfectants came out into
+the warm garden as she opened the door of a glazed brick building. The
+blinds were down to keep out the sun. The building was lined with white
+glazed brick, and two straight burdens lay on a trestle-table.
+
+"Eight o'clock to-morrow," said the Matron, coming out again and locking
+the door.
+
+Jane had gone. She was as confident as the baby in her absence. It was
+that which impressed Anne. Neither of the two so lately one flesh,
+needed or cared for the other. Jane seemed to have shut herself of her
+own accord in that wooden case, so that she would be no longer teased or
+tortured, and the baby was quite happy that it should be so. Their
+disregard one of the other was strange to Anne.
+
+"Elizabeth Richardson was inquiring if you were coming," said the
+Matron. "Will you go up and see her?"
+
+Elizabeth Richardson was lying in the bed that had been Jane's. She
+looked less peevish and more tended. Anne glanced at the fireplace as
+she entered. The armchair had been moved back, and no one sat at the
+fire. She sighed and turned to Elizabeth.
+
+"Yes, it's very comfortable," said Elizabeth. "I'm glad I came. It's
+nice to have the bed made every day. You'll have heard that Jane Evans
+is out of her troubles?"
+
+Anne nodded.
+
+"It's best, I think," said Elizabeth. "The world's none too kind, and
+she was a depending sort of girl. She got out of it easy enough.
+There'll be some disappointed though," she added with her old cynicism.
+
+"Don't let's be hard in our judgments," said Anne, sadly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The habit of working for another is so fixed in the lives of poor women,
+that the interruption of it becomes a kind of second death, almost as
+difficult to bear as the death of the affection which is itself almost a
+kind of habit. When Anne returned from market, and sat down, her house
+seemed to have become a little emptier, because the girl whose welfare
+she had carried with her for so many months was beyond her reach. She
+took down her Bible to read it, and find relief for her trouble. She was
+a woman who had had "experience"--that experience which comes to each as
+a kind of special revelation, a thing so surprising, that it appears
+impossible to think of its having happened before, or to withhold the
+telling; the cynicism, which declares this to be an overwhelming
+interest in one's internal self, being only partially right, it being
+rather the excited and surprised mental condition which is the deep well
+from which all art, all expression, breaks forth. She read slowly,
+trying to find meaning in each phrase, when suddenly a verse struck her
+in its entirety before her lips had finished reading.
+
+"Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to
+visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
+unspotted from the world."
+
+She saw exactly what she would do. There was the child, motherless, and
+worse than fatherless. She would take him and bring him up unspotted
+from the world. It was clearly a leading for her. She had not been
+permitted to save the girl, but she might take and protect the boy. She
+remembered even the commonsense of Mrs Hankworth. "It's soonest
+forgotten about if it's a boy." She was not so much an old maid as a
+woman shut up from issue, and she had no fear of a child. And in the
+midst of her bewilderment about the girl, about death and the hereafter,
+she could see an earthly duty clearly, and pure religion for herself.
+She began to sing:
+
+"Who points the clouds their course,
+  Whom winds and storms obey,
+He shall direct thy wandering feet,
+  He shall point out thy way."
+
+She opened a drawer which held what was left of her father's clothes
+without any feeling of incongruity. There were four shirts of checked
+oxford shirting, two pairs of long stockings, a corduroy jacket, and his
+best suit of black serge bound with braid round the coat. There was a
+revolver, too, a clasp knife, a unused church-warden, an old wide-awake
+hat. To-morrow she would write to the Union, and offer to bring up the
+child when he was weaned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was a cool evening in early summer, full of the leisurely peace of
+the country. The women were out of doors after much perspiring work
+within. It was too early for the shadows, yet a sensible relief to the
+day's ardour, which one was disposed to linger and enjoy, was evident in
+the tranquil atmosphere, and on the relaxed faces of those who lingered
+about the doors of the cottages, or turned the bleaching clothes on the
+hedges. Mrs Hankworth, in a fashionable bonnet and dark green dress,
+which proclaimed a ceremonial visit, was driving beside her husband in a
+light yellow trap, in the unusual direction of Anne Hilton's cottage.
+Her husband, with his eyes on the road, suddenly pulled up the horse.
+
+"Now, where did you two come from?" he ejaculated, jumping from the trap
+and examining the backs of two enormous sows, who were munching and
+rooting in foreign ground with great satisfaction. At the sight of their
+enemy, a man, they began that lumbering but nimble trot, by which their
+tribe elude and disregard anything disagreeable.
+
+"You better get up again," said Mrs Hankworth. "We'll keep up to them
+and perhaps turn 'em in somewhere. Miss Hilton's the nearest."
+
+"I don't recognise 'em," said the farmer, springing up with agility and
+driving the horse carefully after the sows. "Some one must have bought
+them yesterday. We can call at one or two places on the way back and
+inquire. There's William Crowther," he added, standing up in the
+trap--"William!" he shouted, "do you see them sows? Stop 'em at Anne
+Hilton's sty. I don't know whose they are."
+
+"I'll give them a little exercise!" shouted William, setting off in
+pursuit. Anne Hilton looked out from her door to see the farmer standing
+up to bar the road backwards, and shouting directions to William, while
+he at the other side dodged one sow after the other, and Mrs Hankworth
+sat back laughing with enjoyment.
+
+Anne ran to open the yard-gate, and, with management, the sows saw no
+other opening and ran in at a trot, scattering the squealing hens as
+they did so.
+
+"Of all the knowing things!" said Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"Well, Miss Hilton, we're bringing you two sows and ourselves to visit
+you!" said the farmer. "First a baby and then two sows! You'll keep a
+foundling home very soon."
+
+He jumped out, and his wife came slowly over the wheel.
+
+"Somebody'll be sending out to inquire for them soon," said Anne. "I'm
+very pleased to see you, Mrs Hankworth."
+
+"We came to say we'd send you milk for the baby every day," said Mrs
+Hankworth, entering the kitchen. "You'll want yours for the butter."
+
+"It's very kind of you," said Anne. "But he'll want a good deal."
+
+"We've got seventy-five cows, you know," said Mrs Hankworth, with a
+contented laugh. "He'll not make much difference among 'em. Where is he?
+Bless him," she said, as she saw the baby staring at her from the wide
+wooden chair, in which he was tied.
+
+"A fine baby," said the farmer with an ultimate tone.
+
+"He _is_ a nice one!" said his wife. "I _must_ take him," she said,
+picking up the baby and turning him face downwards over her arm while
+she seated herself. She spread open her knees and laid him, docile to
+her practised handling, across them. Anne watched her with the air of
+one taking a lesson.
+
+"Did you have much trouble to get him?" asked Mrs Hankworth.
+
+"No, very little," said Anne. "There were some papers to sign, and one
+or two other things, but I believe they're generally glad to board out
+children if they can."
+
+"Well, he's a healthy child. Oh! I don't know anything that made me so
+full as to hear that poor girl had slipped away like that. I didn't get
+over it for some days. You remember the last time I saw you, I was
+intending to go and see her."
+
+"Yes, we were all making plans," said Anne.
+
+"Here's Mrs Crowther," said the farmer. "Come to see the baby, too, I
+expect. I'll just go and see how the sows is doing," he said,
+approaching the door.
+
+"Well, Mr and Mrs Hankworth, I didn't expect to see you here," said Mrs
+Crowther, coming in. "I came to see how the baby was getting on. Eh, how
+they _do_ get hold of you, don't they, little things. I _must_ have him
+a minute," she said, taking him from Mrs Hankworth's knee. "No, you're
+not the first baby I've had hold of," she added to the little creature,
+who twisted about with protesting noises. She smacked its soft thighs,
+and held its warm head against her cheek. "I'm right down silly over a
+baby!" she exclaimed, laying it back on Mrs Hankworth's knee.
+
+"We can't have any more of our own," said the latter, "we have to make
+the best of other people's."
+
+Anne took a tissue-paper parcel from the shelf, and opening it, showed a
+blue cashmere smock with a ribbon.
+
+"I was so pleased," she said. "Mrs Phillipson's eldest girl that's to be
+married next month brought it in yesterday. It shows how you misjudge
+people. When I went to see them, they seemed so hard upon poor Jane. But
+she brought that pretty frock she'd made herself for the baby. She's a
+good-looking girl, and she'll make a good wife."
+
+"You think on these things at such a time," said Mrs Hankworth. "All
+kinds o' little things you never thought of before come into your mind
+when you're going to be married. But it was nice of her. I shall think
+better of that girl after this."
+
+"That sounds like Mary," said Anne, looking round the open door. "Yes it
+is. Come in, Mary. You'll find some friends here."
+
+Mrs Hankworth laughed uproariously. "The baby's holding a reception,"
+she said, her huge form shaking.
+
+"It's Mrs Hankworth, I know," said Mary.
+
+"And Mrs Crowther," interposed the latter herself; "we're making sillies
+of ourselves over the baby. Here, sit down and take him, Mary."
+
+She set Mary in the chair which she had vacated, and laid the baby on
+her knees carefully placing the blind woman's hands over the little
+body.
+
+"There's not much of him," said Mary. "What does he like? This?" And
+with her hands spread upon the child, she moved her knees backwards and
+forwards, clicking her heels on the floor.
+
+"I could soon do it," she said, with a satisfied chuckle.
+
+"I'm sure you could," said Anne.
+
+"It was Peter Molesworth that told me you was here," said Mary, "so I
+thought I'd come too."
+
+"Whatever _do_ you think that Peter Molesworth came out with in the
+class the other day?" said Mrs Hankworth. "We was having as nice a
+meeting as you could wish, and then Peter gets up to give his
+experience. He says, 'I thank the Lord I've got peace in my home and a
+praying mother' (she's not much o' that, I thought to myself); and then
+he went on, 'You know, when I think of the troubles of others in serving
+Christ, I cannot bear. There's a poor woman I know,' he says, 'that's
+trying to serve Christ, and whenever she kneels down to say her prayers,
+her husband begins to tickle her feet.' Did you ever hear of anybody
+coming out with such a thing before? 'I think this door wants oiling,
+Mrs Hankworth,' he says to me as we was going out. 'Nay, Peter,' I says,
+'it's _thee_ that wants oiling.' 'Why, Mrs Hankworth, what's the
+matter?' he says. 'Whatever made you come out with such a thing in the
+meeting,' I says. 'Why, what was wrong with it?' he says. 'Oh, well!' I
+says, 'if you don't know yourself, _I_ can't tell you,' I says. He's a
+bright one is Peter Molesworth."
+
+"Are you ready, Mother?" shouted Mr Hankworth, putting his head in the
+door. "John Unsworth thinks the sows belongs to Mr Phillipson. He saw
+him bringing some home last night. We can take him on the way home."
+
+"I'm coming," said Mrs Hankworth, rising slowly. "If there's anything
+you need, any advice or that, I'll be very pleased to give it you. Let
+me give him a kiss." "You're a beauty, that's what you are," she said,
+kissing the baby and giving it back to Mary.
+
+"I must go too," said Mrs Crowther. "I'll send down some old flannel
+to-morrow, Anne. One of my girls'll come in and help you sometimes. It's
+well they should get used to a baby."
+
+"She'll not be able to stop away herself," said Mrs Hankworth, shrewdly,
+and laughing together, both women went out, disputing amiably as to
+whether Mrs Crowther would take a seat in the trap and be driven as far
+as the cross roads.
+
+The blind woman was feeling carefully the downy head of the baby.
+
+"He's as soft as a kitten," she said. "I could spare several eggs a week
+out of the basket," she added, "if they'd be any use. I don't know much
+about babies. My brother was bigger than me when we was at home, and, of
+course, since then I've not had much to do with children."
+
+Anne watched the two so helpless and confident. Mary rocked her knees
+steadily, and the child's head lay contentedly.
+
+"I believe you've put him to sleep," said Anne. "Shall I put him in the
+cradle?"
+
+"No, let me have him," said Mary, "I've never nursed a baby before."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Anne was left alone in the cottage with the baby, who slept in the
+clothes-basket she had turned into a cradle. The dog slept, too, having
+made friends with fortune. A late evening glow lit one side of the wall.
+When it faded, the dusk would absorb all the room and its inhabitants.
+Anne, sitting very still lest she should wake the baby, remembered one
+by one the agonies that had been lived through, whose sole result seemed
+to be this peaceful evening and the confidently breathing child. She
+remembered the shock of the disgrace to her, she, who had been a friend
+of the grandmother's, and how she had carried the burden about. She
+remembered the new house, and Jane, pretty, spoiled, and without
+misgiving, caring nothing for the hard judgments of which she herself
+imbibed the bitterness. Then Jane, with the child already striving to be
+free, leaving the new house at night, knowing without being told what
+door was open to her of all the doors in the country, and what place she
+would henceforth take. She saw the girl again, seated by the fire in the
+Infirmary ward, with that strange division between herself and all
+living, removed, as it were, to a distance which could not be bridged.
+Then Jane was no more to be found. There was the boy-child instead, who
+knew nothing except his desire to be kept alive; who met all
+reservations and pity by a determination to be fed. Throughout the whole
+evening, Anne had been struck by the fact that the other women scarcely
+thought of Jane any more than the baby did. It remained to them a very
+simple matter. There was a baby to feed and bring up. Being a boy, other
+things would soon be forgotten. It was too late, she knew, to do
+anything for Jane. The only thing that seemed possible to her in her
+simple reasoning, was to prevent such catastrophes for the future. It
+was not that pity was misplaced when shipwreck came, nor that charity
+ever failed. She understood, without being conscious of it, the ironic
+severity of Jesus, who would have no sudden pity and heart-searching on
+account of His poor. He had come into the world for righteousness and
+for judgment, and the judgment and righteousness both declared, not at
+the time of disaster or human appeal, nor with sudden loud outcries,
+but, "The poor always ye have with you, and _whensoever ye will_, ye may
+do them good."
+
+The baby stirred. Anne lit the candle, and set it on the stairs. She
+stepped over the dog, and took a warm flannel from the oven door.
+Tucking it in at the feet of the child, she lifted the clothes-basket
+and carried it upstairs. The dog raised his head and watched her. She
+returned, covered the fire, and set an earthenware pot of milk on the
+hob. The dog laid his nose between his paws again. Anne, taking the
+candle and leaving the room in darkness, closed the staircase door and
+went upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Women of the Country, by Gertrude Bone
+
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