 CHAPTER 7 OF MARCELLA Three days passed. On the fourth, Marcella returned late in the afternoon from a round of parish visits with Mary Hardin. As she opened the oak doors which shut off the central hall of Melor from the outer vestibule, she saw something white lying on the old cut and disused billiard table, which still occupied the middle of the floor till Richard Boyce in the course of his economies and improvements could replace it by a new one. She ran forward and took up a sheaf of cards, turning them over in a smiling excitement. By Count Maxwell, Mr. Rayburn, Ms. Rayburn, Lady Winterburn and Mrs. Winterburns, two cards of Lord Winterburns, all perfectly in form. Then a thought flashed upon her. Of course it is his doing, and I asked him. The cards dropped from her hand on the billiard table, and she stood looking at them, her pride fighting with her pleasure. There was something else in her feeling, too. The exaltation of proved power of an eight-person knot, as she guessed, easily influenced, especially by women. Marcella, is that you? It was her mother's voice. Mrs. Boyce had come in from the garden through the drawing room and was standing in the inner door of the hall, trying with short-sighted eyes to distinguish her daughter among the shadows of the Great Bear Place. A dark day was drawing to its close, and there was little light left in the hall, except in one corner where a rainy sunset gleam struck a grim contemporary portrait of Mary Tudor, bringing out the obstinate mouth and the white hand holding a jeweled glove. Marcella turned, and by the same gleam her mother caught her flushed and animated look. Any letters? She asked. No, but there are some cards. Oh yes, there is a note. And she pounced upon an envelope she had overlooked. It is for you, mother, from the court. Mrs. Boyce came up and took note and cards from her daughter's hand. Marcella watched her with quick breath. Her mother looked through the cards, slowly putting them down one by one without remark. Oh, mother, do read the note. Marcella could not help in treating. Mrs. Boyce drew herself together with a quick movement, as though her daughter jarred upon her, and opened the note. Marcella dared not look over her. There was a dignity about her mother's lightest action about every movement of her slender fingers and fine fair head, which had always held the daughter in check, even while she rebelled. Mrs. Boyce read it, and then handed it to Marcella. I must go and make the tea, she said, in a light cold tone, and turning, she went back to the drawing room, where the afternoon tea had just been carried. Marcella followed reading. The note was from Miss Rayburn, and it contained an invitation to Mrs. Boyce and her daughter to take luncheon at the court on the following Friday. The note was cautiously and kindly warded. We should be so glad, said the writer, to show you and Miss Boyce our beautiful words while they are still at their best in the way of autumn colour. How will Mama take it? thought Marcella anxiously. There is not a word of Papa. When she entered the drawing room, she caught her mother standing absently at the tea table. The little silver caddy was still in her hand as though she had forgotten to put it down, and her eyes, which evidently saw nothing, were turned to the window, the brows frowning. The look of suffering for an instant was unmistakable. Then she started at the sound of Marcella's step, and put down the caddy amid the delicate china crowded on the tray with all the quiet precision of her ordinary manner. You will have to wait for your tea, she said. The water doesn't nearly boil. Marcella went up to the fire, and kneeling before it, put the logs with which it was piled together, but she could not contain herself for long. Will you go to the court, Mama? she asked quickly, without turning round. There was a pause. Then Mrs. Boy said dryly, Miss Rayburn's proceedings are a little unexpected. We have been here four months, within two miles of her, and it has never occurred to her to call. Now she calls and asks us to lantern in the same afternoon. Either she took too little notice of us before, or she takes too much now. Don't you think so? Marcella was silent a moment. Should she confess? It began to occur to her for the first time that in her wild independence she had been taking liberties with her mother. Mama, yes? I asked Mr. Aldous Rayburn the other day whether everybody here was going to cut us. Papa told me that Lord Maxwell had written him an uncivil letter, and you asked Mr. Rayburn? said Mrs. Boy's quickly. What do you mean? Marcella turned round and met the flash in her mother's eyes. I couldn't help it, she said in a low, horrid voice. It seemed so horrid to feel everybody standing aloof. We were walking together. He was very kind and friendly, and I asked him to explain. I see, said Mrs. Boy's, and he went to his aunt, and she went to Lady Winterburn. They were compassionate, and there are the cards. You have certainly taken us all in hand, Marcella. Marcella felt an instant fear, fear of the ironic power in the sparkling look so keenly fixed on her offending self. She shrank before the proud reserve expressed in every line of her mother's fragile, imperious beauty. Then a cry of nature broke from the girl. You have got used to it, Mama. I feel as if it would kill me to live here shut off from everybody, joining with nobody, with no friendly feelings or society. It was bad enough in the old lodging-house days. But here, why should we? Mrs. Boy's had certainly grown pale. I supposed you would ask sooner or later. She said in a low-determined voice, with what to Marcella was quite a new note of reality in it. Probably, Mr. Rayburn told you. But you must, of course, have guessed it long ago, that society does not look kindly on us, and it has its reasons. I do not deny in the least that it has its reasons. I do not accuse anybody and resent nothing. But the question with me has always been, shall I accept pity? I have always been able to meet it, with a no. You are very different from me. But for you also, I believe it would be the happiest answer. The eyes of both met, the mothers full of an indomitable fire, which had for once wholly swept away her satiric calm of every day. The daughters troubled and miserable. I want friends, said Marcella slowly. There are so many things I want to do here, and one can do nothing if everyone is against you. People would be friends with you and me, and with Papa too, through us. Some of them wish to be kind. She said insistently, thinking of Aldous Rayburn's words and expression, as he bent to her at the gate. I know they do, and if we can't hold our heads high because of things in the past, ought we to be so proud that we won't take their hands when they stretch them out, when they write so kindly and nicely as this? And she laid her fingers almost piteously on the note upon her knee. Mrs. Boyce tilted the silver urn, and replenished the teapot. Then, with a delicate handkerchief, she rubbed away a spot from the handle of a spoon near her. You shall go, she said presently. You wish it? Then go. Go by all means. I will write to Miss Rayburn and send you over in the carriage. One can put a great deal on health. Mine is quite serviceable in the way of excuses. I will try to do you no harm, Marcella, if you have chosen your line and wish to make friends here. Very well. I will do what I can for you, so long as you do not expect me to change my life, for which, my dear, I am grown too crutchety and too old. Marcella looked at her with dismay and a yearning she had never felt before. And you will never go out with me, Mama. There was something childlike and touching in the voice, something which, for once, suggested the normal filial relation. But Mrs. Boyce did not waver. She had long learned, perhaps, to regard Marcella as a girl singularly well able to take care of herself, and had recognized the fact with relief. I will not go to the court with you, anyway, she said, daintily sipping her tea. In your interest, as well as mine, you will make all the greater impression, my dear, for I have really forgotten how to behave. Those cards shall be properly returned, of course. For the rest, let no one disturb themselves till they must. And if I were you, Marcella, I would hardly discuss the family affairs any more with Mr. Rayburn or anybody else. And again, her keen glance disconcerted the tall, handsome girl, whose power over the world about her had never extended to her mother, Marcella flushed and played with the fire. You see, Mama, she said after a moment, still looking at the logs and the shower of sparks they made as she moved them about. You never let me discuss them with you. Heaven forbid, said Mrs. Boyce quickly, then, after a pause, you will find your own line in a while, Marcella, and you will see, if you so choose it, that there will be nothing unsurmountable in your way. One piece of advice let me give you. Do not be too grateful to Miss Rayburn or anybody else. You take great interest in your Boyce belongings, I perceive. You may remember, too, perhaps, that there is other blood in you, and that no merit has ever submitted quietly to either patronage or pity. Marcella started. Her mother had never named her own kindred to her before that she could remember. She had known for many years that there was a breach between the merits and themselves. The newspapers had told her something at intervals of her merit relations, for they were fashionable and important folk. But no one of them had crossed the Boyce's threshold since the old London days, wherein Marcella could still dimly remember the tall forms of certain merit uncles, and even a stately lady in a white cap whom she knew to have been her mother's mother. The stately lady had died while she was still a child at her first school. She could recollect her own mourning frock. But that was almost the last personal remembrance she had connected with the merits. And now this note of intense personal and family pride under which Mrs. Boyce's Boyce had for their first time quivered a little. Marcella had never heard it before, and it thrilled her. She sat on by the fire, drinking her tea, and every now and then watching her companion with a new and painful curiosity. The tacit assumption of many years with her had been that her mother was a dry, limited person, clever and determined in small ways that affected her own family, but on the whole characterless as compared with other people of strong feelings and responsive susceptibilities. But her own character had been rapidly maturing of late, and her insight sharpening. During these recent weeks of close contact, her mother's singularity had risen in her mind to the dignity at least of a problem, an enigma. Presently Mrs. Boyce rose and put the scones down by the fire. Your father will be in, I suppose. Yes, I hear the front door. As she spoke she took off her velvet cloak, put it carefully aside on a sofa, and sat down again, still in her bonnet at the tea table. Her dress was very different from Marcella's, which when they were not in mourning, was in general of the ample aesthetic type, and gave her a good deal of trouble out of doors. Marcella wore art surges and velveteens. Mrs. Boyce attired herself in soft and costly silks, generally black, closely and fashionably made, and completed by various fanciful and distinguished trifles. Rings, an old chateleon, a diamond brooch, which Marcella remembered the same and worn in the same way since her childhood. Mrs. Boyce, however, wore her clothes so daintily, and took such scrupulous and ingenious care of them, that her dress cost, in truth, extremely little, certainly less than Marcella's. There were sounds first of footsteps in the hall, then of some scolding of William, and finally Mr. Boyce entered, tired and splashed from shooting, and evidently in a bad temper. Well, what are you going to do about those cards? He asked his wife abruptly, when she had supplied him with tea, and he was beginning to dry by the fire. He was feeling ill and reckless, too tired anyway to trouble himself to keep up appearances with Marcella. Return them, said Mrs. Boyce calmly, blowing out the flame of her silver kettle. I don't want any of their precious society, he said irritably. They should have done their calling long ago. There is no grace in it now. I don't know that one isn't inclined to think it an intrusion. But the women were silent. Marcella's attention was diverted from her mother to the father's small dark head and thin face. There was a great repulsion and impatience in her heart, an angry straining against circumstance and fate, yet at the same time a mounting voice of natural affection and understanding at once, sad and new, which paralyzed and silenced her. He stood in her way, terribly in her way, and yet it strangely seemed to her that never before till these last few weeks had she felt herself a daughter. You are very wet, papa, she said to him, as she took his cup. Don't you think you had better go at once and change? I'm all right, he said shortly, as right as I'm likely to be anyway. As for the shooting, it's nothing but waste of time and shoe leather. I shan't go out any more. The place has been clean-swept by some of those brutes in the village, your friends, Marcella. By the way, Evelyn, I came across young Horton in the road just now. Horton said his wife interrogatively. I don't remember. Oatai? Why, the liberal candidate for the division, of course, he said testily. I wish you would inform yourself of what goes on. He is working like a horse, he tells me. Dodson, the Rayburns candidate, has got a great start. This young man will want all his time to catch him up. I like him. I won't vote for him, but I'll see fair play. I've asked him to come to tea here on Saturday, Evelyn. He'll be back again by the end of the week. He stays at Del's farm when he comes. Pretty bad accommodation, I should think. We must show him some civility. He rose and stood with his back to the fire, his spare frame stiffening under his nervous determination to assert himself, to hold up his head physically and morally against those who would repress him. Richard Boyce took his social punishment badly. He had passed his first weeks at Melo in a tremble of desire, that his father's old family and country friends should recognize him again and condone his irregularities. All sorts of conciliatory ideas had passed through his head. He meant to let these people see that he would be a good neighbor if they would give him the chance, not like that miserly old fool, his brother Robert. The past was so much the past, who now was more respectable or more well-intentioned than he. He was an impressionable, imaginative man in delicate health, and the tears sometimes came into his eyes as he pictured himself restored to society, partly by his own efforts, partly no doubt, by the charms and good looks of his wife and daughter. For given for their sake, and for the sake also of that store of virtue, he had so laboriously accumulated since that long past catastrophe. Would not most men have gone to the bed altogether after such a lapse? He, on the contrary, had recovered himself, had neither drank, nor squandered, nor deserted his wife and child. These things, if the truth were known, were indeed due, rather, to a certain lack of physical energy and vitality, which age had developed in him, than to self-conquest. But he was no doubt entitled to make the most of them. There were signs indeed that his forecast had been not at all unreasonable. His women-kind were making their way. At the very moment when Lord Maxwell had written him a quelling letter, he had become aware that Marcella was on good terms with Lord Maxwell's heir. Had he not also been stopped that morning in a remote lane by Lord Winterburn and Lord Maxwell, on their way back from the meet, and had not both recognized and shaken hands with him, and now there were these cards. Unfortunately, in spite of Rayburn's opinion to the contrary, no man in such a position and with such a temperament ever gets something without claiming more, and more than he can conceivably or possibly get. Startled and pleased at first, by the salutation which Lord Maxwell and his companion had bestowed upon him, Richard Boyce had passed his afternoon in resenting and brooding over the cold civility of it. So these were the terms he was to be on with them, that you stick them, and their far as aical heirs. If all the truth were known, most men would look foolish, and the men who thanked God that they were not as other men, soonest of all. He wished he had not been taken by surprise, he wished he had not answered them, he would show them in future that he would eat no dirt for them or anybody else. So on the way home there had been a particular zest in his chance encounter with a young man who was likely to give the Rayburn's and their candidate, so all their world said, a very great deal of trouble. The seat had been held to be an entirely safe one for the Maxwell nominee. Young Wharton, on the contrary, was making way every day, and what with securing Alder's own seat in the next division and helping old Dodgson in this, Lord Maxwell and his grandson had their hands full. Dick Boyce was glad of it. He was a Tory, but all the same he wished every success to this handsome, agreeable young man, whose differential manners to him, at the end of the day, had come like ointment to a wound. The three sat on together for a little while in silence. Marcella kept her seat by the fire on the old gilt fender stool, conscious in a dreamlike way of the room in front of her. The stately room with its stucco ceiling, its tall windows, its prussian blue wallpaper behind the old cabinets and faded pictures, and the chair covers in turkey red twill against the blue, which still remained to bear witness at once to the domestic economies and the decorative ideas of old Robert Boyce. Conscious also of the figures on either side of her, and of her own quick-beating youth betwixt them. She was sore and unhappy, yet on the whole what she was thinking most about was Alder's Rayburn. What had he said to Lord Maxwell, and to the winterburns? She wished she could know. She wished with leaping pulse that she could see him again quickly, yet it would be awkward too. Presently, she got up and went away to take off her things. As the door closed behind her, Mrs. Boyce held out Miss Rayburn's note, which Marcella had returned to her, to her husband. They have asked Marcella and me to lunch. She said, I am not going, but I shall send her. He read the note by the firelight, and it produced the most contradictory effects upon him. Why don't you go? He asked her aggressively, rousing himself for a moment to attack her, and so vent some of his ill-humour. I have lost the habit of going out, she said quietly, and I am too old to begin again. What? You mean to say, he asked her angrily, raising his voice, that you never meant to do your duties here, the duties of your position? I did not foresee many outside this house and land. Why should we change our ways? We have done very well of late. I have no mind to risk what I have got. He glanced round at her, in a quick nervous way, and then looked back again at the fire. The sight of her delicate blanched face had in some respects a more and more poignant power with him as the years went on. His anger sank into morose-ness. Then why do you let Marcella go? What good will it do her to go about without her parents? People will only despise her for a gull of no spirit, as they ought. It depends upon how it is done. I can arrange it, I think, said Mrs. Boyce. A woman has always convenient limitations to plead in the way of health. She need never give offence if she has decent wits. It will be understood that I do not go out, and then someone, Miss Rayburn or Lady Winterburn, will take up Marcella and mother her. She spoke with her usual light gentleness, but he was not appeased. If you were to talk of my health, it would be more to the purpose, he said, with grim in consequence, and raising his heavy lids, he looked at her full. She got up and went over to him. Do you feel worse again? Why will you not change your things directly you come in? Would you like Dr. Clark's sent for? She was standing close beside him, her beautiful hand, for which in their young days it had pleased his pride to give her rings, almost touched him. A passionate hunger leapt within him. She would stoop and kiss him if he asked her. He knew that. But he would not ask her. He did not want it. He wanted something that never on this earth would she give him again. Then moral discomfort lost itself in physical. Clark does me no good, not an atom, he said, rising. There, don't you come? I can look after myself. He went, and Mrs. Boyce remained alone in the great fire-lit room. She put her hands on the mantelpiece and dropped her head upon them, and so stood silent for long. There was no sound audible in the room. Or from the house outside. And in the silence, a proud and broken heart once more nerfed itself to an endurance that brought it peace with neither man nor God. I shall go for all our sakes, thought Marcella, as she stood late that night, brushing her hair before her dimly lighted and rickety dressing table. We have, it seems, no right to be proud. A rush of pain and bitterness filled her heart. Pain, newborn and insistent, for her mother, her father, and herself. Ever since Aldous Rayburn's hesitating revelations, she had been liable to this sudden invasion of a hot and shamed misery. And tonight, after her talk with her mother, it could not but overtake her afresh. But her strong personality, her passionate sense of immoral independence, not to be undone by the acts of another, even of her father, made her soon impatient of her own distress, and she flung it from her with decision. No, we have no right to be proud, she repeated to herself. It must be all true what Mr Rayburn said. Probably a great deal more. Poor, poor mama. But all the same there is nothing to be got out of empty quarrelling and standing alone. And it was so long ago, her hand fell, and she stood absently looking at her own black and white reflection in the old flawed glass. She was thinking, of course, of Mr Rayburn. He had been very prompt in her service. There could be no question but that he was specially interested in her. And he was not a man to be lightly played upon. Nay, rather a singularly reserved and scrupulous person. So at least it had been always held concerning him. Marcella was triumphantly conscious that he had not from the beginning given her much trouble. But the common report of him made his recent manner towards her. This last action of his, the more significant. Even the hardens, so Marcella gathered from her friend and admirer Mary, unworldly, dreamy folk, wrapped up in good works, and in the hastening of Christ's kingdom, were on the alert and beginning to take note. It was not as though he was in the dark as to her antecedents. He knew all, at any rate, more than she did. And yet it might end in his asking her to marry him. What then? Scarcely a quiver in the young form before the glass. Love, at such a thought, must have sunk upon its knees and hid its face for tender humbleness and requital. Marcella only looked quietly at the beauty which might easily prove to be so important and narrow in her quiver. What was stirring in her was really a passionate ambition. Ambition to be the queen and arbitress of human lives, to be believed in by her friends, to make a mark for herself among women, and to make it in the most romantic and yet natural way. Without what had always seemed to her, the sordid and unpleasant tragedies of the platform, of a tiresome cooperation with or subordination to others who could not understand your ideas. Of course, if it happened, people would say that she had tried to capture Aldous Rayburn for his money and position's sake. Let them say it. People with base minds must think basely. There was no help for it. Those whom she would make her friends would know very well for what purpose she wanted money, power, and the support of such a man and such a marriage. Her modern realism played with the thought quite freely, her maidenliness, proud and pure as it was, being no-wise ashamed. Oh, for something to carry her deep into life, into the heart of its widest and most splendid opportunities. She threw up her hands, clasping them above her head amid her clouds of curly hair, a girlish, excited gesture. I could revive the straw-plating, give them better teaching, and better models. The cottages should be rebuilt. Papa would willingly hand the village over to me if I found the money. We would have a parish committed to deal with the charities. Oh, the hardens would come in. The old people should have their pensions as of right, no hopeless old age, no cringing dependence. We would try to cooperate on the land and pull it through. And not in mellow only. One might be the ruler, the regenerator of half a county. Memory brought to mind in vivid sequence the figures and incidents of the afternoon of her village round with Mary Harden. As the eyes of servants towards the hand of their mistress, the old words occurred to her as she thought of herself stepping in and out of the cottages. Then she was ashamed of herself and rejected the image with vehemence. Dependence was the curse of the poor. Her whole aim, of course, should be to teach them to stand on their own feet, to know themselves as men. But naturally they would be grateful. They would let themselves be led. Intelligence and enthusiasm give power, and ought to give it, power for good. No doubt under socialism there will be less scoped for either, because there will be less need. But socialism as a system will not come in our generation. What we have to think for is the transition period. The Cravens had never seen that, but Marcella saw it. She began to feel herself a person of larger experience than they. As she undressed, it seemed to her as though she still felt the clinging hands of the herd children round her knees, and through them, symbolized by them, the supply and touch of hundreds of other helpless creatures. She was just dropping to sleep, when her own words to Aldous Rayburn flashed across her. Everybody is so ready to take charge of other people's lives, and look at the result. She must needs laugh at herself, but it's made little matter. She fell asleep, cradled in dreams. Aldous Rayburn's final part in them was not great. End of Chapter 7 of Marcella Recorded by Liz Delosu Book 1 Chapter 8 of Marcella This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Paul Stevens Marcella by Mrs Humphrey Ward Book 1 Chapter 8 Mrs Boyce wrote her note to Miss Rayburn, a note containing cold, those civil excuses as to herself, while accepting the invitation from Marcella, who should be sent to the court, either in the carriage or under the escort of a maid who could bring her back. Marcella found her mother inclined to insist punctiliously on conventions of this kind. It amused her, in submitting to them, to remember the free and easy ways of her London life, but she submitted and not unwillingly. On the afternoon of the day which intervened between the Maxwell's call and her introduction to the court, Marcella walked as usual down to the village. She was teaming with plans for her new kingdom, and could not keep herself out of it. And an entry in one of the local papers had suggested to her that Herd might possibly find work in a parish some miles from Mella. She must go and send him off there. When Mrs Herd opened the door to her, Marcella was astonished to perceive behind her the forms of several other persons, filling up the narrow space of the usually solitary cottage. In fact, a tea-party. Oh, come in, Miss, said Mrs Herd, with some embarrassment, as though it occurred to her that her visitor might legitimately wonder to find a person of her penury entertaining company. Then, lowering her voice, she hurriedly explained, there is Mrs Brunt come in the southern loon to help me with the wash-in while I finish my scorer plate for the woman who takes him into town tomorrow, and there's all pattern on his wife, you know, Miss. Them as lives in the parish house is top of the common. He's walked out a few steps today. It's not often he's able. And when I see him through the door, I said to him, if you'll come in and take a chair, I'd essay them tea-leaves or stand another wet-in. I haven't got nothing else. And there's Mrs Jellison. She came in along with the patterns. You can't say her no. She's a queer one. Do you know her, Miss? Oh, bless her. Yes, yes. She knows me. Said a high jocular voice, making Mrs Herd start. She couldn't be long hereabouts without making yeast to know me. You come in, Miss. We're not afraid of you. Lord bless you. Mrs Herd stood aside for her visitor to pass in, looking round her the while, in some perplexity, to see whether there was a spare chair and room to place it. She was a delicate, willowy woman, still young in figure, with a fresh colour, belied by the grey circles under the eyes, and the pinched sharpness of the features. The upper lip, which was pretty and childish, was raised a little over the teeth. The whole expression of the slightly open mouth was unusually soft and sensitive. On the whole, Minter Herd was liked in the village, though she was sought a trifle fine. The whole family, indeed, kept their cells to their cells, and to find Mrs Herd with company was unusual. Her name, of course, was short for Araminta. Marcella laughed as she caught Mrs Jellison's remarks, and made her way in delighted. For the present, these village people affected her like figures in poetry or drama. She saw them with the eye of the imagination through a medium provided by socialist discussion, or by certain phases of modern art, and the little scene of Mrs Herd's tea-party took for her, in an instant, the dramatic zest and glamour. Look here, Mrs Jellison, she said, going up to her. I was just going to leave these apples for your grandson. Perhaps you'll take them now, you're here. They're quite sweet, though they look green. They're the best we've got, the gardener says. Oh, they are, are they? said Mrs Jellison, composedly, looking up at her. Well, put them down, Miss. I dare say I'll eat them. Eat most things, and don't want no doctor's stuff, neither. Though his mother do keep on at me for spoiling his stomach, you are just fond of that boy, aren't you, Mrs Jellison? said Marcella, taking a wooden stool, the only piece of furniture left in the tiny cottage on which it was possible to sit, and squeezing herself into a corner by the fire, when she commanded the whole group. No, don't you turn Mr Patton out of that chair, Mrs Herd, or I shall have to go away. For Mrs Herd, in her anxiety, was whispering in old Patton's ear that it might be well for him to give up her one wooden armchair in which she was established to Miss Boyce. But he, being old, deaf, and rheumatic, was slow to move, and Marcella's peremptory gesture bade her leave him in peace. Well, it's you that's a young and ain't it, Miss? said Mrs Jellison cheerfully. Poor old Patton, he do get slow on his legs, don't you, Patton? But there there's no help in it when you've turned of eighty. And she turned upon him a bright, philosophic eye, being herself a young thing not much over seventy, and energetic accordingly. Mrs Jellison passed for the village wit, and was at least talkative and excitable beyond her fellows. Well, you don't seem to mind getting old, Mrs Jellison, said Marcella, smiling at her. The eyes of all the old people round their tea-table were by now drawn irresistibly to Miss Boyce in the chimney corner, to her slim grace and the splendour of her large black hat and feathers. The new squire's daughter had so far taken them by surprise. Some of them, however, were by now in the second stage of critical observation. None the less critical because furtive and inarticulate. Ah, said Mrs Jellison interrogatively, with a high, long-drawn note peculiar to her. Well, I've never found you get forwarder with snarling over what you can't help. And there's Mercy's. When you had a husband in his bed for four years, Miss, and he took his last, you'll know, she nodded emphatically, Marcella laughed. I know you were very fond of him, Mrs Jellison, and looked after him very well, too. Ah, I don't say nothing about that, said Mrs Jellison hastily. But all the same, you can reckon it up and see for yourself. Fowl a year, and fire upstairs, and fire downstairs, and fire all night, and something all us wanted. And he's such an object before he died. It do seem like all of thee now to sit a bit. And she crossed her hands on her lap with a long breath of content. A lock of grey hair had escaped from her bonnet, across her wrinkled forehead, and gave her a half-careless, rakish air. Her youth of long ago, a youth of mad spirits, and of an extraordinary capacity for physical enjoyment, seemed at times to pierce to the surface again, even through her load of years. But in general she had a dreamy, sunny look, as of one fed with humorous fancies, but disinclined often to the trouble of communicating them. Well, I missed my daughter, I can tell you, said Mrs Brunt, with a sigh. Though she took a good deal more looking after, and oh, you're a good man, Mrs Jellison. Mrs Brunt was a gentle, pretty old woman, who lived in another of the village arms-houses, next door to the patterns, and was always ready to help her neighbours in their domestic toils. Her last remaining daughter, the victim of a horrible spinal disease, had died some nine or ten months before the boys' arrived at Mella. Marcella had already heard the story several times, but it was part of her social gift that she was a good listener to such things, even at the twentieth hearing. You wouldn't have her back, though, she said gently, turning towards the speaker. No, I wouldn't have her back, Miss, said Mrs Brunt, raising her hand to brush away a tear. Partly the result of feeling, partly of a long-established habit. But I do miss her nights terrible. Mother, ain't it ten o'clock? Mother, look at the clock, do, Mother, ain't it time for my stuff, Mother? Oh, I do hope it is. That was her stuff, Miss, to make her sleep. And when she'd got it, she'd groan. You'd think she couldn't be asleep, and yet she was, dead-like, for two hours. I didn't get no rest with her, and now I don't seem to get no rest without her. And again Mrs Brunt put her hand up to her eyes. Ah, you were honest one for toiling and fretting, said Mrs Jellison calmly. A body must get through it when it's there, but I don't hold me thinking about it when it's done. I know one, said old Patton, slyly, that frettered about her a darter when it didn't do her no good. He had not spoken so far, but had sat with his hands on his stick, a spectator of the women's humours. He was a little hunched man, twisted and bent double with rheumatic gout, the fruit of seventy years of fieldwork. His small face was almost lost, dog-like, under shaggy hair and overgrown eyebrows, both snow-white. He had a look of irritable eagerness, seldom, however, expressed in words. A sudden passion in the faded blue eyes, a quick spot of red in his old cheeks, these Marcella had often noticed in him, as though the flame of some inner furnace leapt. He had been a radical and a rebel once, in old Rick-burning days, long before he lost the power in his limbs, and came down to be thankful for one of the parish arms-houses. To his social betters he was now a quiet and peaceable old man, well aware of the cakes and ale to be got by good manners. But in the depths of him there were reminiscences and the ghosts of passions, which were still stirred sometimes by causes not always intelligible to the bystander. He had rarely, however, physical energy enough to bring any emotion, even of mere worry at his physical ills, to the birth. The pathetic silence of age enwrapped him more and more. Still he could jive the women sometimes, especially Mrs. Jellison, who was in general too clever for her company. Oh, you may talk, Patton, said Mrs. Jellison, with a little flash of excitement. You do like to have your talk, don't you? Well, I dare say I was awkward with Isabella. I won't go for to say I wasn't awkward, for I was. She shouldn't have used me to it before, if she were took that way. She and I had just settled down comfortable after my old man went, and I didn't see no sense in it, and I don't now. She might have let the men alone. She'd seen enough of the worried of them. Well, she did well for her son, said Mrs. Brunt, with the same gentle melancholy. She married a steady man, as will keep her well all her time, and never let her want for nothing. A sour, wooden-faced chap as ever I knew, said Mrs. Jellison grudgingly. I don't have nothing to say to him, nor eat a me. He thinks this and the grand turkey do, since they give him his uniform, and made him full-keeper. A nasty domineer, and so I cause him. He's all us making bad blood with the young fellas when he don't need. It's the way he's got with him, but I don't make no account of him, and I let him see it. All the tea-party grinned, except Mrs. Hurd. The village was well acquainted with the feud between Mrs. Jellison and her son-in-law, George Westall, who had persuaded Isabella Jellison at the mature age of thirty-five to leave her mother and marry him, and was now one of Lord Maxwell's keepers, with good pay, and an excellent cottage some little way out of the village. Mrs. Jellison had never forgiven her daughter for deserting her, and was unlively terms of hostility with her son-in-law. But their only child, little Johnny, had found the soft spot in his grandmother, and her favourite excitement in life, now that he was four years old, was to steal him from his parents, and feed him on the things of which Isabella most vigorously disapproved. Mrs. Hurd, as has been said, did not smile. At the mention of Westall, she got up hastily and began to put away the tea-things. Marcella, meanwhile, had been sitting thoughtful. You say Westall makes bad blood with the young men, Mrs. Jellison, she said, looking up. Is there much poaching in this village now, do you think? There was a dead silence. Mrs. Hurd was at the other end of the cottage with her back to Marcella. At the question, her hands paused an instant in their work. The eyes of all the old people, of Patton and his wife, of Mrs. Jellison, and pretty Mrs. Brunt, were fixed on the speaker. But nobody said a word, not even Mrs. Jellison. Marcella coloured. Oh, you needn't suppose, she said, throwing her beautiful head back. You needn't suppose that I care about the game, or that I would ever be mean enough to tell anything that was told me. I know it does cause a great deal of quarrelling and bad blood. I believe it does here, and I should like to know more about it. I want to make up my mind what to think. Of course, my father has got his land, and his own opinions, and Lord Maxwell has too. But I am not bound to think like either of them. I should like you to understand that. It seems to me right about all such things that people should inquire and find out for themselves. Still silence. Mrs. Jellison's mouth twitched, and she threw a sly, provocative glance at old Patton, as though she would have liked to poke him in the ribs. But she was not going to help him out, and at last the one male in the company found himself obliged to clear his throat for reply. We're old folks, most honest miss, said Mrs. Hurd. We don't hear talk of things now, like as we did when we were younger. If you ask Mr. Harden, you'll tell you, I dare say. Patton allowed himself an inward chuckle. Even Mrs. Jellison, he thought, must admit that he knew a thing or two as to the best way of dealing with the gentry. But Marcella fixed him with a bright, frank eyes. I had rather ask in the village, she said. If you don't know how it is now, Mr. Patton, tell me how it used to be when you were young. Was the preserving very strict about here? Were there often fights with the keepers long ago in my grandfather's day? And do you think men poached because they were hungry, or because they wanted sport? Patton looked at her fixedly a moment undecided. Then her strong, nervous youth seemed to exercise a kind of compulsion on him. Perhaps, too, the pretty courtesy of her manner. He cleared his throat again, and tried to forget Mrs. Jellison, who would be sure to let him hear of it again, whatever he said. Well, I can't answer for a miss, I'm sure. But if you ask me, I believe there's a bit of both in it. You see, it's not in human nature, when a man's young and he's got his blood up, as he shouldn't want to have his sport with the wild creatures. Perhaps he's seeing when he's going to the wood with a wood cart, or he comes across them in the turnips, wounded birds, you understand, miss? Perhaps the day after the gentry has been banging at him all day. And he don't see, not for the life of him, why he shouldn't have them. There's been lots and lots for the rich folks, and he don't see why he shouldn't have a few arter they've enjoyed themselves. And maybe he's eleven children a week, and two, three little children. You understand, miss? Of course I understand, said Marcella eagerly, her dark cheek flushing. Of course I do. But there's a good deal of game given away in these parts, isn't there? I know Lord Maxwell does, and they say Lord Winterbourne gives all his labour as rabbits, almost as many as they want. Her questions wound old pattern up, as though he had been a disused clock. He began to feel a wear among his creaking wheels, a shaking of all his rusty mind. Perhaps they do, miss, he said, and his wife saw that he was beginning to tremble. I dare say they do. I don't say nothing again it, though there's none of it cooms my way. But that isn't all the rights on it neither. Know that it ain't. The labour and man he's glad enough to get a hare or a rabbit for his eaten. But there's more in it nor that, miss. He's Alice in the fields, that's where it is. He can't help seeing the heirs and the rabbits are coming in and out of the woods, if it were ever so. He knows every run over every one of them. If a hare started furthest corner at field, he can tell you where she'll get in by, because he's Alice there, you see, miss, and it's the only thing he's got to take his mind off like. And then he sets a snare or two, and he gets very sharp on setting them, and he'll go out nights for the sport of it. There isn't many things he's got to liven him up, and he takes his chances of going to jail. It's worth it, he thinks. The old man's hands on his stick shook more and more visibly. Bygones of his youth had come back to him. Oh, I know, I know, cried Marcella, with an accent half of indignation, half of despair. It's the whole wretched system. It spoils those who've got and those who haven't got, and there'll be no mending it till the people get the land back again, until the rights on it are common to all. My, she do speak up, don't she? said Mrs. Jellison, grinning again at her companions. Then, stooping forward with one of her wild movements, she caught Marcella's arm. I'd like to hear you tell that to Lord Maxwell, miss. He likes a rumpus I do. Marcella flushed and laughed. I wouldn't mind saying that, or anything else to Lord Maxwell, she said proudly. I'm not ashamed of anything, I think. No, I'll bet you ain't, said Mrs. Jellison, withdrawing her hand. Now then, Patton, you say what you think. You ain't got no vote now you're in the parish houses. I mined that. The quality don't trouble you at election times. This young man, Mr. Wharton, as is going round so free, promising you're the sun out the sky, if you'll only vote for him so the men say, he don't come and sit down along a you and me, and cock a rob us up as he do Joe Simmons or Jim Hurley here. But that don't matter. You're thinking's your own, anyway. But she nudged him in vain. Patton had suddenly run down, and there was no more to be got out of him. Not only had nerves and speech failed him, as they were won't, but in his cloudy soul there had risen, even while Marcella was speaking, the inevitable suspicion which dogs the relations of the poor towards the richer class. This young lady with her strange talk was the new squire's daughter, and the village had already made up its mind that Richard Boyce was a poor sort, and a hard sort too, in his landlord capacity. He wasn't going to be any improvement on his brother, not a heypoth. What was the good of this young woman talking, as she did, when there were three summons as he Patton heard tell, just taken out by the sanitary inspector against Mr. Boyce for bad cottages, and not a farthing given away in the village neither, except perhaps the bits of food that the young lady herself brought down to the village now and then, for which no one in truth felt any cause to be particularly grateful. Besides, what did she mean by asking questions about the poaching? Old Patton knew as well as anybody else in the village that during Robert Boyce's last days, and after the death of his sportsman's son, the Meller estate had become the haunt of poachers from far and near, and that the trouble had long since spread into the neighbouring properties, so that the winter-born and Maxwell keepers regarded it their most arduous business to keep watch on the men of Meller. Of course, the young woman knew it all, and she and her father wanted to know more. That was why she talked. Patton hardened himself against the creeping ways of the quality. I don't think not, he said roughly in answer to Mrs. Jellison. Thinking won't come a-twix me in the parish coffin when I'm took. I've no call to think, I tell you. Marcella's chest heaved with indignant feeling. Oh, but Mr. Patton, she cried, leaning forward to him. Won't it comfort you a bit, even if you can't live to see it, to think there's a better time coming? There must be. People can't go on like this always, hating each other and trampling on each other. They're beginning to see it now. They are. When I was living in London, the persons I was with talked and thought of it all day. Someday, whenever the people choose, for they've got the power, now they've got the vote, they'll be land for everybody, and in every village, they'll be a council to manage things, and the labourer will count for just as much as the squire and the Parsons, and he'll be better educated and better fed and care for many things he doesn't care for now. But all the same, if he wants sport and shooting, it will be there for him to get. For everybody will have a chance and a turn, and there'll be no bitterness between classes and no hopeless pining and misery as there is now. The girl broke off, catching her breath. It excited her to say these things to these people, to these poor, tottering old things who had lived out their lives to the end under the pressure of an iron system, and had no lien on the future, whatever paradise it might bring. Again the situation had something foreseen and dramatic in it. She saw herself as the preacher, sitting on her stool beside the poor great. She realised as a spectator, the figures of the women and the old man played on by the firelight, the white, bare, damp-stained walls of the cottage, and in the background, the fragile, though still comely form of winter herd, who was standing with her back to the dresser, and her head bent forward, listening to the talk while her fingers twisted the straw, she plaited eternally from morning till night for a wage of about one shilling and thruppants a week. Her mind was all aflame with excitement and defiance, defiance of her father, Lord Maxwell, Aldous Rayburn. Let him come, her friend, and see for himself what she thought it right to do and say in this miserable village. Her soul challenged him, long to provoke him. Well, she was soon to meet him, and in a new and more significant relation and environment, the fact made her perception of the whole situation the more rich and vibrant. Pattern, while these broken thoughts and sensations were coursing through Marcella's head, was slowly revolving what she had been saying, and the others were waiting for him. At last he rolled his tongue round his dry lips and delivered himself by a final effort. Them as likes, Miss, may believe as though things were going to happen that way, but you won't catch me. Them as have got will keep. He let his stick sharply down on the floor, and them as haven't got will have to go without and lump it, as long as you're alive, Miss, you mark my words. O Lord, you were all as one for making a poor mouth pattern, said Mrs. Jellison. She had been sitting with her arms folded across her chest, part absent, part abused, part malicious. The young lady speaks beautiful, just like a book she do, and she's likely to know a deal better than all poor persons like you and me. All I can say is, if there's gonna be dividing up of other folk's property when I'm gone, I hope George Westall won't get nothing of it. He's bad enough as Tiz. Isabella would have a fine time if he took to driving of his carriage. The others laughed out. Marcella at their head, and Mrs. Jellison subsided, the corners of her mouth still twitching, and her eyes shining as though a host of entertaining notions were trooping through her. Which, however, she preferred to amuse herself with, rather than the public. Marcella looked at Patton thoughtfully. You've been all your life in this village, haven't you, Mr. Patton? She asked him. Born top of which it's illness, and my wife here, she were born just out of her too further along, and we too have been married sixty-one year come next March. He had resumed his usual arm-house tone, civil and a little plaintive. His wife behind him smiled gently at being spoken of. She had a long, fair face, and white hair surmounted by a battered black bonnet. A mouth set rather on one side, and a more observant and refined air than most of her neighbours. She sighed while she talked, and spoke in a delicate quaver. Do you know, Miss? said Mrs. Jellison, pointing to Mrs. Patton, as she kept school when she was young. Did you, Mrs. Patton? asked Marcella in her tone of sympathetic interest. The school wasn't very big then, I suppose. About forty, Miss? said Mrs. Patton, with a sigh. There was eighteen the rector paid for, and eighteen Mr. Boyce paid for, and the rest paid for themselves. Her voice dropped gently, and she sighed again like one weighted with an eternal fatigue. And what did you teach them? Well, I taught them the plate and miss, and as much reading and writing as I knew myself. It wasn't as high as it is now, you see, Miss. And a delicate flush dawned on the old cheek, as Mrs. Patton threw a glance round her companions, as though appealing to them not to tell stories of her. But Mrs. Jellison was implacable. It were she taught me, she said, nodding at Marcella and pointing sideways to Mrs. Patton. She had a queer way with the odd words I can tell you, Miss. When she couldn't tell them herself, she'd never own up to it. Say Jerusalem, my dear, and pass on. That's what she'd say she would, sure as you're alive. I've heard it do at times. And when Isabella and me used to read the Bible, knights, I'd allus rather doot it than be beholden to my own daughter. It gets you through, anyway. Well, it were a good word, said Mrs. Patton, blushing and margely defending herself. It didn't do none of your any harm. Oh, and before her, Miss, I went to a school to another woman as lived up Shepherd's Row. You remember her, Betsy Brunt? Mrs. Brunt's worn eyes began already to gleam and sparkle. Yes, I recollect very well, Mrs. Jellison. She were Mercy Moss, and a goodish deal of trouble you used to get me into were Mercy Moss, all along her tricks. Mrs. Jellison, still with folded arms, began to rock herself gently up and down as though to stimulate memory. My word, but Muston Morris, he were the clergymanier, then, Miss, were set on Mercy Moss. Ian his wife, they flattered and cocked her up. There were nobody like her for keeping school, not in their eyes. Till one midsummer, she, well, she, I don't want to say nothing unpleasant, but she transgressed, said Mrs. Jellison, nodding mysteriously. Triumphant, however, in the unimpeachable delicacy of her language, and looking round the circle for approval. What do you say? asked Marcella innocently. What did Mercy Moss do? Mrs. Jellison's eyes danced with malice and mischief, but her mouth shut like a vice. Patton leaned forward on his stick, shaken with a sort of inward explosion. His plaintive wife laughed under her breath till she must knead sigh because laughed her tired, her old bones. Mrs. Brunt gurgled gently, and finally Mrs. Jellison was carried away. Oh, my goodness me, don't you make me tell tales of Mercy Moss, she said at last, dashing the water out of her eyes with an excited, tremulous hand. She's been dead and gone these forty years, married and buried most respectable, and it'll be a burning shame to bring up tales again or now. Them as titl-tattles about dead folks needn't look to lie quiet themselves in their graves. I've said it times, and I'll say it again. What are you looking at me for, Betsy Brunt? And Mrs. Jellison drew up suddenly with a fierce glance at Mrs. Brunt. Why, Mrs. Jellison, I never meant no offence, said Mrs. Brunt hastily. I won't stand no insinuating, said Mrs. Jellison with energy. If you've got something against me, you may out with it and never mind the young lady. But Mrs. Brunt, much flurried, retreated amid a shower of excuses, pursued by her enemy, who was soon worrying the whole little company as a dog worries a flock of sheep, snapping here and teasing there, chattering at the top of her voice in broad dialect as she got more and more excited, and quite as ready to break her wit on Marcella as on anybody else. As for the others, most of them had known little else for weeks than alternations of toil and sickness. They were as much amused and excited tonight by Mrs. Jellison's audacities as a Londoner is by his favourite low-comedian at his favourite music hall. They played chorus to her, laughed and baited her. Even old pattern was drawn against his will into a caustic sociability. Marcella, meanwhile, sat on her stool, her chin upon her hand, and her full glowing eyes turned upon the little spectacle, absorbing it all with a covetous curiosity. The light-heartedness, the power of enjoyment lefting these old folks struck her dumb. Mrs. Brunt had an income of two and sixpence a week, plus two loaves from the parish, and one of the parish or charity houses, a hovel, that is to say, of one room scarcely fit for human habitation at all. She had lost five children, was allowed two shillings a week by two labourer sons, and earned sixpence a week about by continuous work at the plate. Her husband had been run over by a farm cart and killed. Up to the time of his death, his earnings averaged about twenty-eight pounds a year. Much the same with the patterns. They had lost eight children out of ten, and were now mainly supported by the wages of a daughter-in-service. Mrs. Patton had, of late years, suffered agonies and humiliations indescribable, from a terrible illness which the parish doctor was quite incompetent to treat, being all through a singularly sensitive woman with a natural instinct for the decorous and the beautiful. Amazing! Starvation wages, hardships of sickness and pain, horrors of birth and horrors of death, wholesale losses of kindred and friends, the meanest surroundings, the most sordid cares, of this mingled cup of village fate every person in the room had drunk and drunk deep. Yet here, in this autumn twilight, they laughed and chattered and joked, weird, wrinkled children, enjoying an hour's rough play in a clearing of the storm. Dependent from birth to death, on squire, parson, parish, crushed often, and ill-treated, according to their own ideas, but bearing so little ill-will, amusing themselves with their own tragedies even, if they could but sit by a fire and drink a neighbour's cup of tea. Her heart swelled and burned within her. Yes, the old people were past hoping for, mere wreck and driftwood on the shore. The spring tide of death would soon have swept them all into unremembered graves. But the young men and women, the children, were they too to grow up and grow old like these, the same smiling, stunted, ignobly submissive creatures? One woman at least would do her best with her one poor life to rouse some of them to discontent and revolt. The fire sank, and Mrs. Hurd made no haste to light her lamp. Soon the old people were dim, chattering shapes in a red darkness. Mrs. Hurd still plaited, silent and upright, lifting her head every now and then at each sound upon the road. At last there was a knock at the door. Mrs. Hurd ran to open it. Mother, I'm going your way, said a strident voice. I'll help you home, if you remind. On the threshold stood Mrs. Jellison's daughter, Mrs. Westall, with her little boy beside her. The woman's broad shoulders and harsh striking head standing out against the pale sky behind. Marcella noticed that she greeted none of the older people, nor they her. And as for Mrs. Hurd, as soon as she saw the keeper's wife, she turned her back abruptly on her visitor and walked to the other end of the kitchen. Are you coming, mother? repeated Isabella. Mrs. Jellison grumbled, jibed at her, and made long leave-takings, while the daughter stood silent, waiting and every now and then, peering at Marcella, who had never seen her before. I don't know where your manners is, said Mrs. Jellison, sharply to her, as though she had been a child of ten, that you don't say good evening to the young lady. Mrs. Westall curtsied low, and hoped she might be excused, as it had grown so dark. Her tone was smooth and servile, and Marcella disliked her, as she shook hands with her. The older people, including Mrs. Brunt, departed a minute or two after the mother and daughter, and Marcella was left an instant with Mrs. Hurd. Oh, thank you! Thank you kindly, Miss, said Mrs. Hurd, raising her apron to her eyes to staunch some irrepressible tears, as Marcella showed her the advertisement, which it might possibly be worth Hurd's while to answer. He'll try, you may be sure, but I can't think as how anything could come of it. And then suddenly, as though something unexplained had upset her self-control, the poor patient creature utterly broke down. Leaning against the bare shelves which held their few pots and pans, she threw her apron over her head, and burst into the full, honest weeping. I wish I was dead! I wish I was dead! And a children too! Marcella hung over her, one flame of passionate pity, comforting, soothing, promising help. Mrs. Hurd, presently recovered enough to tell her that Hurd had gone off that morning, before it was light to a farm near Tam, where it had been told him, he might possibly find a job. But he'll not find it, Miss. He'll not find it, she said, twisting her hands in his sort of restless misery. There's nothing good happens to such as us, and he were always one to work if he could get it. There was a sound outside. Mrs. Hurd flew to the door, and a short, deformed man, with a large head and red hair stumbled in blindly, splashed with mud up to his waist, and evidently spent with long walking. He stopped on the threshold, straining his eyes to see through the fire-lit gloom. It's Miss Boyce, Tim, said his wife. Did you hear of anything? They're turning off hands instead of taking of him on, he said briefly, and fell into a chair by the grate. He had hardly greeted Marcella, who had certainly looked to be greeted. Ever since her arrival in August, as she had told Aldous Rayburn, she had taken a warm interest in this man, and his family. There was something about them, which marked them out a bit from their fellows. Whether it was the husband's strange, but not repulsive deformity, contrasted with the touch of plaintive grace in the wife, or the charm of the elfish children, with their tiny stick-like arms and legs, and the glancing wildness of their blue eyes under the frizzle of red hair, which shone round their little sickly faces. Very soon she had begun to haunt them in her eager way to try and penetrate their peasant lives, which were so full of enigma and attraction to her, mainly because of their very defectiveness, their closeness to an animal simplicity, never to be reached by anyone of her sort. She soon discovered, or imagined, that her had more education than his neighbors. At any rate, he would sit listening to her, and smoking, as she made him do, while she talked politics and socialism to him. And though he said little in return, she made the most of it, and was sure anyway that he was glad to see her come in. And must some time read the labor newspapers, and venturist leaflets she brought him, for they were always well-thumbed before they came back to her. But tonight his sullen weariness would make no effort, and the hunted restless glances he threw from side to side, as he sat crouching over the fire. The large mouth tight shut, the nostrils working, showed her that he would be glad when she went away. Her young exacting temper was picked. She had been for some time trying to arrange their lives for them. So in spite of his dumb resistance, she lingered on, questioning and suggesting. As to the advertisement she had brought down, he put it aside almost without looking at it. There would be a hundred men after it before ever he could get there, was all he would say to it. Then she inquired if he had been to ask the steward of the Maxwell Court estate for work. He did not answer, but Mrs. Hart said timidly that she had heard tell a new drive was to be made that winter for the sake of giving employment. But their own men on the estate would come first, and there were plenty of them out of work. Well, but there is the game, persisted Marcella. Isn't it possible they might want some extra men now that the pheasant shooting has begun? I might go and inquire of Westall. I know him a little. The wife made a startled movement, and Hart raised his misshapen form with a jerk. Thank your miss, but I'll not trouble you. I don't want nothing to do with Westall. And taking up a bit of half-burnt wood, which lay on the earth, he threw it violently back into the grate. Marcella looked from one to the other with surprise. Mrs. Hart's expression was one of miserable discomfort, and she kept twisting her apron in her gnarled hands. Yes, I shall tell him, Jim, she broke out. I shall. I know Miss Boyce is one as I'll understand. Hart turned round and looked at his wife full. But she persisted. You see, miss, they don't speak. Don't Jim and George Westall. When Jim was quite a lad, he was employed at Millor, and the old Westall, George's father as was. Jim was water, and young George was his assistant. That was in Mr. Robert's days, you understand, miss, when Mr. Harold was alive, and they took a deal of trouble about the game. And George Westall, he was always leading the others alive, tail-bearing and spying, and setting his father against any of them, as didn't give in to him. And oh, he behaved fearful to Jim. Jim will tell you. Now, Jim, what's wrong with you? Why shouldn't I tell? For Hurd had risen, and as he and his wife looked at each other, a sort of mute conversation seemed to pass between them. Then he turned angrily and went out of the cottage by the back door into their garden. The wife sat in some agitation a moment, then she resumed. He can't bear no talk about Westall. It seems to drive him silly, but I say as how people should know. Her wavering eye seemed to interrogate her companion. Marcella was puzzled by her manner. It was so far from simple. But that was long ago, surely, she said. Yes, it was long ago. But you don't forget them, things miss. And Westall, he's just the same sort as he was then, so folk say. She added hurriedly, You see, Jim, miss, how he's made. His back was twisted that way when he was a little on. His father was a good old man. Everybody spoke well of him. But his mother, she was a queer and mad body, with red hair, just like Jim and the children, and a temper, my word. They do say she was an Irish girl, out of a gang as used to work near here. And she let him drop one day when she was in liquor, and never took no trouble about him afterwards. He was a poor sickly lad, he was. You'd wonder how he grew up at all. And, oh, George Westall, he treated him cruel. He'd kick and swear at him. Then he'd dare him to fight and thrash him till the others come in and got him away. Then he'd carry tales to his father, and one day old Westall beat Jim within an inch of his life, with a strap end. Because of a lie, George told him. The poor chap lay in a ditch and a distly wood all day. Because he was that knocked about, he couldn't walk. And at night he crawled home on his hands and knees. He's shown me the place many a time. Then he told his father, and next morning he told me, as he couldn't stand it no longer. And he never went back no more. And he told no one else. He never complained, asked Marcella indignantly. What would have been the good or that, Miss? Mrs. Hurd said, wondering. Nobody would have taken his word again, old Westalls. But he come and told me. I was housemaid at Lady Levin's then, and he and his father were old friends of Arne. And I knew George Westall too. He used to walk out with me of a Sunday, just as civil as could be. And he'd give my mother rabbits now and again, and do anything I'd ask him. And I up and told him he was a brute to go ill-treated and sickly fellow, as couldn't pay him back. That made him as cross as vinegar, and when Jim began to be about with me of a Sunday sometimes, instead of him he got madder and madder. And Jim asked me to marry him. He begged of me, and I didn't know what to say. For Westall had asked me twice, and I was a feared of Jim's health, and the low wages he'd get, and of not being strong myself. But one day I was going up a lane into Dudley Endwoods, and I heard George Westall on the other side of the hedge, with a young dog he was draining. Something crossed him, and he flew into a passion with it. It turned me sick. I ran away, and I took against him there and then. I was frightened of him. I darsened trust myself, and I said to Jim, I'd take him. So you can understand, Miss, can't you, as Jim don't want to have nothing to do with Westall? Thank you kindly all the same, she added, breaking of her narrative with the same uncertainty of manner, the same timid scrutiny of her visitor that Marcella had noticed before. Marcella replied that she could certainly understand, but I suppose they've not got in each other's way of late years, she said, as she rose. Oh, no, Miss, no, said Mrs. Hurd, as she went hurriedly to fetch a fur-tipet, which her visitor had laid down on the dresser. There is one person I can speak to, said Marcella, as she put on the wrap, and I will. Against her will she reddened a little, but she had not been able to help throwing out the promise, and now you won't despair with you. You will trust me, I could always do something. She took Mrs. Hurd's hand with a sweet look and gesture, standing there in her tall vigorous youth, her fur's wrapped about her. She had the air of protecting and guiding this poverty that could not help itself. The mother and wife felt herself shy, intimidated. The tears came back to her brown eyes. When Miss Boyce had gone, Minta Hurd went to the fire and put it together, sighing all the time, her face still red and miserable. The door opened and her husband came in. He carried some potatoes in his great earth-stained hands. You're going to put that bit of hair on. Well, make haste, too, for I'm starving. What did she want to stay all that time for? You go and get it. I'll blow the fire up. Damn these sticks! They're as wet as a dog-null pond. Nevertheless, as she sadly came and went, preparing the supper, she saw that he was appeased, in a better temper than before. What did you tell her? He asked abruptly. What do you suppose I'd tell her? I acted for the best. I'm always thinking for you. She said, as though with a little cry, or would soon be in trouble, worse trouble than we are. She added miserably. He stopped working the old bellows for a moment, and holding his long chin stared into the fire. With his deformity, his earth-stains, his blue eyes, his brown-wrinkled skin, and his shock of red hair, he had the look of some strange gnome, crouching there. I don't know what you're at, I'll swear, he said after a pause. I ain't in any particular trouble just now. If you wouldn't send a fellow stump in the country for nothing, if you'll just let me alone, I'll get a living for you and the children right enough. Don't you trouble yourself, and hold your tongue. She threw down her apron with a gesture of despair, as she stood beside him, in front of the fire, watching the pan. What am I to do, Jim, and them children? When you're took to prison, she asked him vehemently. I shan't get took to prison, I tell you. All the same, Westall got hold of me this morning. I thought perhaps you'd better know. Her exclamation of terror, her wild look at him, were exactly what he had expected. Nevertheless, he flinched before them. His brutality was mostly assumed. He had adopted it as a mask for more than a year past, because he must go his way, and she worried him. Now look here, he said resolutely. It don't matter. I'm not going to be took by Westall. I'd kill him or myself first. But he caught me looking at a snare this morning. It were misty, and I didn't see no one coming. It were close to the footpath, and it warrant my snare. Jim, my chap, says he mocking. I'm sorry for it, but I'm going to search here. So take it quietly, says he. He had young dines with him, so I didn't say not. I kept as still as a mouse, and sure enough, he put his ugly hands into all my pockets. And what do you think he found? What, she said breathlessly. Nothing, he laughed out. Nery and Endo string. Nor a kink of wire. Nothing. I'd hidden the two rabbits I got last night, and all my bits of things in a ditch far enough out of his way. I just laughed at the look of him. I'll have the law near for a sultan battery. Your damned, miscalculating brute, says I to him. Why don't you get that boy there to teach you your business? And off I walked. Don't you be afraid. He'll never lay hands on me. But Minta was so afraid, and went on talking and lamenting while she made the tea. He took little heed of her. He sat by the fire, quivering and thinking. In a public house, two nights before this one, overtures had been made to him on behalf of a well-known gang of poachers, with headquarters in a neighboring county town, who had their eyes on the pheasant reserves in Westall's particular beat, the Dudley End Beat, and wanted a local water and accomplice. He had thought the matter at first too dangerous to touch. Moreover, he was at the moment in a period of transition, pestered by Minta to give up the poaching, and yet drawn back to it after his spring and summer of field work by instincts only recently revived, after long dormancy, but now hard to resist. Presently he turned with anger upon one of Minta's wills, which happened to read him. Look here! said he to her. Where would you and the chillon be this night, if I hadn't done it? Hadn't we got rid of every stick of stuff we ever had? Here's a well-furnished place for a tap to sit in. He glanced bitterly round the bear kitchen, which had none of the little properties of the country poor, no chest, no set of mahogany drawers, no comfortable chair, nothing but the dresser, and the few rush chairs and the table, and a few odds and ends of crockery and household stuff. Wouldn't we all have been on the parish if we hadn't starved first? Wouldn't we? Just answer me that. Didn't we sit here and starve till the boast was coming through the chillon's skin, didn't we? That he could still argue the point with her showed the inner vulnerableness, the inner need of her affection and of peace with her, which he still felt, far as certain new habits were beginning to sweep him from her. It's west all Jenkins. Jenkins was the village policeman. Having the law on your gym, she said with emphasis, putting down a cup and looking at him. It's the thought of that makes me cold in my back. None of my people was ever in prison, and if it happened to you I should just die of shame. Then you're better take and read them papers there as she brought. He said impatiently, first jerking his finger over his shoulder in the direction of Melor to indicate mis-boys, and then pointing to a heap of newspapers, which lay on the floor in a corner. They'd tell you somewhat about the shame of making them game laws, not a breaking of them, but I'm sick of this. Where's them chillon? Why do you let that boy out so late? And opening the door, he stood on the threshold, looking up and down the village street, while Minta once more gave up the struggle, dried her eyes, and told herself to be careful. But it was hard. She was far better born and better educated than her husband. Her father had been a small master-chairmaker in Wickham, and her mother, a lackadaisical silly woman, had given her her fine name by way of additional proof that she and her children were something out of the common. Moreover, she had the conforming, low-abiding instincts of the well-treated domestic servant, who has lived in kindly terms with the gentry, and shared their standards. And for years after their marriage, Herd had allowed her to govern him. He had been so patient, so hardworking, such a kind husband and father, so full of a dumb wish to show her he was grateful to her for marrying such a fellow as he. The quarrel with Westall seems to have sunk out of his mind. He never spoke to or of him. Low wages, the burden of quick-coming children, the bad sanitary condition of their wretched cottage, and poor health, had made their lives one long and sordid struggle. But for years he had borne his load with extraordinary patience. He and his could just exist, and the man who had been in youth, the lonely victim of his neighbour's scorn, had found a woman to give him all herself and children to love. Hence years of submission, a hidden flowering time for both of them, till that last awful winter. The winter before Richard Boyce's succession to Melo, when the farmers had been mostly ruined, and half the able-bodied men of Melo had trumped up into the smoke, as the village put it, in search of London work. Then, out of actual sheer starvation, that very rare excuse of the poacher, Hurd had gone one night and sneered a hair on the Melor land. Would the wife and mother ever forget the pure animal satisfaction of that meal, or the fearful joy of the next night, when he got three shillings from a local publican, for a hair and two rabbits? But after the first relief, Winter had gone in fear and trembling, for the old woodcraft revived in Hurd, and the old passion for the field, and their chances, which he had felt as a lad before his watcher's place had been made intolerable to him, by George Westall's bullying. He became excited, unmanageable. Very soon, he was no longer content with Melor, where, since the death of young Herald, the heir, the keepers had been dismissed, and what remained of a once numerous head of game, lay open to the wild of all the bold spirits of the neighborhood. He must needs go on to those woods of Lord Maxwell's, which girdled the Melor estate on three sides, and here he came once more across his enemy, for George Westall was now in the far better paid service of the court, and a very clever keeper, with desires on the head keeper's post, whenever it might be vacant. In the case of a poacher, he had the scent of one of his own hairs. It was known to him in an incredibly short time that that low-kissulty fellow, Herald, was attacking his game. Herald notwithstanding was cunning itself, and Westall lay in wait for him in vain. Meanwhile, all the old hatred between the two men revived. Herald drank this winter more than he had ever drunk yet. It was necessary to keep on good terms with one or two publicans, who acted as receivers of the poached game of the neighborhood. And it seemed to him that Westall pursued him into these low dens. The keeper, big, burly, prosperous, would speak to him with insolent patronage, watching him all the time or with the old brutality, which Herald dared not resent. Only in his excitable dwarf sense, hate grew and drove, very soon to monstrous proportions. Westall's menacing figure darkened all his sky for him, his poaching, besides a means of livelihood, became more and more a silent duel between him and his boyhood's tyrant. And now, after seven months of regular field work and respectable living, it was all to begin again with the new winter. The same shadows and terrors, the same shames before the gentry and Mr. Harden, the soft timid woman, with her conscience, could not endure the prospect. For some weeks after the harvest was over, she struggled. He had begun to go out again at night, but she drove him to look for employment and lived in tears when he failed. As for him, she knew that he was glad to fail. There was a certain ease and jauntiness in his air tonight as he stood calling the kids. Will, you come in at once. Daisy, Nelly! Two little figures came pattering up the street in the moist October dusk, a third panted behind. The girls ran into their mother, chattering and laughing. A herd lifted the boy in his arm. Where you been, Will? What were you out for in this nasty damp? I've brought you a whole pocket full of chestnuts and summer towels, too. He carried him into the fire and sat him on his knee. The little emaciated creature, flushed with the pleasure of his father's company, played contentantly in the intervals of coughing with the shining chestnuts, or ate his slice of the fine pear, the gift of a friend in town, which proved to be the summit else of promise. The curtains were closed drawn. The paraffin lamp flared on the table, and as the savory smell of the hair and onions on the fire filled the kitchen, the whole family gathered round, watching for the moment of eating. The fire played on the thin legs and pinched faces of the children, on the baby's cradle in the further corner, on the mother, red-eyed still, but able to smile and talk again, on the strange Celtic face and matted hair of the dwarf. Family affection and the satisfaction of the simpler physical needs, these things make the happiness of the poor. For this hour, tonight, the herds were content. Meanwhile, in the lane outside, Marcella, as she walked home, passed a tall broad-shouldered man in a velveteen suit and gaiters, his gun over his shoulder, and two dogs behind him. His pockets bulging on either side, he walked with a kind of military air, and touched his cap to her as she passed. Marcella barely nodded. Tyrant and bully, she thought to herself, with Mrs. Herd's story in her mind. Yet, no doubt, he is a valuable keeper. Lord Maxwell would be sorry to lose him. It is the system makes such men, and must have them. The clatter of a pony-carriage disturbed her thoughts. A small elderly lady, in a very large mushroom hat, drove past her in the dusk, and bowed stiffly. Marcella was so taken by surprise that she barely returned to the bow. Then she looked after the carriage. That was Miss Rayburn. Tomorrow.