Women of the Country Part 2

"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, d.i.c.k?" 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 d.i.c.k. "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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k, with an embarra.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k. "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 d.i.c.k, "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 d.i.c.k; "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 embarra.s.sing 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "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 d.i.c.k, 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 a.s.sault, 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.sers-by, stood a row of countrywomen and girls with market baskets of b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 fas.h.i.+on of the best shop in the town, with a basket of rather more elegant shape, went about her marketing with equal decision, if more fas.h.i.+on: 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 pa.s.sages 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 embarra.s.sment 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 b.u.t.ter.

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 b.u.t.ter 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 a.s.sumed 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, a.s.sumed the virtue of a girl who'd no need to seek about for lovers, and of a cla.s.s 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 n.o.body'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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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.