Women of the Country Part 5

CHAPTER XII

Winter hastens his pace when the harvest is gathered, and it was one of those serene winter days on which, if one sat in a sheltered place full of suns.h.i.+ne, one might believe that the spring had begun; as if winter, secure in his domination of the frozen earth, could afford to relax his vigour and admit the approaches of the sun, like a playful child whom one could banish at will. A line of white clouds, with purple bases, were drawn about the horizon, standing like anger, as it were, within call. The sky on every side was of that deep transparency seen after many days of rain. The colours of the earth and gra.s.s were deepened and intense from the same cause. In many places in the fields, sheets of water showed above the gra.s.s, vivid as a wet rock just washed by the sea and colour hidden at other times glowed from the steeped ground.

Villages and houses showed from a great distance as if some obscuring medium had been removed, and the remote country lay a deep band of indigo beneath the horizon, like a distant sea escaping under a light and infinite heaven.

Anne Hilton set off after the evening milking to visit a bed-ridden woman of her acquaintance who lived in a cottage in one of the numerous by-lanes intersecting the now bared fields. She was a woman who had lain many years in the kitchen, whose narrow, hot s.p.a.ce was all she saw of the world. She was not a cheerful invalid, but peevish and querulous.

The irritation with which she always lived, waking from sleep to be at once aware of it, and to know no pause during her waking hours, had worn away a temperament which might almost have been gay. At very rare intervals Anne had heard her laugh, and the laugh had such a note of gaiety in it that she surmised the nature that had been, as it were, knawed thin by this never-sleeping worm. It was pity for something imprisoned and smothered which made Anne a steadfast friend to the unhappy woman, whose other friends had long tired of her incessant complaints and down-cast mind.

Elizabeth Richardson had never any hesitation in expressing her opinions, and Anne had scarcely seated herself by the bed of the unfortunate woman, whose harrowed face told of the torment within, than she began to ask questions of the disgrace of Jane Evans, whom, she had heard, was to have a child to crown all. But contrary to Anne's expectations the bed-ridden woman was friendly to the girl. The habit of neglect and scarcely-veiled impatience with which she had for many years been treated, and of which she had been fully and silently aware, had produced in her tortured mind an exasperated rebellion against the opinions of her neighbours, who were unable to see anything beyond their own comfort. She knew that she had so much the worst of it; that even attending perfunctorily to another's human necessity was not so hard a task as to be there day after day in the company of a pain which never ceased, and beneath whose increasing shadow the world had slowly darkened.

"They're all afraid of the trouble to themselves about the girl," she said, with her bitter intonation. "They're afraid they'll be called on to do something for her sooner or later."

She turned over with a groan, lying still and worried.

"Have you tried a bag of hot salt?" asked Anne, after a few minutes'

silence.

"Yes! I tried once or twice," replied the woman, "but you know it's a bit of extra trouble, and no one likes that."

"If you could tell me where to get a bit of red flannel I'll make one for you now," said Anne.

"The bag's here," said the woman, her face drawn and her mouth gasping.

She tried to feel under the pillow.

"Lie you still. I'll get it," said Anne. She drew out a bag of red flannel, evidently the remnant of an old flannel petticoat, for the tuck still remained like a grotesque attempt at ornament across the middle of the bag. The salt slid heavily to one end as Anne drew it out.

"The oven's still warm," she said opening the door and putting her hand inside. "I'll just slip it in for a few minutes."

"Well," said the woman, "there's not many cares about a bad-tempered, bed-ridden woman, but you're one of them that's been kind. I don't _say_ much, but I _know_."

"You make me nearly cry," said Anne, drawing the bag out of the oven and feeling its temperature. Holding it against her chest, as if to keep in its heat, she drew back the bed-clothes and unb.u.t.toned the flannelette night-gown of the invalid, laying the poultice against her wasted side.

The woman gave a sob and lay still for a minute.

"It's a lot better," she said.

"Perhaps you could sleep a bit," suggested Anne.

"I'd like a cup o' tea," said the woman, "but it's a lot of trouble.

Can't you look where you're going!" she broke out impatiently, as Anne, turning quickly, caught her foot in the chair, overturning it with a crash. "You made me jump so."

"Well, I am sorry," said Anne, humbly.

"Never mind," said the bed-ridden woman, her impatience exhausted. At that moment the door opened with a bang and a stout, middle-aged woman entered noisily.

"What a noise you make!" said the bed-ridden woman peevishly. "You're getting too fat."

"Fat people's better-tempered than thin ones," retorted the other carelessly. "Good evening, Miss Hilton! Has she been telling you all she's got to put up with more than other people?"

"Well now," returned Anne with decisive heartiness, "I don't think we've been speaking about herself at all, except to express grat.i.tude for a very little service that I did her. We've spent a pleasant hour together."

"I'm glad to hear it," said the woman, going to the fire and rattling the irons noisily between the bars.

"You noisy thing. Can't you make a less din!" said the bed-ridden woman, biting her lip.

"Other people's got to live in the house besides you," said the woman.

"If you want so much attention, you know where you can get it."

The bed-ridden woman shut her eyes and lay still at this threat of the workhouse, that confession of failure, in a world where ability to work becomes a kind of morality, and lack of physical strength to procure the means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be acknowledged publicly a failure.

When this last pride is taken away, there sometimes appears a kind of patience which is not really that of despair, but which is nearer to that attained by great saints after long effort and discipline--the mental equilibrium which is the result of desire quenched, of expectation for further good for oneself at an end. What the saints attain by a painful and mortifying life, the poor receive as a gift from the tender mercies of the world, receiving also the pa.s.sionate pity of Jesus, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."

"If she could only work as she used, and be 'beholden' to n.o.body." She sighed and lay still, her mind an abyss of bitterness.

The stout newcomer, step-daughter to the unfortunate woman, turned to Anne, jerking her head backwards to indicate the other woman in bed with an expression of satisfaction which said quite plainly, "That's the way to settle _her_." Then she ignored her totally, except that she moved as noisily, and spoke as loudly as she could.

She was a rather pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an obstinate mouth. There was, so to speak, "no nonsense about her." She was one of those women of coa.r.s.e fibre, whose chief diversion consists in annoying the sensibilities of others. They exist more frequently in the middlecla.s.s than among the poor, whose common dependence teaches them forebearance if not pity, but they exist also among the poor, more terrible if not more merciless. Such women almost always find material to torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative, sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure in hatred, which appears outwardly as good-humour.

The indignation which always awoke in Anne at the sight and expression of injustice flared suddenly upwards. Facing the still satisfied woman, who now drew a chair across the flagged floor with the screech of its wooden legs upon the stone, she said:

"How can _you_, a strong, active woman, take pleasure in worrying a sick and ailing fellow-creature. Suppose you were in her place. How can you expect to find mercy from G.o.d in the day of judgment if you have no mercy on others?"

The woman stared incredulously, and then broke into a loud laugh.

"And I thought you was such a quiet piece. Fancy spitting out like that." Then her brutality of temper a.s.serted itself.

"_I've_ nothing to do with the day of judgment. I don't see why I should be called to look after a woman with the temper of a vixen that wants to be a spoiled darling. The Union's made for such as her and she ought to be in it. It's just her spite that keeps her out."

"Have you no pity?" said Anne. "_You_ may not always be strong and able-bodied. The day may come when _you_ need help and comfort, and how will you deserve it from G.o.d, if you torment your unfortunate sister in this way!"

The woman's answer was a laugh.

"You're as queer as they make 'em," she said, with a slow, impudent stare from Anne's out-of-date immense bonnet to her elastic-sided boots, as if looking for a point at which she might begin to torment a new victim. But Anne's sensibilities lay far beyond her understanding.

"Have you wore out all your grandmother's clothes yet?" she demanded with her contemptuous, impudent look, "you're a proper figure of fun in that bonnet!"

"Be quiet and be done with it, you coa.r.s.e lump!" interrupted the bed-ridden woman in so loud and authoritative a tone that the woman turned slowly and stupidly round to look at her. "This time next week I'll be in the Union and you'll have no one to torment. You can make arrangements when you like, the sooner the better."

"All right! it can't be too soon for me," retorted the woman with her incessant, stupid laugh, which this time did not hide the fact that she had received a shock at this taking of affairs out of her hands. "But perhaps you'd rather I didn't do it since you've so many friends."

"No, you needn't bother yourself about me," said the bed-ridden woman.

"I'll have done with you soon."

"_Couldn't_ you?" said Anne, turning to face the woman and speaking with great earnestness, and as always, when moved, with great preciseness.

"_Couldn't_ you for this last week do your best to be considerate and kind? A week is not a very long portion of eternity. It is so painful to think of two people separating for ever in hatred. You _have_ one week left. Could you not make the most of it?"

"It's a week too much!" said the woman, with careless brutality. "Are you always so fond of making long calls?" she added, staring at Anne.