steps as they went to and from their labour. In the cottages things were being done which made downcast women bestir themselves and look less slatternly. Leaks mended here, windows there, the hopeless copper in the tiny washhouse replaced by a new one, chimneys cured of the habit of smoking, a clean, flowered paper put on a wall, a coat of whitewash— they were small matters, but produced great effect.
Betty had begun to drop into the cottages, and make the acquaintance of their owners. Her first visits, she observed, created great consternation. Women looked frightened or sullen, children stared and refused to speak, clinging to skirts and aprons. She found the atmosphere clear after her second visit. The women began to talk, and the children collected in groups and listened with cheerful grins. She could pick up little Jane’s kitten, or give a pat to small Thomas’ mongrel dog, in a manner which threw down barriers.
“Don’t put out your pipe,” she said to old Grandfather Doby, rising totteringly respectful from his chimney-side chair. “You have only just lighted it. You mustn’t waste a whole pipeful of tobacco because I have come in.”
The old man, grown childish with age, tittered and shuffled and giggled. Such a joke as the grand young lady was having with him. She saw he had only just lighted his pipe. The gentry joked a bit sometimes. But he was afraid of his grandson’s wife, who was frowning and shaking her head.
Betty went to him, and put her hand on his arm.
“Sit down,” she said, “and I will sit by you.” And she sat down and showed him that she had brought a package of tobacco with her, and actually a wonder of a red and yellow jar to hold it, at the sight of which unheard-of joys his rapture was so great that his trembling hands could scarcely clasp his treasures.
“Tee-hee! Tee-hee-ee! Deary me! Thankee—thankee, my lady,” he tittered, and he gazed and blinked at her beauty through heavenly tears.
“Nearly a hundred years old, and he has lived on sixteen shillings a week all his life, and earned it by working every hour between sunrise and sunset,” Betty said to her sister, when she went home. “A man has one life, and his has passed like that. It is done now, and all the years and work have left nothing in his old hands but his pipe. That’s all. I should not like to put it out for him. Who am I that I can buy him a new one, and keep it filled for him until the end? How did it happen? No,” suddenly, “I must not lose time in asking myself that. I must get the new pipe.”
She did it—a pipe of great magnificence—such as drew to the Doby cottage as many callers as the village could provide, each coming with fevered interest, to look at it—to be allowed to hold and examine it for a few moments, guessing at its probable enormous cost, and returning it reverently, to gaze at Doby with respect—the increase of which can be imagined when it was known that he was not only possessor of the pipe, but of an assurance that he would be supplied with as much tobacco as he could use, to the end of his days. From the time of the advent of the pipe, Grandfather Doby became a man of mark, and his life in the chimney corner a changed thing. A man who owns splendours and unlimited, excellent shag may like friends to drop in and crack jokes—and even smoke a pipe with him—a common pipe, which, however, is not amiss when excellent shag comes free.
“He lives in a wild whirl of gaiety—a social vortex,” said Betty to Lady Anstruthers, after one of her visits. “He is actually rejuvenated. I must order some new white smocks for him to receive his visitors in. Someone brought him an old copy of the Illustrated London News last night. We will send him illustrated papers every week.”
In the dull old brain, God knows what spark of life had been relighted. Young Mrs. Doby related with chuckles that granddad had begged that his chair might be dragged to the window, that he might sit and watch the village street. Sitting there, day after day, he smoked and looked at his pictures, and dozed and dreamed, his pipe and tobacco jar beside him on the window ledge. At any sound of wheels or footsteps his face lighted, and if, by chance, he caught a glimpse of Betty, he tottered to his feet, and stood hurriedly touching his bald forehead with a reverent, palsied hand.
” ‘Tis ‘urr,” he would say, enrapt. “I seen ‘urr—I did.” And young Mrs. Doby knew that this was his joy, and what he waited for as one waits for the coming of the sun.
” ‘Tis ‘urr! ‘Tis ‘urr!”
The vicar’s wife, Mrs. Brent, who since the affair of John Wilson’s fire had dropped into the background and felt it indiscreet to present tales of distress at the Court, began to recover her courage. Her perfunctory visits assumed a new character. The vicarage had, of course, called promptly upon Miss Vanderpoel, after her arrival. Mrs. Brent admired Miss Vanderpoel hugely.
“You seem so unlike an American,” she said once in her most tactful, ingratiating manner—which was very ingratiating indeed.
“Do I? What is one like when one is like an American? I am one, you know.”
“I can scarcely believe it,” with sweet ardour.
“Pray try,” said Betty with simple brevity, and Mrs. Brent felt that perhaps Miss Vanderpoel was not really very easy to get on with.
“She meant to imply that I did not speak through my nose, and talk too much, and too vivaciously, in a shrill voice,” Betty said afterwards, in talking the interview over with Rosy. “I like to convince myself that is not one’s sole national characteristic. Also it was not exactly Mrs. Brent’s place to kindly encourage me with the information that I do not seem to belong to my own country.”
Lady Anstruthers laughed, and Betty looked at her inquiringly.
“You said that just like—just like an Englishwoman.”
“Did I?” said Betty.
Mrs. Brent had come to talk to her because she did not wish to trouble dear Lady Anstruthers. Lady Anstruthers already looked much stronger, but she had been delicate so long that one hesitated to distress her with village matters. She did not add that she realised that she was coming to headquarters. The vicar and herself were much disturbed about a rather tiresome old woman—old Mrs. Welden—who lived in a tiny cottage in the village. She was eighty-three years old, and a respectable old person—a widow, who had reared ten children. The children had all grown up, and scattered, and old Mrs. Welden had nothing whatever to live on. No one knew how she lived, and really she would be better off in the workhouse. She could be sent to Brexley Union, and comfortably taken care of, but she had that singular, obstinate dislike to going, which it was so difficult to manage. She had asked for a shilling a week from the parish, but that could not be allowed her, as it would merely uphold her in her obstinate intention of remaining in her cottage, and taking care of herself—which she could not do. Betty gathered that the shilling a week would be a drain on the parish funds, and would so raise the old creature to affluence that she would feel she could defy fate. And the contumacity of old men and women should not be strengthened by the reckless bestowal of shillings.
