Since those terrible words of his were spoken she had not heard a syllable. He took her icy hand. He looked for a puzzled moment in her clouded eyes, and nodded, and he called to the little girl in the adjoining room.
“I’m going now, child, and do you look after your mistress.”
By a coincidence or association—something suggested by Harry Fairfield’s looks, was it?—old Mildred Tarnley’s head was full of the Dutchwoman when Dulcibella came into the kitchen.
“You took out the ink, Tom, when you was weighin’ them oats today,” said she, and out went Tom in search of that always errant and mitching article.
“I was sayin’ to Tom as ye came in, Mrs. Crane, how I hoped to see that one in her place. I think I’d walk to Hatherton and back to see her hanged, the false jade, wi’ her knife, and her puce pelisse, and her divilry. Old witch!”
“Lawk, Mrs. Tarnley, how can ye?”
“Well, now Master Charles is under the mould, I wouldn’t spare her. What for shouldn’t Mrs. Fairfield make her pay for the pipe she danced to. It’s her turn now—
‘When you are anvil, hold you still,
When you are hammer, strike your fill.’
And if I was Mrs. Fairfield, maybe I wouldn’t make her smoke for all.”
“I think my lady will do just what poor Master Charles wished, and I know nothing about the woman,” said Dulcibella, “only they all say she’s not right in her head, Mrs. Tarnley, and I don’t think she’ll slight his last word, and punish the woman; ’twould be the same as sacrilege a’most; and what of her? Much matter about a wooden platter! and it’s ill burning the house to frighten the mice.”
Harry Fairfield here sauntered into the kitchen, rolling unspoken thoughts in his mind. The conversation subsided at his approach; Dulcibella made her courtesy and withdrew, and said he to Tom, who was entering with the ink-bottle—
“Tom, run out, will ye, and get my nag ready for the road; I’ll be off this minute.”
Tom departed promptly.
“Well, Mildred,” said he, eyeing her darkly from the corners of his eyes, “sorrow comes unsent for.”
“Ay, sure, she’s breakin’ her heart, poor thing.”
“ ’Twon’t break, I warrant, for all that,” he answered; “sorrow for a husband they say is a pain in the elbow, sharp and short.”
“All along o’ that ugly Dutch beast. ’Twas an ill wind carried her to Carwell,” said Mildred.
He shut his eyes and shook his head.
“That couldn’t do nowhere,” said he—
“ ‘Two cats and one mouse,
Two wives in one house.’ ”
“Master Charles was no such fool. What for should he ever a’ married such as that? I couldn’t believe no such thing,” said Mrs. Tarnley, sharply.
“ ‘Two dogs at one bone,
Can never agree in one,’ ”
repeated Harry, oracularly. “There’s no need, mind, to set folks’ tongues a-ringin’, nor much good in tryin’ to hide the matter, for her people won’t never let it rest, I lay ye what ye please—never. ’Twill be strange news up at Wyvern, but I’m afeard she’ll prove it only too ready; ’twill shame us finely.”
“Well, let them talk—‘As the bell clinks, so the fool thinks’—and who the worse. I don’t believe it nohow. He never would ha’ brought down the Fairfields to that, and if he had, he could not ha’ brought the poor young creature upstairs into such trouble and shame. I won’t believe it of him till it’s proved.”
“I hope they may never prove it. But what can we do? You and I know how they lived here, and I have heard her call him husband as often as I have fingers and toes, but, bless ye, we’ll hold our tongues—you will, eh? won’t ye, Mildred? ye mustn’t be talkin’.”
“Talkin’! I ha’ nout to talk about. Fudge! man, I don’t believe it—’tis a d⸺d lie, from top to bottom.”
“I hope so,” said he.
“A shameless liar she was, the blackest I ever heard talk.”
“Best let sleepin’ dogs be,” said he.
There was some silver loose in his trousers’ pocket, and he was fumbling with it, and looking hard at Mildred as he spoke to her. Sometimes, between his finger and thumb, he held the shilling—sometimes the half-crown. He was mentally deciding which to part with, and it ended by his presenting Mildred with the shilling, and recommending her to apply this splendid “tip” to the purchase of tea.
Some people experience a glow after they have done a great benevolence; as he walked into the stable-yard, Harry experienced a sensation, but it wasn’t a glow, a chill rather. Remembering the oblique look with which she eyed the silver coin in her dark palm, and her scant thanks, he was thinking what a beast he was to part with his money so lightly.
Mildred Tarnley cynically muttered to herself in the kitchen—
“ ‘Farewell frost,
Nothing got nor nothing lost.’
Here’s a gift! Bless him! I mind the time a Fairfield would a’ been ashamed to give an old servant such a vails. Hoot! what’s the world a-comin’ to? ’Tis time we was a-goin’. But Master Harry was ever the same—a thrifty lad he was, that looked after his pennies sharply,” said old Mildred Tarnley, scornfully; and she dropped the coin disdainfully into a little tin porringer that stood on the dresser.
And Tom came in, and the doors were made sure, and Mildred Tarnley made her modest cup of tea, and all was subsiding for the night.
But Harry’s words had stricken Alice Fairfield. Perhaps those viewless arrows oftener kill than people think of. Up in her homely room Alice now lay very ill indeed.
XLIX
The Heir of the Fairfields
At dead of night Alice was very ill, and Tom was called up to ride across Cressley Common for the Wykeford doctor. Worse and worse she grew. In this unknown danger—without the support of a husband’s love or consolation—“the pains of hell gat hold of her,” the fear of death was upon her. Glad was she in her lonely terrors to
