The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane

of doors. She made straight for Caillaud’s house. It was cold, and the sky was clear at intervals, with masses of clouds sweeping over the nearly full moon. What she was to do when she got to Caillaud’s had not entered her head. She came to the door and stopped. It had just begun to rain heavily. The sitting-room was on the ground-floor, abutting on the pavement. The blind was drawn down, but not closely, and she could see inside. Caillaud, Pauline, and Zachariah were there, but not the Major. Caillaud was sitting by the fireside; her husband and Pauline were talking earnestly across the table. Apparently both of them were much interested, and his face was lighted up as she never saw it when he was with her. She was fascinated, and could not move. It was a dull lonely street and nobody was to be seen that wet night. She had no protection from the weather but her cloak, and in ten minutes, as the rain came down more heavily, she was wet through and shivering from head to foot⁠—she who was usually so careful, so precise, so singularly averse from anything like disorder. Still she watched⁠—watched every movement of those two⁠—every smile, every gesture; and when Caillaud went out of the room, perhaps to fetch something, she watched with increasing and self-forgetting intensity. She had not heard footsteps approaching. The wind had risen; the storm was ever fiercer and fiercer, and the feverish energy which poured itself into her eyes had drained and deadened every other sense.

“Well, my good woman, what do you want?”

She turned with a start, and it was the Major!

“Mrs. Coleman! Good God! what are you doing here? You are soaked. Why don’t you come in?”

“Oh no, Major Maitland indeed I cannot. I⁠—I had been out, and I had just stopped a moment. I didn’t know it was going to rain.”

“But I say you are dripping. Come in and see your husband; he will go with you.”

“Oh no, Major, please don’t; please don’t mention it to him; oh no, please don’t; he would be very vexed. I shall be all right; I will go on at once and dry myself.”

“You cannot go alone. I will see you as far as your house. Here, take my coat and put it over your shoulders.”

The Major took off a heavy cloak with capes, wrapped it round her, drew her arm through his, and they went to her lodgings. She forgot Zachariah, Caillaud, and Pauline. When they arrived she returned the cloak and thanked him. She dared not ask him upstairs and he made no offer to stay.

“Please say nothing to my husband; promise you will not. He would be in such a way if he thought I had been out; but I could not help it.”

“Oh, certainly not, Mrs. Coleman, if you wish it; though I am sure he wouldn’t, he couldn’t be angry with you.”

She lingered as he took the coat.

“Come inside and put it on, Major Maitland; why, it is you who are dripping now. You will not wear that over your sopped clothes. Cannot I lend you something? Won’t you have something hot to drink?”

“No, thank you. I think not; it is not so bad as all that.”

He shook hands with her and had gone.

She went upstairs into her dark room. The fire was out. She lighted no candle, but sat down just as she was, put her head on the table, and sobbed as if her heart would break. She was very seldom overcome by emotion of this kind, and used to be proud that she had never once in her life fainted, and was not given to hysterics. Checked at last by a deadly shivering which came over her, she took off her wet garments, threw them over a chair, and crept into bed, revolving in her mind the explanation which she could give to her husband. When she saw him, and he inquired about her clothes, she offered some trifling excuse, which seemed very readily to satisfy him, for he made scarcely any reply, and was soon asleep. This time it was her turn to lie awake, and the morning found her restless, and with every symptom of a serious illness approaching.

XIII

To the Greeks Foolishness

Neither Mrs. Coleman nor her husband thought it anything worse than a feverish cold, and he went to his work. It was a club night, the night on which the final arrangements for the march were to be made, and he did not like to be away. His wife was to lie in bed; but a woman in the house offered to wait upon her and bring what little food she wanted. It was settled at the club that the Major should accompany the expedition and Zachariah and Caillaud having drawn lots, the lot fell upon Caillaud. A last attempt was made to dissuade the majority from the undertaking; but it had been made before, not only by our three friends, but by other Lancashire societies, and had failed. The only effect its renewal had now was a disagreeable and groundless insinuation which was unendurable. On his return from the meeting Zachariah was alarmed. His wife was in great pain, and had taken next to nothing all day. Late as it was, he went for a doctor, who would give no opinion as to the nature of the disease then, but merely ordered her some kind of sedative mixture, which happily gave her a little sleep. Zachariah was a working man and a poor man. Occasionally it does happen that a working man and a poor man has nerves, and never does his poverty appear so hateful to him as when he has sickness in his house.

The mere discomforts of poverty are bad enough⁠—the hunger and cold of it⁠—but worse than all is the impossibility of being decently ill, or decently dying, or of paying any attention to those who