“We’ll work it some way,” May urged, not knowing of the big pause that had come into Sarah’s life. “You may have to get a word put in for you, but that’s easy done. I’ll see the Squire and Mrs. Wilson and maybe a few more, and it’ll be all fixed up without you putting yourself about.”
“You’re right kind, you are that.”
“It’s worth it,” May said again.
“Ay … I don’t know …” Sarah answered her absently, and then sat up straight. “It’d ha’ been worth it once,” she broke out suddenly, as if letting herself go. “There was a time when I’d a deal sooner ha’ been dead than blind, but it don’t matter much now. There’s not that much left as I care to look at, I’m sure. It’s the eyes make the heart sore more nor half the time. But I’d ha’ felt badly about it if Geordie was coming back, and I couldn’t ha’ framed to see his face.”
May said—“It’s best not to think of such things,” as cheerfully as she could, but her own face clouded as she spoke, and suddenly she looked old. Here was the old trouble, if the doctor had known, that was still big enough to make the new one seem almost small. Blindness was not so dreadful a thing to these two women, who had both of them lost the light of their eyes so long before. Long ago they had known what it was to rise and see no shine in the day, no blue in the sea for May who had lost her lover, no sun in the sky for Sarah without her child.
It was twenty years now since Geordie had gone away, clearing out overseas as casually as if into the next field. Eliza’s eldest from Blindbeck had gone as well, as like him in face and voice as if hatched in the same nest. They were too lively, too restless for the calm machinery of English country life, and when the call came from over the ocean they had vanished in a night. Canada, which has so many links with Westmorland now, seemed farther away then than the world beyond the grave. Death at least left you with bones in a green yard and a stone with a graven name, but Canada made you childless, and there was no sign of your grief beneath the church’s wall. Geordie had written, indeed, from time to time, but though the letters were light enough on the top, there was heartache underneath. He was a failure there, they gathered, after a while, just as they were failures here; as if the curse of the Sandholes luck had followed even across the sea, Jim was a failure, too, as far as they knew, though their impression of Jim’s doings was always vague. His very name on the page seemed to have the trick of dissolving itself in invisible ink, and his own letters were never answered and barely even read. He had been fond of his aunt, but Sarah had given him only the scantiest tolerance in return. Sarah, indeed, would not have cared if Jim had been burning in everlasting fire. …
“We’d a letter from Geordie a month back,” she said suddenly, after the pause, “begging the loan of a pound o’ two to fetch him home.”
May started a little, and the colour came back to her cheek. It was a long time now since anything fresh about Geordie had come her way. Once she had been in the habit of going to Sandholes for news, asking for it by indirect methods of which she was still rather ashamed. Sarah had been jealous of her in those days and grudged her every word; and since she had stopped being jealous there had been next to nothing to grudge. …
“Ay, he axed for his fare, but we hadn’t got it to send. I don’t know as we want him, neither, if he can’t shape better than that.”
May felt her heart shake as she leaned forward, clasping her hands.
“I’ve a bit put by I could spare,” she began, with a thrill in her voice. “It could go from you, Mrs. Thornthet—he need never know. You’ve only to say the word, and you can have it when you want.”
A twinge of the ancient jealousy caught suddenly at Sarah’s heart. With difficulty she remembered May’s kindness and the long bond of the years.
“I’ll not spend any lass’s savings on my lad!” she answered roughly, and then softened again. “Nay, May, my girl, you mean well enough, but it wain’t do. Losh save us! Hasn’t he done badly enough by you, as it is?” she added grimly. “You should ha’ been wed this many a long year, instead o’ hanging on for the likes o’ him!”
“I doubt I’d never have married in any case,” May said. “I don’t know as I’d ever have made up my mind to leave my dad.”
“You’d ha’ wed right enough but for Geordie—dad or no dad!” Sarah scoffed. “You’re the sort as is meant to be wed, from the start. Nay, he’s spoilt your life, and no doubt about it, but there’s no sense in lossing the can because you’ve gone and spilt the milk. Say you sent him the brass, and he come back without a cent, what’d be the end o’ the business then? You’d wed him, I’ll be bound—for pity, if for nowt else. Your father’ll likely leave you a nice bit, and you’d get along on that, but who’s to say how Geordie’d frame after all these years? Happen he’s lost the habit o’ work by now, and
