Simon stirred uneasily when she mentioned her eyes, remembering how they had played in and out of his mind, but never once managed to come to the front.
“Nay, then, I didn’t, if you want to know, because I never gitten chanst. I didn’t rightly know what to say, neither, come to that. You catched doctor right enough, I suppose?”
“Ay, we hadn’t to wait or owt. And he was right kind, he was that!”
“Happen he hadn’t a deal to say, after all?” Simon enquired hopefully, and she gave a faint laugh.
“Nobbut that if I didn’t have an operation right off, I’d be as blind as a barn-door owl by next year!”
Simon said “Gox!” and jerked the horse so violently that it nearly went through the hedge. “Losh, missis, that’s bad!” he went on dismally, when he had straightened out. “It’s worse than I looked for, by a deal. I’ve always been terble feared of operations and suchlike. What’s to be done about it, d’ye think?”
“Nowt.”
“Nay, but dang it!” he cried sharply—“we can’t leave it like yon! If there’s owt they can do for you, we mun let them try. They say some folk come out right enough, wi’ a bit o’ luck.”
“Luck isn’t much in our way, I doubt,” she said, with a sigh, “and it’d mean begging o’ somebody, I reckon, and I’ve had enough o’ that. May says there’s free spots for such as us, but there’s not that much free in this world as I’ve ever seen. I doubt it’d mean somebody’s brass or other going to pay for it in the end.”
“I could ax Will—” Simon began hurriedly, without pausing to think, but she stopped him before the well-known formula was out.
“Nay, then, master, you’ll do nowt o’ the sort, so that’s all there is about it! You’re his brother, and you’ve a right to do as you choose, but I’ll never take a penny piece from him if it’s nobbut for myself.”
“He’d have his hand in his pocket for you right off. He’s never been close about brass and suchlike, hasn’t Will.”
“Ay, but it’s Eliza’s brass as well, you’ll think on, and she’s close, right enough! She’d see me blind and on t’streets afore she’d lift a hand, and if happen she did lift it, I’d strike it down! Nay, master, you can ax what you like for yourself, but you’ll ax nowt for me. As for the farm and Mr. Dent, we’re bound to get shot of it now, whatever happens. The sooner things is fixed the better I’ll be suited, so I’ll thank you to get ’em seen to as soon as you can.”
“ ’Tisn’t my fault they’re not fixed this very minute!” Simon grumbled, feeling hardly used. … “Did you happen across Eliza in Witham?” he asked her suddenly, after a while.
Sarah laughed faintly again, though this time it was an echo of triumph.
“We’d a few words together in t’caif,” she answered tranquilly, “and wi’ a few folks looking on an’ all. She was setting it round we were broke, and had gitten the sack, and a deal more; but I reckon I give her summat to bite on afore I was through. … Seems as if you an’ me had been having a sort o’ sideshow,” she finished, with a grim smile. “Ay, well, we’ve given Witham summat to crack about, if we’ve never done nowt else. …”
Their minds had been full of Eliza as they drove to market, and now they were busy turning her over in their minds again. Sarah’s account of her splendid effort cheered and uplifted them for a while, but they knew only too well that their sense of superiority would not last. Even their victories, ever so dearly bought, turned to Eliza’s advantage in the end. Life was on the side of Eliza, for whom all things were certain to work out well. Heaven was on the side of Eliza, whose face had never registered a single memory of pain. The Simon Thornthwaites never got over the feeling that somehow she had played them false, had wheedled by undue influence the balance of justice off the straight. Alone, they were able to see some dignity in their tragic lives, but once with Eliza they were suddenly cheap—mere poor relations fawning at her skirts. They saw themselves framed as such in her mocking eyes, and felt for the moment the shameful thing they seemed.
She mocked them—that was the evil thing she did; that petty, insidious crime which human nature finds so difficult to forgive. Mockery by comparison was her method, and one which was almost impossible to fight. In all that Eliza said and did, by her attitude and her dress, she invited the world to mark the incredible gulf that yawned between the Simon Thornthwaites and the Wills. She had made her opening point on the double wedding-day, though the actual cause of the enmity lay further back than that. Eliza, indeed, had intended to marry Simon and not Will—Simon, the elder, the better-looking, and even the smarter in those far-off days. But in this, at least, Sarah had won the fall, and Eliza had never recovered from her surprise. From that moment the spoilt beauty had seen in the other’s plain person an opponent worthy of her steel, an antagonist whom it would take her all her life to down. Sneer and strike as she might, she could never be quite sure that she had finally got home, and in mingled inquisitiveness and wrath she sneered and struck again. There must be an end sometime to this spirit that would not break, but even after forty years there was little sign. Something deathless in Sarah rose up again after every stroke, and was always left standing erect when her world was in the dust.
Sarah thought of her wedding-day as they drove through the torpid afternoon, and under the low sky that was shut over the earth like a parsimonious hand. The wedding-day had been soft and
