But already Eliza had drawn back in order to follow a fresh trail. Quite suddenly she had perceived the only means of getting at the truth.
“Nay, I’ll not trouble you,” she sneered. “ ’Tisn’t worth it, after all. I shouldn’t like our grand Family Bible to turn yeller wi’ false swearing! Geordie’s letter’ll be proof enough, Sarah, now I come to think on. I’ll believe owt about Halls and suchlike, if you’ll show me that!”
She came a step nearer still, holding out her hand, and instantly Sarah’s lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. She might have had a dozen sacred letters about her, from the look of her, at that moment. It might have been Geordie’s face itself that she guarded from the touch of Eliza’s hands.
“Ay, I’d be like to show you his letter, wouldn’t I?” she answered, with a wicked smile. “You and me have been such terble friends all these years—I’d be like to show you owt from my bonny lad! Nay, Eliza, you know I’d shove it in t’fire unread, afore I’d let you as much as clap eyes on a single word!”
Eliza wheeled away from her with an angry oath, and began to walk to and fro, setting the loose planks jumping and creaking under her feet, and the china rattling and clinking on the shelves. Her hands worked in and out of each other with convulsive movements, and now and then she flung out her heavy arms. She was working herself into one of those storms which the folk at the farm knew only too well, but Sarah, who was the cause of it, did not seem to care. She, too, however, was breathing faster than before, and a faint colour had stayed in her waxen cheek. She still felt as if, in that last bout, she had protected something vital from Eliza’s hands.
“I’ll be bound it’s Jim!” Eliza was saying senselessly, over and over again. “I’ll swear it’s Jim!” … It was like a giant’s voice, Sarah thought to herself, the voice of a cruel, clumsy giant-child. “You’re telling a lie, Sarah—a nasty lie! You’re jealous, that’s what it is—jealous and mean! Geordie wi’ brass? Not likely! … Nay, it’s Jim!”
“It’s plain enough it’s the brass you’re after and nowt else,” Sarah said in her cool tones. “You’d have no use for the poor lad if he come back without a cent!”
But even while the words were on her lips, Eliza, creaking to and fro, was brought to a sudden halt. The thing that held her was a photograph of Jim, catching her eye in its frame of crimson plush. If he had been older when it was taken, it would have been banished long ago, but here he was only a mischievous baby, struggling in his mother’s arms. Eliza stared at it as she stood in front of the mantelpiece, and quite suddenly she began to cry. The tears poured down her face, and her hands trembled and her body shook. Into the brutal voice came a note at which Sarah, unable to trace the cause, yet quivered in every nerve.
“Nay, then, Sarah, you’re wrong, Sarah, you’re dead wrong! I’d be glad to see him just for himself, I would that! He’s been nowt but a trouble and disappointment all his life, but I’d be glad to see him, all the same.” She put out the plump fingers which Sarah loathed, and drew them caressingly over the baby face. “I can’t do wi’ failures,” she added brokenly; “they make me wild; and Jim was the only failure Blindbeck ever hatched. But for all that he was the bonniest baby of the lot, and there’s times I never remember nowt but that. There’s days I just ache for the sound of his voice, and fair break my heart to think he’ll never come back.”
There was no doubting the sincerity of her grief, and the big sobs shaking their way through her shook Sarah, too. Her own lips trembled, and her eyes filled; her hands quivered on the arms of the chair. She could not see the pitiful fingers stroking the child’s face, but she who had offered that worship herself needed little help to guess. She had her revenge in full as she sat and listened to the passion that never dies, forcing its way upward even through Eliza’s leathern soul; but the revenge was a two-edged sword that wounded herself as well. All the generosity in her that was still alive and kind would have sprung to the surface instantly if the story had been true. She would have groped her way to Eliza’s side in an effort to console, and perhaps the lifelong enemies might have drawn together for once. But the story was not true, and she had nothing to offer and no right of any sort to speak. She could only sit where she was and suffer and shake, hating herself more in this moment of absolute conquest than she had ever hated Eliza in her darkest hour.
But, as a matter of fact, Eliza’s grief would have passed before she could even have tottered to her feet. Her own lips were still shaking when Eliza’s had hardened again; her own eyes were still wet when Eliza’s were dry with hate. The passion which for a brief moment had been selfless and sincere was turned once again into the channel of jealous rage. She swung round so swiftly that her sleeve caught the little frame, and it fell forward unnoticed with a sharp tinkle of broken glass.
“There’s summat wrong about it all,” she cried venomously, “and I’ll not rest till I find out what it is! What’s Geordie mean by landing up so smart, and leaving our Jim a thousand mile behind? It’s a nasty sort o’ trick, if it’s nothing worse, seeing how they were thick as
