“Geordie’s never coming, is he, Sarah?” he asked anxiously. “Nay, you’ve dreamed it, my lass! And he’s rich, d’ye say?—why, that settles it right out! Why, it was nobbut the other day he was writing home for brass!”
Still she did not speak, and quite suddenly he was wroth, vexed by her mask-like face and the sudden diminishing of his hope.
“Losh, woman!” he cried angrily. “You look half daft! Is yon lad of ours coming, or is he not? Is it truth you’re telling me, or a pack o’ lies?”
She stirred then, moved by the cheated sound in his angry voice. She gave a sigh. The fooling of Eliza had been utterly great and glorious, but it had come to an end. “It was just lies,” she heard herself saying in a passionless tone, and then with a last twinge of regret, she sighed again.
Eliza’s scream of “I knew it! I knew it!” merged in the chorus of exclamation from the group about the door. Will said nothing, fixing his sister-in-law with his kindly gaze, but Simon fell back muttering, and staring as if afraid. He wondered, looking at her unemotional face, whether the trouble about her eyes was beginning to touch her brain. She herself had said there was no knowing what blind weather might possibly do, no telling what a blind body’s brain might someday suddenly breed. …
He came back to the consciousness of Eliza’s voice as a man from the dead hears the roar of life as he returns.
“I wonder you’re not struck down where you stand, Sarah Thornthet! I wonder you’re not liggin’ dead on t’floor! But you’ll be punished for it, right enough; you’ll be paid for it, never fear! You’ll see, summat’ll happen to you afore so long—I shouldn’t wonder if it happened before morn! Like enough, the next news as we have o’ Geordie’ll be as he’s dead or drowned. … I’ll serve you a slap on t’lugs, Will, if you can’t shape to let me be!”
It was Sally who saved the situation for the second time that day.
“Fetch the trap, Uncle Simon, and look sharp about it!” she commanded smartly, “and you come and set down, Aunt Sarah, until it’s round. Let her be, can’t you!” she added roughly, flinging round on her mother. “She’s that tired and put out she don’t know what’s she’s at.”
She shook her fist at the window, and the faces disappeared like morning frost. Then she turned on the others and ordered them out, too.
“You’d best be getting about your business!” she commanded them, hand on hip. “You should be in t’dairy this minute, Mary Phyllis—you know that as well as me. I’d think shame o’ myself, Mr. and Mrs. Addison, to be helping other folks’ wi’ their weekly wash! Same to you, Elliman Wilkinson, and a bit over, come to that! You’re not one o’ the family yet by a long chalk, my lad; nay, nor like to be, neither, if you don’t see to mend your ways!”
Eliza still lingered, however, loth that anything should be left unsaid, but Sally ushered her resolutely to the door. She protested to the last inch, and the hand that had been denied judgment on Sarah flew up and slapped Sally’s face. The girl looked at her with scornful eyes.
“Ay, you can’t keep your hands off folk, can you?” she said bitterly. “You never could. I remember Jim saying he fair hated you for it when we were bairns. That was why he always liked Aunt Sarah a deal better than he liked you!”
“You’ll find other folk free wi’ their hands,” Eliza stormed, “if you’re that free wi’ your impident tongue! Yon fool of an Elliman’ll stand no nonsense, for all he looks so new-milk soft! Not that he wants any truck wi’ you at all, as far as I can see. It’s Mary Phyllis he can’t take his eyes off, and no wonder, neither. She was always a sight better-looking than you, and she’s younger, by a deal. You’re that old and teptious you fair turn the cream sour just by being along wi’t in t’house! Nay, I reckon you can put wedding and suchlike out o’ your head as soon as you like! You’ll never have a house of your own, or a man to put in it; and as for bairns o’ your own to slap, why, you’ll never have none o’ them … !”
She said the rest to the closed door, a stout, oaken door which even she was reluctant to attack. In the few pauses that she allowed herself she could hear nothing inside the room, and presently, tiring of the one-sided contest, she waddled heavily away along the passage. She was in the dairy a minute later, and saw through the window the brothers yoking the old horse. Through the window, too, she caught scraps of their talk, and strained her ears eagerly to catch its bent. As if by magic the anger left her face, and a little smile grew happily on her lips. She even hummed a little tune to herself, as she watched and listened, leaning against the frame. …
The silence persisted in the room that she had left, as if the air was so laden with words that it would hold no more. Sarah groped her way to the rocking-chair and sat down again to wait. Sally went to the window, and stared miserably into the yard. So they waited together until they heard the rattle of the wheels along the stones. …
VII
Even now, however, the Blindbeck comedy was not quite played out. Eliza had still to give it its finishing touch. The lately routed audience must have been conscious of this, for they assembled again in order to watch the Thornthwaites take their leave. As a rule, the Simons simply
