TEN days had passed since the sturdy widow led her guest across the threshold, and Catherine, with the remains of a badly twisted ankle, was still under her roof. She had been molested by nobody. One of her two lovers supposed her to be with the other; Mrs. Job did not know where she was; and Susannah, equally ignorant, was only interested in knowing where she was not.
The attraction of opposites had done its work between Mrs. Cockshow and her housemate, for the two women were excellent friends. The human-heartedness of the elder one, and her permanent fancy for other people’s business, made her deaf [Pg 152]when Catherine began to speak of leaving the place. She was still very lame and the toll-woman was right when she took Pharaoh to witness that to travel on foot would be insanity. Besides which, where was she going to? The question was unanswerable; and finally it was settled between them that the cleaning of the house, the cooking, and the minding of that mob of fowls which dwelt at the bottom of the garden should devolve upon Catherine, indefinitely, in return for her keep.
In this arrangement of Mrs. Cockshow’s, convenience and charity, like righteousness and peace, kissed each other. Her whole interest was found outside her own walls; the road was her passion, her world; and those who went up and down on it her pictures, her newspapers, and, very often, her victims. To bandy words with her was the act of a fool; and so well was this understood that the ridicule which her strange appearance evoked when she first [Pg 153]came into residence by the gate had died a natural but by no means lingering death, and gossip had taken its place. This was for the best, because the latter was satisfactory to all, while the former had only been satisfactory to Mrs. Cockshow.
The thing that suited Catherine’s patroness best in their arrangement was that the girl could be left in charge of the gate while she went to Llangarth market. She was a woman of some means, who did a small trade in eggs and poultry, and the difficulty of leaving her post on Thursdays had been a weekly annoyance; for a market day was a foretaste of Paradise to her. She owned a stout, aged pony of her late husband’s which she occasionally hired out to her neighbours for odd jobs, and she now looked forward to journeying in comfort to the very fountain-head of gossip. Besides this, it was delightful to her to have under her roof the heroine of an episode of which she had been almost the first to hear. She [Pg 154]had dragged Catherine’s secret from her in the early hours of their acquaintance, and thought a great deal more of her companion when she learnt that she had eluded two of the opposite sex.
Mrs. Cockshow did not believe in men. Her own husband had drunk heavily and persistently; and she had had time to visit his sins upon him before he escaped into the next world. She was well acquainted with Charles Saunders, and slightly so with Black Heber, for both had passed through her gate at various times.
“Take care ye don’t let the sun go over the ’ill, all the same,” she had said to Catherine; for though a despiser of men, she was an advocate of marriage. To her, matrimony, with the whip hand, was the ideal life.
So far, she had kept her tongue quiet on the subject of her guest. Perhaps it pleased her to hug to her heart the gratification of knowing more than any one else; to pet her [Pg 155]knowledge, so to speak, before using it as a boast. Catherine had been kept a prisoner indoors for several days by her ankle, and when she went outside the walls it was only to tend the poultry or to hang out the washing in the garden. Never had so much washing been seen on the toll-house hedges before, though Mrs. Cockshow, to whom soap was not important, eyed the display contemptuously. Her cleanings consisted generally of what the country-side called “a lick and a promise.” The toll-house hid Catherine from prying eyes on the road as she went about her business in the garden, and she began to feel secure in her very public retreat.
Between herself and Bungo, the white cur dog, no great friendship existed. The girl was fond of all animals; but her efforts to be on easy terms with this one had been useless, for he persisted in looking with imperishable distrust at her out of his blinking eyes and galloping away whenever [Pg 156]she spoke to him. He would follow her to the garden at a servile distance; but the first words she threw him would send him flying across the cabbage beds, from the safe side of which he would stun her ears with his insane barking. In Mrs. Cockshow, who had hurled enough stones at him to pave a yard, he had implicit trust; but he took each movement of Catherine’s hand for a menace.
She had just returned from her hens one morning, with Bungo sneaking in her wake, when she heard Mrs. Cockshow in loud altercation on the road. The shrill, high voice of an old man was contending with that of the widow, and Catherine ran to the window in the upper storey, attracted by the increasing noise. Judging by the part that the word “fourpence” played in the storm, the dispute was about money, and the girl knew the toll-woman well enough to be sure that there could be but one issue to the combat. She smiled, [Pg 157]hearing the baffled fury in the old man’s tone, as the gate swung open for the wheels that went grinding through it.
“A pint o’ fourpences would be no more account to me nor a pint o’ ditchwater!” he screamed. “I’ve thousands to leave behind me when I go, I have!”
“An’, by Pharaoh, I’ve got more than that!” cried Mrs. Cockshow at the pitch of her lungs. “I’ve the world to leave be’ind me when I go!”
Catherine, at her vantage point in the upper window, pulled the curtain aside as the gate closed, only to jump back as though she had been fired at; for Bungo, who had joined his owner and was at the farther side of the road, fell into a frenzy of barking as he heard her movement at the open casement and saw her figure. The eyes of all went upward. The old man in the gig below was Saunders’s uncle, and Catherine was looking straight into the upturned face of Charles.
[Pg 158]
When the gig had rolled on without any action on his part, she breathed again freely. Mrs. Cockshow standing in her favourite spot in the middle of the road, watched the vehicle out of sight, and when a bend hid it she came close under the toll-house walls.
“’E’s ’ad enough o’ you!” she called up, her broad face all one smile. “Did ye see the bald ’eaded old mawkin sittin’ up beside ’im? If the young feller’s no better nor ’im, ye did well to give ’im the slip. I’ve seen the old devil drivin’ ’is cattle along this road many a time. A proud look and a ’igh stomach ’e ’as, too; but that don’t keep ’im from bastin’ their ribs wi’ a common stick cut out o’ the ’edge—can’t spare so much as would buy a decent bit o’ ash plant. ’E don’t ’ave no cattle-man neither, an’ ’im screechin’ about ’is thousands! They do say ’e starved ’is wife too. I know them that’s seen ’er——”
At this point the widow discovered herself to be shouting up into an empty room; [Pg 159]for Catherine had come out and was standing behind her, with a scared face.
Mrs. Cockshow turned on her.
“Silly wench that ye be!” she exclaimed. “It’s better to be sure than sorry. I tell ye ’e ’ates the very sight of ye now, an’ no wonder too. Go an’ get the dinner. It’s nigh upon twelve, and Bungo ’asn’t ’ad a bite to-day. Come in, ye whelp!”
The last sentence was addressed, in a murderous tone, to the white dog, who wagged his tail. He took it for a caress.
Mrs. Cockshow arose next morning in her most jovial humour. It was Thursday; and now, for the first time for months, she was dispensing with the services of that neighbour who called to take her eggs to market and was looking forward to carrying them there herself. Catherine also was happy; for the two Saunderses had driven by last evening on their return journey, without so much as a look at the toll-house windows, and she was sure the widow was [Pg 160]right in saying that Charles now hated the sight of her.
She was not afraid that Heber would pass, though she knew that he went on Thursdays to Llangarth; for his way thither from the hill farm joined the highroad some way east of the toll. She sighed. Could she see him, while remaining invisible herself, she knew that she would secretly be glad. But, admitting that, she put him from her thoughts with a heightened colour. Since Susannah’s plain speaking, she had never let her mind dwell on the shepherd; yet she had learned of late that if her pride had been cruelly handled, her heart had fared little better. She could not think, looking back, how she had ever liked or tolerated Saunders. She was bitter against Black Heber, as well she might be; but she hated him and loved him at the same moment. For the first time, the simple girl was in a terribly complicated state of mind.
[Pg 161]
Mrs. Cockshow had tied on her late husband’s hat with a new piece of twine and loaded her person yet more completely with clothes. Before she climbed into the antiquated side-saddle on her pony’s back, she went to the roadside and began to fill the most accessible of her pockets with stones. While so engaged, she directed Catherine, who looked on with astonishment, to shut the gate and tie the animal to it. The girl obeyed, and when the widow approached, bulging more strangely than usual, she helped her to mount. Mrs. Cockshow used the toll bars as a horse-block. Then the egg basket was handed up to her, a switch cut from the hedge, and Catherine was bidden to attend to the needs of passers and to suffer no one to shirk payment. Before the rider was out of sight, Bungo burst with a yell from the toll-house and began to follow, raising a trail of dust as he went.
In one moment Mrs. Cockshow had [Pg 162]turned and the air was one hail of flying stones, while, through the cloud sent up by the sudden facing about of the pony, her arm could be seen whirling above her head like the arm of a mounted drummer through the smoke of battle; and as, in the blinding hurricane of hard metal and abuse, Bungo flew homewards like the greyhound which had evidently been too intimate with his grandmother, Catherine realised as she had never realised before, the infinite forethought of her protectress. She shut the dog into the house and sat down to await her first summons from the public.
Mrs. Cockshow gained Llangarth without further inconvenience. Many looks followed her as she rode up the street; but though there was a smile on most faces, no one addressed her with levity. Having disposed of the pony, she disappeared with her basket into the market-place.
The market had drawn more than one of the actors in our story to Llangarth; [Pg 163]for Charles and his uncle were among those inspecting cattle in the street, and Heber, who had come on hor............