Mrs. Tarns was a woman of nearly sixty, stout5 and—in appearance—untidy and dirty. The wet wind played with grey wisps of her hair, and with her coarse brown apron6, beneath which her skirt was pinned up. Human eye so seldom saw her without a coarse brown apron that, apronless, she would have almost seemed (like Eve) to be unattired. It and a pail were the insignia of her vocation7.
She was accomplished8 and conscientious9; she could be trusted; despite appearances, her habits were cleanly. She was also a woman of immense experience. In addition to being one of the finest exponents10 of the art of step-stoning and general housework that the Five Towns could show, she had numerous other talents. She was thoroughly11 accustomed to the supreme12 spectacles of birth and death, and could assist thereat with dignity and skill. She could turn away the wrath13 of rent-collectors, rate-collectors, school-inspectors, and magistrates14. She was an adept15 in enticing16 an inebriated17 husband to leave a public-house. She could feed four children for a day on sevenpence, and rise calmly to her feet after having been knocked down by one stroke of a fist. She could go without food, sleep, and love, and yet thrive. She could give when she had nothing, and keep her heart sweet amid every contagion18. Lastly, she could coax19 extra sixpences out of a pawnbroker20. She had never had a holiday, and almost never failed in her duty. Her one social fault was a tendency to talk at great length about babies, corpses21, and the qualities of rival soaps. All her children were married. Her husband had gone in a box to a justice whose anger Mrs. Tam's simple tongue might not soothe22. She lived alone. Six half-days a week she worked about the house of Mrs. Maldon from eight to one o'clock, for a shilling per half-day and her breakfast. But if she chose to stay for it she could have dinner—and a good one—on condition that she washed up afterwards. She often stayed. After over forty years of incessant23 and manifold expert labour she was happy and content in this rich reward.
A long automobile24 came slipping with noiseless stealth down the hill, and halted opposite the gate, in silence, for the engine had been stopped higher up. Mrs. Tams, intimidated25 by the august phenomenon, ceased to rub, and in alarm watched the great Thomas Batchgrew struggle unsuccessfully with the handle of the door that imprisoned26 him. Mrs. Tams was a born serf, and her nature was such that she wanted to apologize to Thomas Batchgrew for the naughtiness of the door. For her there was something monstrous27 in a personage like Thomas Batchgrew being balked28 in a desire, even for a moment, by a perverse29 door-catch. Not that she really respected Thomas Batchgrew! She did not, but he was a member of the sacred governing class. The chauffeur30—not John's Ernest, but a professional—flashed round the front of the car and opened the door with obsequious31 haste. For Thomas Batchgrew had to be appeased32. Already a delay of twenty minutes—due to a defective34 tire and to the inexcusable absence of the spanner with which the spare wheel was manipulated—had aroused his just anger.
Mrs. Tarns pulled the gate towards herself and, crushed behind it, curtsied to Thomas Batchgrew. This curtsy, the most servile of all Western salutations, and now nearly unknown in Five Towns, consisted in a momentary35 shortening of the stature36 by six inches, and in nothing else. Mrs. Tams had acquired it in her native village of Sneyd, where an earl held fast to that which was good, and she had never been able to quite lose it. It did far more than the celerity of the chauffeur to appease33 Thomas Batchgrew.
Snorting and self-conscious, and with his white whiskers flying behind him, he stepped in his two overcoats across the narrow, muddy pavement and on to Mrs. Tarn's virgin37 stonework, and with two haughty38 black footmarks he instantly ruined it. The tragedy produced no effect on Mrs. Tams. And indeed nobody in the Five Towns would have been moved by it. For the social convention as to porticoes40 enjoined41, not that they should remain clean, but simply that they should show evidence of having been clean at some moment early in each day. It mattered not how dirty they were in general, provided that the religious and futile42 rite43 of stoning had been demonstrably performed during the morning.
Mrs. Tams adroitly44 moved her bucket, aside, though there was plenty of room for feet even larger than those of Thomas Batchgrew, and then waited to be spoken to. She was not spoken to. Mr. Batchgrew, after hesitating and clearing his throat, proceeded up the steps, defiling46 them. As he did so Mrs. Tams screwed together all her features and clenched47 her hands as if in agony, and stared horribly at the open front door, which was blowing to. It seemed that she was trying to arrest the front door by sheer force of muscular contraction48. She did not succeed. Gently the door closed, with a firm click of its latch49, in face of Mr. Batchgrew.
"Nay50, nay!" muttered Mrs. Tarns, desolated51.
And Mr. Batchgrew, once more justly angered, raised his hand to the heavy knocker.
"Dunna' knock, mester! Dunna' knock!" Mrs. Tarns implored53 in a whisper. "Missis is asleep. Miss Rachel's been up aw night wi' her, seemingly, and now her's gone off in a doze54 like, and Miss Rachel's resting, too, on th' squab i' th' parlor55. Doctor was fetched."
Apparently56 charging Mrs. Tarns with responsibility for the illness, Mr. Batchgrew demanded severely—
"What was it?"
"One o' them attacks as her has," said Mrs. Tarns with a meekness57 that admitted she could offer no defence, "only wuss!"
"Hurry round to th' back door and let me in."
"I doubt back door's bolted on th' inside," said Mrs. Tarns with deep humility58.
"This is ridiculous," said Mr. Batchgrew, truly. "Am I to stand here all day?" And raised his hand to the knocker.
Mrs. Tarns with swiftness darted59 up the steps and inserted a large, fat, wet hand between the raised knocker and its bed. It was the sublime60 gesture of a martyr61, and her large brown eyes gazed submissively, yet firmly, at Mr. Batchgrew with the look of a martyr. She had nothing to gain by the defiance62 of a great man, but she could not permit her honoured employer to be wakened. She was accustomed to emergencies, and to desperate deeds therein, and she did not fail now in promptly63 taking the right course, regardless of consequences. Somewhat younger than Mr. Batchgrew in years, she was older in experience and in wisdom. She could do a thousand things well; Mr. Batchgrew could do nothing well. At that very moment she conquered, and he was beaten. Yet her brown eyes and even the sturdy uplifted arm cringed to him, and asked in abasement64 to be forgiven for the impiety65 committed. From her other hand a cloth dripped foul66 water on to the topmost step.
And then the door yielded. Thomas Batchgrew and Mrs. Tarns both abandoned the knocker. Rachel, pale as a lily, stern, with dilated67 eyes, stood before them. And Mr. Batchgrew realized, as he looked at her against the dark, hushed background of the stairs, that Mrs. Maldon was indeed ill. Mrs. Tams respectfully retired68 down the steps. A mightier69 than she, the young, naïve, ignorant girl, to whom she could have taught everything save possibly the art of washing cutlery, had relieved her of responsibility.
"You can't see her," said Rachel in a low tone, trembling.
"But—but—" Thomas Batchgrew spluttered, ineffectively. "D'you know I'm her trustee, miss? Let me come in."
Rachel would not take her hand off the inner knob.
There was the thin, far-off sound of an electric bell, breaking the silence of the house. It was the bell in Rachel's bedroom, rung from Mrs. Maldon's bedroom. And at this mysterious signal from the invalid70, this faint proof that the hidden sufferer had consciousness and volition71, Rachel started and Thomas Batchgrew started.
"Her bell!" Rachel exclaimed, and fled upstairs.
In the large bedroom Mrs. Maldon lay apparently at ease.
"Did they waken you?" cried Rachel, distressed72.
"Who is there, dear?" Mrs. Maldon asked, in a voice that had almost recovered from the weakness of the night, Rachel was astounded73.
"Mr. Batchgrew."
"I must see him," said the old lady.
"But—"
"I must see him at once," Mrs. Maldon repeated. "At once. Kindly74 bring him up." And she added, in a curiously75 even and resigned tone, "I've lost all that money!"
II
"Nay," said Mrs. Maldon to Thomas Batchgrew, "I'm not going to die just yet."
Her voice was cheerful, even a little brisk, and she spoke45 with a benign76 smile in the tranquil77 accents of absolute conviction. But she did not move her head; she waited to look at Thomas Batchgrew until he came within her field of vision at the foot of the bed. This quiescence78 had a disconcerting effect, contradicting her voice.
She was lying on her back, in the posture79 customary to her, the arms being stretched down by the sides under the bed-quilt. Her features were drawn80 slightly askew81; the skin was shiny; the eyes stared as though Mrs. Maldon had been a hysterical82 subject. It was evident that she had passed through a tremendous physical crisis. Nevertheless, Rachel was still astounded at the change for the better in her, wrought83 by sleep and the force of her obstinate84 vitality85.
The contrast between the scene which Thomas Batchgrew now saw and the scene which had met Rachel in the night was so violent as to seem nearly incredible. Not a sign of the catastrophe86 remained, except in Mrs. Maldon's face, and in some invalid gear on the dressing-table, for Rachel had gradually got the room into order. She had even closed and locked the wardrobe.
On answering Mrs. Maldon's summons in the night, Rachel had found the central door of the wardrobe swinging and the sacred big drawer at the bottom of that division only half shut, and Mrs. Maldon in a peignoir lying near it on the floor, making queer inhuman87 noises, not moans, but a kind of anxious, inarticulate entreaty88, and shaking her head constantly to the left—never to the right. Mrs. Maldon had recognized Rachel, and had seemed to implore52 with agonized89 intensity90 her powerful assistance in some nameless and hopeless tragic91 dilemma92. The sight—especially of the destruction of the old woman's dignity—was dreadful to such an extent that Rachel did not realize its effect on herself until several hours afterwards. At the moment she called on the immense reserves of her self-confidence to meet the situation—and she met it, assisting her pride with the curious pretence93, characteristic of the Five Towns race, that the emergency was insufficient94 to alarm in the slightest degree a person of sagacity and sang-froid.
She had restored Mrs. Maldon to her bed and to some of her dignity. But the
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