CHAPTER XI
Next day at daybreak the country was whitened by a light mist. The birds sang incessantly with long ecstatic calling from throats which had drunk the air of the dawn and retained something of its quality. Coolness refreshed the day and strengthened the eyes, and one's ears were opened to hear from every side the chorus which in a more varied landscape one took as a part of the glittering moving world outside the house.
Anne unbolted the house-door. The dog rose from the hearth and stretched itself slowly, yawning and shutting its mouth with a snap. Then it walked to the door, waiting until it was dragged open grating on the sand of the floor. The cool morning air came in like a visitor. The old dog pushed against Anne as she stepped outside, sneezed, yawned again, and lay down in the sunshine to finish his nap.
"Haven't you had enough sleep yet, Lion?" said Anne. "Look, what a beautiful day it is! Why, there's Mary on the road already," she added, looking over the low gate.
Mary was coming straight down the middle of the road, her black-and-white terrier sniffing on all sides and pulling the cord by which she held him. When he perceived the presence of the other dog he began to advance by leaps, uttering little yelps between each like a child's jumping toy. Lion, with the superiority of a larger dog, raised himself without hurry and advanced to meet the terrier, who excitedly whined and sniffed about him.
"Good morning," said Anne, "you're out early."
"Yes," replied Mary, standing quite still in the position in which she had halted. "I came over the fields. The grass is very wet though. There's a mist, surely."
"Yes, a thick one," said Anne, "but the sun's coming through. Listen to the birds. Did you ever hear anything like them?"
"I was out collecting the eggs at five o'clock this morning," returned Mary, "and I think I never heard them so busy. The earth was all a-hum with them. They seemed as though they must be listened to, whatever happened."
Both women stood listening.
"I came this way because I was going to leave my shilling for Lord
Axton's wedding present," said Mary, after a moment's silence.
"Did they come and ask you for one?" said Anne. "I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves."
"There's been some grumbling about it," said Mary. "I think myself the agent should have left it to those who wanted. I suppose we could have said No, but nobody likes to. It isn't as if people like them want any wedding presents we can give them, and a shilling means a lot to some people."
"It's the agent that wants to make a show," said Anne. "I think sometimes that if those rich people knew how their wedding presents were procured," she went on in the stilted manner habitual to her when wishing to express a formal thought, "they would find little pleasure in them."
"Mr Burton's given £10," said Mary. "They'll have a good sum." She paused, distrustful.
Mary, who was known to all the country side, and who could do nothing secretly, seldom spoke of the affairs of her neighbours. Whether she was by nature a little taciturn, or whether her blindness, before which so much passed unobserved, which cut her off from the possibility of forming a judgment, had increased her natural modesty and diffidence, she drew back into silence where others were discussed. But the actual difficulties of living, which she daily and silently surmounted, brought her so closely into touch with reality that she invariably saw, not the fault or its circumstances, but the practical difficulties issuing from it. But she had unthinkingly stumbled upon the scandal, and she went on, "I was sorry to hear of Jane Evans forgetting herself like she has."
"Poor girl," said Anne; "she seems so certain that it'll last. What was so sad to me, was that a girl brought up as she was by her grandmother should have so little sense of her position."
"She's happy, I suppose," said Mary, "and there's no need to look further. She'll find it hard to earn a living if he gets tired of her."
"He's not an ill-natured man," said Anne. "You feel as though if he'd been brought up to have a respect for good behaviour he wouldn't have got loose so easily. He thinks he's doing a generous thing, and giving Jane a good time, without thinking what the result must be to her good character. He doesn't like to see people unhappy, as he calls unhappiness. He hasn't learnt the results of sin in his own experience, and won't look at them in others. He kept on telling me she'd got a servant of her own, and needn't do anything but fancy-work. They'd neither of them hear anything I could say. I can't understand how they came to know one another at the beginning. It seems to have come about without anyone's knowing till it was too late."
"He seems a joking sort of man," said Mary. "Once he came up to buy a paper, and gave me half a sovereign instead of sixpence to change, and when I told him he'd made a mistake he laughed a lot, and said he wanted to know if I could tell the difference. He never sees me now without speaking of it and laughing."
"Yes," said Anne; "he's fond of rough jokes of his own making, and thinks that giving people material things makes them happy," she continued in her bookish manner. "I remember just such another man as him, a boisterous sort of man, whose old father was dying, who took the old man out to look at a new grand-stand they were making. Poor old man! It was pitiful to see him in the presence of eternity, looking at a new grand-stand."
"I suppose, being as I am," said Mary, "there's a lot of temptations been spared to me."
"I wish we were all as kind and charitable as you," said Anne. "I never heard you say a hard thing of anybody all the years I've known you."