7
It seems that Mrs Isaacson had formed the habit of staying up in the evening. She pleaded that she could not sleep during the early hours of the night, which was not surprising in view of the fact that she slept much during the day; and as she was diligent in picking up or begging sufficient wood to maintain the fire, there was no reason why Blanche and Millie should offer any objection. Thrale had rigged up a dynamo at the mill now to provide artificial light, and the girls’ hours of work were so prolonged that they were glad to get to bed at half-past seven. By eight o’clock Mrs Isaacson evidently counted herself safe from all interruption.
She might have continued her enjoyment of luxury undiscovered throughout the winter if Blanche had not suffered from toothache.
She had been in bed and asleep nearly two hours when her dreams of discomfort merged into a consciousness of actual pain. She sighed and pressed her cheek into the pillows, made agonizing exploration with her tongue, and tried to go to sleep again. Possibly she might have succeeded had not that unaccountable smell of whisky obtruded itself upon her senses.
At first she thought the house was on fire. That had always been her one fear in leaving Mrs Isaacson alone; and she sat up in bed and sniffed vigorously. “Funny,” she murmured; “it smells like—like plum pudding.” The analogy was probably suggested to her by the odour of burning brandy.
She got up and opened the door of the bedroom.
Mrs Isaacson slept on a sort of glorified landing, and when Blanche stepped outside her own door she could see at once by the light of a watery full moon that her lodger had not yet come to bed.
The smell of the spirit was stronger on the landing, and Blanche, forgetting her toothache in the excitement of the moment, stole quietly down the short flight of crooked stairs. The door giving on to the living-room was latched, but there were two convenient knot-holes, and through one of them she saw Mrs Isaacson seated by the fire drinking hot tea. On the table stood an open whisky bottle and two lighted wax candles.
Blanche was thunderstruck. Tea, whisky and candles were inexplicable things. The thought of witchcraft obtruded itself, and so fascinated her that she stood on the stairs gazing through the knothole until a sudden rigour reminded her that she was deadly cold.
She did not interrupt the orgy. She crept back to bed, and after much difficulty awakened Millie.
The sound of their voices must have alarmed Mrs Isaacson, for the girls presently heard her stumbling upstairs. They stopped their discussion then, and Blanche’s toothache being mysteriously cured by her excitement, they were soon asleep again.
Neither of the girls spoke of their discovery to anyone the next day, but Blanche returned to the cottage at half-past four, when Mrs Isaacson was at a meeting over the way, and explored her bedroom. She found a small store of tea, sugar and candles under the mattress—the whisky bottle had disappeared—and so came to an understanding of Mrs Isaacson’s self-sacrificing insistence that she should perform all work connected with her own sleeping-place—it could hardly be called a room.
After consultation with Millie, Blanche decided that she must inform Jasper Thrale of the contraband.
“She’s been stealing, of course,” he said. “I suppose we shall have to bring it home to her.” But he laughed at Blanche’s indignation.
“She’s stealing from us!” said Blanche, who had developed a fine sense of her duty towards and interest in the community.
“Oh, yes! you’re quite right,” said Thrale. “I’ll inform the committee—at least, the non-Jenkynites.”
The five non-Jenkynites were furious.
“We must make an example,” Elsie Durham said. “It isn’t that we shall miss what the Isaacson woman has taken—or will take. It’s the question of precedent. This is where we are facing the beginning of law—isn’t it? Somebody has to protect the members of the community against themselves. If one steals and goes unpunished, another will steal. We shall have the women divided into stealers and workers.”
“What are you going to do with her?” asked Thrale.
“Turn her out,” replied Elsie Durham.
“The Jenkynites won’t let her go,” said Thrale raising the larger question.
“We shall see,” said Elsie Durham, “But that reminds me that we must catch the woman flagrante delicto; we must have no quibbles about the facts.”
Thrale agreed with the wisdom of this policy, but refused to take any part in either the detection or the prosecution of Mrs Isaacson. “They’ll say its a put-up job if I have anything to do with it,” he argued.