XXIX
Mrs. Todd drew her pie from the oven and sniffed it appreciatively. Its billowing crust was slowly ripening to the rich gold of maturity. Its savoury smell satisfied her. She replaced it, shut the oven door with meticulous care and rose stiffly to her feet, her corsets creaking as she moved. She began to grumble aloud cheerfully:
"All I can say is—if Miss Muriel can't eat a bit of good pie like that, she can go without. Good meat houses there is, and bad 'uns there is, and no one can say that Meggie Todd's near wi' her lads, nor lasses neither, though I'm fair sick o' these Hammonds. What wi' Mr. Hammond trampin' round like a mad elephant an' Mrs. H. mewing round like a sick cat, you might ha' thought Ben had murdered their lass instead o' marrying her."
She clapped a dish of bacon on to the long table and whisked her oven cloth on to a nail beside the stove, for she did nothing without enormous vigour.
"A fat lot o' use it is, me havin' Connie front ways if she's not going to give a hand wi' t'work, but s'always gadding round after her fine relations. Ah suppose William 'ud tell me that the wife's kin are a scourge sent from God for t'original sin o' t'husband," and she tossed the head that had once been the pertest in Follerwick. But she was not William, nor did she really dislike Connie as much as her words implied; but she found in these monologues of indictment an outlet for the accumulated irritation of reproaches born without resentment. She contemplated the clean white cloth on the table, straightened a couple of dishes on the dresser, then flew towards the yard door and the coal-house, murmuring as a parting message to the kitchen, "I'm sure the Lord made relations-in-law to square up for them as can't get married."
She had, indeed, good reason to see in relations-in-law a doubtful blessing. As Meggie Megson, the bright-eyed daughter of a Follerwick publican, she had been wooed with greater enthusiasm than discretion by William Todd of Thraile. A hasty marriage ensured the legitimate birth of her eldest son, Matthew, but did not quiet the uneasy conscience of her lover. For a year of bitter recrimination alternating with reckless passion, he had lived with her as her husband, but before her second son, Benjamin was born, the Lord took vengeance upon the wickedness of William. A false step while manœuvring the thrashing-machine robbed the wild young Todd of his left leg, and so much injured his spine that he lay now always on a couch in the front parlour, contemplating the inexorable justice of God and the unending pageant of the sky from the west window. William Todd did not so much find religion as religion found him, the sunless, menacing religion of a tramping preacher, part Calvinist, part Wesleyan; a religion wherein strange anomalies of predestination strove with a Pauline emphasis upon justification by faith, without which, in spite of the admonition of St. James, works were dead. Meggie accepted her husband's religion as she had accepted his love. Finding herself regarded as an enticement sent from the devil, she listened with patience to the outpourings of St. James, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God . . . but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the Lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin, and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death." But she endured with less tranquility the continual assurance that from her sons, Matthew and Benjamin, such sin and death should come. Since, however, things were as they were, she proceeded to her cooking, scrubbing, baking and nursing with undiminished vigour, comforted, perhaps, by the thought that if her husband despised her only less than he despised his children at least he could not do without her.
William's mother unfortunately also tended to regard her son's accident as something in the nature of divine retribution, not for compromising a publican's daughter, but for marrying her; and when it became known that Ben, the weakling, the awkward boy whom every one conspired to brand as "wanting," had got Connie, the land-girl, into trouble, then the fierce scene of personal remorse, impotent bitterness and denunciation had been visited, not so much upon Connie, as upon Mrs. Meggie, since she was clearly the root of all evil at the High Farm. Yet, after Connie had returned to the High Farm as Ben's wife, it was Mrs. Meggie who continued to make her new life bearable. To tell the truth, Mrs. Meggie was secretly glad that Ben had married under any circumstances. Between the grim couple of invalids in the front parlour and the boisterous conviviality of farm workers in the kitchen, she had been unconsciously numbed with loneliness, and the prospect of a daughter-in-law pleased her gregarious temperament. Then too, she was glad that Ben, whom his father and brother despised for lack of virility, should have been the first to marry after all.
As she bustled from the stone-paved yard this evening, and called up the long passage, her heart, though she hardly knew it, was softened to the thought of her Ben's little child.
"Polly, Alice, Gert, come on some of you. Give me a hand wi' t'table, now."
From the draughty darkness came a gust of song and laughter.
"Who, who, who, who, who were you with last night?
'Twasn't your sister, 'twasn't your ma!
Ah, ah, ah, ah, a—ah, ah! ah!"
The voices rose to a shrill crescendo, accompanied by the screeching gasps of Bob Wither's concertina, and the tramp of nailed boots on the floor.
Mrs. Todd opened the door of the back room, releasing a flood of lamplight and tumultuous clamour.
"Come on, you lazy good-for-nowts. Put down yon thing, for goodness' sake, Bob. Alice, where's Gert? Feeding pigs this time o' day? What, how often did I tell you that ye'll never make a farmer by gettin' up to feed stock ower' nights? Be off now, some on ye, to see if light cart's come yet. Hurry and get gone, then you'll get back."
They scattered under her genial despotism.
"I'll help, Ma. Where's forks?"
The kitchen rang to the clatter of pots, of tongues and the shouted refrain of their song, "Who were you with last night?"
Thus Muriel, who had clambered down stiffly from the dog-cart, and dragged her suit-case along the unlighted corridor, came suddenly upon a scene of firelit tumult and huge gaiety. Connie pushed open the kitchen door and marched in. The noise stopped. Every one looked at the new-comers.
"Well I never! If you're not here already and no one ever heard you! Connie, did Sam go to loose out for you? So this is Muriel? My, aren't you wet! You're not as big as your sister, are you? Take after your mother likely. Here, Mat, where are your manners? Dolly, Alice!"
"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly pertly.
Alice set a saucer cheese-cake on the table, nodded at Muriel, and took from her pocket a bundle of crochet that never left her. Some women take to crochet as others do to cigarettes. Alice, flicking at hers with unsteady fingers, was hiding herself from any possible embarrassment. Her thin face bent above her work.
"Where's Ben?" asked Connie abruptly.
"Didn't he come to help you down? There now! Well, he must be up in fold yard. You'd better go and get your wet things off. Go on. Take her up, Connie. Polly go and help carry Muriel's bag. Connie, get a dry pair o' stockings on for Heaven's sake. We can't have you catching cold, at all events." This with an uncontrollable wink at Muriel.
"When did Ben go out?" asked Connie stubbornly, ignoring her mother-in-law's injunctions.
"I don't know. When did he go, Mat?"
"Half an hour. He went to help Sam." Alice the land girl raised her face for a minute from her crochet to give her information, then thrust it down again. It was a thin, freckled face, with long fair lashes and a sharp up-tilted chin. Muriel found herself standing and facing Alice, while the rain dripped from her coat on to the white scoured floor.
"Go along with you now, messing up my floor!" cried Mrs. Todd, and shooed them vigorously from the kitchen.
"Well," remarked Connie, as they stood together at last in the large square room to which she had brought Muriel. "And what do you think of it all?"
Muriel looked round the bare walls, papered with a grotesquely botanical pattern and texts on strips of cardboard. The wind blew the texts backwards and forwards against the wall. It drove the lace window-curtains out into the room, and sent the carpet rippling in long waves across the floor. Through the window she could see nothing but a veil of twilight rain.
"How can I say what I think of it till I've seen some more?" she temporized, pulling off her wet coat and pushing the hair out of her eyes. "It's all frightfully different from what I expected. The front of the house is so grim, and yet, when you come to the back and see all those jolly people—— They seem to enjoy life, Connie. And then Mrs. Todd. She may be a bit of a Tartar, but I like her eyes. And then, there's Ben's father, and old Mrs. Todd, aren't there?"
Connie laughed bitterly, "Oh yes. There's my respected father-in-law and old Mrs. Todd. I wonder if you'll like her eyes?"
"Why not? Oh, Connie, you ought to take your wet things off. Now, at once."
"I'm all right." Connie pulled off her oilskin and felt the sleeve of her woollen coat below. "I'm quite dry." But she sat down on the bed and began to unlace her boots.
"Why shouldn't I like old Mrs. Todd's eyes?" persisted Muriel.
"Oh, she gets on my nerves. She sits in her chair in that awful little room and looks and looks and looks. She looks right through you, Muriel. She sees just everything. All the things you ever thought or did or—anything.
"They say she's got the 'sight'—you know, second sight. I think she's just uncanny. And she's so frightfully old, you know. Not like a person at all—like a tree, all twisted. And then she's always nibbling things, little bits of biscuit and soft sweets and things. Like a mouse. And then her bright eyes. Ugh!"
"But then, do you see her much?"
"No, thanks! I keep out of her way. But she sees me. She never misses anything. Oh, dear me, no! and she knows all about—all about Ben and me. It's awful, Mu. Sometimes I think I'll have to kill her or run away or something."
"How do you mean? She knows all about Ben and you? Every one here does, don't they?" said Muriel slowly. She had understood from Mr. and Mrs. Hammond that the Todds had accepted Connie's position as regrettable but without alternative.
"Oh, yes, in a way they know. The girls don't exactly, but they suspect. Mu, it's awful. We used to have such jolly times, singing in the back room and going off to concerts at Follerwick camp, and all that. Now it's awful. I'm out of it all. They hardly talk to me, and we all used to laugh at Ben, and they don't know what to make of it. And old Mrs. Todd hates me, and the old man's mad. He's got religious mania or something and he's quite potty. Mrs. Meggie's all right, but nobody cares much what she says except Ben, and he's still more scared of his father." Connie's bootlaces dropped from her hands and she sat forward, huddled on the edge of the bed, staring at her sister.
"I don't see that they have any right to hate you," cried Muriel hotly. "After all—it was their precious son—who——"
Connie's blue, miserable eyes darted a quick glance at her sister's face, then dropped again to her boots.
"Oh, yes, I know, but you could hardly expect them to remember that."
She kicked off her boots and sat with her feet in their black woollen stockings swinging from the bed.
"Every one hates me," she said miserably. "Mr. Todd thinks I'm a judgment from hell fire or something, because he was a bit wild when he was young. And Alice—well, to tell the truth, I think that Alice was in love with Ben and she'll get her knife into me whenever she can. She's as jealous as anything. And Mrs. Todd's a bit queer because she's so fond of Ben and is afraid I shan't make him happy. She knows I'm going to get him away from this place too as soon as the war's over and we can get a farm. Oh, it's no picnic I can tell you."
Muriel was apparently engaged upon fastening the front of her velveteen dress. Really she was thinking about Connie. "I mustn't be sentimental. Connie evidently pities herself quite enough. She's not really displeased because Alice is jealous. And Mrs. Todd is kind, I'm sure. Mother said I hadn't to let her harrow my feelings. Connie always did make the most of her own sufferings." She fastened a press hook below the brown fur edging of her dress and asked quite casually:
"But Ben, of course he stands up for you?"
"Oh, Ben would be all right. But he's frightened of his father, and Alice worries him, and it's rotten living on here in this house. You never get away from them all for a minute, and tea's the worst. They all sit there round that big table and they eat and eat. And I've got to sit there and feel that they're looking at me and thinking things, an' nudging each other if I've got a headache. And then they all go giggling and carrying on in the back room and I've got to sit about with Mrs. Meggie. And I can't go into the farm because it's such hard work, and it's such beastly weather. And you never see anyone. Oh, I'm so bored and bored and bored!"
"It'll be better when the baby's come. You'll have lots to do then."
"I don't know. Sometimes I just get scared. I wish I was going home to have it. It's awful here. Ben gets fed up with me because I'm not so jolly as I used to be. He doesn't say anything, but I know. Why didn't he come and meet us to-night, I'd like to know? Oh, they just treat me here as if I was dirt. They think it's an honour for me to have married into their beastly family. The Todds! who live in the kitchen, and Mrs. Meggie was a barmaid, and—well, look at this room! You see what they're like."
"I don't. I haven't seen them all yet. I haven't even seen Mr. Todd."
"Oh, he's mad. He's gone quite potty. He reads the Bible all day and talks like a lunatic. Ben says he's not so frightfully poor really. They've done badly since his accident and all that, but he's got a lot of land. There's a little farm over at Fallowdale that's let out to tenants. If he'd let Ben and me go there——"
She leant forward, biting her nails, a singularly unattractive figure in her sagging skirt and the old crimson jersey that she had worn at Marshington. Muriel deliberately went to her case and drew out a clean handkerchief from her lavender-scented satchel. Part of her mind was conscious of a satisfactory contrast between her own trim orderliness and Connie's abandoned self-commiseration. Part of her thoughts were dazed with a sad wonder. Was this the ennobling power of suffering and tragedy, this nauseating muddle of petty resentment and self-pity? Wasn't it really rather a waste of time and energy to try to help people as impossible as Connie?
She stood with her face towards the window, a pucker of thought between her brows.
Suddenly from the bed came a little cry. "Oh, Mu, Mu! I am so awfully glad you've come. I know you'll help me. You will help me, won't you? I've been so beastly miserable!"
Muriel capitulated.
Her position in this household might be most unpleasant, and Connie might not be an easy person, but at least she had appealed to Muriel. Somebody wanted her. Somebody needed her.
She returned to the bed and opened her arms wide. Tear-stained but comforted, Connie tumbled in. They sat there until Mrs. Todd called up the stairs:
"Come along, girls. Tea's ready."
"Oh, Connie," cried Muriel, "and I've never let you tidy!"
"Oh, Lord, and there's such a song and dance if we're late. For goodness' sake go down and say I'm coming."
Go down? All alone! into that formidable crowd of quite strange people? Muriel hesitated. Then the courage of her new resolve returned to her.
"Oh, well, I suppose I shall have to do harder things than this if I'm really going to help Connie," she reflected.
With her head high and her eyes shining she felt her way down the uneven stairs.
The battle of Thraile had begun.