All around Cairns farm a coating of snow lay over the fields, whitening hedges and outhouse roofs, and making tree-trunks look darker by contrast. The snow was not deep, but it was accompanied by a hard frost and an icy wind. Robins hovered tamely about the back door, on the lookout for crumbs; and human beings kept as much as possible under shelter.
Close to the great kitchen fire, well muffled-up in wraps, sat Jervis, coughing and half breathless with one of his asthmatic attacks. He was entirely a prisoner in such weather as this. Hannah stood beside the table, peeling potatoes with quick and capable hands. Her movements were always capable, however ungraceful. The deeply lined, austere face did not wear a pleasant expression; but that was by no means an uncommon event. Hannah scarcely knew how to smile.
“Well, I call it unnatural,” she was saying in a harsh voice. “After more than twenty years away—why, it was nearer twenty-five—to come home, and then, after just an hour’s talk, to leave her own flesh and blood, and go and take up with strangers. I call it unnatural. Never been near us again, from that day to this. Can’t be spared? Oh, I know better! I know what it is to be in a house full of servants, all of them with pretty near nothing to do. Polly don’t want to be spared. She likes everything that makes her important—always did. Spending her time and strength for them that have got no sort of claim on her, as if we were never in want of a helping hand here? I’m sure I don’t know which way to turn sometimes, among you all. I call it a shame. But Polly never had any heart to spare for her own folks.”
“Polly’s not wanting in heart, only she’s too easily led,” protested Jervis, coughing as he spoke. “There’s warmth of heart enough. She never can forget Mr. Rutherford’s kindness to William.”
“It’s a pity she forgets so soon any sort of kindness from them that belong to her,” sourly observed Hannah. “But that’s the way of the world. If a stranger says a soft word, everybody’s dying with gratitude; while a woman that slaves night and day for her own people don’t get so much as a civil ‘thank you’ for it all.”
“I suppose the one comes naturally as a right, and the other doesn’t,” said Jervis. “But perhaps if there were more soft words spoken in our homes there’d be more ‘thank you’s’ too.”
The remark struck home with greater keenness than he had intended. Hannah tossed her head, and went on peeling with disdainful vigor.
Then the kitchen-door, standing ajar, was pushed quietly open; and Marian herself; in bonnet and shawl, stood before them.
She looked cold and wan and sorrowful; and the light of peace seemed to have died out of her gray eyes, which were full only of a nameless pain. Hannah said—“Well, here you are at last!” and Jervis gazed anxiously at the haggard face. Marian uttered not a word. She came forward slowly, took a seat on the other side of the fireplace, and sighed.
“Why, Polly my dear,” Jervis said, with a kind of protest—“Polly!”