Spring had come. The flight and finding of Myra had long since ceased to be a nine days' wonder, and she and Clem and Tom Trevarthen—received back into favour, and in some danger of being petted by Mrs. Purchase, who had never been known to pet a seaman—were shipmates now on board the Virtuous Lady, and had passed for many weeks now beyond ken of the little port. A new schoolmistress reigned in Hester's stead, since Hester, with the New Year, had taken over the care of the Widows' Houses. In his counting-house at Hall Samuel Rosewarne sat day after day transacting his business without a clerk, speaking seldom, shunned by all—even by his own son; a man afraid of himself. Susannah declared that the house was like a tomb, and vowed regularly on Monday mornings to give 'warning' at the next week-end. The villagers, accustomed to the Rosewarne tyranny for generations, had found it hard to believe in their release. Lady Killiow was little more than a name to them, Rosewarne a very present steward and master of their lives; and at first, when Peter Benny engaged workmen to pull down Nicky Vro's cottage and erect a modest office on its site, they admired his temerity, but awoke each morning to fresh wonder that no thunderbolt from Hall had descended during the night and razed his work to the ground. The new ferryman had vanished too, paid off and discharged for flagrant drunkenness, and his place was taken by old Billy Daddo the Methodist—a change so comfortable and (when you come to think of it) a choice so happy, that the villagers, after the shock of surprise, could hardly believe they had not suggested it. If they did not quite forget Nicky and his sorrows—if in place of Nicky's pagan chatter they listened to Billy's earnest, gentle discourse, and might hardly cross to meal or market without being reminded of God—why, after all, the word of God was good hearing, and everyone ought to take an interest in it. Stop your ears for a moment, and you could almost believe 'twas Nicky come back to life again. Nobody could deny the man was cheerful and civil. He rowed a stroke, too, amazingly like Nicky's.
As for Rosewarne, in the revulsion of their fears they began to despise him. They Had done better to pity him.
Across the water, in her lodging in the Widows' Houses, Hester found work to be done which, to her surprise, kept her busier than she had ever been in her life before—so busy that the quiet quadrangle seemed to hold no room for news of the world without. She found that, if she were to satisfy her conscience in the service of these old women, she could seldom save more than an hour's leisure from the short spring days; and in that hour maybe Sir George would call with his plans, or she would put on her bonnet and walk down the hill for a call on the Bennys and a chat with Nuncey. But oftener it was Nuncey who came for a gossip; Nuncey having sold her cart and retired from business.
Spring had come. Within the almshouse quadrangle, around the leaden pump, the daffodils were in flower and the tulip buds swelling. A blast from the first of those golden trumpets could hardly have startled her more than did her first sight of it flaunting in the sun. It had stolen upon her like a thief.
"A letter for you, Mrs. Trevarthen!"
The postman, as he crossed the quadrangle to the Matron's door, glanced up and spied Mrs. Trevarthen bending over a wash-tub in the widows' gallery. He pulled a letter from his pocket and held it aloft gaily.
"I'll run up the steps with it if you can't reach."
"No need to trouble you, my dear, if you'll wait a moment."
Mrs. Trevarthen dried her hands in her coarse apron, leaned over the balustrade, and just contrived to reach the letter with her finger-tips. They were bleached with soap and warm water, and they trembled a little.
"'Tis from your son Tom, I reckon," said the postman, while she examined the envelope. "Foreign paper and the Quebec postmark."