"It's grand news, if it is! ... I'm right glad about it, I'm sure! I've always thought it hard lines, him going off like that. And you said he'd done well for himself, didn't you, Aunt Sarah? ... Eh, but I wish Elliman could make some brass an' all!"
"There's a deal o' power in brass." The words came as if of themselves from behind the mask-like face. "Folks say it don't mean happiness, but it means power. It's a stick to beat other folk wi', if it's nowt else."
"I don't want to beat anybody, I'm sure!" Sally laughed, though with tears in her voice. "I only want what's my own."
"Ay, we all on us want that," Sarah said, with a grim smile. "But it's only another fancy name for the whole world!"
————
She sat still for some time after the girl had gone out, as if she were afraid that she might betray herself before she was actually alone. Presently, however, she began to rock gently to and fro, still keeping her hands folded and her eyes closed. The good chair moved easily without creak or jar, and the good cushions adapted themselves to every demand of her weary bones. Geordie should buy her a chair like this, she told herself as she rocked, still maintaining the wonderful fiction even to herself. She would have cushions, too, of the very best, covered with silk and cool to a tired cheek. A footstool, also, ample and well stuffed, and exactly the right height for a pair of aching feet.
But though one half of her brain continued to dally with these pleasant fancies, the other was standing amazed before her late stupendous act. She was half-aghast, half-proud at the ease with which she had suddenly flung forth her swift, gigantic lie. Never for a moment had she intended to affirm anything of the kind, never as much as imagined that she might hint at it even in joke. She had been angry, of course, bitter and deeply hurt, but there had been no racing thoughts in her mind eager to frame the princely tale. It had seemed vacant, indeed, paralysed by rage, unable to do little else but suffer and hate. And then suddenly the words had been said, had shaped themselves on her lips and taken flight, as if by an agency with which she had nothing to do. It was just as if somebody had taken her arm and used it to wave a banner in the enemy's face; as if she were merely an instrument on which an angry hand had suddenly played.
So she was not ashamed, or even really alarmed, because of this inward conviction that the crime was not her own. Yet the voice had been hers, and most certainly the succeeding grim satisfaction and ironic joy had been hers! She allowed herself an occasional chuckle now that she was really alone, gloating freely over Eliza's abasement and acute dismay. For once at least, in the tourney of years, she had come away victor from the fray. No matter how she was made to pay for it in the end, she had had the whip-hand of Blindbeck just for once. Indeed, now that it was done,--and so easily done,--she marvelled that she had never done it before. At the back of her mind, however, was the vague knowledge that there is only one possible moment for tremendous happenings such as these. Perhaps the longing engendered by the Dream in the yard had suddenly grown strong enough to act of its own accord. Perhaps, as in the decision about the farm, a sentence lying long in the brain is spoken at length without the apparent assistance of the brain....
She did not trouble herself even to speculate how she would feel when at last the truth was out. This was the truth, as long as she chose to keep it so, as long as she sat and rocked and shut the world from her dreaming eyes. From pretending that it was true she came very soon to believing that it might really be possible, after all. Such things had happened more than once, she knew, and who was to say that they were not happening now? She told herself that, if she could believe it with every part of herself just for a moment, it would be true. Up in Heaven, where, as they said, a star winked every time a child was born, they had only to move some lever or other, and it would be true.
A clock ticked on the mantelpiece with a slow, rather hesitating sound, as if trying to warn the house that Sunday and the need of the winding-key were near. There was a close, secretive feeling in the room, the atmosphere of so many objects shut together in an almost terrible proximity for so many days of the week. She was so weary that she could have fallen asleep, but her brain was too excited to let her rest. The magnitude of her crime still held her breathlessly enthralled; the glamour of it made possible all impossible hopes. She dwelt again and again on the spontaneity of the lie, which seemed to give it the unmistakable stamp of truth.