“What, there must be news sometime, you’ll think on!” she chirruped bravely. “It’s only a matter of who brings it. There’s some think it’ll be Mr. Baines.”
“Baines?” The smooth, sliding tones seemed to convey, even in that single word, that it would be better on the whole if the devil himself brought the news, rather than the amiable lawyer. “I’ve never known anything but bad luck come o’ news brought by Mr. Baines. There was that time, you’ll think on, when he come to tell Alice Alderson as she’d a bit o’ money left her by her aunt, and after she’d got engaged on the strength of it, and run up a ter’ble big bill, Mrs. Clapham, with your Tibbie, an’ all, round he come again to say it was all a mistake. Then there was that mighty queer tale about Polly Green, which I shouldn’t as much as mention if we wasn’t friends. Baines had looked in to say as her husband was coming back from abroad, after twenty year, and she went and hanged herself, right off the reel. Ay, and yon other time, you’ll think on (now you’ll surely remember this!), when he come to tell Ann Machell as she’d got the same house you’re after now; and blest if she didn’t have a stroke with excitement that very night!”
The spirits of the whole company were at zero by now. Even Martha Jane seemed crushed for the time being. Some of them, indeed—Mrs. James, for one—cast longing glances at their dwellings, and thought to themselves that they might just as well be waiting inside. It seemed mean, of course, to desert Mrs. Clapham, and at the critical moment, but nobody could be expected to put up with Emma. They could not understand why she made things seem so hopelessly wrong, as if nothing splendid could possibly happen. It was as if that little smile of hers brushed all the colour out of life, hinting that it was something different from what you had thought. It couldn’t be just that she slanged everybody as their names came up, because they were more than equal to that themselves, and would, if they were honest, admit that it left them all the brighter and better. It was that queer something at the back of Emma’s mind that made you feel so low, something that hinted at knowledge you didn’t possess. It was like being shut in a dark room with somebody you couldn’t see. It was like being a mouse and thinking you knew the whereabouts of the cat; conscious all the time from your head to your tail that it was watching you from somewhere else.
As for Mrs. Clapham, her knee was beginning to ache with the long standing, and there was also a grumble about her heart. She, too, had almost begun to wish that she had never come into the street at all, but had stayed quietly inside her cottage. It seemed to her suddenly that she was making an exhibition of herself, standing there with that crowd of women. Not that she actually lost faith in the wonderful outcome that was to be; it was only that the perfect approach was being spoilt. First of all, there had been Martha Jane, turning her handsprings like a clown; and now unexpectedly there was Emma, with her prophecies of ill-luck....
So crushed, indeed, was the whole group, that it seemed for the moment as if nobody would ever have courage to answer. But even the most oppressed will fight to the last ounce for a thing that has touched their imagination, and Mrs. James had again been injured in her ideal. “Mr. Baines ’ll bring no more bad luck than most folks—that I’ll be bound!” she burst out sharply, even twisting herself from under the feathers to glare. “Bad luck comes of itself and with nobody’s help; we all on us know that. But, speaking for myself, I’m not sure as even bad luck brought by Mr. Baines wouldn’t sound like good!”
Emma said nothing for quite a long time, but just stood staring with her little smile, while the embarrassed red grew in the other’s face.... Her crossed hands, cupping her elbows, did not so much as twitch.
“I’m not saying it’s what Mr. Baines brings,” she answered at last, as Mrs. James dived back; “it’s what he leaves. He comes up all nice and smiling and sweet-spoken like, and you feel rarely pleased. It’s only after he’s gone you find as things isn’t what they seem.”
“They can seem any old how they choose, so long as I get t’ house....” This was Martha Jane, recovered a second time from her wilting. “News can come through a dozen Baineses, so long as it says I’m in!”
Mrs. James being to all intents and purposes invisible, Emma had plenty of time to attend to Martha Jane.
“I’m surprised, I’m sure, to think of you being after one o’ them houses!” she remarked sweetly. “When I heard tell about it, I could hardly believe my ears. The folks in them houses is expected to keep ’em spick as a pin, and I can’t rightly see you putting your hand to that. You’ll have governors and their wives calling and ferreting round to see what you’re at; and a nice to-do there’ll be if things isn’t just so. Seems to me you’ll have to alter your ways in other things, too, if you mean taking yon house.... But there, after all, I reckon you know your own business best....”