But at last Emma’s wholesale commandeering of everything that she loved had aroused her to open resentment. “Ay, and me an’ all!” she broke out sharply, yet remembering even in her vexation to handle tenderly the relics of the War. “There’s nowt like coming home to a child’s funny little ways. What, there’s times even yet I can’t hardly believe I shan’t find Tibbie on t’ other side when I push the door! Folks never forget as has once had a child about the spot, and the older they grow the more like they are to think there was nowt to match it.”
“That’s only just thinking back, though,” Emma replied, returning each of the photographs to its place of woe. “Old folks can’t really do with children in the flesh. They make a deal o’ work, as I said just now, and old folks can’t do with that. They want their bit o’ rest and quiet. You’d find a child real tiresome nowadays, Ann Clapham.”
“Not me!” The charwoman flung out her answer with stout scorn. “I was never one to mind a bit o’ noise at any time—nor work neither—and shouldn’t now. I like to hear young things singing and shouting up and down the world. Folks’s barns where I scrub near always look to me for a bit of a lark. And I’m a long way from being an old body yet, even though I’m not as young as I was!”
“You’ve aged a deal lately, though—ay, more than a deal!” Emma had finished her setting of her sorrowful prisoners to rights, and was now returned to her post at the table. (Would she never sit? Mrs. Clapham wondered exasperatedly.) “You’re not as lish on your feet for one thing—I’ve noticed that. Think on how you kicked table-leg or summat when you come in. And there’s a look about you I don’t like, same as I’ve seen in a deal of folks as was quick took off. What, there was one day I see you coming back from your job, I was feared you’d drop down dead in the street! Walking dead lame you was, and with your hand on your heart, and as for your face, what, it was the colour o’ putty! I made sure I’d see doctor at your house afore so long, and I was right surprised when he never come. You kept house for a while, though, didn’t you?—ay, so I thought. There’s no denying you were mortal bad.”
Again the smooth voice and the black eyes held Mrs. Clapham captive, allowing her no point at which to speak; and again, as she listened, she felt the old trouble at her tiresome heart, and was conscious of the old grumble in her tiresome knee. She was ashamed, in any case, on her beautiful day, to remember that other day of depression and giving-up, but that Emma should know of it made her doubly ashamed. She had forgotten, as she toiled miserably up the empty street, that quite probably Emma would be watching her from some hidden place. She said to herself that, if only she had known it at the time, she would have got home somehow without giving herself away! The thing in itself had been hard enough to bear, setting a dread in her life that she would never afterwards escape; but it made her fear greater and the wound deeper that Emma, of all people, should have seen her shame.
“Eh, well, folks all has their bad times,” she answered at last, in a defiant tone that yet, in spite of her efforts, held a distinct element of apology. “I don’t know what was the matter, I’m sure. A touch o’ flu, likely—there was a deal about. Anyway, I got over it mighty sharp,” she went on valiantly. “If you know so much, I reckon you’ll know that! There’s not many can get through the work I can, even now, and that’s the truth. As for kicking table and suchlike, your spot is a bit dark, Emma, coming out of the sun.”
“Seems like as if there might be summat amiss with your eyes,” was all Emma’s response to this, fixing her with her own beady, black orbs which looked as if they would last to the Judgment and beyond. “It’s queer how folks don’t always notice when they’re breaking up. I’ve known some on ’em go on exactly the same for years and years, and then all of a sudden stop like a clock. There was Mr. Perry, you’ll think on, reading lessons on Sunday evening as throng as a laying hen, and almost before you could speak he was going about with a stick and a dog. Then there was that fine, big Mrs. Chell, much the same build as you, dancing as light as a bubbly-jock at the Farmers’ Ball, and next day stiff as a board. Nay, when folks is most certain, yon’s the time to look out; so don’t get boasting, Ann Clapham, for fear of a judgment.”
“Nay, but I’m not boasting—nowt o’ the sort!” The charwoman’s hands, at work again on her knees, actually threatened to rub a hole in the good black gown. “I’ve never been one to get above myself and I’m not now. I’m just thankful, that’s all—cheerful and thankful I’m so fit and well.”
“Ay, well, don’t think so much about it, that’s all I’m meaning to say. Don’t count on it overmuch. What, you’d never have put in for yon almshouse if you hadn’t felt you was done!”
“I put in for it because I’d earned it—not because I was wore out!” Mrs. Clapham’s face was almost purple, and her hands worked like a rubbing-machine. The suggestion was intolerable to her that she was something come to an end, a finished, miserable object creeping into a hole. Again she forgot that she had ever felt that she couldn’t go on ... forgot that Emma had seen her when she felt she couldn’t go on.... “I might be a broken-kneed bus-horse, the way you talk!” she concluded with an attempt at humour, though with all her fighting spirit aroused by the assumption that she was no longer worth her salt.