The information conveyed nothing to her hearers at first, and then slowly into their faces came wonder, followed sharply by terror. Into Mrs. Dunn’s, indeed, there came naked horror—Mrs. Dunn, who knew only too well what it was like to deliver a loved one into alien arms.
“Coming to her?” Mrs. Airey demanded fiercely, her motherly face suddenly peaked and sharp; and “Nay, now, she never means—!” shrilled Mrs. Dunn, in the voice that usually was so tired and flat.
Mrs. Tanner nodded a portentous head.
“Ay, but that’s just what she does mean, and no mistake about it!” she explained loudly. She spoke roughly, brutally, almost—almost in a shout, as if the words were clubs with which she battered at Mrs. Clapham. “She sticks to it Ann’s agreed to let her have Tibbie’s barns.”
“Nay, now ... nay, never now! ... she mustn’t then ... she just can’t!...” The words seemed to come helter-skelter out of any mouth that opened to fling them first, an almost unintelligible chorus which yet managed to convey volumes. The women actually huddled against the wall, like sheep huddled before some dog. And then, just as the outcry seemed to be dying away, they began again—“Nay, now ... nay never now ... she mustn’t then ... she just can’t!”
This distinctly uncomplimentary outburst seemed, however, to have no effect upon Emma.
“Mrs. Clapham can’t take ’em herself,” she condescended to explain, the calmness of her attitude making, as it were, an impertinence of the scene before. “There’s yon almshouse, you’ll think on—she can’t go taking the children there; so what wi’ one thing and another, they’ll be bound to come to me.... That’s the way of it, isn’t it, Ann Clapham?” she finished, turning to Tibbie’s mother; and Tibbie’s mother said “Ay,” staring immovably at the floor.
This final vindication, this triumph in the teeth of those whom she knew for her sworn foes, was perhaps a little too much for the careful Emma. Loosing her hold on her caution by ever so little, she allowed herself what proved to be a mistaken pleasure. “Likely you’ve summat agen it?” she inquired of the women, her eyes shining with unmistakable malice.
More than one person present had plenty against it, as she knew, but she counted upon their lack of courage to take up the challenge. It was true that they had cried out, had given her plainly to understand what it was they felt, but she guessed that they would flinch when it came to stating their reasons. Until to-night there had been only one person who had ever openly flung her the truth, and that person was luckily absent. She was congratulating herself upon this particular fact when the unlatched door suddenly swung wide, and somebody who had obviously been listening in the porch almost tumbled into the room. She looked about her a moment in order to gather her scattered wits, and then—“I’ve summat agen it, for one!” proclaimed Martha Jane Fell.
The whole company gave a nervous jump when she tumbled into the room, as usual keeping up her unwarranted rôle of village clown. The effect, indeed, was almost as if she had entered it head over heels. Even Mrs. Clapham lifted her head to look at this latest comer. But Emma Catterall did more than jump. She had remained seated hitherto, as if conscious that no more intimidating spectacle could be presented to the crowd, but on Martha Jane’s entrance she rose to her feet. Standing beside the table, she looked like a stout little pillar-box which had missed its allowance of Government red. Her eyes which, during that moment of triumph, had looked beady and bright, suddenly changed in expression, and became beady and dull. Her arms, which had remained still so long that it seemed they must have been clamped, released themselves now to their wonted mechanical act.