“Baines has nowt to do with it!” Martha Jane snapped, again forgetting the Cause for the irresistible lure. Even at the door of Heaven she would have resented this continual trailing of the inevitable Baines jacket. “It’s his lordship as matters, when it comes to a choice. Baines is nobbut a pen-pusher, to do as he’s tellt what!... You’d get a house right enough, though,” she swung back to Mrs. Clapham. “Only, whatever you do, don’t let her have them barns!”
The charwoman had remained silent during this concerted outpouring of opinion, all the more strenuous when it came for having been held in check. But the earnestness behind it was bound to have some effect even upon her dull wrath, her rebellion against fate, her bitter and sullen determination to snatch what she could from the damaged day. After all, it was only what in ordinary circumstances she would have said herself, what, indeed, was being said to her even now by her own heart. She reminded herself, however, that the clamouring women knew nothing of Emma’s desire to atone; not that it was any use trying to tell them about it in their present mood. Led by Martha Jane, they would certainly laugh it to scorn, or, even if they did not laugh, they would refuse to believe. It took some believing, too, Mrs. Clapham was bound to admit, with Emma’s round little face expressing venom in every line. But then, even if she had come to repent, you could not expect her to change all through; and, repentance once granted, it was easy to argue that, the unkinder she had been to Stephen, the kinder she would probably be to his orphaned children. It was always the converts who went to the farthest extremes; they were the swing of the pendulum, the opposite side of the shield. Nor did it follow that, because you couldn’t stand Martha Jane, you wouldn’t be simply an angel to everyone else. Mrs. Clapham had been as good a mother as there was in the whole world, but she, too, had never been able to stand Martha Jane.
Nevertheless, there was no doubt that Emma was not being an angel at this particular moment. “You’re a nice one to go preaching to others, Martha Jane Fell,” she was saying virulently; “you that was dead drunk the whole o’ this afternoon!”
Mrs. Clapham muttered “Nay, now, Emma—nay, now, nay!” putting up a heavy hand; but already the words had had their desired effect. The Chorus drew away from about Martha Jane like a single soul, testifying to their personal worth by exclamations and looks of disgust. (Mrs. James remarked later that she had noticed a smell of drink—a really refined person couldn’t miss it—but there, since the War there had been so little of it about, only them as fair lived for it could believe when they happened across it!)
“Yon lordship o’ yours’ll be rarely set up when he hears tell about it!” Emma finished sardonically. “A bonny specimen for an almshouse you are, to be sure!...” And from the new huddle formed by the women against the wall came the indignant supplement from Mrs. James—“And her setting herself up to be judging of Mr. Baines!”
It was a bitter blow to Martha Jane when she found herself thus suddenly left in the lurch. Those moments of support from the respectable Clapham Contingent had been some of the sweetest in her not very sweet life. Now, however, she was once again under the ban, thrust back into the role of Chief Village Sinner, beside whose delinquencies even Emma’s looked pleasantly pale....
“Ay, and if I was!” she shrilled defiantly, as much to the virtuous Chorus as to Emma herself. Flushing, she threw back her hair, looking more Bacchanalian than ever. “That’s my own business, I reckon, as you say one had ought to know best!... But if you’re that keen on folks minding their own business and nowt else, what have you got to say about yon telegraph, Mrs. Emma?”
A fresh quiver ran the length of Emma’s stout little frame, and her arms fell away to her sides, as if they were struck. Mrs. Clapham’s eyes suddenly sharpened their focus as they rested on Martha Jane.
“Telegraph?” Mrs. Tanner was saying, with a bewildered air. “What, she’d nowt to do wi’ that! I took it from t’ lad myself.”
“Ay, there’s been overmuch taking of other folks’ telegraphs and suchlike to-day!...” Martha Jane couldn’t resist the slap. “But I’m not talking about that telegraph, thank you, Mrs. Tanner. I’m talking of yon as come this morning.”