“Nay, now—you’re never thinking o’ going back on your word!” Mrs. Tanner pushed back her chair so sharply that it shrieked on the flag.
“Nay—not me! That’s all settled and by with,” Mrs. Clapham assured her quickly. “I—I’m beginning to want ’em, and that’s a fact! All the same, I can’t help wondering,” she added thoughtfully, “whether she wouldn’t ha’ done by ’em all right.”
“Don’t you get wondering owt o’ the sort!” Mrs. Tanner responded vehemently, as she got to her feet. Her hands actually shook a little as she gathered the pots. “There’s only one thing she wanted ’em for, I doubt, and it won’t bide putting into human words. I’ve not forgotten, if you have, how yon lad of hers used to look, a-creeping back to that devil’s spot of a winter’s night!”
“Nay, I’ve not forgotten, not I!” Mrs. Clapham said hastily, feeling rather ashamed, and for the fourth time that day seeing the vision of the little boy reluctantly climbing the dark stair. Looking out into the street, which was now full of September mist, she saw in imagination Libby and Stevie come creeping up. Hand in hand they came, clasping each other close, and with every step that they took growing slower and more afraid. Doors opened and voices called to them, but they never as much as glanced aside. Always they crept on, their mournful eyes fixed on their pilgrimage’s dreadful end, making their sad way to the ancient slaughter-house which was Emma Catterall’s suitable home....
She almost put out her hands to clutch them when she saw them thus passing by, and, turning with a sharp start, caught her elbow against her cup and tilted it over. “Eh, now, but that’s a daft-like trick!” she exclaimed, pushing back quickly as the tea came pouring on to the floor.
“You’re a bit jumpy—that’s what it is,” Mrs. Tanner commented soothingly. “Nerves a bit out of order, and no wonder, neither! It hasn’t catched your gown, has it?—nay, it’s nobbut the floor. Ay, well, I’ll take a clout to it as soon as I’m through wi’ my job.”
She went away with the pots into the back kitchen, and Mrs. Clapham, instead of sitting down again, began to wander about the room. She was still lame, of course, but the compress had eased her knee, and the stimulant of the tea had eased the ache of her tired bones. She stood for some time looking at Tibbie’s picture, and wept again as she looked, presently lifting a pitiful finger to the photographs of the children. Afterwards, staring about, she tried to imagine the house with the children in it, sitting or playing or running from room to room. Already their little coats and hats seemed to have taken their natural place on the bracket behind the door. She found herself wondering whether it would be possible to have the old chair mended for them, and then decided that it was too old. There were other things, too, that could no more be mended than the chair, things like the loss of youth and good health, and the terrible break of death. She was looking forward again now, patiently trying to believe that there was happiness still ahead, but there was no disguising the fact that it could be only second-hand happiness at the best.
The pool of tea on the floor kept catching her eye as she stirred about, the stain of it on the flags offending her charwoman’s pride. It seemed to her it was the sort of thing you would expect in an old woman’s house, an idle old woman who had grown too ancient to care. Each time that she came across it she stopped to mutter and frown. For the time being she allowed Mrs. Tanner’s kindness to slip utterly out of her mind, choosing only to remember that she had forgotten the promised clout.
There came a moment at last when she could bear it no longer, and, finding the back kitchen empty, she stealthily limped in. Presently she emerged with brush, pail and mat, and an expression of furtive excitement upon her face. Getting painfully on to her knees, she began to scrub, and almost at once found happiness coming back to her as if by magic. She was no longer afraid of life, now that she was at her job, nor of her own ability to cope with what the future might choose to send. Again, as in the morning, she turned instinctively to it for strength, and again found that it brought her courage, and that the touch of her tools brought her peace.
She scrubbed the stained patch over and over again long after it was clean, and felt her spirits revive with every scrunch of the brush. As she wiped off the soap only to put it on, for the second time that day she remembered the last words of old Mr. T. He had said that she was one of the fighters of life—a non-finisher, a never-ender. With a grim humour she told herself that he would certainly say so if he could see her now! She no longer felt bitter against the well-intentioned old man, and indeed in those last words found a distinct solace to her pride. God was put back in His heaven again as soon as she began to scrub, and along with her forgiveness of God went forgiveness of Mr. T.