"No! If the women were like you, there'd mighty soon be no more women--nor men neither--a poor, unfinished thing--like a frost-bitten carrot--good for nought. You to talk to me out of your empty life! You to say I'm not fit company for people--me as be bringing brave boys and girls into the world, while you look after puppies and lambs! Why, damn you, you be no more than a useless lump of flesh, as might so well be underground as here! You--out of your empty, silly life--to talk to me in my full, busy days! I spit at you; and if you think to punish me, then I'll punish you too. I can bite so well as bark; and if you ban't on your knees pretty soon, I'll have you and David by the ears--then we'll see what becomes of you!"
Mrs. Screech suggested a woman suffering under too much alcohol. But she was merely drunk with anger. Her sister's calm attitude and patient indifference to this attack did not help to soothe her. Rhoda looked at the sun, and Dorcas knew that she was judging the time of day.
"You'll call for the hours to move a bit faster afore long," she said. "Don't you think you can insult me and my husband, year 'pon year like this, and not smart for it. We know very well how to hit back, and if it hadn't been for a better woman than you, I'd have done it a long time ago. I don't forget how you boxed my ears once, because I knowed how to love a man. You'd have better axed me what the secret was and begged to know it. But you think you've got no use for a man; and they've got no use for you and never will have--as you'll live to find out. And I'll sting you to the quick now--now--this instant moment, if you don't say you'm sorry for the past and promise on your honour to treat me and mine decent in future. I warn you to mind afore you speak."
A malignant light shone over the face of Dorcas. She set her teeth and panted at her own great wrongs, while she waited for the other to speak.
"You can't hurt me," said Rhoda, "and you know it."
"Can't I? We'll see then! God defend the world from white virgins like you--that's what I say. A holy terror you are; and we're all to be brought up for judgment, I suppose--to have our heads chopped off, because we dare to be made of flesh and blood instead of dead earth. Pure and clean--is it? What you call pure. All the same, the likes of you does things, and thinks things, us married women would blush to do and think."
"If that's all you want to say, I'll thank you to get out of my road," answered the other.
"'Tisn't all, as it happens. I'm going to talk of Bartley Crocker now, and then you can take away something to think about yourself, you frozen wretch! I suppose, in your pride, you fancy he's after you all these days, and comes because he wants to marry you--wants to marry a lump of granite! 'Tisn't you he thinks about, or cares about, or ever will; 'tis one whose shoes you ban't worthy to black--or David either. Between you she'd be like to die of starvation, I reckon; and who shall blame her if she does take her hungry heart to somebody, else? You and him--good God! 'tis like living between two ice images--enough to kill the nature in any creature higher than a dog. And she knows it, and a good few more--Bartley Crocker among the number--knows it. Belike Madge grows tired of being moss to his stone, and working her fingers raw for such as you and her husband. And even your precious David ban't the only man in the world. And so a decent chap like Bartley comes along, an old friend that knows a little about girls and what they feel like, and knows they be different from sheep and heifers. Hear that! 'Tis not for you the man seeks your house. He uses your name like a blind. He laughs at you and your airs and graces. He's got no use for you and never will have. They meet here and there and everywhere--and why not? 'Fallen woman' be the word for me, I suppose. 'Tis you be the fallen woman; and to call you woman is too good for you! You never was a woman; but Madge is, and I hope to God you'll wake one day to find she've had pluck and sense enough to leave you and David and run for it with a better man. You may stare your owl's eyes out of your head. But you've got it now, and you've earned it."
Dorcas stopped, panting from her tirade, and passed her sister and disappeared without more speech. Rhoda, left alone, stood quite still for a little while; then she proceeded on her business. Not a shadow of anger clouded her mind, only dreadful dismay at the things she had heard. She was not galled for herself; she did not wince at the foul torrent loosed upon her. It passed over her harmlessly. But her thoughts busied themselves entirely with David. That Dorcas should thus have supported her own fears, and driven home her own cloudy suspicions and terrors, struck Rhoda dumb. Here was the thing that she had hidden and suffered to gnaw her breast without a sign, now shouted on the loud, vulgar tongue of the world, as represented by Dorcas. Here was the secret that she had suspected, and searched out in fear and trembling, blurted coarsely for any ear.
A period of increased happiness had recently passed over 'Meavy Cot,' and Madge, who appeared to hide her emotions no more than a bird, went singing and cheerful through it. Then matters drifted into the old ways. Now much of hope deferred was upon David's mind and some abstraction and silence clouded the home again, for the Tavistock appointment remained still a matter of uncertainty. But the circumstance chiefly in Rhoda's thoughts at this moment was the attitude of her brother to Bartley Crocker.