To Elizabeth’s astonishment the old lady was crying.
“May I help you gather up the peas?” she asked. “I’m afraid that I’ve made you feel badly.”
The old lady stooped and began to fumble about.
“They can be washed,” said she. Then she straightened up. “He wasn’t an ordinary man. It was like it says in the Bible, he was a star fallen from heaven when he did wrong. That was what we couldn’t stand, that John Baring should have done such a thing! Now the heathen back in the mountain, they would have done it and nobody would have been surprised. But John Baring!”
Elizabeth was ready to go.
“Did you know his wife?”
“She was my companion!” said the old woman. “And I never spoke to her afterwards. I never spoke to her!” In the declaration was a rage as fresh as though its cause were of yesterday and—Elizabeth was certain of it—a wild remorse. “I didn’t even go to see her buried!”
Elizabeth wiped her eyes.
“Come again, if you want to,” said the old lady.
Then Elizabeth smiled. Grudging as the invitation was, it gave her the first faint hope that whatever John Baring had done, his descendants might in time make their way here in his old home.