She was fearfully tired; and, in the reaction from the excitement of the morning, could fight no longer against a melancholy that swept over her, as the clouds steadily rising from the east swept over the sky.
She saw the rest of her life in as unnatural and lurid a light as that which now lay in a streak across the marshes, and in which the polished stalks of the marsh grass shone red.
"There is such a glare under the clouds! how it makes one's eyes ache!" she said; and then she became aware that her charioteer was giving her a great deal of highly seasoned advice on her behaviour to her husband.
Granny hated all ladies. She hated them even in their natural place. She had an old and standing grudge against them. But when they chose to descend from their unassailable platform—when they were silly enough to force themselves into the grade of honest workers—then they ought to be made to mend their ways, and eat humble pie in large mouthfuls—not to keep up their old airs and insult their betters.
"Oh, I know," said Meg, speaking more to herself than to granny; "but I can't help being different from the others; I have tried, but it is of no use. There are things one can do, and things one can't do; the thing I have tried I can't!"
And granny had no more idea what hopelessness lay in that confession than if Meg had spoken in a foreign language. It even irritated her the more, as a fresh avowal of a claim to the "fine-ladyism" which to her was like a red rag to a bull.
"Can't help!" she cried. "An' let me tell 'ee this, young woman, if I wur your husband I'd mak' yo' help it. Ah, an' he wull one day. You think the preacher's made of naught but butter; but yo'll find out theer's more nor that in him. It's all fine for a while. Oh yes, I've he'rd o' yo're stand-off ways wi' him; but a mon 'ull ha' some satisfaction from the woman he feeds and clothes. I suppose you've not thought o' that? Ye fancy becos ye are young, and ha' got eyes that look as if they saw through stone walls, that ye can do as ye like wi' a mon! An' so 'ee con, so 'ee con for a bit; but it's only fur a bit wi' ony of 'em, it don't last. Eh, I knaw. I con tell thee, I wur a greater beauty than ever yo' wur, my lass; and Jacob wur as big a fule over me afore he married as ever yo' see'd; an', afore that I'd been his'n a month, he kicked me so that——"
"I don't want to hear, please!" said Meg; but granny laughed scornfully, and proceeded with the recital. Whether because she took a fierce pleasure in shocking her companion's sensibilities, or because she thought it would be good for the lady to realise what she might have had to suffer if Barnabas hadn't been "softer nor some," she spared no details.
"It wur no marvel Timothy wur born quare," said granny; "he wur cliverer than most to live at all, poor lad; tho' ye do look down on 'im." And there was a kind of fierce affection in that last speech; a defiant love for the lad she had born in the midst of sore mis-usage, that woke Meg's pity more than the horrible stories of gross cruelty that had been poured into her unwilling ears.
"But all men are not like that, granny," she said at last.