"Is not that old John's wife?" Esther said.
"Yes, that's her," said William. "She'd have seen us if that cove hadn't given her the shilling…. Lord, I didn't think they was as badly off as that. Did you ever see such rags? and that thick leg wrapped up in that awful stocking."
The morning had been full of sadness, and Mrs. Randal's wandering rags had seemed to Esther like a foreboding. She grew frightened, as the cattle do in the fields when the sky darkens and the storm draws near. She suddenly remembered Mrs. Barfield, and she heard her telling her of the unhappiness that she had seen come from betting. Where was Mrs. Barfield? Should she ever see her again? Mr. Barfield was dead, Miss May was forced to live abroad for the sake of her health; all that time of long ago was over and done with. Some words that Mrs. Barfield had said came back to her; she had never quite understood them, but she had never quite forgotten them; they seemed to chime through her life. "My girl," Mrs. Barfield had said, "I am more than twenty years older than you, and I assure you that time has passed like a little dream; life is nothing. We must think of what comes after."
"Cheer up, old girl; eighteen months is a long while, but it ain't a lifetime. She'll get through it all right; and when she comes out we'll try to see what we can do for her."
William's voice startled Esther from the depth of her dream; she looked at him vaguely, and he saw that she had been thinking of something different from what he had suspected. "I thought it was on account of Sarah that you was looking so sad."
"No," she said, "I was not thinking of Sarah."
Then, taking it for granted that she was thinking of the wickedness of betting, his face darkened. It was aggravating to have a wife who was always troubling about things that couldn't be helped. The first person they saw on entering the bar was old John; and he sat in the corner of the bar on a high stool, his grey, death-like face sunk in the old unstarched shirt collar. The thin, wrinkled throat was hid with the remains of a cravat; it was passed twice round, and tied according to the fashions of fifty years ago. His boots were broken; the trousers, a grey, dirty brown, were torn as high up as the ankle; they had been mended and the patches hardly held together; the frock coat, green with age, with huge flaps over the pockets, frayed and torn, and many sizes too large, hung upon his starveling body. He seemed very feeble, and there was neither light nor expression in his glassy, watery eyes.
"Eighteen months; a devil of a stiff sentence for a first offence," said
William.
"I just dropped in. Charles said you'd sure to be back. You're later than
I expected."
"We stopped to have a bit of lunch. But you heard what I said. She got eighteen months."