That morning she had decided to drift on with her engagement. All vitality seemed to have left her, after uneasy vigils and travailings. She had been born to tread the old ways, like her mother, like all her people, except that one unfortunate who was never mentioned.
Probably she would lose Tiddy. And such a loss filled her with dismay and apprehension. She computed her debt to Tiddy. Tiddy had opened her eyes. Tiddy would go to France, and hurl herself into the danger zone, if she could get anywhere near it. Why was she so different from Tiddy?
III
Presently inaction became prickly. She decided to walk to the village and inquire after Isaac Burble. Mixed up with all her thoughts and speculations was this neglected old man who had served faithfully the House of Chandos. He had suffered abominably. Because of that it seemed a soft of judgment that Lady Selina’s daughter must suffer too. The mills of God worked that way.
By the time she reached Upworthy the sun was nearly overhead, pouring down redhot shafts upon just and unjust. Once more the smell of the unclean animal assailed Cicely’s nostrils as she passed Martha Giles’s sties. Close by, in striking apposition, stood Timothy Farleigh’s picturesque, heavily-thatched cottage. Mary Farleigh was in her garden, hanging out the Monday washing. Cicely beheld garments patched and darned incredibly. Mary’s pale, thin face seemed paler and thinner; she looked an attenuated shadow of a woman, worn to skin and bone. Nick, the softy, was helping her, with a vacuous grin upon his round, amorphous face.
“Good morning, Mary.”
“Marning, miss. A be-utiful marning, to be sure.”
“How are you?”
“I bain’t feeling very grand, miss. Tired-like. But I allers feels that way o’ Mondays. ’Tis the washing, I reckons. So you be marriage-ripe, they tells me.”
“What be that?” asked Nick.