She paused again, lost in a mist of incoherent memories, the tears falling slowly.
After a minute's silence, George said—not indeed knowing what to say—"We're very sorry for you, Mary—my wife and I—we wish we could do anything to help you. I am afraid it can't make any difference to you—I expect it makes it all the worse—to think that accidents are so much fewer—that so much has been done. And yet times are mended, aren't they?"
Mary made no answer.
George sat looking at her, conscious, as he seldom was, of raw youth and unreadiness—conscious, too, of Letty's presence in a strange, hindering way—as of something that both blunted emotion and made one rather ashamed to show it.
He could only pursue the lame topic of improvement, of changed times. The disappearance of old abuses, of "butties" and "tommy-shops"; the greater care for life; the accident laws; the inspectors. He found himself growing eloquent at last, yet all the time regarding himself, as it were, from a distance—ironically.
Mary Batchelor listened to him for a while, her head bent with something of the submission of the old servant, till something he said roused again the quick shudder, the look of anguished protest.
"Aye, I dessay it's aw reet, Mr. George—I dessay it is—what yer say. The inspectors is very cliver—an the wages is paid proper. But theer—say what yer will! I've a son on the railway out Lichfield way—an he's allus taakin about is long hours—they're killing im, he says—an I allus ses to im, 'Yer may jest thank the Lord, Harry, as yer not in the pits.' He never gets no pity out o me. An soomtimes I wakes in the morning, an I thinks o the men, cropin away in the dark—down theer—under me and my bed—for they do say the pits now runs right under Ferth village—an I think to mysel—how long will it be before yo poor fellers is laying like my Jim? Yer may be reet about the accidents, Mr. George—but I know, ef yer wor to go fro house to house i this village—it would be like tis in the Bible—I've often thowt o them words—'Theer was not a house—no, nary one!—where there was not one dead.'"
She hung her head again, muttering to herself. George made out with difficulty that she was going through one phantom scene after another—of burning, wounds, and sudden death. One or two of the phrases—of the fragmentary details that dropped out without name or place—made his flesh creep. He was afraid lest Letty should hear them, and was just putting out his hand for his hat, when Mrs. Batchelor gripped his arm again. Her face—so white and large-featured—had the gleam of something like a miserable smile upon it.
"Aye, an the men theirsels ud say jest as you do. 'Lor. Mrs. Batchelor,' they'd say, 'why, the pits is as safe as a church'—an they'd laff—Jamie ud laff at me times. But it's the women, Mr. George, as knows—it's the women that ave to wash the bodies."
A great trembling ran through her again. George instinctively rose, and motioned to Letty to go. She too rose, but she did not go. She stood by the door, her wide grey eyes fixed with a kind of fascination on the speaker; while behind her a ring of children could be seen in the street, staring at the pretty lady.