In a Quiet Village

by S. Baring-Gould

This mood lasted for a day only, and then passed. She remained as before, good-natured, following Jim as a dog, but never intruding herself on him and his young wife.

The latter did not take kindly to Jane. She was annoyed at the persistent haunting of the neighbourhood of the mill, by her animal-like devotion to Jim, and remonstrated with her husband.

“What can I do?” he asked; “the poor crazy creature does no harm.”

“It is absurd, it is scandalous,” said the young wife petulantly. “It makes you an object of ridicule throughout the country.”

Jim’s mother, and after her death, Jim himself, had often sent broken meat, a blanket, some little comfort, perhaps a few bushels of coal to Crazy Jane; but the new mistress at the mill forbade these charities. “Let her be starved out,” she said. “The creature is a nuisance. Who can be confident with a mad woman so near? She may set fire to the mill, she may murder me, if I go alone into the woods. And”—she pouted—“I should not be surprised if she were to attempt it, as she is jealous of me. She has hitherto engrossed so much of Jim’s attention, and now thinks I rob her of what should be hers.”

“How can you talk such trash?” said Jim, annoyed.

So Crazy Jane was the occasion of the first little disagreement between Jim and his wife.

It is a satisfaction to some natures to have an opportunity for grumbling, an excuse for venting their vexation. Mrs. Thacker had a fretful, irritable temper, and the presence of Crazy Jane furnished her with an occasion for giving tongue to her annoyance, and scolding and finding fault with her husband. She knew perfectly that she had no real grounds for her jealousy, and the fact that she knew this excused her in her own mind for her fretfulness towards her husband on the subject. Some women regard their ebullitions of ill-temper and jealousy as justified by the fact that they are unreasonable. Jim was so good-natured that he did not become angry, and his good-nature provoked his wife.

So time passed, and Mrs. Thacker bore her husband a little daughter; and the child grew, and as it grew became an object of intense, affectionate regard to Crazy Jane. Indeed, it seemed as though her devotion to Jim had been transferred to the child. She hovered about the mill as before, but now, so that she might watch the child, not the father, and seemed quite pleased when she could offer the little girl a bunch of wild strawberries, or a posy of lilies of the valley.

This also gave annoyance to Mrs. Thacker. She did not like her child to be near the mad girl—or woman—she was a girl no longer. “Who can say what she might do? She might carry her off, as the gipsies do?”