INFECTION.
A touch on Arminell’s shoulder made her turn with a start. She saw
behind her an old woman who had approached along the ledge, unobserved,
supporting herself by the strands of ivy in the same manner as herself.
Arminell had been standing leaning against the rock, her eyes and
attention occupied with Captain Saltren, and so had not noticed the
stealthy progress of the woman.
“See here, miss,” said the new arrival, “I have come to help you in the
proper way. Lord love y’ what’s the good o’ calling to that half mazed
man there? By the road you came, by that you must return. Here be ivy
bands enough for both. Take half yourself and follow me, or if you’d
rather, go on before. Don’t look at your feet, look ahead.”
“Who are you?” asked Arminell in surprise.
“Won’t you accept help till you know who she is that offers it?” asked
the woman with a laugh. “Do you object to lean on a stick till you know
the name of the tree whence it was cut? I’m not ashamed of what I’m
called, I’m Patience Kite, that lives in the thatched cottage under the
wood at the end of the quarry. I saw how you came to this place, and how
you have thrown your book at the captain, because he looked every way
but the right one when he was called. There’s perversity in all things,
miss, as you’ll discover when you’re a bit older. Them as we call to
come to us don’t look our way, and them as we ain’t thinking about offer
us the helping hand.”
Arminell took the proffered ivy ropes, and began to retrace her steps
along the face of the precipice, but was unable, whilst so doing, to
resist the temptation to look and see if Captain Saltren had as yet
observed her, but she saw that he was still diving his arms into the
water after the sunken volume, and was unconscious that any one watched
him.
“Hold to my gown, it is coarse, but the better to stay you with,” said
the woman. “Do not look round, keep fast with the right hand to the ivy,
and clutch me with your left. What a comical bringing together of them
whom God has put asunder that would be if you and I were to be found in
death grappled together in the quarry pond!”
Slowly, cautiously, Arminell followed her guide and finally reached the
firm bank.
“Now then,” said Patience, “you can come and rest in my cottage. It is
hard by. I’ll wipe a chair for you. As you wanted to see the owl’s nest,
perhaps you mayn’t object to visit the house of the white witch.”
Arminell hesitated. She was inclined to return home, but felt that it
would seem ungracious to decline the offer of the woman who had assisted
her out of her difficulties.
“Look yonder,” mocked Patience, pointing to the water, “the captain is
at his prayers again. I wonder, now, what he took that book to be you
throwed at him, and your voice to be that called him? He’ll make a maze
o’ queer fancies out of all, I reckon.”
“Does Mr. Saltren often come here?”
“When the shoe pinches.”
“I do not understand you, Mrs. Kite.”
“No, I’ll be bound you do not. How can you understand the pinching and
pain o’ others, when you’ve never felt pinch or pain yourself? Such as
lie a-bed in swans’ down wonder what keeps them awake that couches on
nettles.”
“But what has this to do with Captain Saltren and his prayers?”
“Everything,” answered the woman; “you don’t ask for apples when your
lap is full. Those that suffer and are in need open their mouths. But
whether aught comes to them for opening their mouths is another matter.
The cuckoo in my clock called, and as none answered, he gave it up—so
did I.”
There was a savagery in the woman’s tone that startled Arminell, and
withal a strangeness in her manner that attracted her curiosity.
“I will go with you to the cottage for a moment,” she said.
“This is the way,” answered Patience, leading through the brake of fern
under the oaks.
Patience Kite was a tall woman, with black hair just turning grey, a
wrinkled face, and a pointed chin. She had lost most of her teeth, and
mouthed her words, but spoke distinctly. Her nose was like the beak of a
hawk; her eyes were grey, and wild under heavy dark brows. When she
spoke to Arminell she curtsied, and the curtsey of the gaunt creature
was grotesque. The girl could not read whether it were intended as
respectful, or done in mockery. Her dress was tidy, but of the poorest
materials, much patched. She wore no cap; her abundant hair was heaped
on her head, but was less tidy than her clothing; it was scattered about
her face and shoulders.
Her cottage was close at hand, very small, built of quarry-stone that
corroded rapidly with exposure—the air reduced it to black dust. The
chimney threatened to fall; it was gnawed into on the south-west side
like a bit of mice-eaten cheese. The thatch was rotten, the rafters were
exposed and decayed. The walls, bulged out by the thrust of the bedroom
floor-joists, were full of rents and out of the perpendicular.
The place looked so ruinous, so unsafe, that Arminell hesitated to
enter.
The door had fallen, because the frame had rotted away. Patience led her
guest over it into the room. There everything was tidy and clean.
Tidiness and cleanliness were strangely combined with ruin and decay. In
the window was a raven in a cage.
“This house is dangerous to live in,” said Arminell. “Does Mr. Macduff
not see that repairs are done? It is unfit for human habitation.”
“Macduff!” scoffed Mrs. Kite. “Do y’ think that this house belongs to
his lordship? It is mine, and because it is mine they cannot force me to
leave it, and to go into the workhouse.”
“But you are in peril of your life here, the chimney might fall and bury
you any windy night. The roof might crash in.”
“So the sanitary officer says. He has condemned the house.”
“Then you are leaving?”
“No. He has done his duty. But I am not going to turn out.”
“Yet surely, Mrs. Kite, if the place is dangerous, you will not be
allowed to remain?”
“Who can interfere with me? The board of guardians have applied to the
petty sessions for an order, and it has been granted and served on me.”
“Then, of course, you go?”
“No; they can order me to go, but they cannot force me to go. The
policeman says they can fine me ten shillings a day if I remain and defy
them. Let them fine me. They must next get an order to distrain to get
the amount. They may sell my furniture, but they won’t be able to turn
me out.”
“But why remain in peril of your life? You will be crushed under the
ruins some stormy night.”
“Why remain here? Because I’ve nowhere else to go to. I will not go into
the union, and I will not live in a house with other folk. I am
accustomed to be alone. I am not afraid. Here I am at liberty, and I
will die here rather than lose my freedom.”
“You cannot even shut your door.”
“I do not need to. I fear nothing, not the sanitary officer; he can do
nothing. Not the board of guardians; they can do nothing. Not the
magistrates; they cannot touch me.”[1]
“Have you anything to live on?”
“I pick up a trifle. I bless bad knees and stop the flow of blood, and
show where stolen goods are hidden, and tell who has ill-wished any
one.”
“You receive contributions from the superstitious.”
“I get my living my own way. There is room for all in the world.”
Arminell seated herself in a chair offered her, and looked at the raven
in its cage, picking at the bars.
Silence ensued for a few minutes. Patience folded her bare brown arms
across her bosom, and standing opposite the girl, studied her from head
to foot.
“The Honourable Miss Inglett!” she said, and laughed. “Why are you the
honourable, and I the common person? Why are you a lady, at ease,
well-dressed, and I a poor old creature badgered by sanitary officers
and board of guardians, and magistrates, and by my lord, the chairman at
the petty sessions?”
Arminell looked wonderingly at her, surprised at her strange address.
“Because the world is governed by injustice. What had you done as a
babe, that you should have the gold spoon put into your mouth, and why
had I the pewter one? It is not only sanitary officers and guardians of
the poor against me, bullying me, a poor lone widow. Heaven above has
been dead set against me from the moment I was born. I’ve seen the
miners truck out ore and cable; now a truck load of metal, then one of
refuse; one to be refined, the other to be rejected. It is so in life;
we are run out of the dark mines of nothingness into light, and some of
us are all preciousness and some all dross. But do you know this, Miss
Arminell, they turned out heaps on heaps of refuse from the copper
mines, and now they have abandoned the copper to work the refuse heaps.
They find them rich—in what do you suppose? In arsenic.”
“You have had much trouble in your life?” asked Arminell, not knowing
what to say to this strange, bitter woman.
“Much trouble!” Patience curtsied. She unlaced her arms, and used her
hands as she spoke, like a Frenchwoman. She lacked the words that would
express her thoughts, and enforced and supplemented them with gesture.
“Much trouble! You shall hear how I have been served. My father worked
in this old lime quarry till it was abandoned, and when it stopped, then
he was out of work for two months, and he went out poaching, and shot
himself instead of a pheasant. He was not used to a gun. ’Twasn’t the
fault of the gun. The gun was good enough. When he was brought home
dead, my mother went into one fainting fit after another, and I was
born; but she died.”
“The quarry was given up, I suppose, because it was worked out?” said
Arminell.
“Why did Providence allow it to be worked out so soon? Why wasn’t the
lime made to run ten feet deeper, three feet, one foot would have done
it to keep my father alive over my birth, and so saved my mother’s life
and made me a happy woman?”
“And when your poor mother died?”
“Then it was bad for poor me. I was left an orphan child and was brought
up by my uncle, who was a local preacher. He wasn’t over-pleased at
being saddled wi’ me to keep. He served me bad, and didn’t give me
enough to eat. Once he gave me a cruel beating because I wouldn’t say
‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ for, said I, ‘Heaven has trespassed against
me, not I against Heaven.’ Why was there not another foot or eighteen
inches more lime created when it was made, so that my father and mother
might have lived, and I had a home and not been given over to uncle?
What I said then, I say now”—all Patience’s fierceness rushed into her
eyes. “Answer me. Have I been fairly used?” She extended her arms, and
held her hands open, appealing to Arminell for her judgment.
“And then?” asked the girl, after a long silence, during which nothing
was heard but the pecking of the raven at the bars.
“And then my uncle bade me unsay my words, but I would not. Then he
swore he would thrash me every day till I asked forgiveness. So it came
about.”
“What came about?”
“That I was sent to prison.”
“Not for profanity! for what?”
“For setting fire to his house.”
“You——?”
“Yes, finish the question. Yes, I did; and so I was sent to prison.”
Arminell involuntarily shrank from the woman.
“Ah! I frighten you. But the blame does not attach to me. Why were there
not a few inches more lime created when the quarry was ordained?
Providence means, I am told, fore-seeing. When the world was made I
reckon it was foreseen that for lack of a little more lime my father
would shoot himself, and the shock kill my mother, and cast me without
parents on the hands of a hard uncle, who treated me so bad that I was
forced to set his thatch in a blaze, and so was sent to prison.
Providence saw all that in the far-off, and held hands and did not lay
another handful of lime.”
“Have you ever been married?” asked Arminell, startled by the defiance,
the rage and revolt in the woman’s heart. She asked the question without
consideration, in the hope of diverting the thoughts of Mrs. Kite into
another channel.
Patience was silent for a moment, and looked loweringly at the young
lady, then answered abruptly, “No—a few inches of lime short stopped
that.”
“How did that prevent your marriage? The quarry was stopped before you
were born.”
“Right, and because stopped, my father was shot and I became an orphan,
and was took by my uncle, and fired his house, and was sent to gaol.
After that no man cared to take to wife a woman who put lighted sticks
among the thatch. No respectable man would share his name with one who
had been in prison. But I was a handsome girl in my day—and—but there—I
will tell you no more. The stopping of the quarry did it. If there had
been laid at the bottom a few inches more of lime rock, it would never
have happened. Where lies the blame?”
“Another quarry was opened,” said Arminell, “that where Mr. Tubb is
captain.”
“True,” answered Patience; “but between the closing of one and the
opening of another, my father bought a gun, and went over a hedge with
it on a moonlight night, and the trigger caught.”
Arminell rose.
“I have been here for some time,” she said, “and I ought to be on my way
home. You will permit me—” she felt in her pocket for her purse.
“No,” said Patience curtly. “You have paid me for what I did by
listening to my story. But stay—Have you heard that if you go to a pixy
mound, and take the soil thereof and put it on your head, you can see
the little people, and hear their voices, and know all they say and do.
You have come here—to this heap of ruin and wretchedness,” she stooped
and gathered up some of the dust off the floor and ashes from the
hearth, and threw them on the head of Arminell. “I am a witch, they say.
It is well; now your eyes and ears are opened to see and know and feel
with those you never knew of before this day—another kind of creatures
to yourself—the poor, the wretched, the lonely.”
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Footnote 1:
The reader may think this an impossible case. At the present moment an
old woman in the author’s immediate neighbourhood is thus defying all
the authorities. They have come to a dead lock. She has resisted
orders to leave for three years, and is in hourly peril of her life.
The only person who could expel her is the landlord, who happens to be
poor, and who says that he cannot rebuild the cottage, the woman who
has it on a lease is bound to deliver it over at the end of the time
in good order, but she is without the means to put the cottage in
order. Next equinoctial gale may see her crushed to death.