* * * * *
ELY, 28_th_ _March_ 1839.
You must not reply. I have always tried not to answer back if it will do
no good. In a way, I am not sorry he has written in this style to you.
It proves that the leading I had was true. I feared cruel claws ever
since I first set eyes on him notwithstanding he was so even-tempered,
and I am glad he has not shown them till you are safe in Blackdeep. I
know what you will have to go through in time to come, but for all that I
am sure I am right and that you are right. I am more sure than ever. I
am sorry for him, but he will soon settle down and rejoice that you have
gone. That spiteful word about my religion does not disturb me. I have
my own religion. I have brought up my children in it. I have taught
them to fear God and to love the Lord Jesus Christ, who has stood by me
in all my troubles and guided me in all my straits whenever I have been
willing to wait His time. I bless God, my dear child, that you have not
gone away from your mother’s faith—ay, and your father’s too—and that you
can still pray to your Heavenly Father in your distress. Be thankful you
have been spared the worst, that you have not grown hard.
I shall come back this week; your aunt wants you here, and a change will
do you good.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP, 10_th_ _April_ 1839.
I am glad you went to Ely, for yesterday the parson called to see you.
He had received a letter from Mr. Craggs, and considered it his duty as a
Christian minister to endeavour to bring about a reconciliation. I told
him at once he might spare himself the pains, for they would be useless.
He replied that I ought to think of the example. Well, at that I broke
out. I asked him whether that slut of a Quimby girl wasn’t a worse
example, who at five-and-twenty had married Horrocks, the hoary old
wretch, for his money, and leads him a dog’s life? Had he ever warned
either of them? They go to church regular. I was very free, and I said
I thought it was a bright example that a woman should have given up a
fine house and money in London because there was no love with them, and
should have come back to her mother at Blackdeep. Besides, I added, why
should my Esther suffer a living death for years for the sake of the folk
hereabouts? They weren’t worth it. She was too precious for that.
‘Oh!’ but he went on again, ‘they have souls to be saved. Husbands and
wives may be led to imagine there is no harm in separating, and may yield
to the temptations of unlawful love.’ This made me very hot, and I gave
it him back sharp that a sinner could find in the Bible itself an excuse
for his sin.
He said no more except that it would be a nice scandal for the
Dissenters, and that he trusted God would bring me into a better frame of
mind. He then went away. His reasoning went in at one ear and out at
the other. Parsons are bound to preach by rule. It is all general: it
doesn’t fit the ins and outs.
* * * * *
BLACKDEEP, 1_st_ _May_ 1839.
You had better stop at Ely as long as you can. Everybody is gossiping,
for parson has told the story as he heard it from your husband. It is
worse for Jim than for me, as he goes about among people here, and
although they daren’t say anything to him about you, there is no mistake
as to what they think. Mrs. Horrocks inquired after me, and said she was
sorry to hear of my trouble. Jim told her I was quite well, and that the
two cows were now all right. He wouldn’t let her see he knew what she
meant.
Last night, Jim, who has been talking for a twelvemonth past about going
to his cousin in America, asked me whether I would not be willing to
leave. I have always set my face against it. To turn my back on the old
house and the Fen, to begin again at my time of life in a new strange
world would be the death of me. More than ever now am I determined to
end my days here. They’d say at once we had fled. No, here we’ll bide
and face it out.
* * * * *
They did not fly. Years went on, and to the astonishment of their
neighbours—perhaps they were a little sorry—there was no sign that Esther
had a lover. Mrs. Horrocks’s eyes were feline, but she was obliged to
admit she was at fault. Jim married, and an agreeable opportunity was
presented for the expression of amazement that his wife’s father and
mother felt safe in allowing their child to enter such a family—but then
she came from Norwich. The majority of the poor in Blackdeep Fen sided
with the Suttons, and here and there a pagan farmer boldly declared that
old Mrs. Sutton and her daughter were of a right good sort, and that
there was not a straightforrarder man than Jim in Ely market. But to
respectable Blackdeep society the Suttons remained a vexatious knot which
it could not unpick and lay straight. Nobody, as Mrs. Horrocks observed,
knew how to take them. Mrs. Craggs wore her wedding-ring, and when she
was in Mrs. Jarvis’s shop looked her straight in the face and asked for
what she wanted as if she were the parson’s wife. But that, according to
Mrs. Horrocks, just showed her impudence. ‘What a time that poor Craggs
in London must have had of it:’ (Mr. Horrocks was not present). ‘Lord!
how I do pity the man.’ ‘And yet,’ added Mrs. Jarvis, ‘and _yet_, you
might eat your dinner off Mrs. Craggs’s floor. I call it hers, for she
cleans it.’ Clearly the living-room ought to have been a pigsty. It was
particularly annoying that, although Mrs. Sutton and her family by
absence from church had become infidels, they did not go to the devil
openly as they ought to do, and thereby relieve Blackdeep of that pain
and even hatred which are begotten by an obstinate exception to what
would otherwise be a general law. Parson often preached that everybody
was either a sheep or a goat. The Suttons were not sheep—that was
certain; and yet it was difficult to classify them as ordinary Blackdeep
goats, creatures with horns. Mrs. Jarvis had heard that there was a
peculiar breed of goats with sheep’s wool and without horns. ‘Esther
Craggs,’ she maintained, ‘will one day show us what she’s after; mark my
word, you’ll see. If that brazen face means nothing, then I’m
stone-blind.’
After Jim’s marriage Esther continued to manage the house and the dairy,
leaving the cooking to her sister-in-law and the needlework to her
mother. Soon after five o’clock on a bright summer morning the labourer
going to his work heard the unbarring of Mrs. Sutton’s shutters and the
withdrawal of bolts. The casement windows and the door were then flung
open, and Esther generally came into the doorway and for a few minutes
faced the sun. She did not shut herself up. She walked the village like
a queen, and no Fen farmer or squireling ventured to jest with her. Mrs.
Jarvis could not be brought to admit her stone-blindness and clung to the
theory of somebody in London; but as Esther never went to London, and
nobody from London came to her, and the postmistress swore no letters
passed between London and the Sutton family, Mrs. Jarvis became a little
distrusted, although some of her acquaintances believed her predictions
with greater firmness as they remained unfulfilled. ‘I don’t care what
you may say; don’t tell me,’ was her reply to sceptical objections, and
it carried great weight.
Esther died of the Blackdeep fever in the fifth year after she came home.
As soon as he received the news of her death Mr. Craggs married Mrs.
Perkins, who had been twelve months a widow, was admitted into
partnership, and is now one of the most respected men in the City.