MRS. HAWORTH AND GRANNY DIXON.
About this time a change appeared in little Mrs. Haworth. Sometimes when
they sat together, Haworth found himself looking up suddenly and feeling
that her eyes were fixed upon him, and at such times she invariably met
his glance with a timid, startled expression, and released herself from
it as soon as she had the power.
She had never been so tender and lavish with her innocent caresses, but
there was continuously a tremulous watchfulness in her manner, which was
almost suggestive of fear. It was not fear of him, however. She clung to
him with all the strength of her love. At night when he returned home,
however late, he was sure of finding her waiting patiently for him, and
in the morning when he left the house he was never so early that she was
not at his service. The man began to quail before her, and grow restless
in secret, and be haunted, when he awakened in the night, by his
remembrance of her.
"She is on the lookout for something," he said to himself, fearfully.
"What have they been saying to her?"
On her part, when she sat alone, she used to try and think the matter
out, and set it straight and account for it.
"It's the strikes," she said, "as has set them agen him and made 'em
hard an' forgetful of all he's done. They'd never have spoke so if
they'd been theirselves."
She could scarcely have told what she had heard, or how the first blow
had struck home. She only knew that here and there she had heard at
first a rough jeer and then a terrible outspoken story, which, in spite
of her disbelief, filled her with dread. The man who first flung the
ill-favored story at her stopped half-way through it, the words dying on
his lips at the sight of her face.
It happened in one of her pensioners' cottages, and she rose from her
chair trembling.
"I didn't think," she said, with unconscious pathos, "as the world could
be so ignorant and wicked."
But as the ill-feeling became more violent, she met with the same story
again and again, and often with new and worse versions in forms she
could not combat. She began to be haunted by vague memories of things
she had not comprehended. A sense of pain followed her. She was afraid,
at times, to go to the cottages, lest she should be confronted with
something which would overwhelm her. Then she began to search her son's
face with a sense of finding some strangeness in it. She watched him
wistfully when he had so far forgotten her presence as to be almost
unaware of it. One night, having thrown himself upon a sofa and fallen
into a weary sleep, he suddenly started up from it to find her standing
close by him, looking down, her face pale, her locked fingers moving
nervously.
"What is it?" he exclaimed. "What ails you?"
He was startled by her falling upon her knees at his side, crying, and
laying her shaking hand upon his shoulder.
"You was having a bad dream, my dear," she said,--"a bad dream. I--I
scarcely knowed your face, Jem--it was so altered."
He sank back upon his cushions and stared at her. He knew he had been
having no bad dream. His dreams were not half so evil and bitter when he
slept as they were in these days when he wakened.
"You always had such a good face, Jem," she said, "and such a kind one.
When you was a boy----"
He stopped her almost sullenly.
"I'm not a boy now," he said. "That's put away and done with."
"No," she answered, "that's true, my dear; but you've lived an innocent
life, an'--an' never done no wrong--no more than you did when you was
one. And your face was so altered."
Her voice died away into a silence which, somehow, neither of them could
break.
It was Granny Dixon who revealed the truth in its barest form. Perhaps
no man nor woman in Broxton knew more of it than this respectable
ancient matron. Haworth and his iniquities had been the spice of her
later life. The fact that his name was being mentioned in a conversation
never escaped her; she discovered it as if by magic and invariably
commanded that the incident under discussion be repeated at the top of
the reciter's voice for her benefit, occasionally somewhat to the
confusion of the honest matron in question.
How it had happened that she had not betrayed all to Mrs. Haworth at
once was a mystery to remain unsolved. During the little woman's visits
to the cottage, Mrs. Briarley existed in a chronic condition of fear and
trembling.
"She'll be out wi' it some o' these days, mark me," she would quaver to
Janey. "An' th' Lord knows, I would na' be theer fur nowt when she
does."
But she did not do it at first. Mrs. Briarley had a secret conviction
that the fact that she did not do so was due entirely to iniquity. She
had seen her sit peering from under her brows at their guest as the
simple creature poured forth her loving praise of her son, and at such
times it was always Mrs. Briarley's province to repeat the conversation
for her benefit.
"Aye," Mrs. Dixon would comment with an evil smile, "that's him! That's
Haworth! He's a noice chap--is Haworth. _I_ know him."
Mrs. Haworth learned in time to fear her and to speak timidly in her
presence, rarely referring to the subject of her boy's benefactions.
"Only as it wouldn't be nat'ral," she said once to Mrs. Briarley, "I
should think she was set agen him."
"Eh! bless us," was Mrs. Briarley's answer. "Yo' need na moind _her_.
She's set agen ivverybody. She's th' nowtest owd piece i' Christendom."
A few days after Haworth had awakened to find his mother standing near
him, Mrs. Haworth paid a visit to the Briarleys. She took with her a
basket, which the poor of Broxton had long since learned to know. In
this case it contained stockings for the little Briarleys and a dress or
so for the baby.
When she had bestowed her gifts and seated herself, she turned to Granny
Dixon with some tremor of manner.
"I hope you're well, ma'am," she said.
Granny Dixon made no reply. She sat bent over in her chair, regarding
her for a few seconds with unblinking gaze. Then she slowly pointed with
her thin, crooked finger to the little presents.
"He sent 'em, did he?" she trumpeted forth. "Haworth?"
Mrs. Haworth quailed before her.
"Yes, ma'am," she answered, "leastways----"
Granny Dixon stopped her.
"He did nowt o' th' soart," she cried. "Tha'rt leein'!"
The little woman made an effort to rise, turned pale, and sat down
again.
"Ma'am----" she began.
Granny Dixon's eyes sparkled.
"Tha'rt leein'," she repeated. "He's th' worst chap i' England, and aw
Broxton knows it."
Her victim uttered a low cry of pain. Mrs. Briarley had left the room,
and there was no one to help her. All the hints and jeers she had heard
rushed back to her, but she struggled to stand up against them.
"It ain't true," she said. "It ain't--true."
Granny Dixon was just beginning to enjoy herself. A difference of
opinion with Mrs. Briarley, which had occurred a short time before, had
prepared her for the occasion. She knew that nothing would so much
demoralize her relative and hostess as this iniquitous outbreak.
"They've been warnin' me to keep quiet an' not tell thee," she answered,
"but I towd 'em I'd tell thee when I wur i' th' humor, an' I'm i' th'
humor now. Will Ffrench wur a devil, but _he's_ a bigger one yet. He
kep' thee away because he did na want thee to know. He set aw th' place
by th' ears. A decent woman would na cross his door-step, nor a decent
mon, fur aw his brass--afore tha coom. Th' lot as he used to ha' down
fro' Lunnon an' Manchester wur a shame to th' town. _I've_ seed
'em--women in paint an' feathers, an' men as decent lasses hide fro'. A
good un, wur he? Aye, he wur a good un, for sure."
She sat and chuckled a moment, thinking of Sararann's coming terror and
confusion. She had no objection to Haworth's moral lapses, herself, but
she meant to make the most of them while she was at it. She saw nothing
of the anguish in the face from which all the fresh, almost girlish
color had faded.
"An' yo' did na know as they wur na gentlefolk," she proclaimed again.
"Tha thowt they wur ladies an' gentlemen when tha coom in on 'em th'
fust night tha set foot i' th' house. A noice batch o' ladies they wur!
An he passed 'em off on thee! He wur sharp enow fur that, trust him.
Ladies, bless us! _I_ heard tell on it--an' so did aw Broxton!"
The wounded creature gathered all her strength to rise from her chair.
She stood pressing her hands against her heart, swaying and deadly pale.
"He has been a good son to me," she said. "A good son--an' I can't
believe it. You wouldn't yourself if--you was his mother, an' knew him
as--as I do."
She made her way to the door just as Mrs. Briarley came in. One glance
told that excellent matron that the long-dreaded calamity had arrived.
"What's she been up to?" she demanded. "Lord ha' mercy! what's she been
up to now?"
"She's been tellin' me," faltered the departing guest, "that my son's a
bad man an' a shame to me. Let me go, ma'am--for I've never heard talk
like this before--an' it's made me a bit weak an'--queer."
And she slipped past and was gone.
Mrs. Briarley's patience deserted her. A full sense of what Granny
Dixon's worst might be burst in upon her; a remembrance of her own
manifold wrongs and humiliations added itself to this sense; for the
moment, discretion ceased to appear the better part of valor.
"What has tha been sayin'?" she cried. "What has tha been sayin'? Out
wi' it."
"I've been telling her what tha wur afeared to tell her," chuckled Mrs.
Dixon with exultation. "I towd thee I would an' I've done it."
Mrs. Briarley made no more ado. She set the baby down upon an adjacent
chair with a resonant sound, and then fell upon the miserable old woman
and seizing her by the shoulders shook her until her cap flew off and
danced upon her back and her mouth opened and shut as if worked by a
spring.
"Tha brazent, hard-hearted besom, tha!" she cried as she shook. "Tha
ill-farrant nowt, tha! as nivver did no good i' thy days an canna bear
as no one else should. I dunnot care if I nivver see thy brass as long
as I live. If tha wur noine i'stead o' ninety-five I'd give thee a
hidin', tha brazent, hard-hearted owd piece!"
Her strength failed her and she loosened her hold and sat down and wept
aloud behind the baby, and Mrs. Dixon fell back in her chair, an
unpleasant heap, without breath to speak a word or strength to do
anything but clutch wildly at her cap, and so remained shrunken and
staring.