So placid and unimpressive was the country which lay about Anne Hilton's
cottage, that in the lanes which branched from it one seldom thought of
any other season than that of spring. Even in winter, when a few
shrivelled berries clattered in the leafless hedges, and the old beech
leaves dangled until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of
the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the
banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the
young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky
would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day,
a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter
for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden
from beginning to end. The sun had risen without mist and set in a sky
without a cloud, seeming, as it sank, to draw with it all the colour
from the heavens, as if it had cast a golden net in the morning and now
drew it home again behind the hill.
As the warm light ebbed, a coolness, as of an actual atmosphere
distilled into the cottage, became apparent in the kitchen. Now that the
sunlight had gone, one could see the objects in the room with a new
distinctness. It was serious, quiet, and orderly in this grave light,
like the room of some saint shown in piety to pilgrims.
A tall, half-grown youth came to the kitchen door, and, knocking twice,
entered and sat down lumpily on the wooden armchair, slipping a basket
from his arm on to the table as he did so. He looked round him, pleased
unconsciously by the grave light and the orderly room.
"You've a quiet life of it here," he said, rising to shake hands with
Anne, who came into the room at the same moment, bending a little as she
walked with the slightly anxious expression of one preoccupied with
pain.
"Yes," she replied, "it's very pleasant in the kitchen when the sun goes
off. Nearly every evening at this time something about the room brings
to my mind the hymn--
"When quiet in my house I sit,
Thy book be my companion still."
The youth looked uncomfortable, thinking that he had brought upon
himself a sermon unawares, and that being actually inside the house, and
having sat down, he might have difficulty in extricating himself. So he
said, rather to turn the conversation from its personal character, than
from any sense of the fitness of his remarks.
"It's sad about Jane Evans, isn't it?"
"What's sad, Dick?" asked Anne, still standing, and resting both hands
on the table. "Excuse my not sitting down, I've got a bad turn of
rheumatism."
"That's bad," said Dick. "I once had a bit in my back, and it was as
much as I wanted."
"But what about Jane?" asked Anne. "I've scarcely seen her or her sister
since the old grandmother died. I seldom get so far away. The Ashley
road doesn't go near that side, and that's the one that sees me
oftenest."
"Well, it seems," replied Dick, finding it, after all, an awkward
subject to talk of to a woman, "she's gone to live with that
horse-breeder who's taken Burton's farm."
"But he's a married man," said Anne, not comprehending.
"Yes, I know," said Dick, with an embarrassed laugh, but Anne did not
hear. She had understood.
"She was a good, respectable girl," she said. "However can she have
forgotten herself like that? Where's her sister Annie?"
"They do say she's nearly as bad," replied Dick. "He's rather a taking
man--good-looking and hearty, and dresses better than the farmers, and
his wife went off with a trainer too."
"Her grandmother's only been dead two years, and she's been allowed to
go wrong like that," exclaimed Anne, with condemnation of herself in her
voice.
"Well, you know," expostulated Dick, "I don't know as it's anybody's
business. Everybody's got their own affairs to attend to."
"Oh yes! I know," said Anne. "It's never anybody's business to try to
prevent such things, but it'll be everybody's business to throw stones
at the girl very soon, if the man tires of her."
"I don't know about preventing," returned Dick; "she seemed pretty set
on him herself. I think myself it's a pity. Here's the eggs from Mary
Colton, Miss Hilton--three dozen," he added, as a diversion from the
conversation, which he found more embarrassing than the sermon he had
successfully avoided. With that he escaped from the chair with a jerk,
scuffled his feet once or twice on the floor, took his cap out of his
pocket, and ejaculated "Good-night."
"Good-night," replied Anne, still preoccupied. "Thank you for bringing
the eggs;" and she sat down with a slight groan.
"Why, it might be herself," reflected Dick, looking back at the dejected
figure in the darkening room. Being a simple youth, he felt vaguely
uncomfortable at the sight of such trouble over the doings of one who
was no relation, and began to take a little blame to himself for
thinking lightly of the girl's downfall.
"Well, she's very good," he concluded in his thoughts, "but she's
peculiar;" and he tramped heavily through the yard into the lane.
Anne did not stir. She was so shocked that her bodily faculties seemed
to have ceased, and her mind to have remained sorrowing and awake. This
lapse was even worse than that of Sir Richard's son, because it seemed
irretrievable. Then, too, it had happened before she knew anything about
it, whereas, in the other case, she had been active, and able to
expostulate and screen the young man's fall. And then, too, there was
the surprise of a middle-aged woman at the lapses of "young, strong
people," just as, if one of more maturity had fallen, the comment of the
young would have been equally certain, "an old thing like her."
To Anne, whose temptations were of the kind that betray rather than
assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity--a man's
gluttony or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not
shock her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the
grandmother who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease
that they might not run wild as many girls do, but might grow up girls
of good character. Since the grandmother died, Jane, who was young and
pretty, had tried to support herself. Anne did not know Richard Burton,
but he was older and a "married man," which, of itself, implied
responsibility to her mind. With the passion for justice, in which her
intellectual faculties found material for exercise, she declared that
Burton must be more to blame than Jane. He had money and position in the
country-side. But equally as he was more to blame he would be less
blamed. No one would dare to tell _him_ he was wrong. They would wait,
stone in hand, for the girl who had been a child among them, and when
she was forsaken and alone would throw and strike. Anne lived apart, but
she knew _that_. "It will be visited on the girl," she thought; and
indignation at Richard Burton rose steadily in her thoughts.
After a while she stirred, and, lighting a candle, slowly stooped and
raised the lid of the bread-mug. Pulling out half a loaf, she cut a
thick piece for supper. She ate it slowly, with a piece of cold bacon,
then, taking the candle, her shadow growing gigantic behind her, she
fastened the door without looking outside, and climbed the stairs,
heavily and sorrowfully, to her solitary bedroom, her shadow with one
jerk filling the whole room.