Next day at daybreak the country was whitened by a light mist. The birds
sang incessantly with long ecstatic calling from throats which had drunk
the air of the dawn and retained something of its quality. Coolness
refreshed the day and strengthened the eyes, and one's ears were opened
to hear from every side the chorus which in a more varied landscape one
took as a part of the glittering moving world outside the house.
Anne unbolted the house-door. The dog rose from the hearth and stretched
itself slowly, yawning and shutting its mouth with a snap. Then it
walked to the door, waiting until it was dragged open grating on the
sand of the floor. The cool morning air came in like a visitor. The old
dog pushed against Anne as she stepped outside, sneezed, yawned again,
and lay down in the sunshine to finish his nap.
"Haven't you had enough sleep yet, Lion?" said Anne. "Look, what a
beautiful day it is! Why, there's Mary on the road already," she added,
looking over the low gate.
Mary was coming straight down the middle of the road, her
black-and-white terrier sniffing on all sides and pulling the cord by
which she held him. When he perceived the presence of the other dog he
began to advance by leaps, uttering little yelps between each like a
child's jumping toy. Lion, with the superiority of a larger dog, raised
himself without hurry and advanced to meet the terrier, who excitedly
whined and sniffed about him.
"Good morning," said Anne, "you're out early."
"Yes," replied Mary, standing quite still in the position in which she
had halted. "I came over the fields. The grass is very wet though.
There's a mist, surely."
"Yes, a thick one," said Anne, "but the sun's coming through. Listen to
the birds. Did you ever hear anything like them?"
"I was out collecting the eggs at five o'clock this morning," returned
Mary, "and I think I never heard them so busy. The earth was all a-hum
with them. They seemed as though they _must_ be listened to, whatever
happened."
Both women stood listening.
"I came this way because I was going to leave my shilling for Lord
Axton's wedding present," said Mary, after a moment's silence.
"Did they come and ask _you_ for one?" said Anne. "I think they ought to
be ashamed of themselves."
"There's been some grumbling about it," said Mary. "I think myself the
agent should have left it to those who wanted. I suppose we could have
said No, but nobody likes to. It isn't as if people like them want any
wedding presents we can give them, and a shilling means a lot to some
people."
"It's the agent that wants to make a show," said Anne. "I think
sometimes that if those rich people knew how their wedding presents were
procured," she went on in the stilted manner habitual to her when
wishing to express a formal thought, "they would find little pleasure in
them."
"Mr Burton's given £10," said Mary. "They'll have a good sum." She
paused, distrustful.
Mary, who was known to all the country side, and who could do nothing
secretly, seldom spoke of the affairs of her neighbours. Whether she was
by nature a little taciturn, or whether her blindness, before which so
much passed unobserved, which cut her off from the possibility of
forming a judgment, had increased her natural modesty and diffidence,
she drew back into silence where others were discussed. But the actual
difficulties of living, which she daily and silently surmounted, brought
her so closely into touch with reality that she invariably saw, not the
fault or its circumstances, but the practical difficulties issuing from
it. But she had unthinkingly stumbled upon the scandal, and she went on,
"I was sorry to hear of Jane Evans forgetting herself like she has."
"Poor girl," said Anne; "she seems so certain that it'll last. What was
so sad to me, was that a girl brought up as she was by her grandmother
should have so little sense of her position."
"She's happy, I suppose," said Mary, "and there's no need to look
further. She'll find it hard to earn a living if he gets tired of her."
"He's not an ill-natured man," said Anne. "You feel as though if he'd
been brought up to have a respect for good behaviour he wouldn't have
got loose so easily. He thinks he's doing a generous thing, and giving
Jane a good time, without thinking what the result must be to her good
character. He doesn't like to see people unhappy, as he calls
unhappiness. He hasn't learnt the results of sin in his own experience,
and won't look at them in others. He kept on telling me she'd got a
servant of her own, and needn't do anything but fancy-work. They'd
neither of them hear anything I could say. I can't understand how they
came to know one another at the beginning. It seems to have come about
without anyone's knowing till it was too late."
"He seems a joking sort of man," said Mary. "Once he came up to buy a
paper, and gave me half a sovereign instead of sixpence to change, and
when I told him he'd made a mistake he laughed a lot, and said he wanted
to know if I could tell the difference. He never sees me now without
speaking of it and laughing."
"Yes," said Anne; "he's fond of rough jokes of his own making, and
thinks that giving people material things makes them happy," she
continued in her bookish manner. "I remember just such another man as
him, a boisterous sort of man, whose old father was dying, who took the
old man out to look at a new grand-stand they were making. Poor old man!
It was pitiful to see him in the presence of eternity, looking at a new
grand-stand."
"I suppose, being as I am," said Mary, "there's a lot of temptations
been spared to me."
"I wish we were all as kind and charitable as you," said Anne. "I never
heard you say a hard thing of anybody all the years I've known you."