Mrs Hankworth lived at one of the largest farms in the country, some
three miles away from Anne Hilton's cottage. The farmstead was, contrary
to the usual custom, not placed near the high road for convenience, but
on an eminence in the midst of its own lands. A road had been cut to it
between cornfields, so that in the time of springing corn a man walking
on this road seemed to be wading to the knees in a green undulating sea,
which had risen and submerged the hill. The farm itself was large, with
a garden unusually well kept, a sign that the mistress counted in the
establishment. Old rose trees grew almost to the roof of the wide
building, and the thick turf bore token to the richness of the soil.
Inside, the passage, the stairs, the rooms, were all spacious, and, in
spite of the rattling of cans and the sound of voices in the kitchen,
the place retained an atmosphere of quiet and tranquillity, not of
isolation or desertion, but of that comfortable restfulness which one
recalls as a child, when, having been ill, one is left at home when the
others have gone to school, and remains in a quiet house, watching
contentedly the leisurely cheerful movements of one's mother.
Mrs Hankworth, the mistress of the best farm in the country, was an
enormously stout but very active woman. Her husband, a man half her size
and an excellent farmer, exhibited only one trait of nervousness, and
that on her account. If she went to market without him he was uneasy
until she came back lest something should have happened to her. In all
the fifteen years of their married life they had never slept out of
their own bed, and they had had no honeymoon.
With the contentment of a woman of sound health and of active useful
life, who was fully aware that her good sense and management were as
necessary to the farm, her husband and twelve children, as his own
knowledge of farming, she looked upon this as a just sense of her own
value, as indeed it was, and the reward of the confidence which she so
completely deserved from her husband. She was generous to her poorer
neighbours even when they cheated her. Not taking it very deeply to
heart nor expecting much otherwise, she was yet able to remember that
her lot was an affluent one compared with theirs, and was ready to
excuse even while being perfectly aware of human fraility. Who, when she
had sent to an old woman of the village who lived discontentedly on such
pickings as she could induce her neighbours to leave her, and who had
constantly profited by the liberality of this well-established mistress,
a ticket for a large tea, and was informed by some officious person that
the husband also had procured a ticket at her expense, said, "He's a
poor old crab-stick. It'll do him no harm to have a good tea for once."
She was a contented woman, entirely satisfied with the position which
life had allotted to her, a position in which all her faculties had full
scope, and were to the full appreciated by those with whom she had most
to do, and being of a really kind heart she was a good friend to the
poor. When Anne arrived at the door of the dairy, she found its mistress
seated before a tin pail containing a mass of butter which she was
dividing into prints. With white sleeves and apron, a bucket of scalding
water on one side of her and a pail of cold on the other, her ample
knees spread apart for balance as she sat on a low chair, her bulky and
capable hands moved with decision and practice about her work. She
looked up as Anne appeared in the doorway, but her hands did not cease
working.
"It's not often we have to do this," she said, "but they sent down word
that there was no milk wanted yesterday, so we had to set to."
"It looks nice butter," said Anne, with the judgment of a connoisseur.
"_You_ ought to know what good butter is," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I've
just been having a laugh over that Peter Molesworth. He wrote on his
account, "17 pints." Did you ever hear such a thing! It took me quite a
long time to know what 17 pints was. Him and his 17 pints!"
"He's not very clever, Peter," said Anne, "but I don't know what his
poor mother would do without him."
"No," returned Mrs Hankworth, "he's hard-working if he's stupid, and
that's better than the other way round."
"Mrs Hankworth," began Anne, "I know what a good friend you've always
been to those that have got into trouble, and I came to ask your advice
about that poor Jane Evans."
"I just heard of it the other day," replied Mrs Hankworth, letting the
butter-prints sink on her lap. "I don't know how it was I came to know
of it so late. I'd no idea till the other day that she'd ever gone to
live with that Burton. I wonder how she got acquainted with him. There's
no men goes about their house. What's she doing now?"
"She's in the Union," said Anne, "and she sits there without speaking,
staring into the fire. Nobody can rouse her. She seems to have no life
left in her. It's pitiful to see her, and to think of what's coming to
her."
"She's been foolish," said Mrs Hankworth, "and I expect she'll find
plenty to make her pay for her foolishness. But I see no reason why she
shouldn't do all the better for a lesson. She'll have to work though.
There'll be no sitting round in silk blouses doing fancy-work. You
needn't be troubled about her moping when she's got the baby. They don't
leave you much time for that," she added with a laugh of retrospection.
"But your first baby's as much trouble as ten. If she can earn a living
when she comes out she'll be better without that Burton. He's no better
than a child's balloon. He's up, and you prick him with a pin and he's
down! She's provided in the Union, I suppose?"
"I think so, since they never asked anything about it," said Anne.
"What sort of a place is it, Miss Hilton?" asked Mrs Hankworth in the
tone of one who might be enquiring after a prison or worse.
"They'd a nice big fire," said Anne, "and until you came to look at the
people, it looked quite comfortable. But when you came to look at those
poor things, and thought that that was all they had to expect, it made
your heart ache."
"She's a good matron I've heard," said Mrs Hankworth.
"She's a kind woman," returned Anne, heartily, "and I suppose it's a
good thing they've got such a place to shelter them. But it seems a poor
end somehow, and not a place for young people. There seems to be no hope
in it, and yet it's clean, and they've got good food."
"Other people's bread doesn't taste like your own to them that's been
used to having any," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I expect, if you've never
had any of your own, you're glad to get anything. I suppose Burton's out
of the country."
"Nobody seems to know rightly," said Anne. "Jane says not a word. I
don't suppose she really knows anything."
"She'll come to see that she's better without him," said Mrs Hankworth,
taking up the prints and working the butter emphatically. "But she must
work like the rest of us. It's generally the long clothes that gets left
over," she added, "the short ones get worn out by some of them, but I'll
look and see what I can find. It'll be rather nice to be looking out
baby-things again. There's nothing you miss more than a baby, when
you've had one or other about for a good many years. But she'd never do
any good with that Burton about."
It seemed not so much the fact that a girl would give up her reputation
for a man, that impressed Mrs Hankworth unpleasantly, but that she would
give it into the keeping of _such_ a man. She did not expect impossible
things of anybody. No one belonging to her had ever made a slip, and
such a happening seemed to be so remote a possibility for anyone
"connected," that she could spare great charity for the rest of the
world. Nor did she believe in "driving people." If a girl had made a
mistake, that was no reason why everyone else should make another, and
her good sense revolted against a perpetually drawn-out punishment for
any fault. Her disgust at this fault, not very deep, being submerged
almost as it arose, by the immediate necessity for doing something, and
a reminiscent understanding of the timidity and dread with which the
first child-bearing might be regarded by an ignorant and forsaken girl.
Her position as the reputable and capable mother of a family being
unassailable, no one could consider that kindness to the girl implied
any countenancing of her offence. Anne, puzzled and baffled by the
things which she had seen, felt herself in a larger sphere which could
consider the fact of birth as a small matter for everyday occurrence and
preparation, happen however it might.
"You can't do anything by worrying, Miss Hilton, you know," said Mrs
Hankworth. "You've got to wait. There's nothing _anybody_ can do but
wait. There's our John. I think he gets more nervous every child we
have. I always say to him that he can't help anything by worrying, and
in any case _I'm_ the person who's got to go through it; but it makes no
difference. He can't be satisfied till he sees me walking about again.
The girl'll be quite right when she's got the baby to work for. She's
nothing to do now but wait and think about it and herself. You'll see
when she's up and about again she'll be another thing. I hope the baby's
a boy. It'll be sooner forgotten about if he is."
"I'm afraid," said Anne, growing expansive beneath the good sense which
attacked every practical side of the matter, and dissolved difficulties
as soon as they arose, "that she'll get little work to do when she comes
out. People talk unkindly, and say that you must make a difference
between her and other girls."
"Oh! there'll always be some clever folk like that," said Mrs Hankworth,
drily. "The difference that anyone can see if they use their eyes is,
that _she'll_ have a child to keep and _they_ won't. She's no idea where
she'll go, I suppose?"
"She doesn't seem to know where she is now," replied Anne. "It's
terrible to see anybody drinking such bitter waters as that poor girl.
She thinks we're all against her, and I'm a religious old maid. So she
shuts herself up, and doesn't say a word."
"Don't you worry, Miss Hilton," said Mrs Hankworth; "she'll look for
friends when the baby comes. She'll stir herself for his sake, if she
won't for her own. We're going to have Mr Charter to stop to-morrow
night. You'll be going to the Home Missions, won't you?" she said, as if
all had been said that could be.
"It'll be a great treat to hear Mr Charter," said Anne. "He's such a
kind way of talking about everybody. It's a season of grace and sweet
delight when he comes."
"He's got such a way with children and young people," said Mrs
Hankworth, steering away from "experiences." "There's my big lad
William! He'll follow him round from place to place till he's out of
walking distance. 'What do you do it for, William?' I says to him, and
he stands on one leg and then on the other, and says 'I don't know,' he
says. 'I like hearing him,' he says. He's a great attraction for him."
"I hope there'll be a good meeting," said Anne, rising to go. "Don't you
get up. It's been a great relief to me to have a chat with you."
"I'll go down myself and have a look at Jane," said Mrs Hankworth.
"Perhaps in a week or so she'll have got a bit used to her position, and
see that she can't go on like that long."
"It'll be a real work of charity," said Anne earnestly. "Young people
think a lot of married women. She thinks, you know, that I'm an old maid
and don't know anything about it."
"Well, I'll go," said Mrs Hankworth, gratified. "Good morning, then. We
shall see you at the meeting."
"God willing," replied Anne, and turned to go, comforted by the
confidence and ample views of this well-to-do woman.