Raeburn, a note containing cold though civil excuses as to herself, while accepting the invitation for Marcella, who should be sent to the Court, either in the carriage or under the escort of a maid who could bring her back. Marcella found her mother inclined to insist punctiliously on conventions of this kind. It amused her, in submitting to them, to remember the free and easy ways of her London life. But she submitted—and not unwillingly.
On the afternoon of the day which intervened between the Maxwells' call and her introduction to the Court, Marcella walked as usual down to the village. She was teeming with plans for her new kingdom, and could not keep herself out of it. And an entry in one of the local papers had suggested to her that Hurd might possibly find work in a parish some miles from Mellor. She must go and send him off there.
When Mrs. Hurd opened the door to her, Marcella was astonished to perceive behind her the forms of several other persons filling up the narrow space of the usually solitary cottage—in fact, a tea-party.
"Oh, come in, miss," said Mrs. Hurd, with some embarrassment, as though it occurred to her that her visitor might legitimately wonder to find a person of her penury entertaining company. Then, lowering her voice, she hurriedly explained: "There's Mrs. Brunt come in this afternoon to help me wi' the washin' while I finished my score of plait for the woman who takes 'em into town to-morrow. And there's old Patton an' his wife—you know 'em, miss?—them as lives in the parish houses top o' the common. He's walked out a few steps to-day. It's not often he's able, and when I see him through the door I said to 'em, 'if you'll come in an' take a cheer, I dessay them tea-leaves 'ull stan' another wettin'. I haven't got nothink else.' And there's Mrs. Jellison, she came in along o' the Pattons. You can't say her no, she's a queer one. Do you know her, miss?"
"Oh, bless yer, yes, yes. She knows me!" said a high, jocular voice, making Mrs. Hurd start; "she couldn't be long hereabouts without makkin' eëaste to know me. You coom in, miss. We're not afraid o' you—Lor' bless you!"
Mrs. Hurd stood aside for her visitor to pass in, looking round her the while, in some perplexity, to see whether there was a spare chair and room to place it. She was a delicate, willowy woman, still young in figure, with a fresh colour, belied by the grey circles under the eyes and the pinched sharpness of the features. The upper lip, which was pretty and childish, was raised a little over the teeth; the whole expression of the slightly open mouth was unusually soft and sensitive. On the whole, Minta Hurd was liked in the village, though she was thought a trifle "fine." The whole family, indeed, "kept theirsels to theirsels," and to find Mrs. Hurd with company was unusual. Her name, of course, was short for Araminta.
Marcella laughed as she caught Mrs. Jellison's remarks, and made her way in, delighted. For the present, these village people affected her like figures in poetry or drama. She saw them with the eye of the imagination through a medium provided by Socialist discussion, or by certain phases of modern art; and the little scene of Mrs. Hurd's tea-party took for her in an instant the dramatic zest and glamour.
"Look here, Mrs. Jellison," she said, going up to her; "I was just going to leave these apples for your grandson. Perhaps you'll take them, now you're here. They're quite sweet, though they look green. They're the best we've got, the gardener says."
"Oh, they are, are they?" said Mrs. Jellison, composedly, looking up at her. "Well, put 'em down, miss. I dare say he'll eat 'em. He eats most things, and don't want no doctor's stuff nayther, though his mother do keep on at me for spoilin' his stummuck."
"You are just fond of that boy, aren't you, Mrs. Jellison?" said Marcella, taking a wooden stool, the only piece of furniture left in the tiny cottage on which it was possible to sit, and squeezing herself into a corner by the fire, whence she commanded the whole group. "No! don't you turn Mr. Patton out of that chair, Mrs. Hurd, or I shall have to go away."
For Mrs. Hurd, in her anxiety, was whispering in old Patton's ear that it might be well for him to give up her one wooden arm-chair, in which he was established, to Miss Boyce. But he, being old, deaf, and rheumatic, was slow to move, and Marcella's peremptory gesture bade her leave him in peace.
"Well, it's you that's the young 'un, ain't it, miss?" said Mrs. Jellison, cheerfully. "Poor old Patton, he do get slow on his legs, don't you, Patton? But there, there's no helping it when you're turned of eighty."
And she turned upon him a bright, philosophic eye, being herself a young thing not much over seventy, and energetic accordingly. Mrs. Jellison passed for the village wit, and was at least talkative and excitable beyond her fellows.
"Well, you don't seem to mind getting old, Mrs. Jellison," said Marcella, smiling at her.
The eyes of all the old people round their tea-table were by now drawn irresistibly to Miss Boyce in the chimney corner, to her slim grace, and the splendour of her large black hat and feathers. The new squire's daughter had so far taken them by surprise. Some of them, however, were by now in the second stage of critical observation—none the less critical because furtive and inarticulate.
"Ah?" said Mrs. Jellison, interrogatively, with a high, long-drawn note peculiar to her. "Well, I've never found you get forrarder wi' snarlin' over what you can't help. And there's mercies. When you've had a husband in his bed for fower year, miss, and he's took at last, you'll know."
She nodded emphatically. Marcella laughed.
"I know you were very fond of him, Mrs. Jellison, and looked after him very well, too."
"Oh, I don't say nothin' about that," said Mrs. Jellison, hastily. "But all the same you kin reckon it up, and see for yoursen. Fower year—an' fire upstairs, an' fire downstairs, an' fire all night, an' soomthin' allus wanted. An' he such an objeck afore he died! It do seem like a holiday now to sit a bit."
And she crossed her hands on her lap with a long breath of content. A lock of grey hair had escaped from her bonnet, across her wrinkled forehead, and gave her a half-careless rakish air. Her youth of long ago—a youth of mad spirits, and of an extraordinary capacity for physical enjoyment, seemed at times to pierce to the surface again, even through her load of years. But in general she had a dreamy, sunny look, as of one fed with humorous fancies, but disinclined often to the trouble of communicating them.
"Well, I missed my daughter, I kin tell you," said Mrs. Brunt, with a sigh, "though she took a deal more lookin' after nor your good man, Mrs. Jellison."
Mrs. Brunt was a gentle, pretty old woman, who lived in another of the village almshouses, next door to the Pattons, and was always ready to help her neighbours in their domestic toils. Her last remaining daughter, the victim of a horrible spinal disease, had died some nine or ten months before the Boyces arrived at Mellor. Marcella had already heard the story several times, but it was part of her social gift that she was a good listener to such things even at the twentieth hearing.
"You wouldn't have her back though," she said gently, turning towards the speaker.
"No, I wouldn't have her back, miss," said Mrs. Brunt, raising her hand to brush away a tear, partly the result of feeling, partly of a long-established habit. "But I do miss her nights terrible! 'Mother, ain't it ten o'clock?—mother, look at the clock, do, mother—ain't it time for my stuff, mother—oh, I do hope it is.' That was her stuff, miss, to make her sleep. And when she'd got it, she'd groan—you'd think she couldn't be asleep, and yet she was, dead-like—for two hours. I didn't get no rest with her, and now I don't seem to get no rest without her."
And again Mrs. Brunt put her hand up to her eyes.
"Ah, you were allus one for toilin' an' frettin'," said Mrs. Jellison, calmly. "A body must get through wi' it when it's there, but I don't hold wi' thinkin' about it when it's done."
"I know one," said old Patton, slily, "that fretted about her darter when it didn't do her no good."
He had not spoken so far, but had sat with his hands on his stick, a spectator of the women's humours. He was a little hunched man, twisted and bent double with rheumatic gout, the fruit of seventy years of field work. His small face was almost lost, dog-like, under shaggy hair and overgrown eyebrows, both snow-white. He had a look of irritable eagerness,