Constance Holme

“ The change to them from the uneven-floored, crooked-walled cottage in which Mrs. Clapham had lived so long would be, when it came, like the change to a king’s palace. To have a roof of her own, with nothing to pay for it, nothing to fear, would make her feel little less of a property-owner than his lordship himself. Moving up to that high place from the huddled and crouching street would be like soaring on strong wings into the open spaces of the sky.
All through her working life she had hoped that she might be allowed to end her days in one of the almshouses on Hermitage Hill. ”

“ Tibbie would never come. She fretted for her mother sometimes, just as her mother fretted for her, but as long as a certain person remained alive, Tibbie would never come.
In all the history of mankind there could never have been anybody more free than Mrs. Clapham to take what her heart desired, and just at the moment when it was most accessible to her reach. All the ties and burdens of life seemed to fall away from her as she sat waiting there, looking for the news that was certain to come, with the happy expectancy of a trustful child. ”

“ All the way behind her as she went the bells clanged and clamoured Miss Marigold’s joy, and Mrs. Clapham smiled as she listened to them, and then wept as well, because of that note of finality in the wedding-peal which is almost all that the married woman hears. The passion of its rejoicing speaks so vehemently of something brought to an end, a road closed, a door shut, a sharp cutting as with a knife. The joy of the wedding-peal must needs be emphatic and loud, because it is a joy that demands utter fearlessness if it is to remain joy at all. ”

“ Human beings are never so happy, so soothed and so unafraid, as when they seem to identify themselves with the Ruling Mind. The soul, swerving blindly from fear to fear, clings thankfully to the least vestige of a plan, whether for good or ill. It was not often that Mrs. Clapham had felt afraid of life, but it seemed to her at this moment that she would never feel afraid again. It was muddle that frightened people, she thought to herself, torn edges and jagged ends, suddenly-twisted threads that on every count should have run straight, and meaningless blows from a vague dark. ”

“ It was real shrewdness of character which had led her to choose for a husband the tamest youth in the place, whom everybody knew now to have been a hero in disguise. And she was so clever with her fingers that each one of them was worth at least the whole of another person’s hand. Young as she was, she had been the village dressmaker par excellence before she married Stephen Catterall, and Mrs. Clapham’s memories of Tibbie’s youth were always shot through by the colours in which she had worked. Her bright head, gleaming about the cottage, had always a background of coloured cottons and silks. ”

“ Sooner or later, however, they always began to run, racing hither and thither, without hope and without goal. It was only she who could not begin to run. All she could do was to stand there, helpless and bound, until that deepest of tides had swung itself over her head.
The cottage was small enough, as she knew, far smaller than the House of Dreams, but it did not seem small enough to her now. It fretted her that she could not draw the walls close enough to her on every side. She wanted a place smaller still, darker and closer—more like the grave into which they would put Tibbie. ”

“ Bell. She could never have let herself go in that carping and sniffing presence, and half the pleasure consisted in letting herself go. Alone with the house, she could be as undignified as she chose; the house did not mind—the homely, welcoming house. In the thrill of the moment it seemed to her like a September-time Santa Claus, with herself, no more than a little child again, laughing and crying like a child....
It was like old Mr. T. to have seen to it that the kitchen had a wooden floor, and an elegant block floor of the best pitch-pine at that. ”

“ A fresh spasm, evidenced by pursed lips, went round the shocked throng, exactly as if they had been drilled by some rapped-out word of command. Mrs. James looked at Mrs. Tanner, and Mrs. Airey at Mrs. Dunn. Martha Jane went furiously red, and tossed her head so violently that a hairpin flew out. Only in the background Emma went on smiling her Mona Lisa smile.... “Lordships and suchlike have their own way o’ doing things,” said her expressionless voice. “Seems to me calling on such as you is more a parson’s job than a lord’s.... But there, no doubt he knows his own business best....” ”

“ This horrible travesty of motherly tenderness had frightened Tibbie Clapham as nothing else had frightened her in life, turning her, even in its recital, into a bitter, white-faced woman whom her mother hardly knew. Evil is never so sinister as when it touches the beautiful natural things and makes them strange. The story of those nights had impressed Tibbie with such cruel force that there was a time when she was almost afraid to approach her own children as they lay and slept....
The nights had been hardest to bear, so Stephen had said, but Emma had watched him everywhere else as well. ”

“ Clapham’s heritage for the future. Even storm-nights would be wonderful, too, seen from the close haven of the House of Dreams. Somewhere, mellow, far-off voices were busy calling the cattle home, and children’s voices struck up clear as the blackbird’s whistle from their playground on the road. There is always healing in beauty, even though sometimes it wounds first, and the tired charwoman reached towards it with longing, still marvelling that the peace of the temple should be really hers. ”

“ Mr. Baines, as all the village was aware, was hardly the sort to rise up early in order to bathe his face in morning dew. Besides, as she reminded herself again, this enchanting dispensation of Providence could not possibly seem as important to him as it did to her. Why, in the pressure of business he might even forget it—let it stand over, perhaps, until to-morrow! Mrs. Clapham could hardly restrain herself from rushing off to sit waiting for him on his office doorstep when she thought of that. ”

“ Sudden surprises are wonderful in their way, opening the doors of fairylands and heavens, but they do not create security or make for peace. On the contrary, they, too, suggest chaos after their own magnificent fashion. The highest pinnacle is that which is reached after earnest endeavour, patient provision, humble yet certain hope. The charwoman felt satisfied in every inch, seeing life and the justice of things fitting each other like lock and key. ”

“ Mrs. Clapham threw at her cheerfully, as she hurried away. “I’ll just have a look round and see what’s what; and if you can spare me a cup o’ tea, I’ll be right glad of it when I’m through.”
She left Mrs. Bell still looking longingly after the key, and, turning the corner, arrived at her own door. Michaelmas daisies and asters lined the flagged path at either side, purple, clean-coloured faces not yet touched by the frost; but beside the door itself was what she knew to be a flowering currant, that first flambeau of glory which Nature flings to us in the Spring. ”

“ Nature, at least, did not pass it by. But Emma Catterall’s house, with which Nature would have nothing to do, ought not to have been dirty, and was certainly not poor. Financially, she was said to be better off than anybody in the street, and her furniture, though neglected, was most of it good and sound. Out of the tail of her eye Mrs. Clapham could see a bow-fronted chest of drawers which she would almost have given her almshouse to possess; and she felt pretty sure that Emma’s own bedroom would be comfortable enough, whatever sort of a hole she had thought fit for Stephen. ”

“ It was Emma who answered her without pause, taking up the gage instantly, and smoothing her own voice still further in order to heighten the contrast with the strident tones.
“Eh, now, Martha Jane Fell, you shouldn’t come bursting in like that! ’Tisn’t nice, when folks is in trouble, to come making a stir; and Mrs. Clapham’s heart not what it should be—not by a deal.” ”

“ Life, passing on inexorably, tells her that it is against nature to weep for this purely natural change. It is only when the grown man or woman, whom perhaps she can hardly recognise, is laid to rest, that she is allowed to weep. Then at last she may cry her heart out for the child who died but was never buried ever so long ago.
So it was for the child Tibbie that Mrs. Clapham wept, seated in the rocking-chair with the angry voice, her head dropped on the table on her outflung arms, and beside her the little lame chair resting lob-sidedly on the hearth. ”

“ Yet Jemmy—or so at least Mrs. Clapham had been known to insist—would have been right enough but for Emma. He was never a star, of course, either in looks or brains, but he was right enough as men went, seeing that in most cases they didn’t go far. It was hardly credible that he should have turned into the mad skeleton of his later years, peering at people from behind the ferns, or, later still, from a room upstairs. When he wasn’t peering he was emptying water-jugs upon callers’ heads, or throwing things at the passers-by. ”

“ Racy vulgarity getting the better of ultra-refinement is always a rather inspiriting sight. But to-day it seemed dreadful to her that her splendid moment should be prefaced by this sordid scrap. It hurt her that there should be this unpleasantness at the climax of her honest life; and moreover there was always the fear at the back of her mind that somehow it might break her luck....
Martha Jane’s speech snapped like a bent twig when the charwoman’s hand came down upon her. ”

“ Would any woman, for instance, with a heart softened either by nature or time, have schemed to keep a mother from her dying child? A fresh wave of sorrow engulfed Mrs. Clapham when she remembered that, but for Emma, she might still have seen Tibbie alive. No, there could be no question now of entrusting the children to her, after that.
Her expression changed slowly as she looked steadily at Martha Jane, and for the first time she seemed to resemble the happy Mrs. Clapham of the happy morning.
“Nay, Martha Jane,” she said quietly, “I can believe you without that. ”

“ First of all, there had been Martha Jane, turning her handsprings like a clown; and now unexpectedly there was Emma, with her prophecies of ill-luck....
So crushed, indeed, was the whole group, that it seemed for the moment as if nobody would ever have courage to answer. But even the most oppressed will fight to the last ounce for a thing that has touched their imagination, and Mrs. James had again been injured in her ideal. “Mr. Baines ’ll bring no more bad luck than most folks—that I’ll be bound!” she burst out sharply, even twisting herself from under the feathers to glare. ”

“ One said to oneself, “What is it? What is it?” and then knew it to be the feet of the new generation on the road. The patter and clatter of those feet wove themselves into the last of Mrs. Clapham’s dream. She heard the clink of clogged soles, the lighter slither of leather, the whistles and cries of the boys, the running chatter of little girls. And, long after the stream had passed on, it seemed to her that she heard other feet on the hill—the thin little dragging feet of little Libby and Baby Steve.... ”

“ Mrs. Clapham began to wonder whether she wasn’t being merely absurd in trying to take her beautiful day so beautifully. Martha Jane gave her much the same uncomfortable feeling as that curate of Mrs. Tanner’s used to give her in church; the same feeling that she might have had if a clown had been introduced into a Bethlehem Play.
“It’s right kind of you, I’m sure,” she replied, as she had already replied right and left, but with none of the usual heartiness in her voice. ”