As she passed through the park gate Betty was thinking of the first morning on which she had walked down the village street between the irregular rows of red-tiled cottages with the ragged little enclosing gardens.Then the air and sunshine had been of the just awakening spring, now the sky was brightly cold, and through the small-paned windows she caught glimpses of fireglow.A bent old man walking very slowly, leaning upon two sticks, had a red-brown woollen muffler wrapped round his neck.Seeing her, he stopped and shuffled the two sticks into one hand that he might leave the other free to touch his wrinkled forehead stiffly, his face stretching into a slow smile as she stopped to speak to him.
"Good-morning, Marlow," he said."How is the rheumatism to-day?"He was a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the "rheumatics," which formed the greater part of existence.
"Mornin', miss--mornin'," he answered in the high, cracked voice of rural ancientry."Winter be nigh, an' they damp days be full of rheumatiz.'T'int easy to get about on my old legs, but I be main thankful for they warm things you sent, miss.This 'ere," fumbling at his red-brown muffler proudly, " 'tis a comfort on windy days, so 'tis, and warmth be a good thing to a man when he be goin' down hill in years.""All of you who are not able to earn your own fires shall be warm this winter," her ladyship's handsome sister said, speaking closer to his ear."You shall all be warm.Don't be afraid of the cold days coming."He shuffled his sticks and touched his forehead again, looking up at her admiringly and chuckling.
" 'T'will be a new tale for Stornham village," he cackled.
" 'T'will be a new tale.Thank ye, miss.Thank ye."As she nodded smilingly and passed on, she heard him cackling still under his breath as he hobbled on his slow way, comforted and elate.How almost shamefully easy it was; a few loads of coal and faggots here and there, a few blankets and warm garments whose cost counted for so little when one's hands were full, could change a gruesome village winter into a season during which labour-stiffened and broken old things, closing their cottage doors, could draw their chairs round the hearth and hover luxuriously over the red glow, which in its comforting fashion of seeming to have understanding of the dull dreams in old eyes, was more to be loved than any human friend.
But she had not needed her passing speech with Marlow to stimulate realisation of how much she had learned to care for the mere living among these people, to whom she seemed to have begun to belong, and whose comfortably lighting faces when they met her showed that they knew her to be one who might be turned to in any hour of trouble or dismay.The centuries which had trained them to depend upon their "betters" had taught the slowest of them to judge with keen sight those who were to be trusted, not alone as power and wealth holders, but as creatures humanly upright and merciful with their kind.
"Workin' folk allus knows gentry," old Doby had once shrilled to her."Gentry's gentry, an' us knows 'em wheresoever they be.Better'n they know theirselves.So us do!"Yes, they knew.And though they accepted many things as being merely their natural rights, they gave an unsentimental affection and appreciation in return.The patriarchal note in the life was lovable to her.Each creature she passed was a sort of friend who seemed almost of her own blood.It had come to that.This particular existence was more satisfying to her than any other, more heart-filling and warmly complete.
"Though I am only an impostor," she thought; "I was born in Fifth Avenue; yet since I have known this I shall be quite happy in no other place than an English village, with a Norman church tower looking down upon it and rows of little gardens with spears of white and blue lupins and Canterbury bells standing guard before cottage doors."And Rosalie--on the evening of that first strange day when she had come upon her piteous figure among the heather under the trees near the lake--Rosalie had held her arm with a hot little hand and had said feverishly:
"If I could hear the roar of Broadway again! Do the stages rattle as they used to, Betty? I can't help hoping that they do."She carried her letter to the post and stopped to talk a few minutes with the postmaster, who transacted his official business in a small shop where sides of bacon and hams hung suspended from the ceiling, while groceries, flannels, dress prints, and glass bottles of sweet stuff filled the shelves.
"Mr.Tewson's" was the central point of Stornham in a commercial sense.The establishment had also certain social qualifications.
Mr.Tewson knew the secrets of all hearts within the village radius, also the secrets of all constitutions.He knew by some occult means who had been "taken bad," or who had "taken a turn," and was aware at once when anyone was "sinkin'