Miss Silver looked at him seriously. ‘You wish me to interview Mrs. Harbord?’ The word obviously startled him.
‘Well, I thought – perhaps – you would see her. And if you do not mind, I think it would be better not to say anything to my sister about it. You see, she took such a very decided line, and strife in the house is not what I’ve been accustomed to.’
A few preliminary enquiries informed Miss Silver that Mrs. Harbord, though no longer confined to her bed, was still in a very weak and melancholy way, and that the widowed daughter-in-law whose children were of school age went out to work by the day. Miss Arnold, it appeared, knew all about her.
‘Oh, yes, she goes to the Deanery. Mrs. Mayhew says she is an absolute treasure. Of course she is Chapel. How shocked dear Papa would have been at the idea of employing a dissenter, but people can’t pick and choose as they used to, and she is a marvellous worker – never stops for a moment and gets through about twice as much as anyone they have ever had. Mrs. Mayhew says she is more than worth the extra sixpence an hour she asks.’
With this and other helpful information at her disposal, Miss Silver considered that an early hour in the afternoon would be the most suitable time for a call.
The appearance of the small house in Pegler’s Row certainly bore out the character ascribed to the younger Mrs. Harbord. The front door step was whitened, the four windows, two up and two down, looked as if they had just been cleaned, and spotless curtains screened the rooms behind them from the public eye. The small brass door-knocker shone. Miss Silver used it. After an interval she heard a slow, dragging step in the passage behind the door. It opened a very little way and a tall, stooping woman came into view – at first no more of her than a poking head and a hand, but after a moment the whole bent figure in a decent black dress with a grey shawl caught about the shoulders. At the sight of Miss Silver she stepped back and said in a hollow voice,
‘If it’s for my daughter-in-law, she won’t be in till five.’
Miss Silver smiled pleasantly.
‘Oh, no, Mrs. Harbord, my visit is to yourself. But you should not be standing at the door. May I come in?’
The days are long when you are alone during most of the dragging hours. Mrs. Harbord no longer felt well enough to engage in the active household tasks with which she had been used to fill her days. By the time she had dressed herself and made shift to do her room she felt fit for nothing but to drop into a chair and mind the kitchen fire. On a good day she would get the children’s dinner, but mostly Florrie would leave everything ready, so that she only had to have it hot by the time they came home. She had never been a reader, and there were a great many hours in the day. Miss Silver would be someone from the Chapel – she had heard that the minister had an aunt coming to stay – or perhaps someone from the Ladies’ Guild. Anyhow she would be someone to talk to.
‘If you wouldn’t mind coming into the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s warm in there. We’ve a nice front room, but the fire isn’t lit.’
A poor thing she might be, but she had yet to be ashamed of taking anyone into her kitchen. All nicely tidied up it was, and the children back at school. She had her chair by the fire and a footstool in front of it, and a second chair that could be pulled up for the visitor. She was glad to get back into the warm, and that was a fact. It was cold in the passage, and she felt the cold these days.
Miss Silver looked at her in a sympathetic manner and said,
‘I am afraid you are not very strong, Mrs. Harbord. You must not let me tire you. My name is Silver – Miss Maud Silver. I thought perhaps we might talk for a little. It must be lonely for you here with your daughter-in-law out all day and the children at school.’
Mrs. Harbord said,
‘Yes, it’s lonely. Only I don’t know that I could do with the children all the time – two of them, and twins. And I don’t know which of them makes the most noise, the boy or the girl. Just turned eight they are – and lively – you wouldn’t believe it.’
Miss Silver smiled in a friendly manner.
‘It sounds as if they were very strong and healthy.’
A gleam of pride appeared on Mrs. Harbord’s face.
‘Oh, they’re healthy,’ she said. ‘They take after their mother. Now my poor son, he was always ailing from a baby. Died when the twins were three months old, and what we’d have done I don’t know, only I had my health, and Florrie went out to work. My old mother was alive then, and she’d mind the babies. I don’t think I’d come to being the one to sit at home and be a burden. The doctor, he says there’s no reason why I can’t get well, but I don’t, and that’s a fact.’
‘I am sure you did not think your mother a burden when she was looking after the babies and making it possible for you and your daughter-in-law to work.’
Mrs. Harbord shook her head. Her mother had been a very decided old lady. She would have made short work of anyone who set up to consider her a burden. Even Florrie had been under her thumb.
‘She was able for more than what I am,’ she said.
Before she knew quite how it came about she found herself telling Miss Silver all about her mother. There were incidents which she had not recalled for years. Miss Silver displayed great skill in steering her past deathbeds and family illnesses to such cheerful occasions as weddings, christenings, and outings. Mrs. Wild had appeared at the twins’ christening in a bonnet with two black ostrich feathers which nobody knew she possessed.
‘Down in the bottom of her box she’d got them, and a wonder the moths hadn’t been at them. “Why mother,” I said, “wherever did you get those feathers?” And it seems my Uncle Jim brought them from South Africa when he came home after the Boer war. And just to think she’d never had them out all those years! Not when poor Father died, nor my husband, nor poor Ernie. And she tosses her head and says feathers is for joyful occasions, not for funerals, and she’s going to wear them for the twins, poor little fatherless things, and may be they’ll bring them a bit of good luck.’ She broke off to give a heavy sigh and say, ‘Oh, well, I had my health then. I could bicycle out the three miles and do a day’s work and not so much as feel tired at the end of it.’
Miss Silver said in a sympathetic voice,
‘You used to work at Underhill, did you not, with the Miss Benevents?’
Mrs. Harbord’s flow of reminiscence was arrested. She looked sideways and said,
‘I’m sure I never mentioned it.’
‘There was no reason why you should not do so.’
‘I left on account of my health.’ Mrs. Harbord’s voice shook. ‘And I was never one to talk.’
Miss Silver looked at her.
‘What would there be to talk about?’
Mrs. Harbord’s hand went up to her lips and stayed there. Her eyes shifted. She said,
‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ And then quite suddenly words came pouring out. ‘I don’t know anything – why should I? I just went there for the cleaning – there wasn’t anything for me to talk about.’
It was no use, she couldn’t go on looking away. She had to turn her eyes back again to meet Miss Silver’s. She did so, and found them very clear and kind.
‘Pray do not distress yourself, Mrs. Harbord. But when you have something on your mind, I think you know that you cannot get rid of it by pretending it is not there. I think that you have something on your mind. I think it has been there for a long time, and that it is frightening you and preventing you from getting well. You began to tell Mrs. Kean about it, did you not, but you did not go on.’