James Andersen’s face became convulsed with fury. He stretched out his arm towards his brother, and extended a threatening fore-finger.
“Young man,” he cried, “I will never forgive you for this!”
Having uttered these words he rushed incontinently out of the room, and, bare-headed as he was, proceeded to stride across the fields, in a direction opposite from that which led to Nevilton.
The younger brother shrugged his shoulders, drained his tea-cup, and meditatively lit another cigarette. The stone-works being closed, he had all the day before him in which to consider this unfortunate rupture. At the present moment, however, all he did was to call their landlady — the station-master’s buxom wife — and affably help her in the removal and washing up of the breakfast things.
Luke was an adept in all household matters. His supple fingers and light feminine movements were equal to almost any task, and while occupied in such things his gay and humorous conversation made any companion of his labour an enviable person. Mrs. Round, their landlady, adored him. There was nothing she would not have done at his request; and Lizzie, Betty, and Polly, her three little daughters, loved him more than they loved their own father. Having concerned himself for more than an hour with these agreeable people, Luke took his hat and stick, and strolling lazily along the railroad-line railings, surveyed with inquisitive interest the motley group of persons who were waiting, on the further side, for the approach of a train.
A little apart from the rest, seated on a bench beside a large empty basket, he observed the redoubtable Mrs. Fringe. Between this lady and himself there had existed for the last two years a sort of conspiracy of gossip. Like many other middl-eaged women in Nevilton, Mrs. Fringe had made a pet and confidant of this attractive young man, who played, in spite of his mixed birth, a part almost analogous to that of an affable and ingratiating cadet of some noble family.
He passed through the turn-stile, crossed the track, and advanced slowly up the platform. His plump Gossip, observing him afar off, rose and moved to meet him, her basket swinging in her hand and a radiant smile upon her face. It was like an encounter between some Pantagruelian courtier and some colossal Gargamelle. They stood together, in the wind, at the extreme edge of the platform. Luke, who was dressed so well that it would have been impossible to distinguish him from any golden youth from Oxford or Cambridge, whispered shameless scandal into the lady’s ears, from beneath the shadow of his panama-hat. She on her side was equally confidential.
“There was a pretty scene down our way last night,” she said. “Miss Seldom came in with some books for my young Reverend and, Lord! they did have an ado. I heard ’un shouting at one another as though them were rampin’ mad. My master ’ee were hollerin’ Holy Scripture like as he were dazed, and the young lady she were answerin’ ’im with God knows what. From all I could gather of it, that girl had got some devil’s tale on Miss Gladys. ’Tweren’t as though she did actually name her by name, as you might say, but she pulled her hair and scratched her like any crazy cat, sideways-like and cross-wise. It seems she’d got hold of some story about that foreign young woman and Miss Gladys having her knife into ’er, but I saw well enough what was at the bottom of it and I won’t conceal it from ’ee, my dear. She do want ’im for herself. That’s the long and short. She do want ’im for herself!”
“What were they disputing about?” asked Luke eagerly. “Did you hear their words?”
“’Tis no good arstin’ me about their words,” replied Mrs. Fringe. “Those long-windy dilly-dallies do sound to me no more than the burbering of blow-flies. God save us from such words! I’m not a reading woman and I don’t care who knows it. But I know when a wench is moon-daft on a fellow. I knows that, my dear, and I knows when she’s got a tale on another girl!”
“Did she talk about Catholicism to him?” enquired Luke.
“I won’t say as she didn’t bring something of that sort in,” replied his friend. “But ’twas Miss Gladys wot worried ’er. Any fool could see that. ’Tis my experience that when a girl and a fellow get hot on any of these dilly-dally argimints, there’s always some other maid biding round the corner.”
“I’ve just had a row with James,” remarked the stone-carver. “He’s gone off in a fury over towards Hullaway.”
Mrs Fringe put down her basket and glanced up and down the platform. Then she laid her hand on the young man’s arm.
“I wouldn’t say what I do now say, to anyone, but thee own self, dearie. And I wouldn’t say it to thee if it hadn’t been worriting me for some merciful long while. And what’s more I wouldn’t say it, if I didn’t know what you and your Jim are to one another. ‘More than brothers,’ is what the whole village do say of ye!”
“Go on — go on — Mrs. Fringe!” cried Luke. “That curst signal’s down, and I can hear the train.”
“There be other trains than wot run on them irons,” pronounced Mrs. Fringe sententiously, “and if you aren’t careful, one such God Almighty’s train will run over that brother of yours, sooner or later.”
Luke looked apprehensively up the long converging steel track. The gloom of the day and the ominous tone of his old gossip affected him very unpleasantly. He began to wish that there was not a deep muddy pond under the Hullaway elms.
“What on earth do you mean?” he cried, adding impatiently, “Oh damn that train!” as a cloud of smoke made itself visible in the distance.
“Only this, dearie,” said the woman picking up her basket, “only this. If you listen to me you’d sooner dig your own grave than have words with brother. Brother be not one wot can stand these fimble-fambles same as you and I. I know wot I do say, cos I was privileged, under Almighty God, to see the end of your dear mother.”
“I know — I know—” cried the young man, “but what do you mean?”
Mrs. Fringe thrust her arm through the handle of her basket and turned to meet the incoming train.
“’Twas when I lived with my dear husband down at Willow-Grove,” she said. “’Twas a stone’s throw there from where you and Jim were born. I always feared he would go, same as she went, sooner or later. He talks like her. He looks like her. He treats a person in the way she treated a person, poor moonstruck darling! ’Twas all along of your father. She couldn’t bide him along-side of her in the last days. And he knew it as well as you and I know it. But do ’ee think it made any difference to him? Not a bit, dearie! Not one little bit!”
The train had now stopped, and with various humorous observations, addressed to porters and passengers indiscriminately, Mrs. Fringe took her place in a carriage.
Heedless of being overheard, Luke addressed her through the window of the compartment. “But what about James? What were you saying about James?”
“’Tis too long a tale to tell ’ee, dearie,” murmured the woman breathlessly. “There be need now of all my blessed wits to do business for the Reverend.” There, look at that! “She waved at him a crumpled piece of paper. “Beyond all thinking I’ve got to fetch him books from Slitly’s. Books, by the Lord! As if he hadn’t too many of the darned things for his poor brain already!”