The Woodlanders | Page 8

her, departed on his way
homeward.
Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying
down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room,
where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely
scrubbed that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such
cleansing. At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without
entering, said, "Father, do you want anything?"
A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, "I should be all
right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!"
"The tree again--always the tree! Oh, father, don't worry so about that.
You know it can do you no harm."
"Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?"
"A Sherton man called--nothing to trouble about," she said, soothingly.
"Father," she went on, "can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of our house if
she's minded to?"
"Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned
out of my body. 'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne's. But when
my life drops 'twill be hers--not till then." His words on this subject so
far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his
moaning strain: "And the tree will do it--that tree will soon be the death

of me."
"Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?" She refrained from
further speech, and descended to the ground-floor again.
"Thank Heaven, then," she said to herself, "what belongs to me I keep."
CHAPTER III.
The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only
remained two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on
the hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at present; the other shone
from the window of Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect
was produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck ten
and hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to keep
ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she obviated
the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging a cloth
over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have to work
harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a secret as far
as possible; and but for the slight sounds of wood- splintering which
came from within, no wayfarer would have perceived that here the
cottager did not sleep as elsewhere.
Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and
the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the hill had
now been extinguished; but still she worked on. When the temperature
of the night without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she opened
a large blue umbrella to ward off the draught from the door. The two
sovereigns confronted her from the looking-glass in such a manner as
to suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the watch for an opportunity.
Whenever she sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze towards them,
but withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses with her fingers for a
moment, as if to assure herself that they were still secure. When the
clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had last made in a
bundle resembling those that lay against the wall.
She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door.
The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the very

brink of an absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed
in by her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze,
and here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly transition
between the inner glare and the outer dark. A lingering wind brought to
her ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches in the
neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and
other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of owls,
and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon ill- balanced
on its roosting-bough.
But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well
enough for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and
guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some
hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached a long open shed,
carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay about everywhere. Night,
that strange personality, which within walls brings ominous
introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open sky banishes
such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired Marty
South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars
on the ground within the shed and