made no reply. She opened the top drawer of the old bureau which stood in one corner of the house-place and took out a hymn-book and a handkerchief. From a gaily-decorated bottle she sprinkled a few drops of cheap scent on the handkerchief; carrying it and the hymn-book in her left hand, and taking her ivory-handled umbrella in her right, she went off without further word to her husband. The key of the beer-barrel was in her pocket; the last drop of whisky had been wasted in restoring Pippany Webster to consciousness; she had made herself assured that Perris had no money on him, and therefore could not visit the Dancing Bear. Accordingly, he could come to little harm during her absence at the religious exercises which she made a point of never missing.
In addition to her charm of face and figure, Perris's young wife possessed a fine voice, of the quality of which she was by no means unconscious. If she had been less gifted she would have attended the parish church, but the church possessed a surpliced choir of men and boys, and had no need for a particularly strong soprano; and, moreover, anything beyond the most modest congregational singing was not much desired by its authorities. This sent Rhoda, who had no idea of allowing her talents to go unused, to the Methodists. These good people, a little time before the coming of Perris and his wife to Cherry-trees, had bought a second-hand American organ for their chapel, and had consequently turned their attention to something better in the way of music than they had previously attempted. They welcomed Rhoda with great enthusiasm, and immediately installed her as leader of the choir. It would have been difficult, indeed, to make her anything else, for her voice was strong and clear, and she led and controlled the hymn-singing in more senses than one. On summer evenings, when the doors of the chapel stood open, her powerful notes were heard far across the meadows outside, and the non-religious part of the surrounding population lounged over garden gates, or sat on the edge of the causeway, to listen with surprise and pleasure.
Whatever might be going on at home, Rhoda never missed any of the chapel services or the weekly choir-practices. She had come to be sovereign mistress of the young men, maidens, and children who sat with her in the singing-pew beneath the pulpit, and though the ministers and preachers chose the hymns, it was Rhoda who settled upon the particular tunes to which they should be sung. Consequently she was something of a power, and had already begun to consider the chapel in the same light in which an opera-house is viewed by a prima-donna who sings in it season after season. The heads of the little congregation deferred to her in everything relating to the musical part of the services; the young man who walked out from the market-town to play the American organ, and who cultivated his hair after the fashion of a plaster cast of Beethoven which he had purchased from an itinerant vendor of busts, worshipped her, and presented her every Sunday afternoon with a paper of strong mint lozenges, to be consumed during the sermon. These attendances at the chapel were therefore Rhoda's sole diversion in an otherwise grey and colourless life; she would not have missed one of them for any reason whatever, and she was always in her place winter and summer, fair weather or foul.
But on this particular evening Rhoda had an additional reason for going down to the chapel. On one night of the month one of the regular ministers came to preach; the minister for that night was an old man who had a reputation for prudence and sagacity; she wanted to ask his counsel and advice on the difficulty in which Perris by his incompetence had placed his wife and himself. All through the service she was scheming and planning as to what might be done; of the sermon she heard nothing; she sang the hymns mechanically. And when the service was over and the congregation had departed she curtly dismissed the organist, who usually walked with her as far as the Dancing Bear on their homeward way, and following the old minister into the little vestry, she asked for an interview with him. With a plainness and directness which made him regard her as an eminently business-like and practical young woman, she put the situation before him.
"You see, Mr. Marriner," she concluded, "it's this way. Abel, he's not a bad farmer, but he's weak and shiftless, and if things begin going wrong he loses heart and then he goes from bad to worse. I'm sorry to say I've little good opinion of him as a manager for himself. But I know what I can do. If I'd a bit of money I'd manage that place myself, and I'd make him work. I'd manage it, and I'd manage him—I've managed him to-day to some purpose, I'll warrant you, Mr. Marriner! I'm none going to stand by and see everything go to naught but failure if I can help it. But the thing is—where am I to find the money? My poor father's a big family of his own, and it's all he can do to keep it—he can't do aught for me. What would you advise, now, Mr. Marriner?"
The old minister, who had a sufficient knowledge of Abel Perris to make him aware that in this case the grey mare was much the better horse, considered matters for a few minutes.
"Well, Mrs. Perris," he said at last. "I dare say there are plenty of people who would lend you money in preference to lending it to your husband. Now, supposing you could get money and pull things round, do you think you could manage him?"
Rhoda drew her fine eyebrows together, and screwed up her eyes, and Mr. Marriner gained a new impression of her. He laughed softly, nodding his head.
"I see—I see!" he said. "Well, now, aren't there any of your neighbours that would help? I understand that some of the big farmers hereabouts are pretty well to do—some of them very well to do. Can't you think of one of them?"
A sudden hot flush burned into Rhoda's cheeks. She was quick to make excuse for it.
"I don't like the idea of going cap in hand, as they say, to neighbours, Mr. Marriner," she said. "I've never been used to asking favours, though I came of poor folks. And I don't know any of the big farmers hereabouts; they look upon us little farmers as so much dirt beneath their feet! I've never spoken to one of them—except to Mr. Taffendale."
"Why, Mr. Taffendale's the very man!" said the old minister. "I know him to be a wealthy man. He's on a committee of which I'm a member, so I meet him now and then. I'll tell you what I'll do, Mrs. Perris, if you like. I'll write him a note, saying that you've told me your troubles, and that I'm sure he won't be disappointed if he helps you. How would that be?"
"Thanking you kindly, Mr. Marriner, it would be a good help," Rhoda answered. "I should feel less what you might call ashamed and frightened about it if I had some writing of yours to show."
"All right, all right!" said the old man. "I'll write it now. I think you'll find Mr. Taffendale a likely man to apply to. Tell him all you've told me; let him see you mean business. He'll see then, I'm sure, that you know what you're talking about."
"Oh, I know what I'm talking about, Mr. Marriner!" said Rhoda, with quiet confidence. "I don't talk for talking's sake. And I know what I can do if I set out to do it."
Ten minutes later, when the old minister had mounted his horse and ridden away, Rhoda, holding the note which he had given her, stood in the darkness outside the chapel, thinking. Once she turned in the homeward direction, only to pause before she had taken many steps. And after the pause she suddenly turned in the other direction and began to walk rapidly down the village street, already deserted and quiet.
"Since it's got to be done, I'll do it now," she muttered to herself. "I'll do it, and get it over."
Martinsthorpe was a long, straggling village lying in a valley which ran from east to west. It was divided into two halves by a high-road running north and south, and transecting the one street at the point where the Dancing Bear looked down from his swinging sign upon the cross-roads formed by the intersection. In the western half of the village stood the church, the school, the principal farmsteads, and the great house of the place; in the eastern there was nothing more pretentious in the way of human habitation than the smithy, the carpenter's shop, a general store kept by an old woman, various clusters of labourers' cottages, and the little chapel. Beyond lay open and uninhabited country which stretched, wood, meadow and arable land, for many a mile before the next village showed itself through its ring of ash and elm. But just beyond the chapel a footpath ran across the valley and up the hillside in the direction of the Limepits,
