Rutherford and Son by Githa Sowerby

Author:Githa Sowerby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Act Three

It is about eleven o’clock on the following morning. Janet is sitting at the table with a shawl about her shoulders talking in low tones to Mary, who is opposite.

Janet (after a pause) You mean that you guessed?

MaryYes.

JanetYou knew all the time, and you didn’t tell? Not even John?

MaryWhy should I tell him?

JanetI would ha’ told Martin if it had been you.

MaryNot John.

JanetIt was good of you. You’ve always been better to me than I’ve been to you.

MaryWhat are you going to do?

JanetHe says I’m to go. He’s to come in and find me gone, and no one’s to speak of me any more. Not John, nor Dick, nor Aunt Ann – I’m never to set foot in this room again. Never to lock up and give him the keys last thing. Never to sit the long afternoon through in the window, till the furnaces are bright in the dark. I’ve done what women are shamed for doing – and all the night I’ve barely slept for the hope in my heart.

MaryHope?

JanetOf things coming. I had a dream – a dream that I was in a place wi’ flowers, in the summer-time, white and thick like they never grow on the moor – but it was the moor – a place near Martin’s cottage. And I dreamt that he came to me with the look he had when I was a little lass, with his head up and the lie gone out of his eyes. All the time I knew I was on my bed in my room here – but it was like as if sweetness poured into me, spreading and covering me like the water in the tarn when the rains are heavy in the fells.

MaryIs Mr Rutherford very angry?

JanetHe won’t never hear my name again. Oh, last night I said things to him, when he blamed me so – things he can’t never forget. I was wild – mad with the bitterness of it. He made it all ugly with the things he said. I told him what I never looked to tell him, though I’d had it in my heart all these years. All the time I was speaking I was dead with shame that he should know, and I had to go on. But afterwards – it was as if I’d slipped a burden, and I was glad he knew, glad that Dick heard it in the street, glad that he sneaked of me behind my back – glad! For, when I’d got over the terror of it, it came to me that this was what we’d been making for ever since you came without knowing it, that we were to win through to happiness after all, Martin and I, and everything come right. Because I’ve doubted. Men’s lives are different to ours. And sometimes, when we’ve stolen together, and afterwards I’ve seen his face and the sadness of it, I’ve wondered what I had to give him that could count against what he’d lost.

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