PHOEBE made all reasonable, and a few indulgent, allowances for the weaknesses of manflesh, but when she awoke to the knowledge that John had not been home all night, she was downright angry with him. A bereaved husband might accept the consolation offered by his friends on the day of his wife’s funeral, and might go on accepting it late into the night. She had left the door on the latch for him with the thought that it wasn’t like John to drown his sorrow, but men were men, even the best of them, and she had put a lot of housework behind her that day. He would have been constantly getting in her way with his clumsy efforts to help, and if he had found forgetfulness, no matter how, they had both of them come through the day very well.

But he had not come home at all; he had forgotten too thoroughly, and Phoebe intended to give him “the rough side of her tongue” the moment she came across him in the factory. It never occurred to her that he would not be in the factory. To be out all night was a departure from his custom, and on such a night a departure from decency, but to be absent from work was more than either of these; it was defiance of necessity, a treachery to her and to his children and she knew her John better than to suspect him of conduct like that. He might be grief-stricken and, after that (homeopathically), ale-stricken, but the law of nature was “Work or Clem,” and John would be at work.

He was not at work, and that was not the only thing to be remarked that morning. Nobody appeared to have a word for her, though there was an exceptional disposition to gossip. Even the overseers had caught the infection and formed gossiping groups to the detriment of discipline. She was too preoccupied at first to notice that she was their cynosure or to wonder what it meant, but she couldn’t for long be unconscious of their gaze.

They were looking at her, every one was looking at her, and her first impulse was to be angry with them for staring so curiously and her second was to conceal her awareness of their gaze. They stared? Let them stare. She had not been at the factory on the previous day, but she had had leave of absence. She had been burying her daughter-in-law, and if they wanted to stare at her for that, they could stare. And then she connected their fixed regard with John’s absence. There was something serious then? Something about John of which they knew and she did not? She dropped abruptly her pretense of unconsciousness.

“For God’s sake tell me what’s to do,” she cried. “If it’s John, I’m his mother and I’ve the right to know.”

Will Aspinall, the overseer, detached himself from his group. “Get at work,” he bawled at large, then with a rare gentleness, led Phoebe aside. “Either tha’s gotten th’ brassiest faice i’ Lankysheer, or else tha’ doan’t kna’,” he said.

“Is it to do with John?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said, “it’s all to do wi’ thy John.”

“I know nothing beyond that he’s not been home all night.”

“A kna’ he’s not bin hoam. He’s done wi’ coming hoam.”

“Why? Why? What has happened?”

“A’m, striving to tell thee that. Th’ job’s not easy, though.” He looked at her. “Wilt have it straight?”

“I’m never afraid of truth.”

“Truth can hit hard. Well, I’ll tell thee. Thy John shot at th’ maister’s wife last neight an’ hit her. They’ve gotten him.” He upturned a waste-bin. “Now, A’m real sorry for thee and it weren’t a pleasant job for me to break th’ news. That’s over, though, and tha’ knaws now. Next sit thee down on this. It’s in a corner, like, and folks canna watch thee. When tha’ feels like work, come and tell me.” He left her with rough kindliness, and relieved his feelings by cuffing a child who was peering round a loom at them. He was paid to be brutal, and the child, gathering himself up from the floor, might have thought that the overseer was earning his wages: but the shrewd blow was rather a warning to the rest and an expression of his sympathy with Phoebe than an episode in his day’s work.

That Aspinall, and not he alone but the general sense of the workers, should be sympathetic towards her was in its way remarkable enough. They expected naturally that John would hang, but they had definitely the idea that retribution for his deed would not stop at the capital punishment of the actual malefactor. Hepplestall would “tak’ it out of all on us,” and “We’ll go ravenous for this,” “Skin an’ sorrow—that’s our shape,” and (from a humorist) “Famished? He’ll spokeshave us” were some of the phrases by which they expressed their belief in the widespread severity of Hepplestall’s vengeance.

Yet they had no bitterness against John, nor against Phoebe who, as his mother, might be supposed to have a special responsibility. It was a dreadful deed and the more dreadful since his bullet had miscarried and had killed a woman; but it had fanned to quick fire their smoldering hatred of Hepplestall and there was more rejoicing than regret that he was, through Dorothy, cast down. They would have preferred to know that John had hit the true target but, as it was, it was well enough and they were not going to squeal at the price they expected to pay. Their commiseration was not for the bereaved master, but for the about-to-be-bereaved mother of the murderer.

Somebody moved a candle so that Phoebe in her corner should be the more effectually screened from observation. It was a kindly act, but one which she hardly needed. Her thoughts were with John, but not with a John who was going to be hanged; they were with a John who was going to be saved.

Murderers were hanged and so for the matter of that were people convicted of far less heinous crimes. That was the law, but she had never a doubt but that Hepplestall was above the law, that he was the law, and that John’s fate was not with an impersonal entity called justice but, simply, with Hepplestall. Probably two-thirds of her fellow-workers were firmly of the same belief in his omnipotence, though they hadn’t, as she supposed she had, grounds for thinking that he would intervene on John’s behalf.

When Annie died she had told herself vehemently that she would never go, a suppliant, to Hepplestall, she would never let him share in John’s children wrho were his grandchildren; but that resolution was rescinded now. Reuben had never hinted since the day when Peter and Phoebe went to him, aghast at the edict which broke Peter’s factory, that he remembered he had had a son by Phoebe. It was so long ago and perhaps he had indeed forgotten, but she must go to him and remind him now. She must tell him that John Bradshaw was his son. He could not hang his son.

Daylight was penetrating through the sedulously cleaned windows of the factory. It was the hour when expensive artificial light could be dispensed with and candles were being extinguished; it was the hour, too, when Reuben might ordinarily be expected in his office. He had the usual manufacturers’ habit of riding or walking to the factory for half an hour before breakfast, and to-day word was passed through the rooms that he had, surprisingly, arrived as usual.

The word had not reached Phoebe, but she expected nothing else. She had to speak with Reuben, and therefore he would be there. She came from her corner and told Aspinall what she intended.

“Nay, nay!” he said.

“Please open the door for me.”

“A canna’,” he said. “Coom, missus, what art thinking? He’ll spit at thee.”

“I have to speak to him about John,” said Phoebe. “Open the door and let me through.”

“It’s more nor my plaice is worth,” he said, but, nevertheless, he was weakening. She was not making a request, she was not a weaver asking a favor of an overseer, she was Phoebe Bradshaw, whom Peter had brought up to be a lady, giving an order to a workman in the tone of one who commands obedience as a habit.

He scratched his head in doubt, then turned to a fellow-overseer and consulted with him. They murmured together with a wealth of puzzlement and headshaking and, presently, “Now, Mrs. Bradshaw,” said Aspinall, “tak’ heed to me. Yon door’s fast, but me an’ Joe here are goin’ to open it on factory business, understand. If happen tha’s creeping up behind us, it’s none likely we’ll see thee coomin’ and if tha’ slips through door and into office while we’ve gotten door open on our business, it’s because tha’ was too spry for us to stop thee. That’s best we can do for thee and it’s takkin’ big risks an’ all.”

“I’m grateful,” said Phoebe.

They opened the door and made loud sounds of protest as she slipped through, causing Reuben to look up from the bureau where he was opening his letters and to see both Phoebe standing in his office and the actors at the door. He waved them off and, when the door was closed, “Well?” he said.

“Reuben!” said Phoebe.

He rose with an angry cry. How dared she, this weaver, this roughened, withered old woman, address him by his Christian name? This gray wraith, whose hair hung mustily about her like the jacket of lichen about a ruined tree, she to call him by the name his Dorothy alone had used! That morning of all mornings it was outrage of outrages.

He did not know her whom once he nearly loved. Twenty years ago he had put her from him and had excluded her from his recollection. Long ago the factory had outgrown the stage when an employer has knowledge of his workpeople as individuals; he did not know her nor had the identification of the prisoner as John Bradshaw, a spinner in the factory, conveyed any personal significance to him. Bradshaw was a common name, and he had never known that Phoebe had called their son John.

“But I am Phoebe,” she said, standing her ground before his menacing advance. “Phoebe, Reuben. Phoebe, who—Phoebe Bradshaw.”

He remembered now, he had remembered at the second “Phoebe”—and at the second “Reuben.” He was even granting her, grimly, her right to call him by that name when the “Bradshaw” struck upon his ear.

“Bradshaw?” he repeated. “Bradshaw?” And this second time, there was an angry question in it.

“I came about John,” she said. “John is our son, Reuben. Of course he did not know, but—” Reuben had covered the space between them at a bound. He was holding her hands tightly, he was looking at her with eyes that seared. In moments like these, thought outspaces time. John, his wife’s murderer, was his son, and the son of Phoebe Bradshaw whom he had—well, he supposed he had betrayed her. She had told the son, of course. He had nursed a grievance, he had shot Dorothy in revenge. Whether he had aimed at Reuben and hit Dorothy, or whether he lied when he had made that statement to the constable and had, in fact, aimed at Dorothy, they had the true motive now. Reuben might have put it that his sin had found him out, but his thought did not run on those lines. Then, what was she saying? “Of course, he did not know.” Oh, that was absurd, that took them back for motive to what John had been telling the constable—that he shot at Hepplestall to—to—(what was the boy’s wind-bagging phrase which the constable reported?)—“to set the people free from a tyrant.”

“Say that again,” he said.

She met his eye fearlessly. “Of course he did not know. You could not think that I would tell of my shame. Father and I, we invented a second cousin Bradshaw whom I married, who died before John was born.”

Yes, she was speaking the truth, and, after all, he didn’t know that it mattered very much. Dorothy was dead, either way, but, yes, it did matter. It mattered enormously, because of Dorothy’s sons. If John had known, there must have been disclosures at the trial, things said against Reuben, ordinary enough but not the things he cared to have Dorothy’s sons know about their father.

It wasn’t criminal to have seduced a woman twenty years ago, and the exceptional thing about Reuben was that he had seduced no more women, that he had not abused his position as employer. Needham was known, with grim humor, as “the father of his people.” Whereas Reuben had been Dorothy’s husband.

He saw the trial and that disclosure insulting to Dorothy’s memory. He heard the jeers of Needham and his kind. Hepplestall, Gentleman Hepplestall, reduced by public ordeal to a common brutishness with the coarse libertines he had despised! He saw Dorothy’s sons contemptuous of their father. This, they would take occasion to think, was where factory-owning led a man.

“You’re sure of this?” he asked. “You’re absolutely sure he did not know he is my son?”

“Absolutely,” she said.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s good. If he had known, I believe I must have taken measures to defeat justice. I should have done all in my power to have spirited him away before the trial, and I believe I should have contrived it. I feel quite keenly enough about the matter to have done that.” Which was, to Phoebe, confirmation of her belief in his omnipotence. “But, as it is,” he went on, “as it is, thank God, the law can take its course.” He was back in his chair now, looking at her with a relief that was almost a smile, if tigerish. She, he was thinking, might still speak to his discomfiture if she were put in the box at the trial, but he would see that she was not called. There was no need to call her to establish John’s absence from home that night, when he had been caught red-handed. They could do without Phoebe, and he would take care they should.

“Can take its course,” she repeated, bewildered. What had Reuben meant if not, incredibly, that had she told John of her “shame,” he would have been saved now, but that, as it was, John must—“But it cannot tak’ its course, John is your son. Your son. Reuben, he’s your son. You cannot hang your son.”

“He killed my wife.”

“But you haven’t understood. They haven’t told you. John was not himself. He—”

“Drunk?”

“No, no. Oh, Reuben. He was crazed with grief on account of his wife. Don’t they tell you when the likes of that chances in the factory? Annie Bradshaw, that was John’s wife and your daughter-in-law—she bore a child on the floor in there and died. You must have heard of it.”

Reuben nodded. “These women,” he said, “are always cutting it too fine.” His gesture disclaimed responsibility for the reckless greed of women.

“Yes,” she said, brazenly agreeing with his monstrous imputation, “but John loved Annie and he’s been in a frenzy since she died and in his mazed brain we can see how it seemed to him. We can, can’t we, Reuben? She died in the factory and it looked to him that the factory had killed her. And then he must have got a gun. I don’t know how, but we can see the crazy lad with a gun in his hands and the wild thought in his mind that the factory killed Annie. It’s your factory, it’s Hepple-stall’s, and it ‘ud seem to him that Hepplestall killed. Annie, so he took his gun and came to your house and tried to kill you. A daft lad and a senseless deed and an awful, awful end to it, but we can read the frantic thoughts in his grief-struck brain, we can understand them, Reuben—you and I.” She sought to draw him into partnership with her, to make him share in the plea which she addressed to him.

But “He killed my wife,” Reuben said again.

She had a momentary vision of Reuben and Phoebe twenty years ago riding home to Bradshaw’s on the afternoon when they had met Dorothy in the road, and Dorothy had cut him. She had talked then, she had chattered, she had striven to be gay and her talk had rebounded, like a ball off a wall, from the stony taciturnity of his abstraction and that night, that very night.... It had been Dorothy then, and it was Dorothy now. “He killed my wife.”

“But, Reuben, he was mad.”

“Still—”

She flung herself upon her knees. “Reuben, you cannot hang your son. Not your son, Reuben.”

“Quiet,” he commanded. “Quiet.”

“Oh, I will be very quiet.” She lowered her voice obediently. “If there are clerks through that door, they shall not hear. No one shall ever know he is your son. You can save him and you must. He is your son and there are babies, two little boys, your grandchildren, Reuben. What can I do alone for them? Give John back to me and we can manage. It will be mortal hard, but we shall do it.”

The woman was impossible. Actually she was pleading not only for the murderer’s release, but for his return. His wife, Dorothy, lay dead at this boy’s hands, and Phoebe was assuming that nothing was to happen! But, by the Lord, things were going to happen. Crazy or not that phrase of John’s stuck in his throat—“to set the people free from a tyrant.” Where there was one man thinking that sort of thing, there were others; it was a breeding sort of thought. Well, he’d sterilize it, he’d bleed these thinkers white. Meantime, there was Phoebe, and, it seemed, there were two young encumbrances. “There is the workhouse,” he said.

“Not while I live,” said Peter Bradshaw’s daughter.

“But to live, Phoebe, you must earn, and there will be no more earning here for you.” The workhouse was a safe place for a woman with a dangerous story and anything that escaped those muffling walls could be set down as the frantic ravings of a hanged man’s mother. This side-issue of Phoebe was a triviality, but he had learned the value of looking after the pence—as well as the pounds.

“Oh, do with me what you like. You always have done. But John—John!”

He looked his unchanging answer.

“I am to go to the workhouse. Is not that enough? I to that place and his children with me, John to—to the gallows, and why? Why? Because through all these years I have given you a gift. The gift of my silence. You are going to hang my son because I did not tell him he was your son. You could save him and you don’t because he did not know. Reuben, is there no mercy in you?” There was none. John had killed Dorothy. “Then, if I shriek the truth aloud? If I cry out now so that your clerks can hear me, that John is your son? If—”

“It would make this difference, Phoebe. You would go to the madhouse, instead of to the workhouse. In the one you would be alone. In the other you would sometimes see John’s brats.” He rang the hand-bell on his desk.

“And teach them,” she said, “teach them to speak their first words, ‘I hate the Hepplestalls.’”

Perhaps he heard her through the sound of the bell, perhaps not. A well-drilled clerk came promptly in upon his summons. “This woman is to go at once to the workhouse, with two children,” he said. “If there are forms to go through refer the officials to me.”

In the factory they called him “Master.” He was master of them all. She did not doubt it and she went.

Reuben finished reading his letters before he went home to breakfast. He read attentively, doing accustomed things in his accustomed way because it seemed that only so could he drug himself to forgetfulness of Dorothy’s death, then gravely, with thoughts held firmly on business affairs, he mounted his horse to where skilled hands had made death’s aftermath a. gracious thing.

Edward had spoken to his brothers. “Give me five minutes alone with Father when he comes in,” he said. It seemed to him this morning that once, a prodigious while ago, he had been fatuously young and either he had quarreled with his father or had come near to quarreling—he couldn’t be expected to remember which across so long a time as the night he had passed since then—about so obvious a certainty as his going into the factory. Dorothy, in that moment when she held their hands together, had made him see so clearly what he had to do. A moment of reconcilement and of clarification, when she had indicated her last wish. It was a law, indeed, and sweetly sane. “Why, of course, Mother,” he had been telling her through the night, “Father and I must stand together now.” He told, and she could not reply. She could not tell him how grotesquely he misinterpreted her moment.

He met Reuben at the door. “Father,” he said, “there is something you must let me say at once. My mother joined our hands last night. May we forget what passed between us earlier? May we remember only that she joined our hands last night, and that they will remain joined?”

“I hope they will,” said Reuben, not quite certain of him yet.

“The man who killed her came from the factory. I should like your permission to omit my last term at Oxford. I want very deeply to begin immediately at the factory.” His voice rose uncontrollably. “‘Drive or be driven,’ sir, you said the other day. And by God, I’ll drive. I’ll drive. That blackguard came from there.”

“Come with me after breakfast,” Reuben said, shaking the hand of his heir. And in that spirit Edward went to Hepplestall’s to begin his education.

Dorothy had died happy in the bright certainty of her authentic moment!