VIII
A SUFFRAGETTE

She thanked God, she told me, that she had never been married.

She was quite old—well, quite old? Can you ever say that of a woman? Women are quite old for five years, but that is all. They are quite old between the ages of thirty-five and forty. Then, if God has given them a heart and they have taken advantage of the gift, youth comes back again. It is not the youth under the eyes, perhaps; it is the youth in the eyes. It is not the youth around the lips; it is the youth of the words that issue from them.

Between thirty-five and forty a woman is trying to remember her youth and forget her age. That makes her quite old—quite, quite old. After that—well, I have said, it rests with God and her.

So Miss Taviner was not quite old. She was quite young. She was sixty-three. Her eyes twinkled, even when she thanked God for her spinsterdom.

“You’ve got,” said I, “a poor opinion of men.”

“’Tisn’t my opinion—’tis my mother’s,” said she.

I felt there was nothing to be said to that. It would have been unseemly on my part—who have only just found my own youth—to disagree with an opinion of such long standing.

You must understand that Miss Taviner could never have been beautiful. God may have meant her to be; I don’t know anything about that. I am only aware how Nature interfered. For when she was young—a child not more, I think, than six—she was struck by lightning, paralysed for a time, and, when she recovered, her eyes were at loggerheads. They looked every way but one.

But I like her little shrivelled face, nevertheless. It is crafty, perhaps. She looks as if she counts every apple on the trees in her old garden. Why shouldn’t she? She has a poor opinion of men. Besides, the apples at Beech House Farm—where her father lived and his father before him—those apples are part of the slender income by which she manages to cling to the old home. Who could blame her for counting them? I don’t even blame her for having the cunning look of it in her eyes.

No—I suppose, though I do like her face, it is because I haven’t got to love it. Possibly that is why she has so poor an opinion of men. Some man found that he could not love her face and broke his faith with her. At least, I thought that then. Some heartless wretch has jilted her, I thought—taught her to love, and then caught sight of a prettier pair of eyes. I must admit he need not have been on the lookout for them.

“But,” said I presently, when these ideas had passed away, “don’t you admit men have their uses?”

“None!” she said emphatically.

“Then why,” I asked, “do you hang up that old top hat of your father’s on a peg in the kitchen, so that the first tramp, as you open the door to him, may see it?”

“So that he’ll think I’ve got a man in the house, I suppose,” she replied.

“That’s why you have a couple of glasses and a whiskey bottle on the table in the evening?”

“Yes.”

“Then a man is useful,” said I, “as far as his hat is concerned?”

She winked her crooked eyes at me and she said, “Yes, so long as there isn’t a head inside of it.”

I laughed. “Then really,” I concluded, “you do hate men?”

“I suppose I do,” said she.

“Why?”

I thought I was going to hear of her little romance with its pitiable ending.

But no, she merely shrugged her shoulders, stuck an old tam-o’-shanter on her head, and went out to see if the gardener was doing his fair share of work.

I might never have thought of this again, but it chanced that I bought from her, amongst her old relics of the family property, a mahogany box, with brass lock and brass handle. Inlaid, it was, round the edge of the lid. Quite a handsome thing. She had lost its key. It was locked and, seeing that she did not want to go to the expense of getting a key made, she sold it to me.

I got a key made. I opened it. It was empty, but for one thing. There was a letter at the bottom. It is unquestionable that I had no right to read it. It is also unquestionable that I did.

“That’s the man,” said I to myself. “He was ashamed of being seen with her even then. No wonder she has a poor opinion of men.” My anger went out to Henry Yeoman on the spot.

But I did him an injustice. For, inquiring at the forge, which I happened to pass some days later, I stopped and asked the smith about him.

“Henry Yeoman,” said he, “why he’s left these parts nigh fifteen years. He’s gone to live at Reading.”

“Is he married?” I asked.

“Yes; married Miss Taviner.”

“Miss Taviner?”

“Yes; sister of her down at Beech House Farm.”

“Never knew she had a sister,” said I.

“Yes. Oh, she had three; all married, they are.”

“Why did she never marry?” I asked, for then I knew the letter was not to her.

“Why?” He tapped the anvil with his hammer and he laughed a bass accompaniment to its ring. “Because no one ’ud ever look at her, I suppose.”

I saw it then. I saw why she had so poor opinion of men. I saw why she thanked God she had never married.

No man had ever taught her what love was. No man had ever even jilted her. No wonder she hated them. No wonder she counted her apples.