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27 chapters
Applecroft
Applecroft
Half-way along the one straggling street of Savilestowe a narrow lane suddenly opened out between the cottages and turned abruptly towards the uplands which rose on the northern edge of the village. Its first course lay between high grey walls, overhung with ivy and snapdragon. When it emerged from their cool shadowings the church came in view on one hand and the school on the other, each set on its own green knoll and standing high above the meadows. Once past these it became narrower and more
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The Tight Lip
The Tight Lip
Ever since her mother's death, ten years before the events of that morning, Jeckie, as responsible manager of household affairs, had cultivated an instinct which had been born in her—the instinct, if a thing had to be done to do it there and then. As soon as Farnish unburdened himself of his difficulty, his daughter's quick brain began to revolve schemes of salvation. There was nothing new in her father's situation; she had helped him out of similar ones more than once. More than once, too, she
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The Broken Man
The Broken Man
While Jeckie was busied in the village and Farnish, sighing after the key of the beer barrel, was aimlessly wandering about the farm buildings, there came into the kitchen, where Rushie was making ready the dinner, a tall, blue-eyed, broadly-built youngster, whose first action was to glance inquiringly at the clock and whose second was to go to the sink in the corner to wash his brown hands. This was Joe, or Doadie Bartle, about whom nobody in those parts knew more than that he had turned up as
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The Diplomatic Father
The Diplomatic Father
Grice drove away down the lane in a curious temper. He was angry with himself for wasting a couple of hours of his valuable time; angry with Jeckie for having induced him to do so; angry with Farnish for his incapacity and idleness; still more angry to find that it was hopeless to do what he might have done. He knew well enough that Jeckie had been right when she said that he would never find a better wife for Albert; he also knew that after what he had just witnessed he would never allow Albert
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The Shakespeare Line
The Shakespeare Line
The Savilestowe blacksmith had been right when he said to George Grice that Jeckie Farnish had probably put money by. Jeckie had for some time foreseen the coming of an evil day, and for three years she had set aside a certain amount of the takings from her milk, butter, and eggs sales, and had lodged it safely in the Penny Bank at Sicaster in her own name. Her father knew nothing of this nest-egg; no one, indeed, except Rushie, knew that she had it; not even Rushie knew its precise amount. And
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The Gloves Off
The Gloves Off
The old grocer was not the man to do things by halves, and as soon as he found that Albert's engagement to his cousin Lucilla was an accomplished fact, duly approved by the young woman's father and to be determined by a speedy marriage, he made up his mind to put his son out of the mouse stage and make a man of him. Albert should come into full partnership, with a half-share in the business; he should also have a domicile of his own under the old roof. There were two big, accommodating rooms on
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The Golden Teapot
The Golden Teapot
While George Grice was driving out of Sicaster, groaning and grumbling at his ill-luck, Jeckie Farnish, in the Finkle Street lodging, was contemplating a pile of linen which had just been sent in to her for stitching. Rushie contemplated it, too, and made a face at it. "Looks as if we should never get through it!" she said mournfully, "And it's such dull work, sewing all day long." "Don't you quarrel with your bread-and-butter, miss!" answered Jeckie, with ready sharpness. "You'd ought to be tha
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The Battle Begins
The Battle Begins
Up to that moment George Grice had fondly and firmly believed that he knew the secret of the house opposite—he was so certain in his assumption, indeed, that he had taken no particular trouble to get at the real truth about it. For some time there had been a travelling draper, a Scotsman, coming into those parts, and doing a considerable amount of trade; this man had often remarked to the grocer that he had a rare good mind to set up a shop in Savilestowe, and make it the headquarters of a furth
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The Iron Rod
The Iron Rod
There were more reasons than one for the first gush of customers to Jeckie Farnish's smart new shop. One of them George Grice had foreseen as soon as his eyes fell on the golden teapot and the new sign novelty. Folk would always go to whatever was fresh, he said; only time would tell if the influx of trade to the new-comer would be kept up. But of other reasons he knew little. One was that he himself was unpopular in the village; he had abused his monopoly; more than once he had refused temporar
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The Eternal Feminine
The Eternal Feminine
All unknown to George Grice, there was a certain young person in his immediate surroundings who was watching the course and trend of events with a pair of eyes which were at least as keen as his own. His daughter-in-law had come to her new life armed with a goodly stock of common sense and no small share of the family characteristics of love of money and astuteness in getting it. Lucilla, indeed, was a worthy daughter of her father, the draper, who was as much of a money-grubber as his brother o
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Humble Pie
Humble Pie
Those who were in close touch with Jeckie Farnish on the day of her younger sister's revolt and defection had far from pleasant moments. She drove her father and shop boys about with harsh and impatient words; she was curt and dictatorial with Bartle, one of those conscientious and faithful souls to whom any reasonable employer would have found it impossible to attribute laxity; for the first time since commencing business she was short-tempered with some customers, snappish with others, and ope
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The Triple Chance
The Triple Chance
At the beginning of her venture Jeckie had spent all her energies on the business part of her establishment, and had laid out very little money on the furnishing of the private rooms. A living room for meals, bedrooms for herself and Rushie and their father, had seemed to her sufficient for first needs; additions could come later, if the business prospered. The business had prospered, and there came a time when she determined to have at least a parlour into which the better class of customers co
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Dead Men's Shoes
Dead Men's Shoes
Had George Grice but known it, the defection of his daughter-in-law, Lucilla, to the rival establishment across the street had more in it than appeared on the surface. Lucilla, after much worry and anxious thought, had come to the conclusion that there was no more to be got out of Albert's father. She had grown doubtful, not very long after her marriage, about the old man's financial position. George, when the bride and bridegroom had fairly settled down, had begun to throw out hints that her po
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Avarice
Avarice
Five years after George Grice had been gathered to his fathers, by which time Jeckie Farnish had achieved her ambition and become the richest woman in Savilestowe, there walked into the stone-flagged hall of the "Coach-and-Four" one fine spring morning, a gentleman who wore a smart suit of grey tweed, a grey Homburg hat, ornamented by a black band, and swung a handsome gold-mounted walking cane in his elegantly-gloved fingers. There was an air of consequence and distinction about him, though he
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The Bit of Bad Land
The Bit of Bad Land
Mortimer was at Jeckie Farnish's private door to the minute on the following evening, and Jeckie hastened to admit him and to lead him to her parlour. He went straight to the point at which he had broken off their conversation of the night before. "You were saying that before ever starting on the project I mentioned it would be necessary to buy the land," he said, as he settled himself in an easy chair. "Now, Miss Farnish, let's be plain and matter-of-fact about one thing. Most of the land in th
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Coal
Coal
Mortimer threw down his cap, and dropped into the easy chair which he had come to look upon as his own special reservation. He rubbed his hands together in sign of high satisfaction. "Smart woman," he exclaimed admiringly. "Excellent! Excellent! Didn't I tell you that you'd be able to manage it? Good! Good!" "Yes," said Jeckie, almost indifferently. "I did it. I knew how to do it, you see, when I came to to think it over. And I did it there and then, and paid the price—there's naught to do but t
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Birds of a Feather
Birds of a Feather
Close countenance though Jeckie Farnish kept to all the world, her thoughts had never been so many nor so varied as at this eventful stage of her career. She spent many a sleepless night considering possibilities, probabilities, eventualities. She thought over ways and means; she reckoned up her resources. She tried to look ahead as far as possible; to take everything into account. But, in all her reflections and plans and schemings, there was one dominant note—the desire to make money out of he
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The Yorkshire Way
The Yorkshire Way
During the course of the next morning Jeckie received a large oblong envelope delivered to her by the stable-boy of the "Coach-and-Four." It was handed to her over the counter of the shop, and she opened it there and then, in the presence of her assistants and of several customers, all of whom were surprised to see the usually hard, unmoved face flush as its owner glared hastily at the two enclosures which she drew out. Within an instant Jeckie had hurried them into the envelope again, and had t
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Obsession
Obsession
Before noon the next day the two Londoners, for whom Jeckie Farnish had no further use, had shaken the Savilestowe dirt from off their feet, to the sorrow of Beckitt and his wife and the frequenters of the bar-parlour, and Jeckie told her partner, Lucilla Grice, of how cleverly she had done them. Lucilla applauded her cleverness; what was the use, she said, of paying money if you could get out of paying it?—especially as there was such a lot of spending to be done that she and Jeckie could not b
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The Last Throw
The Last Throw
It was a conversation with Farnish that sent Jeckie, grim and resolute, into Sicaster, determined on selling the business which she had built up and developed so successfully. Until the day of that conversation the idea of giving up the shop had never entered her mind; she had more than once foreseen that she might have to raise ready money on the strength of her prosperous establishment, but she had not contemplated relinquishing it altogether, for she knew—no one better—that as the population
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The Commination Service
The Commination Service
At five o'clock that afternoon, by mutual agreement, Jeckie Farnish sold to John Bradingham the stock and goodwill of her grocery business, and a few days later she paid in another heavy cheque to the credit of Farnish and Grice, and, at the same date, secured the alteration in the deed of partnership which made matters straight between her and Lucilla. There was something of a grim desperation in Jeckie's face as she walked out of the solicitor's office whereat this transaction had been effecte
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The Bell Rings
The Bell Rings
Jeckie Farnish was a strong woman; physically as well as mentally she was the strongest woman in all those parts. She had scarcely ever known what it was to feel a sudden giving way of strength; the end of a long day's toil usually found her fresh and vigorous, ready for and gladly anticipating the labours of the morrow. Nor had she ever known what it was to experience a mental giving way; the nearest approach to it—only a momentary one—had been on that day, long years before, whereon George Gri
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Black Depths
Black Depths
The cottage to which Jeckie had removed her father and herself, and such household belongings as were absolutely necessary to their simple standard of comfort, faced due east; consequently, when the sun rose above the fringe of woods that morning its beams shone direct into the little living-room. And they fell full on Jeckie, who sat bolt upright at the table, her hands stretched out and tightly clasped on its surface, her eyes staring straight in front of her, her lips white and set. So she ha
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The Sentence
The Sentence
On the evening of that eventful day—a day of comings and goings about the ruined colliery—Farnish stayed later than usual at the "Coach-and-Four." There had never been so much to talk about in the whole history of Savilestowe as there was that evening, and he, as father of Jeckie Farnish, was a person of consequence in the debate which was carried on in the bar-parlour to the latest hours allowed by the licensing laws. But he went home at last, to find the cottage in darkness; there was not even
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The Second Exodus
The Second Exodus
Those who ministered to her in her convalescence found it difficult to understand Jeckie Farnish's curious apathy and indifference to the things about her. Once her sister was out of danger, Rushie had gone home to Binks and her children; Binks was by that time a bustling tradesman in Sicaster, and had prospered so well that Rushie wore a real sealskin coat and sported gold chains and diamond rings. It had been Binks's idea that his wife should go to the rescue when Jeckie was taken ill; blood,
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The Lustre Jug
The Lustre Jug
Some eight or nine years after the morning on which Jeckie Farnish and her father had walked out of their native village for the last time, never to be heard of again in those parts, a man, who had just arrived by train at Scarhaven, the time being seven o'clock of a bitterly cold November evening, turned away from the railway station and betook himself, shivering in the north-east wind that swept inland from the sea, towards a part of the town wherein cheap lodgings were to be found. In the lig
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