But she had gone almost mad. Of wild and overweening temper, she could not bear the humiliation of her husband’s soft, half–appealing kindness to everybody. He was not deceived by the poor. He knew they came and sponged on him, and whined to him, the worse sort; the majority, luckily for him, were much too proud to ask for anything, much too independent to come knocking at his door. But in Beldover, as everywhere else, there were the whining, parasitic, foul human beings who come crawling after charity, and feeding on the living body of the public like lice. A kind of fire would go over Christiana Crich’s brain, as she saw two more pale–faced, creeping women in objectionable black clothes, cringing lugubriously up the drive to the door. She wanted to set the dogs on them, 'Hi Rip! Hi Ring! Ranger! At 'em boys, set 'em off.' But Crowther, the butler, with all the rest of the servants, was Mr Crich’s man. Nevertheless, when her husband was away, she would come down like a wolf on the crawling supplicants:
'What do you people want? There is nothing for you here. You have no business on the drive at all. Simpson, drive them away and let no more of them through the gate.'
The servants had to obey her. And she would stand watching with an eye like the eagle’s, whilst the groom in clumsy confusion drove the lugubrious persons down the drive, as if they were rusty fowls, scuttling before him.
But they learned to know, from the lodge–keeper, when Mrs Crich was away, and they timed their visits. How many times, in the first years, would Crowther knock softly at the door: 'Person to see you, sir.'
'What name?'
'Grocock, sir.'
'What do they want?' The question was half impatient, half gratified. He liked hearing appeals to his charity.
'About a child, sir.'
'Show them into the library, and tell them they shouldn’t come after eleven o’clock in the morning.'
'Why do you get up from dinner?—send them off,' his wife would say abruptly.
'Oh, I can’t do that. It’s no trouble just to hear what they have to say.'
'How many more have been here today? Why don’t you establish open house for them? They would soon oust me and the children.'
'You know dear, it doesn’t hurt me to hear what they have to say. And if they really are in trouble—well, it is my duty to help them out of it.'
'It’s your duty to invite all the rats in the world to gnaw at your bones.'
'Come, Christiana, it isn’t like that. Don’t be uncharitable.'
But she suddenly swept out of the room, and out to the study. There sat the meagre charity–seekers, looking as if they were at the doctor’s.
'Mr Crich can’t see you. He can’t see you at this hour. Do you think he is your property, that you can come whenever you like? You must go away, there is nothing for you here.'
The poor people rose in confusion. But Mr Crich, pale and black–bearded and deprecating, came behind her, saying:
'Yes, I don’t like you coming as late as this. I’ll hear any of you in the morning part of the day, but I can’t really do with you after. What’s amiss then, Gittens. How is your Missis?'
'Why, she’s sunk very low, Mester Crich, she’s a’most gone, she is—'
Sometimes, it seemed to Mrs Crich as if her husband were some subtle funeral bird, feeding on the miseries of the people. It seemed to her he was never satisfied unless there was some sordid tale being poured out to him, which he drank in with a sort of mournful, sympathetic satisfaction. He would have no raison d’etre if there were no lugubrious miseries in the world, as an undertaker would have no meaning if there were no funerals.
Mrs Crich recoiled back upon herself, she recoiled away from this world of creeping democracy. A band of tight, baleful exclusion fastened round her heart, her isolation was fierce and hard, her antagonism was passive but terribly pure, like that of a hawk in a cage. As the years went on, she lost more and more count of the world, she seemed rapt in some glittering abstraction, almost purely unconscious. She would wander about the house and about the surrounding country, staring keenly and seeing nothing. She rarely spoke, she had no connection with the world. And she did not even think. She was consumed in a fierce tension of opposition, like the negative pole of a magnet.
