CHAPTER XI--THE HATE OF THE HEPPLESTALLS 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.”