Suspicious
looks, sulky silences, or sharp speeches had become the order of
the day. As for the old mother, she sat about the kitchen or the
garden all day, murmuring threats and spells against Martha
Pillamon. There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the
spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating
their last flickering energies to the task of making each other
wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived
in undiminished vigour and intensity where all else was dropping
into ordered and symmetrical decay. And the uncanny part of it
was that some horrid unwholesome power seemed to be distilled from
their spite and their cursings. No amount of sceptical
explanation could remove the undoubted fact that neither kettle
nor saucepan would come to boiling-point over the hottest fire.
Crefton clung as long as possible to the theory of some defect in
the coals, but a wood fire gave the same result, and when a small
spirit-lamp kettle, which he ordered out by carrier, showed the
same obstinate refusal to allow its contents to boil he felt that
he had come suddenly into contact with some unguessed-at and very
evil aspect of hidden forces.
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