I DON'T know how she could have done it. I couldn't have done it
myself. At least, I don't think so. But being lame and small, and
not noticeable anyhow, I had never any temptation, so I can't judge
those that have.
Ellen was tall and a slight figure, and as pretty as a picture in
her Sunday clothes, and prettier than any picture on a working day,
with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulder and the colour in her
face like a rose, and her brown, hair all twisted up rough anyhow;
and, of course, she was much sought after and flattered. But I
couldn't have done it myself, I think, even if I had been sought
after twice as much and twice as handsome. No, I couldn't, not after
the doctor had said that father's heart was weak, and any sudden
shock might bring an end to him.
But, oh! poor dear, she was my sister--my own only sister--and it's
not the time now to be hard on her, and she where she is.
She was walking regular with a steady young man, who worked through
the week at Hastings, and come home here on a Sunday, and she would
have married him and been as happy as a queen, I know; and all her
looking in the glass, and dressing herself pretty, would have come
to being proud of her babies and spending what bits she could get
together in making them look smart; but it was not to be.
Young Barber, the grocer's son, who had a situation in London, he
come down for his summer holiday, and then it was 'No, thank you
kindly,' to poor Arthur Simmons, that had loved her faithful and
true them two years, and she was all for walking with young Mr.
Barber, besides running into the shop twenty times a day when no
occasion was, just for a word across the counter.
And father wasn't the best pleased, but he was always a silent man,
very pious, and not saying much as he sat at his bench, for he had
been brought up to the shoemaking and was very respected among
Pevensey folks. He would hum a hymn or two at his work sometimes,
but he was never a man of words. When young Barber went back to
London, Ellen, she began to lose her pretty looks. I had never
thought much of young Barber. There was something common about
him--not like the labouring men, but a kind of town commonness,
which is twenty times worse to my thinking; and if I didn't like him
before, you may guess I didn't waste much love on him when I see
poor Ellen's looks.
Now, if I am to tell you this story at all, I must tell it very
steady and quiet, and not run on about what I thought or what I
felt, or I shan't never have the heart to go through it. The long
and short of it was that a month hadn't passed over our heads after
young Barber leaving, when one morning our Ellen wasn't there. And
she left a note, nailed to father's bench, to say she had gone off
with her true love, and father wasn't to mind, for she was going to
be married.
Father, he didn't say a word, but he turned a dreadful white, and
blue his lips were, and for one dreadful moment I thought that I had
lost him too. But he come round presently. I ran across to the Three
Swans to get a drop of brandy for him; and I looked at her letter
again, and I looked at him, and we both see that neither of us
believed that she was going to be married. There was something about
the very way of the words as she had written them which showed they
weren't true.
Father, he said nothing, only when next Sunday had come, and I had
laid out his Sunday things and his hat, all brushed as usual, he
says--
'Put 'em away, my girl. I don't believe in Sunday. How can I believe
in all that, and my Ellen gone to shame?'
And, after that, Sundays was the same to him as weekdays, and the
folks looked shy at us, and I think they thought that, what with
Ellen's running away and father's working on Sundays, we was on the
high-road to the pit of destruction.
And so the time went on, and it was Christmas. The bells was ringing
for Christmas Eve, and I says to father: 'O father! come to church.
Happen it's all true, and Ellen's an honest woman, after all.'
And he lifted his head and looked at me, and at that moment there
come a soft little knock at the door. I knew who it was afore I had
time to stir a foot to go across the kitchen and open the door to
her. She blinked her eyes at the light as I opened the door to her.
Oh, pale and thin her face was that used to be so rosy-red, and--
'May I come in?' she said, as if it wasn't her own home. And father,
he looked at her like a man that sees nothing, and I was frightened
what he might do, like the fool I was, that ought to have known
better.
'I'm very tired,' says Ellen, leaning against the door-post; 'I have
come from a very long way.'
And the next minute father makes two long steps to the door, and his
arms is round her, and she a-hanging on his neck, and they two
holding each other as if they would never let go. And so she come
home, and I shut the door.
And in all that time father and me, we couldn't make too much of
her, me being that thankful to the Lord that He had let our dear
come back to us; and never a word did she say to me of him that had
been her ruin. But one night when I asked her, silly-like, and
hardly thinking what I was doing, some question about him, father
down with his fist on the table, and says he--
'When you name that name, my girl, you light hell in me, and if ever
I see his damned face again, God help him and me too.'
And so I held my stupid tongue, and sat sewing with Ellen long days,
and it was a happy, sad time, if a time can be sad and happy both.
And it was about primrose-time that her time come, and we had kept
it quiet, and nobody knew but us and Mrs. Jarvis, that lived in the
cottage next to ours, and was Ellen's godmother, and loved her like
her own daughter; and when the baby come, Ellen says, 'Is it a boy
or a girl?' And we told her it was a boy.
Then, says she, 'Thank God for that! My baby won't live to know such
shame as mine.'
And there wasn't one of us dared tell her that God meant no shame or
pain or grief at all should come to her little baby, because it was
dead. But by-and-by she would have it to lie by her, and we said No:
it was asleep; and for all we said she guessed the truth somehow.
And she began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks and wetting
the linen about her, and she began to moan, 'I want my baby--oh,
bring me my little baby that I have never seen yet. I want to say
"good-bye" to it, for I shall never go where it is going.'