I had dressed the poor little thing--a pretty boy, and would have
been a fine man--in one of the gowns I had taken a pleasure in
sewing for it to wear, and the little cap with the crimped border
that had been Ellen's own when she was a baby and her mother's
pride, and I brought it and put it in her arms, and it was clay-cold
in my hands as I carried it. And she laid its head on her breast as
well as she could for her weakness; and father, who was leaning over
her, nigh mad with love and being so anxious about her, he says--
'Let Lucy take the poor little thing away, Ellen,' he says, 'for you
must try to get well and strong for the sake of those that love
you.'
Then she says, turning her eyes on him, shining like stars out of
her pale face, and still holding her baby tight to her breast, 'I
know what's the best thing I can do for them as love me, and I'm
doing it fast. Kiss me, father, and kiss the baby too. Perhaps if I
hold it tight we'll go out into the dark together, and God won't
have the heart to part us.' And so she died.
And there was no one but me that touched her after she died, for all
I am a cripple, and I laid her out, my pretty, with my own hands,
and the baby in the hollow of her arm; and I put primroses all round
them, and I took father to look at them when all was done, and we
stood there, holding hands and looking at her lying there so sweet
and peaceful, and looking so good too, whatever you may think, with
all the trouble wiped off her face as if the Lord had washed it
already in His heavenly light.
Now, Ellen was buried in the churchyard, and Parson, who was always
a hard man, he would have her laid away to the north side, where no
sun gets to for the trees and the church, and where few folks like
to be buried. But father, he said, 'No; lay her beside her mother,
in the bit of ground I bought twenty years ago, where I mean to lie
myself, and Lucy too, when her time comes, so that if the talk of
rising again is true we shall be all together at the last, as
kinsfolk should.'
So they laid her there, and her name was cut under mother's on the
headstone.
Father didn't grieve and take on as some men do, but he was quieter
than he used to be, and didn't seem to have that heart in his work
that he always had even after she had left us. It seemed as if the
spring of him was broken, somehow. Not but what he was goodness
itself to me then and always. But I wasn't his favourite child, nor
could I have looked to be, me being what I am and she so sweet and
pretty, and such a way with her.
And father went to church to the burying, but he wouldn't go to
service. 'I think maybe there's a God, and if there is, I have that
in my heart that's quite enough keeping in my own poor house,
without my daring to take it into His.'
And so I gave up going too. I wouldn't seem to be judging father,
not though I might be judged myself by all the village. But when I
heard the church-bells ringing, ringing, it was like as if some one
that loved me was calling to me and me not answering; and sometimes
when all the folk was in church, I used to hobble up on my crutches
to the gate and stand there and sometimes hear a bit of the singing
come through the open door.
It was the end of August that Mr. Barber at the shop fell off a
ladder leading to his wareroom, and was killed on the spot; and Mrs.
Jarvis, she says to me, 'If that young Barber comes home, as I
suppose he will, to take what's his by right in the eyes of the law,
he might as well go and put his head into an oven on a baking-day,
and get his worst friend to shove his legs in after him and shut the
door to.'
'He won't come back,' says I. 'How could he face it, when every one
in the village knows it?'
For when Ellen died it could not be kept secret any longer, and a
heap of folks that would have drawn their skirts aside rather than
brush against her if she had been there alive and well, with her
baby at her breast, had a tear and a kind word for her now that she
was gone where no tears and no words could get at her for good or
evil.
I see once a bit of poetry in a book, and it said when a woman had
done what she had done, the only way to get forgiven is to die, and
I believe that's true. But it isn't true of fathers and sisters.
It was Sunday morning, and father, he was working away at his
bench--not that it ever seemed to make him any happier to work, only
he was more miserable if he didn't,--and I had crept up to the
churchyard to lean against the wall and listen to the psalms being
sung inside, when, looking down the village street, I saw Barber's
shop open, and out came young Barber himself. Oh, if God forgets any
one in His mercy, it will be him and his like!
He come out all smart and neat in his new black, and he was
whistling a hymn tune softly. Our house was betwixt Barber's shop
and the church, not a stone's-throw off, anyway; and I prayed to God
that Barber would turn the other way and not come by our house,
where father he was sitting at his bench with the door open.
But he did turn, and come walking towards me; and I had laid my
crutches on the ground, and I stooped to pick them up to go home--to
stop words; for what were words, and she in her grave?--when I heard
young Barber's voice, and I looked over the wall, and see he had
stopped, in his madness and folly and the wickedness of his heart,
right opposite the house he had brought shame to, and he was
speaking to father through the door.
I couldn't hear what he said, but he seemed to expect an answer,
and, when none came, he called out a little louder, 'Oh, well,
you've no call to hold your head so high, anyhow!' And for the way
he said it I could have killed him myself, but for having been
brought up to know that two wrongs don't make a right, and
'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.'
They was at prayers in the church, and there was no sound in the
street but the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs, and young Barber,
he stood there looking in at our door with that little sneering
smile on his face, and the next minute he was running for his life
for the church, where all the folks were, and father after him like
a madman, with his long knife in his hand that he used to cut the
leather with. It all happened in a flash.
Barber come running up the dusty road in his black, and passed me as
I stood by the churchyard gate, and up towards the church; but
sudden in the path he stopped short, his eyes seeming starting out
of his head as he looked at Ellen's grave--not that he could see her
name, the headstone being turned the other way,--and he put his
hands before his eyes and stood still a-trembling, like a rabbit
when the dogs are on it, and it can't find no way out. Then he cried
out, 'No, no, cover her face, for God's sake!' and crouched down
against the footstone, and father, coming swift behind him, passed
me at the gate, and he ran his knife through Barber's back twice as
he crouched, and they rolled on the path together.
Then all the folks in church that had heard the scream, they come
out like ants when you walk through an ant-heap. Young Barber was
holding on to the headstone, the blood running out through his new
broadcloth, and death written on his face in big letters.
I ran to lift up father, who had fallen with his face on the grave,
and as I stooped over him, young Barber he turned his head towards
me, and he says in a voice I could hardly catch, such a whisper it
was, 'Was there a child? I didn't know there was a child--a little
child in her arm, and flowers all round.'
'Your child,' says I; 'and may God forgive you!'
And I knew that he had seen her as I see her when my hands had
dressed her for her sleep through the long night.
I never have believed in ghosts, but there is no knowing what the
good Lord will allow.
So vengeance overtook him, and they carried him away to die with the
blood dropping on the gravel; and he never spoke a word again.
And when they lifted father up with the red knife still fast in his
hand, they found that he was dead, and his face was white and his
lips were blue, like as I had seen them before. And they all said
father must have been mad; and so he lies where he wished to lie,
and there's a place there where I shall lie some day, where father
lies, and mother, and my dear with her little baby in the hollow of
her arm.