'Oh yes, I think so,' says Mattie, hardly understanding what I was
saying. 'I didn't notice particular. But I suppose that's all
right.'
She didn't notice particular! Now, I put it to you, Was that the
sort of girl to be the wife of a man who had got on like Jack had? I
for one didn't think so. If she didn't care for money why should she
have it, when there was plenty that did? And if love in a cottage
was what she wanted, and kisses and foolishness out of poetry-books,
I suppose one man's pretty much as good as another for that sort of
thing.
So I said, 'Come along in, dear, and we will get along with the
jam-making, and talk it all over nicely. I'm so glad he's come back.
I always say he would, if you remember.'
Not that I ever had, but she didn't seem to know any different,
anyhow.
The next few days Mattie was like a different girl. I will say for
her that she always did her fair share of the work, but she did it
with a face as long as a fiddle. Only now her face was all round and
dimply, and like a child's that has got a prize at school.
On Wednesday afternoon she said to me, 'I'm going to meet Jack, and
don't you say a word to the others about it, Jane. I'll tell father
myself when I come back, if you'll get the tea like a good girl, and
just tell them I've gone up to the village.'
'I don't tell lies as a rule, especially for other people,' I says;
'but I don't mind doing it for you this once.'
And she kissed me (she had got mighty fond of kissing these last few
days), and ran upstairs to get ready. When she come down, if you'll
believe me, she wasn't in her best dress as any other girl would
have been, but she had gone and put on a dowdy old green and white
delaine that had been her Sunday dress, trimmed with green satin
piping, three years before, and the old hat she had with all the
flowers faded and the ribbons crumpled up, that was three year old
too, and the very one she used to walk home from church with him on
Sundays in. And her with a really good blue poplin laid by and a new
bonnet with red roses in it, only come home the week before from
Maidstone.
She come through the kitchen where I was setting the tea, and she
took the key of the church off the nail in the wall. Our farm was
full a mile from the village, and half way between it and the
church. So we kept one key, and Jack's uncle, who was the sexton, he
had the other.
'What time was you to meet Jack?' I says.
'He didn't say,' said she; 'but it used to be half-past six.'
'You're full early,' says I.
'Yes,' she says, 'but I've got to take the butter down to Weller's,
and to call in for something first.'
And, of course, I knew that she meant that she had to call in for
that note at the church.
Minute she was out of the way, I runs into the kitchen, and says to
our maid--
'Poor Mrs. Tibson's not so well, Polly. I'm going over to see her.
Give the men their tea, will you? there's a good girl.'
And she said she would. And in ten minutes I was dressed, and nicely
dressed too, for I had on my white frock and the things I had had at
a girl's wedding the summer before, and a pair of new gloves I had
got out of my butter-money.
Then I went off up the hill to the church after Mattie, even then
not making up my mind what I was going to do, but with an idea that
all things somehow might work together for good to me if I only had
the sense to see how, and turn things that way.
As I come up to the church I was just in time to see her old green
gown going in at the porch, and when I come up the key was in the
door, and she hadn't come out. Quick as thought, the idea come to me
to have a joke with her and lock her in, so she shouldn't meet him,
and next minute I had turned the key in the lock softly, and stole
off through the church porch, and up to the ash copse, which I
couldn't make a mistake about, for there's only one within a mile of
the church.
Jack was there, though it was before the time. I could see his blue
tie and white shirt-front shining through the trees.
When I locked her in I only meant to have a sort of joke--at least,
I think so,--but when I come close up to him and saw how well off he
looked, and the diamond ring on his fingers, and his pin and his
gold chain, I thought to myself--
'Well, you go to Liverpool to-morrow, young man! And she ain't got
your address, and, likely as not, if you go away vexed with her, you
won't leave it with your aunt, and one wife is as good as another,
if not better, and as for her caring for you, that's all affectation
and silliness--so here goes.'
He stepped forward, with his hands held out to me, but when he saw
it was me he stopped short.
'Why, Miss Jane,' he said, 'I beg your pardon. I was expecting quite
a different person.'
'Yes, I know,' I says, 'you was expecting my cousin Mattie.'
'And isn't she coming?' he asks very quick, looking at me full, with
his blue eyes.
'I hope you won't take it hard, Mr. Halibut,' says I, 'but she said
she'd rather not come.'
'Confound it!' says he.
'You see,' I went on, 'it's a long time since you was at home, and
you not writing or anything, and some girls are very flighty and
changeable; and she told me to tell you she was sorry if you were
mistaken in her feelings about you, and she's had time to think
things over since three years ago; and now you're so well off, she
says she's sure you'll find no difficulty in getting a girl suited
to your mind.'
'Did she say that?' he said, looking at me very straight. 'It's not
like her.'
'I don't mean she said so in those words, or that she told me to
tell you so; but that's what I made out to be her mind from what she
said between us two like.'
'But what message did she send to me? For I suppose she sent you to
meet me to-day.'
Then I saw that I should have to be very careful. So to get a little
time I says, 'I don't quite like to tell you, Mr. Halibut, what she
said.'
'Out with it,' says he. 'Don't be a fool, girl!'
'Well, then,' I says, 'if it must be so, her words were these: "Tell
Jack," she says, "that I shall ever wish him well for the sake of
what's past, but all's over betwixt him and me, and--"'
'And what,' says he.
'There wasn't much besides,' says I.
'Good God, don't be such an idiot!' and he looked as if he could
have shaken me.
'Well, then, if you must have it,' says I, 'she says, "Tell Jack
there's at least one girl I know of as would make him a better wife
than I should, and has been thinking of him steady and faithful
these three years, while I've been giving my mind to far other
things."'
'Confound her!' says he, 'little witch. And who is this other girl
that she's so gracious to hand me over to?'
'I don't want to say no more,' says I. 'I'm going now, Mr. Halibut.
Good-bye.'
For well I knew he wouldn't let me go at that.
'Tell me who it is,' says he. 'What! she's not content with giving
me the mitten herself, but she must insult me and this poor girl
too, who's got more sense than she has. Good Heavens, it would serve
her right if I took her at her word, and took the other girl back
with me.'
He was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, frowning
like a July thunderstorm.
'Wicked, heartless little--but there, thank God! all women aren't
like her. Who's this girl that she's tried to set me against?'
'I can't tell you,' says I.
'Oh! can't you, my girl? But you shall.'
And he catches hold of both my wrists in his hands.
'Leave me go!' I cried, 'you're hurting me.'
'Who is it?'
I was looking down my nose very straight, but when he said that, I
just lifted my eyes up and looked at him, and dropped them.
I've always practised looking like what I meant, or what I wanted
people to think I meant--sort of matching your looks and words, like
you match ribbon and a bit of stuff.
'So you're the girl, are you?' he cries. 'And she thought to put you
to shame before me with her messages? Look here, I'm well off. I'm
going to Liverpool to-night, and back to America next week. I want
to take a wife with me, and she says you have thought of me while
I've been away. Will you marry me, Jane?'
I just looked at him again, and he put his arm round me and gave me
a good kiss. I had to put up with it, though I never could see any
sense in that sort of stuff. Then we walked home together, very
slow, his arm round me.
I daresay some people will think I oughtn't to have acted so, taking
away another girl's fellow. But I was quite sure she would get
plenty that would play love in a cottage with her, and she did not
seem to appreciate her blessings in getting a man that was well off,
and I didn't see how it could be found out, as he was going away
next day.
Now, it would all have gone as well as well if I had had the sense
to offer to see him off at the station, and I ought to have had the
sense to see him well out of the place. But we all make mistakes
sometimes. Mine was in saying 'Good-bye' to him at the corner of the
four-acre and going home by myself, leaving him with three-quarters
of an hour for 'Satan to find some mischief still for idle hands to
do' in.
I said 'Good-bye' to him, and he kissed me, and gave me the address
where to write, and told me what to do.
'For I shan't have no truck with your uncle,' says he. 'I marries my
wife, and I takes her right away.'
It wasn't till I was going up the stairs, untying my bonnet-strings
as I went, and smoothing out the ribbons with my finger and thumb,
for it was my best, that it come to me all in a minute that I had
left Mattie locked up in that church. It was very tiresome, and how
to get her out I didn't know. But I thought maybe she would be
trying some of the other doors, and I might turn the key gently and
away again before she could find out it was unlocked.
So up to the church I went, very hot, and a setting sun, and having
had no tea or anything, and as I began to climb the hill my heart
stood still in my veins, for I heard a sound from the church as I
never expected to hear at that time of the day and week.
'O Lord!' I thought, 'she's tried every other way, and now she's
ringing the bell, and she'll fetch up the whole village, and what
will become of me?'
I made the best haste I could, but I could see more than one black
dot moving up the hill before me that showed me folks on their way
home had heard the bell and was going to see what it meant. And when
I got up there they were trying the big door of the church, not
knowing it was the little side one where the key was, and Jack, he
come up almost the same moment I did, and I knew well enough he had
come to get that note out of her prayer-book for fear some one else
should see it.
'Here, I've got the key in my pocket,' says he, and with that he
opened the door, the bell clang, clang, clanging from the tower all
the time like as if the bellringer was drunk and had got a wager on
to get more beats out of the bell in half an hour than the next man.
Whoever it was that was ringing the bell--and I could give a pretty
good guess who it was--didn't seem to hear us coming, and they went
up the aisle and pulled back the red baize curtain that hides the
bottom of the tower where the ringers stand on Sundays, and there
was Mattie with her old green gown on, and her hair all loose and
down her back with the hard work of bellringing, I suppose, and her
face as white as the bald-faced stag as is painted on the sign down
at the inn in the village. And directly she saw Jack, I knew it was
all over, for she let go the rope and it swung up like a live thing
over our heads, and she made two steps to Jack and had him round the
neck before them all.
'O Jack!' she cried, 'don't look like that.