THE November landscape was sombre and melancholy enough; brown,
newly-ploughed fields alternating for the most part with the tawny
stubble of land that still lay fallow. A few withered leaves clung to
the branches of trees and hedges; the sky was grey, the air heavy and yet
cold. It was a fit day to hear news of trouble, Mrs. Frizzell thought,
as her eyes roamed over the prospect, not vaguely as another woman’s
might have done, but with a definite object in view.
She proceeded at a round pace up the lane, and along the high road,
leaving it, after half a mile or so, to strike across the fields.
She was a small, energetic-looking woman, with hazel eyes and prematurely
grey hair. Her usually cheerful face was deadly pale to-day, and its
characteristically alert expression had given place to one of devouring
anxiety.
Presently against the sky-line above a distant hedge appeared the head
and shoulders of a man, and a little way in front of him the ears and
crests of two horses. Mrs. Frizzell quickened her pace, making for a
familiar gap in the hedge aforesaid, through which she presently squeezed
herself.
The man, who had not seen her, continued his slow progress across the
field. Without calling out to him she broke into a run, her feet sinking
deep at every step in the newly turned-up soil; after a few minutes she
reached him, panting, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
He looked round with a start, and brought his horses to a standstill.
“Martha! what brings ye out at this time o’ day?”
“Nothing good,” said Martha. She threw a hasty glance round. “Be there
any one about?”
She spoke in a peculiarly loud and distinct key, and he answered in the
low, mumbling tone habitual to deaf people.
“Nay, who should be about? There bain’t nobody here but myself.”
“I think I’ll go with ’ee to the top o’ the hill and make sure—I don’t
want nobody to hear what I’ve a-got to tell ’ee. Go on—go on to the top
o’ the drill.”
“I be to go forrard?” questioned her husband, staring at her stupidly.
“’Ees, take them harses up to the top o’ the drill, and then I’ll talk to
’ee.”
Frizzell admonished his horses to proceed, and went plodding on up the
rising ground along which he had traced his furrow, glancing round every
now and then at the set face of his wife as she plodded in his rear.
He was a big, blond, good-natured man, whose natural dulness of wit was
intensified by his infirmity.
When they reached the brow of the hill Martha slipped in front of him,
and standing on tip-toe, cast a searching glance round. A flock of sheep
was penned in a corner of the adjacent turnip-field, a few rooks were
waddling up the furrows nearer at hand; over their heads a heron was
slowly sailing with wide, sweeping wings on his way to the river, but not
a human creature was in sight.
“Well,” said John Frizzell as she turned towards him, “whatever be the
matter, Missus? I wish you’d out wi’ it.”
“I have had a letter from my cousin Julia, Father, and she have telled me
some bad noos about our Susan.”
John’s jaw dropped, and the colour forsook his face, leaving it pale
beneath its tan.
“Why—be the maid took ill?” he inquired with a gasp.
“She bain’t well—and she bain’t like to be well. She’ve a-been ill-used,
Father. There, the silly girl wouldn’t hearken to what I did al’ays tell
her, an’ now she be sufferin’ for’t. She’ve been an’ took up wi’ a
soldier, an’ so far as I can make out he made a purtence o’ marryin’ her;
got some raskil to dress up as a minister, an’ put on the ring and all.
The poor maid was sure she was married honest, but she kep’ it secret,
for he dared her to tell any one wi’out he gave her leave. Well, an’ now
he’ve a-gone off to the war, and left a letter for her sayin’ as how
’twere all humbug, an’ they wasn’t married at all, an’ hopin’ she’d
forgive en.”
“My God!” said the poor father, and he brought his hand down on the
plough-handle with a force that made the mild horses start, “My God! I
wish I had en here—I’d smash en!”
“An’ that’s not all,” went on Mrs. Frizzell, in a choked voice; “there’s
a little ’un upon the road—our daughter ’ull be disgraced afore the whole
parish.”
“Disgraced!” cried John, his honest face as red as it had before been
pale, “who says _disgraced_! ’Tain’t no fault o’ the poor child’s!
She’ve a-been deceived and used cruel hard. Nobody ’ull not have a word
to say against _her_.”
“Won’t they, though!” retorted his wife, who, though as sore at heart as
he, thought it necessary to assume an aggressive tone. “Who do you
suppose ’ull ever believe as the girl ’ud be so simple as to be took in
and think herself married when she warn’t married? They don’t believe it
in Darchester, I can tell ’ee. There, they’ve a-gone and sent her away
from her situation; and Julia—why I can see as my own cousin Julia don’t
half believe her story—she’ve wrote to say she ’opes I’ll come and take
her away at once, as she don’t like her for to be comin’ to the house.”
“Well, write an’ tell her as you will take her away,” returned Frizzell
in a kind of muffled roar. “I bain’t ashamed o’ my child, whatever other
folks may be. Write an’ tell her as Father an’ Mother ’ull be fain to
have her home, and won’t let nobody worrit her when she d’ get there.
I’ll soon shut their mouths if they try to make out as she bain’t
a-tellin’ the trewth!”
“Now, Father, you listen to I.” And here Martha laid both her hands upon
his great round shoulders and fairly shook him in her eagerness. “I
bain’t a-goin’ for to let her tell the trewth—not all the trewth. I’m
willin’ she should say she got married to a soldier unbeknown to us, but
I don’t mean to let the rest come out. I’m goin’ for to give out as he
were killed in the war. That way he’ll be done wi’, so to speak—nobody
’ull be axin’ questions about en, or wonderin’ why Susan have come home.”
John Frizzell fairly gasped.
“Bless my heart!” he ejaculated, staring at his eager little wife. “Why,
what a tale! I don’t much fancy tellin’ sich a pack o’ lies; nay,
now”—and he rolled his head obstinately—“I bain’t a-goin’ to tell ’em.
I’ll speak the trewth, and knock down them as says contrairy—I’ll be
danged if I won’t!”
“Don’t ’ee be sich a fool, Father. You’ll do jist as I tell ’ee. I’ve
al’ays held up my head, and Susan, she’ve al’ays been a bit high, an’
have a-kep’ herself to herself, and there be folks as ’ud be only too
glad to go a-crowin’ over we, an’ a-backbitin’ of we. I bain’t a-goin’
for to give ’em no cause. You keep your mouth shut—that’s all as you’ve
got to do. Keep your mouth shut, and if folks d’ come a-worrettin’ of
’ee wi’ questions, don’t ’ee let on for to understand. You be hard
enough o’ hearin’ at all times, and you can jist make out to be a bit
harder. You’ll have to do as I do bid ’ee, for I’ve telled Mrs. Cross
jist now the story about Susan’s husband bein’ killed in the war, and his
name an’ all—”
“Why, do ’ee know his name?” interrupted Frizzell, staring at her in a
puzzled sort of way. “What be his name? The young raskil! If he bain’t
killed out abroad, I’ll half murder en when he do come back.”
Martha’s face assumed a set expression.
“He don’t deserve for to come back,” she said, in a tone too low for her
husband to hear. “There, it bain’t Christian to wish ill to nobody, but
the A’mighty be just, and I can’t think as He’d let a blessin’ rest on
that there wicked fellow. I don’t know his name no more nor you,” she
shouted, turning to John, who was still muttering vengeance. “Julia
didn’t tell I; but when Mrs. Cross axed straight out what his name mid
be, I had to say summat. I weren’t a-goin’ for to tell her as I didn’t
know, so I jist thought of a name as I seed in the paper o’ Sunday among
the list o’ killed—Private Griggs—so I telled her ’twas that.”
John stared at her solemnly and with unwilling admiration.
“Ye be wonderful quick at makin’ out things, and I do suppose it bain’t
no use for I to go against ye; but I don’t believe no good ’ull come o’
it. Mrs. Cross be a terrible one to talk—she’ll ha’ spread the tale over
village by now.”
“She will,” agreed Martha. “’Tis jist for that I did tell her. I must
be gettin’ back now,” she continued, in an altered tone. “Don’t ’ee be
took back when ’ee see blinds down, Father.”
“Blinds down! What’s that for?”
“Why, because Private Griggs be killed,” returned Mrs. Frizzell grimly.
“They’ll ha’ to be kep’ down till I’ve a-fetched the widow home.”
“The widow!” exclaimed John. And he fairly burst out crying. “My poor
little Susie! My poor maidie!”
He turned his back to his wife and stood for a moment with his shoulders
convulsively heaving; then, rubbing his eyes with one horny hand, he
shouted huskily to the horses, ordered his wife gruffly to stand out of
the way, and started off down the hill again.
Mrs. Frizzell struck off at right angles across the field, and made for
home with all possible speed. Her heart was full, nigh to bursting, and
the lump in her throat caused her almost intolerable physical distress,
but she resolutely forced the tears back. This was no time for
crying—there was too much to be done—too much to be thought of.
* * * * *
It was about noon on the following day when Mrs. Frizzell arrived at
Susan’s lodging.
The poor girl ran to meet her with an inarticulate cry, and the mother,
without looking at her, began to talk rapidly in her characteristically
matter-of-fact fashion.
“I be come to take ’ee home, my dear—Father an’ me think ’tis best—you’d
better be gettin’ your things together. There, I did start so early as I
could, but I had to go into one or two shops, and it did take I sich a
time to find out this place! Ye’d best make haste and do your packing;
there’s the getting back to be thought on. You can put up all as you’ve
a-got ’cept your black dress—ye can slip that on. I’ve got everythin’
else as ye be like to want here.”
“My black dress!” said Susie. “’Tis too good for travellin’, mother;
this here blue be quite tidy.”
“Do what I tell ’ee,” said Mrs. Frizzell, sternly, looking up from the
parcel which she was unfastening, and fixing her eyes for the first time
on the girl’s pale, agitated face.
“Mother, why have you got your blacks on?” cried Susan in sudden alarm.
“And, oh! what’s that in your hand?”
“’Tis a bonnet, my dear, and you be to put it on. Now, Susan, I haven’t
said one cross word to ’ee, and I bain’t a-goin’ to say a cross word to
’ee; and Father and me have a-made up our minds to stand by ’ee, and
we’ll not let nobody go a-worrettin’ of ’ee, or a-castin’ up at ’ee about
what’s past. If ye did deceive we, ye’ve a-been punished enough for’t.”
“Oh, dear! an’ that’s true,” wailed Susan; and she threw herself into her
mother’s arms, her big, babyish, blue eyes drowned in tears; her poor
head, with its crown of golden hair, hidden on the bosom where it had so
often lain in innocent infancy. “I was a wicked girl to deceive ’ee and
dear Father, as was always so good to me. But he—Jim—said I wasn’t to
tell no one, or he’d be gettin’ into trouble, as we wasn’t on the
strength!”
“And what mid that mean, my dear?”
“I don’t know, Mother. Some soldiers’ talk. Some of ’em has leave to
get married, an’ some hasn’t.”
“Ah-h-h-h, ye mid ha’ knowed he was up to some tricks—ye couldn’t be
married right that way. Why, where was your lines, my dear?”
“He said he was a-keepin’ them for me, an’ he took me to a kind o’ tin
buildin’, an’ said it was the soldiers’ chapel, and he knowed I always
went to chapel, so he wouldn’t ax me to be married in church; and there
was another man there, as he said was the minister. And he put the ring
on my finger—Jim did—he did indeed”—and here Susan raised her head to
look earnestly in her mother’s face—“and he did say the words, and all.”
“There, there, no need to talk more on’t. Ye’ve been voolish, my maid,
and he’ve a-been wicked; and you be left to pay for it all. But you’ve
got Father and Mother to look to, and if you’ll do as I do bid ’ee,
nobody need know o’ the trick as has been played on ’ee. There, slip on
your dress, my dear, and pop this bonnet on, and–”
“Mother, ’tis a widow’s bonnet,” gasped Susan. “Oh, don’t—don’t make me
wear a widow’s bonnet! Oh, I can’t bear the sight of en; it do seem so
unlucky, so dreadful!”
“Now be still, Susan; I don’t want no idle talk about ’ee, an’ no
insultin’ remarks passed, and I’ve a-made out a story and you be to keep
to’t. You be the Widow Griggs—that be your name; and your husband, what
was a soldier, have a-been killed in this here war.”
“Oh, not killed; not killed!” cried the girl wildly. “Oh, Mother, don’t
’ee talk like that, for I can’t a-bear it. There, ’twould seem so wicked
to be sayin’ sich things—the Lard mid make it come true. I can’t but
feel as Jim be my husband; whatever he’ve a-done, and so bad as he mid
be, I can’t ever feel anything else. He did mean to marry I some day
when he’d got leave, and he’d ha’ done it if it hadn’t ha’ been for the
war. If you call me a widow, I shall feel all the time as if Jim were
really killed.”
Mrs. Frizzell folded her arms and gazed at her resolutely and severely.
“Susan, don’t let me hear ’ee talk like that—the man’s dead to you if he
bain’t killed, an’ his name mustn’t ever be on your lips. I’m doin’ the
best I can for ’ee, an’ I can’t think the Lard ’ud be angry with me for
makin’ out a story what does no harm to nobody. As for that fellow, he
be in the hands o’ the Lard—the Lard ’ull see to en. I leave en to the
A’mighty.”
Mrs. Frizzell spoke with a certain almost terrible significance which
made poor Susie’s blood run cold.
The stronger will gained the day, and a short time afterwards the Widow
Griggs, clad in her “deep,” and sobbing in a heartrending fashion that
had no pretence at all about it under her long veil, was led out of the
house by her resolute little mother.
Mrs. Frizzell was by nature truthful, but in this emergency it must be
owned that her veracity was exposed to tests from which it did not always
escape unscathed.
When one of her neighbours asked her if she did not mean to apply for
relief on her daughter’s behalf from some of the funds instituted for
soldiers’ widows, she could reply boldly enough that such an appeal would
be useless, as Private Griggs had married without leave, and Susan’s
claim would therefore not be recognised. But when the sympathetic, but
exasperatingly pertinacious Mrs. Cross—the gossip who had been chosen in
the first instance to spread the news of Susan’s bereavement—plied her
with questions anent her departed son-in-law, the poor woman occasionally
found herself so completely cornered as to be obliged to invent
appropriate answers.
Thus, before very long, it became known in the village that the late
Private Griggs had been a tall, dark man, very well-looking; that he came
from somewhere up the country; that his mother was breaking her heart
about his loss, but his father did seem to bear up very well. They
didn’t write often to Susan—no, for the poor dear were that undone she
couldn’t a-bear so much as to hear his name mentioned; in fact, Mrs.
Frizzell herself did scarcely ever mention it to her. (“And that’s
true!” remarked the originator of this history, with infinite
satisfaction.) No more didn’t Frizzell—indeed, poor Frizzell were that
upset about it that the less said to en the better.
Sometimes Mrs. Frizzell was a little startled when these figments were
recalled to her—many of them, indeed, were so much embellished by
transmission from mouth to mouth that she scarcely recognised her own
original creation; but she deemed it best to let the story pass.
“Let ’em please theirselves,” she murmured. “I didn’t say so much as
that, but ’tis better to let ’em think so if it do satis_fy_ ’em.
There,” she would add, when tormented by some particularly keen twinge of
conscience, “’tis to be ’oped as the Lard will forgi’e me. I can’t
believe as it ’ull be held agen me, seein’ as it’s for the sake of my own
child.”
When poor Susan’s baby boy arrived great astonishment was elicited by the
fact that the soft down which covered its little head was of a distinctly
ruddy colour.
“Dear, to be sure,” remarked Mrs. Cross, “he can’t take after his father,
poor, dear little hinfant. You said he was a black-haired man, didn’t
you, Mrs. Frizzell? And Susan’s hair be just so yellow as the corn. I
can’t call to mind as there be any red-haired folks in your family, or
Frizzell’s either.”
“Very like the poor innocent do take after some o’ Mr. Griggs’
relations,” remarked another woman. “His mother, now—’tis strange how
often I’ve a-known the first child be the very image o’ the father’s
mother.”
Mrs. Frizzell’s hawk eyes immediately fixed themselves upon the mental
picture of Private Grigg’s maternal parent, and she presently remarked,
in a somewhat muffled tone, that she fancied she had heard summat about
old Mrs. Griggs bein’ a red-haired woman.
“And that makes another of ’em!” she groaned to herself, “I d’ ’low I’ll
soon forget what ’tis to speak the truth.”
Returning, after the departure of the visitors, to replace the little
flannel-wrapped bundle by its mother’s side, she observed tentatively—
“His hair do seem to be red, Susie.”
“’Ees,” returned poor Susie faintly, “his hair be red—like Jim’s.”
“Ye mid ha’ told me that, I think!” exclaimed Mrs. Frizzell, with
irrepressible irritation. “I’ve been a-tellin’ everybody as your husband
were a dark-haired man. I had to make out a story now about your
mother-in-law having red hair. P’r’aps she has?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. She’s dead long ago, and so is his father. Oh,
Mother, how can you make up sich tales?”
“Well, I had to say summat when they axed me. If I were to say as I
didn’t know, they’d be sure to guess as things wasn’t all right.”
“But if—if Jim ever do come back?” faltered the girl.
“He’ll not come back—put that out o’ your head,” said Mrs. Frizzell
shortly.
The tears rolled down Susie’s face, and her eyes followed her mother’s
energetic figure as it moved about the room. Once or twice she opened
her lips as though to speak, but her courage failed her. Then, suddenly,
the words burst from her—
“Mother, don’t ’ee pray agen him! I can feel as you’re wishin’ and
wantin’ him not to come back. P’r’aps ye be a-prayin’ as—as summat may
happen. Oh, don’t, don’t! ’Tis wicked.”
Mrs. Frizzell turned quite pale. She came and stood at the foot of
Susie’s bed, gazing at her so oddly that the girl, who was by this time
shaking with hysterical sobs, became more and more unnerved and
frightened.
“There, don’t take on so,” said her mother at last, and her voice sounded
husky and strange. “I mid be better nor what I am, the Lard knows,
though, p’r’aps, it bain’t my own darter’s place to tell I so; but I’ve
not gone so far as to pray for evil to fall on anybody, if that be what
ye mean. I be a Christian woman, however wicked I mid be.”
“But you wish it,” sobbed Susan. “You know you wish it, Mother—you do
wish as Jim were dead.”
“You lay down,” said Mrs. Frizzell, coming round to the side of the bed,
and forcing her patient back upon her pillows. “Lay down, and keep
still, and don’t go upsettin’ yourself and this poor innocent child.
Leave the Lard to judge of I, as I do leave Him to judge of _he_.”
Susan was slowly recovering strength when one day a letter arrived
containing news so consoling and yet so tragic that her heart very nearly
broke.
Jim—her Jim—her husband, for as such, in spite of her mother’s protests,
she continued to regard him, had written to her on the eve of battle—a
manly letter, full of remorseful tenderness. Solemn thoughts had come to
him out there on the lonely veldt, face to face with death. The
remembrance of the innocent creature who had trusted him, and whom he had
loved and wronged, haunted him perpetually. The conduct which had once
seemed to him excusable now appeared to him in its true light. Moreover,
his actual rough life, the hardships, the horrors of war, threw into
stronger relief the happy hours which he had passed by her side; his
brief glimpses of home—home of which pretty, guileless Susie had been the
presiding goddess.
So, when the great fight was imminent, he had bethought him of writing to
her, telling her a little of what was in his mind, announcing that he
loved her still, and if God spared him to return he would do the right
thing by her and make her his wife in earnest.
[Picture: There, on the narrow stairs, stood the girl herself]
But alas! and alas! the letter was enclosed in one written by another
hand, and the poor soldier’s own unfinished missive bore a postscript of
a sinister kind—a deep red-brown stain.
The writer of the enclosure—an ambulance-nurse, no doubt—related how poor
Jim had been so anxious for the letter to be sent that she had despatched
it as it was. At his request the envelope bore Mrs. Frizzell’s name, and
for her the enclosure was intended. Would she, the writer asked, break
to her daughter that Gunner Barton’s wounds were of so serious a nature
that it was impossible he could recover? He had been struck and
fearfully shattered by some fragments of a shell—in fact, by the time his
letter reached its destination he must be dead.
Martha was standing supporting herself by the table, and vainly trying to
muster up courage to face Susan, when a cry from behind her made her
start and look furtively round. There, on the narrow stairs, stood the
girl herself, her figure unnaturally tall in its clinging white
nightdress, her eyes dilated, her pale lips apart.
Not a word could the mother say. She stood clutching the papers which
fluttered in her hand.
But Susie had already seen that terrible smear, and again a cry rang
through the house.
“Oh, Mother! oh, Mother! you’ve done it! You’ve got your wish—he’s
dead!”
And Mrs. Frizzell, darting forward, was just in time to catch her as she
fell.
But a little later, after being carried back to bed with the aid of Mrs.
Cross—whom Martha prudently banished on the first sign which Susie gave
of “coming to”—the poor girl wept as much with gladness as with grief.
“He did love me, Mother; you see how he did love me, and he did mean to
make amends. Thank God for that! Oh, thank God for that! If he hadn’t
ha’ wrote you’d never ha’ believed me; but I knew—I knew! But now I
shall never see his face no more.”
And then, pressing the letter to her heart, she turned and hid her face
upon the pillows, refusing to be comforted.
Mrs. Frizzell went downstairs and sank into the elbow-chair.
“Lard forgive me!” she said to herself over and over again. “Good Lard,
forgive me! I can scarce think I wished en dead, but I did wish for en
not to come back, and I did tell so many lies that they’ve a-come true to
punish I. There, my child be a-breakin’ her heart, and ’tis me as has
done it.”
By-and-bye Mrs. Cross peered in again, anxious and curious.
“What did make Susan take that bad turn, I wonder?”
“Why,” returned Mrs. Frizzell, looking up with red eyes, but with an odd
sense of returning self-respect—this time, at least, she was telling no
untruth—“it be enough to upset her. She’ve a-had a letter from her
husband, wrote afore he died: so lovin’. And it be all stained wi’
blood.”
“Dear heart alive!” groaned the other sympathetically. “Poor Mr. Griggs!
They took it off en after he were dead, I suppose?”
Mrs. Frizzell’s face fell. It was hard, after all, to persevere in the
path of rectitude.
“’Ees,” she said faintly. “Leastways, the nurse as sent it on said he
were almost gone when she took it off en.”
“Ah-h-h!” groaned the neighbour again. “Well, we do know he be dead,
Mrs. Frizzell, don’t we? seein’ as his name were in the paper, and all.”
“Oh, ’ees,” agreed Mrs. Frizzell, still more falteringly.
“And his blood was on the letter,” resumed Mrs. Cross, with a certain
gruesome relish, though her eyes were full of tears. “Dear, now, I
should like to see it. It ’ud be really summat to see, wouldn’t it?”
“Ah, but my poor Susan, she won’t let nobody look at it,” returned the
mother in quick alarm. “She’ve a-got it under her pillow, and she’ve
a-got fast hold on’t.”
“Poor young thing! Well, I can understand her feelings—p’r’aps some
other day—”
“Nay, don’t think it, Mrs. Cross—don’t look for’t! Says she to I,
‘Mother, you won’t never let no stranger set eyes on this here. ’Twas
meant for nobody but me,’ says she, and I do mean to keep it for myself.’
. . . And there’s another,” lamented the poor woman almost in despair.
“Oh, very well, mum; I’m sure I don’t want to put myself forrard where I
bain’t wanted,” retorted Mrs. Cross in a tone of offended dignity. “But
I thought I mid make so bold as to ax, seein’ as I’ve a-knowed your Susan
since she were no bigger than her own blessed orphan child.”
“Nay, now, no offence. I don’t suppose, Mrs. Cross, as Susan ’ull so
much as let Father see it. There now, talkin’ of the baby, would you
like to look at en? I’ll fetch en in a minute; he be comin’ on finely.”
“Well, I haven’t seen en for two or three days—I couldn’t take much
notice on en jist now when Susan seemed so bad,” returned Mrs. Cross,
lingering in the hope of picking up a further crumb or two of
information. “Ye don’t seem to take much notice on en yourself, my
dear—I do scarcely ever see you nursin’ en.”
“I’ve a-been so taken up with Susan, d’ye see,” said Mrs. Frizzell, with
a sudden pang of remorse.
She went upstairs for the child, and after he had been duly admired, and
the visitor had withdrawn, she still sat looking down at the little
placid face.
“Poor fellow!” she said to herself. “Poor fellow! Ah! I fancy he’d have
been proud if he’d ha’ lived to come back an’ own ye, Baby. Dear, dear!
they mid all ha’ been so happy—and all forgive an’ forgot. Ah! he were
sorry enough, poor chap, and he did repent—the Lard ’ull ha’ mercy on him
for that. . . . ’Ees, I can fancy he’d ha’ been proud if he could ha’
seen ye, Baby; but there, all of en as ’ull ever come back is them few
lovin’ words and that dreadful spot o’ blood.”
And then Mrs. Frizzell fell to weeping again for pure pity, and kissed
the little soft face of the dead soldier’s child and the tiny rings of
ruddy gold which no father’s hand would ever stroke.
When John came in she conveyed the tidings to him in half-inarticulate
shouts, between bursts of sobbing. The big dull man stood gazing at her
for a moment in perturbed amazement, and then went, slowly and heavily,
upstairs.
Susan still lay with her face hidden, and her slight frame heaving with
convulsive sobs.
Her father paused in the doorway, and then came lumbering forward towards
the bed, stooping when he reached it and patting the girl’s shoulder with
his great horny, toil-worn hand.
“Don’t ’ee take on, Susie, my dear,” he murmured, blubbering too, poor
fellow. “There, don’t ’ee cry, Maidie.”
“Nay, Father,” moaned Susan, “don’t ’ee call me that—don’t ’ee never call
me that no more! I be a widow—I be a real widow now.”
“Ah, ’tis true,” murmured poor Frizzell indistinctly. “Ye be a widow, my
poor maid—ye be a widow now, sure!”
* * * * *
But it was not so sure after all. As Mrs. Frizzell sometimes said, the
most wonderfullest things did certainly happen in her family. Lo! no
sooner was Private Griggs decently, and, as she imagined, finally
interred than Gunner Barton took upon himself to return to life; and the
complications which ensued were so bewildering that even Mrs. Frizzell
was unable to cope with them. For, on the receipt of the letter which
announced that Jim, though so seriously injured that he would be more or
less of a cripple all his life, was indubitably recovering, and would in
fact be shortly shipped home, Susan, hitherto so meek and broken, became
utterly unmanageable.
She was about to set forth on some household errand when she met the
postman, who informed her that he had a letter for her mother from
abroad.
“Give it to me,” cried Susan quickly.
“’Tis for Mrs. Frizzell,” said the rural messenger in surprise; but the
girl, with a flaming face, had already torn open the envelope.
In another moment she rent the air with strange cries and shrieks of joy.
All the inhabitants of the place came hastening forth to inquire the
reason of the outcry, and there beheld the relict of Private Griggs, with
her yellow hair streaming over her shoulders, and her face alight with a
very passion of rapture, trampling on her widow’s bonnet, and brokenly
telling her baby that Daddy was coming home.
Mrs. Frizzell rose to the emergency. Putting her arm round her daughter,
she propelled her gently towards the house, without deigning to notice by
word or look the importunate crowd.
Presently she went out, closing the door after her, and repossessed
herself of the obnoxious bonnet, which a thoughtful neighbour had rescued
from the dust and set upon a gatepost.
Before she could re-enter the house one or two anxious friends, who had
been eagerly on the look-out for her from divers points of ambush,
emerged from their respective doors.
“Summat very strange must have happened, Mrs. Frizzell, I’m sure, to make
Susan behave as she did just now,” one said.
“Ah, I never did see nothing like it,” chimed in another.
“I’ve seen a man as was a bit drinky-like throw off his hat and tread on
it, but never a respectable young ’ooman, same as Mrs. Griggs.”
“The poor thing didn’t know what she was a-doin’,” returned Mrs.
Frizzell. “There, it be all so mixed up I do scarce know how to tell ye.
We’ll know the right o’ things in a few days. It do seem now as if we’d
ha’ made some mistake in thinkin’ Susie was a widow.”
“Lard, now, you don’t say so? Weren’t Private Griggs killed, then, after
all? Why, we did see’s name in papers.”
“Them papers do make mistakes, though,” cried Mrs. Cross. “I did see
oncet or twicet as they did say: ‘So-and-so, stated to be missin’, is now
found to be dead,’ and t’other way round. This here be t’other way
round, I suppose?”
“’Ees,” groaned Mrs. Frizzell, passing her band wearily over her brow.
It was very much the other way round; the whole world, as it seemed to
her, had turned completely topsy-turvy.
“Dear, I don’t wonder as poor Susan be half out of her mind. You don’t
look so very well pleased yourself, my dear.”
“I scarce do know what I feel. I scarce can think it be true. If it
_bain’t_ true, what’s to become o’ Susan? As you do say, Mrs. Cross,
she’s very near out o’ her mind now. And if it _be_ true—there, them as
wrote did say as he were so terrible bad he were bound to be crippled for
life.”
“Crippled!” ejaculated both women together; and they looked at the mother
aghast.
“Then,” cried Mrs. Cross, “Susan ’ull have en to keep!”
She exchanged a look of blank dismay with her companion; it was plain
that in the eyes of both the calamity originally believed in—that of the
honourable demise of Private Griggs—was regarded as a much less serious
misfortune.
“And when do ye think ye’ll be likely to know for certain, my dear?”
insinuated Mrs. Cross, with her head on one side.
“Well, they be a-sending _somebody_ home, they do tell me, but whether it
be Susan’s husband or not I can’t say. I suppose we’ll know as soon as
he gets to England.”
“Ah-h-h, dear, it do seem a strange story, to be sure. And very likely
when you do see en ye’ll find as it bain’t Private Griggs at all.”
“Very likely indeed,” agreed Mrs. Frizzell, with extraordinary warmth of
manner, but with a sinking heart.
* * * * *
How she contrived to keep Susan from divulging the whole story to her
interested neighbours was a mystery known only to the indomitable little
mother herself; for the girl, in her excited state, was for doing away at
once with pretence and owning the truth to all comers. It was lucky for
both that the suspense was not of long duration. A few weeks after
receiving the astonishing tidings of Jim Barton’s resurrection came the
news that he had arrived in England, and that he had been actually sent
to the temporary hospital at the Artillery Barracks in Dorchester.
And so it came to pass that one day two women appeared in the doorway of
the ward in which Gunner Barton lay, and paused for a moment as though in
uncertainty. Then, with a stifled cry, the younger of the two rushed
forward, past the long line of beds, where, propped on pillows, were to
be seen many faces pale and drawn with pain. By the side of one—the
palest of all, so pale indeed that had it not been for the red-brown eyes
and auburn hair it might have been called utterly colourless—she paused
and fell upon her knees. She forgot that many curious eyes were bent
upon her; she forgot that she was an injured woman; and that Jim, who had
wronged her, was so maimed and shattered as to be in truth a very wreck
of a man; she forgot everything but that he was there, and that he loved
her. And so, poor little soft foolish thing, she put her arm about his
neck and laid her face upon the pillow beside his, and kissed him, and
murmured incoherent words of tenderness and joy.
And Jim—poor Jim, his broken frame was so weak, and his heart so torn by
gladness mingled with a piercing sorrow, that he hid his face upon her
shoulder and wept like a little child.
By-and-bye Susie, throwing back her shawl, disclosed the sleeping face of
the babe with a kind of shrinking pride; and Jim, with his great gaunt
frame still shaking with sobs, raised himself on his one serviceable
elbow and looked at him long and earnestly, though his eyes were still
dim.
“I’d like,” he said, “I’d like to make all square for him and you, Susan;
but ’tis puzzlin’ to know what’s right. I’m just fit for nothin’, my
girl; I’ll never be fit to do a hand’s turn for myself.”
“And that’s true,” put in Mrs. Frizzell, who had been standing at the
foot of the bed, wiping her eyes and sniffing violently. “’Ees, poor
fellow, I can see from here where they’ve a-took off your leg. I can see
quite plain that it bain’t aside of the other under the clothes.”
Susie did not hear her; her face was burning as she bent it close to
Jim’s.
“I’ll not mind nothin’, Jim,” she said. “I’d be only too proud and glad
to work for ’ee.”
“There’d be my pension of course,” said he. “But you’re so young, Susie;
you might do better p’r’aps—if ’tweren’t for the little chap here.”
He thrust out his long, feeble hand and touched the child’s soft face,
his own working with emotion the while. Wife, and child, and home—all
there within the grasp of those weak hands. Could he give them up? And
yet to be a burden all his days to the trusting creature, of whose
ignorance he had already taken shameful advantage.
“Susie,” he whispered, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Nay,” she returned earnestly, “I do know it very well—I do ax but one
thing, Jim.”
“And what’s that?”
“God’s blessin’,” said Susie; and stretching out her hand she pressed to
his lips the finger which was encircled by the wedding-ring.
* * * * *
Mrs. Frizzell returned in the evening alone, it having been arranged that
Susan was to remain in Dorchester until Jim was sufficiently recovered
for the marriage to take place. She looked very worn and pale and tired
as she turned in at her garden-gate, and was anything but gratified to
find the alert Mrs. Cross on the watch for her.
“Well, my dear, so you’ve come back wi’out her! ’Twas the right man,
then, after all?”
“’Ees,” returned Mrs. Frizzell faintly, “’twas the right man. And him
and Susie be to set up house so soon as he gets a bit better.”
“Ah-h-h. Be he so bad, then, my dear?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Frizzell, putting down her basket and setting her arms
akimbo, “he be that bad that he haven’t a-got but one leg, and not much
use in that; and one of his arms be damaged. But Susan—dear! a body ’ud
think there was nothin’ ever so j’yful in the world as the notion o’
keepin’ en.”
“Bless me! it do seem queer! She’ll find it ’ard work, won’t she, Mrs.
Frizzell? I suppose he’ll want just so many victuals as if he were a
sound man, and not be doin’ nothin’ to earn ’em.”
“Well, he’ve a-got a pension. There, don’t ’ee talk to me, Mrs. Cross,
my dear. To tell ’ee the truth, I do scarce know what I be doin’. It
bain’t what I did look for, d’ye see. The man himself—my daughter’s
’usband—he bain’t the man I did take en for.”
“Ye don’t tell me so!” ejaculated Mrs. Cross, with a dropping jaw. “In
what way be he different, Martha?”
“Why,” returned Mrs. Frizzell slowly, “I d’ ’low I did tell ’ee as my
daughter’s ’usband were a dark man. Well, that’s one thing as I did make
a mistake about—his hair be red, Mrs. Cross.”
“Red!” repeated the other, with a gasp.
“’Ees, red,” reiterated Mrs. Frizzell, assuming a stolid expression.
“That be the colour on it, Mrs. Cross.”
“Well, I am surprised. To be sure, the blessed baby’s hair’s red, too—it
be easy accounted for now, bain’t it? seein’ as Private Griggs’s hair be
red. I wonder how you did come to make sich a mistake, Mrs. Frizzell.”
“I wonder!” said the poor woman. “My mind were fair muddled up, I do
think, and I did get a lot o’ queer notions in my head. There’s another
thing now; his name bain’t Griggs.”
“Lard! you do give I quite a turn. However did you come to think it
were? And what mid his name be, Mrs. Frizzell?”
Mrs. Frizzell opened her mouth, shut it again, and swallowed down what
seemed to be a very unpleasant morsel; finally she said, fixing her
impenetrable eyes upon her neighbour’s face—
“His name be Barton—Gunner James Barton. ’Ees, that be the name.”
“Barton!” ejaculated Mrs. Cross, in utter bewilderment; then, after a
momentary pause, she continued—“It bain’t so very like Griggs, be it?”
For once Mrs. Frizzell’s lively imagination was at fault; she had no
explanation to offer. “Nay,” she said feebly, “it bain’t.”