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The Novel of the Indian Mutiny
-----------------------
On the Face of the Waters
BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL
_In One Volume, Crown 8vo, price 6s. Twenty-Eighth Thousand_
=The Spectator.=—“We have read Mrs. Steel’s book with ever-increasing
surprise and admiration—surprise at her insight into people with whom
she can scarcely have been intimate, admiration for the genius which has
enabled her to realize that wonderful welter of the East and West, which
Delhi must have presented just before the Mutiny. We know in literature
of few sketches better than those which reveal to us Buhadur Shah, the
last great Moghul ... or that of Zeemet Maihl, the evil Queen, ... or of
the Moulaire, who roused by his preaching the war against the English,
... or of Tiddu, the hereditary juggler-actor, ... or of Soma, the
haughty, sullen Sepoy. And the best evidence of Mrs. Steel’s genius is
that those who can scarcely conceive the society will feel certain that
it is truly drawn. There is many an officer who would give his sword to
write military history as Mrs. Steel has written the history of the
rising, the siege, and the storm. It is the most wonderful picture. We
know that none who lived through the Mutiny will lay the book down
without a gasp of admiration, and believe that the same emotion will be
felt by thousands to whom the scenes depicted are but lurid
phantasmagoria.”
=The Academy.=—“All that relates to the natives, whether to the sepoys,
or the Court, or the town, is admirable; and the sketches of British
military and civil life are absolutely convincing. Mrs. Steel sees
detail everywhere, and records it minutely; but she is full of humanity,
and can give us the mysticism of the Oriental as faithfully as the
easy-going morality of the Anglo-Indian. Each incident, almost each
chapter, is a picture by itself, revealing an extraordinary wealth of
descriptive power, and a masterly insight into character.”
=A.T.Q.C.= in =The Speaker=.—“It certainly is a remarkable book. The
native intrigues are brilliantly handled. Alice Gissing may claim to
stand beside the really great women of fiction. The whole book has the
high seriousness which, until quite recently, few people dreamed of as
possible in an Anglo-Indian novel.”
=The Saturday Review.=—“Many novelists and spinners of tales have made
use of the Indian Mutiny, but Mrs. Steel leaves them all a long way
behind. Major Erlton and Alice Gissing challenge comparison with Rawdon
Crawley and Becky Sharp. ‘On the Face of the Waters’ is the best novel
of the Great Mutiny, and we are not likely to see its rival in our
time.”
=The St. James’s Gazette.=—“Of the familiar incidents of the early
Mutiny, how vivid and full of dramatic effect are the scenes as she
paints them! The tale has been often told, but never quite with Mrs.
Steel’s catholic sympathy with the native point of view. Her position is
now established as a writer of the truth and romance of India. She is a
fine writer, and she has written a fine novel about an epoch in our
history which Englishmen can never cease to weep over and to glory in.”
-----------------------
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Novels of Native Indian Life
-----------------------
_In One Volume, 6s. each_
From the Five Rivers
BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL
=The Times.=—“Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society
would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are
sufficiently remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the ‘dumb
millions’ of India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small,
vie in ministering to it. Mrs. Steel has evidently been brought into
close contact with the domestic life of all classes, Hindu and
Mahomedan, in city and village, and has steeped herself in their customs
and superstitions.... Mrs. Steel’s book is of exceptional merit and
freshness.”
The Potter’s Thumb
BY FLORA ANNIE STEEL
=The Pall Mall Budget.=—“For this week the only novel worth mentioning
is Mrs. Steel’s ‘The Potter’s Thumb.’ Her admirable ‘From the Five
Rivers,’ since it dealt with native Indian life, was naturally compared
with Mr. Kipling’s stories. In ‘The Potter’s Thumb,’ the charm which
came from the freshness of them still remains. Almost every character is
convincing, and some of them excellent to a degree.”
The Naulahka
BY RUDYARD KIPLING AND WOLCOTT BALESTIER
=The Athenæum.=—“There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his
readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East; and in this
book (if we except the description of Tarvin’s adventures in the
deserted city of Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he
has surely surpassed himself. In his faculty for getting inside the
Eastern mind and showing its queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.”
-----------------------
An Anglo-Indian Novel by Alice M. Kipling
_Just Ready, price 3s. 6d._
A Pinchbeck Goddess
--------------
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cottage Folk
------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Six-Shilling
Novels
On the Face of the Waters
By F. A. Steel
The Spoils of Poynton
By Henry James
The Man of Straw
By Edwin Pugh
Illumination
By Harold Frederic
McLeod of the Camerons
By M. Hamilton
Life the Accuser
By Author of
“A Superfluous Woman”
Andria
By Percy White
Below the Salt
By C. E. Raimond
A Court Intrigue
By Basil Thomson
Chun Ti-kung
By Claude A. Rees
London: WM. HEINEMANN
Cottage Folk
By
Mrs. Comyns Carr
London
William Heinemann
1897
_All rights reserved_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CONTENTS_
_Page_
_The Hoppers_ 1
_A Retrospect_ 21
_The Bread-winner_ 45
_His Little Maid_ 89
_A Farm Tragedy_ 133
_A Broken Tryst_ 183
_An Only Son_ 201
_A Woman’s Wager_ 225
_A Ne’er-do-weel_ 251
THE HOPPERS
THE HOPPERS
A dull red sun had just set amid purple storm-clouds behind the Sussex
Downs. Nevertheless the twilight was falling softly beneath a wet west
wind that had made the land full of colour and the sea full of shadow
all day.
From the stubble-field where the “hoppers” were lighting their
camp-fires, one could just see the sea through a dip in the land beneath
the hill where the old farm stood among the ash-trees.
Against the privet hedge that hemmed the road, a girl leaned with her
back to the marsh-land that spread westward from the hollow between the
hills. The half-picked hop-gardens were to right of her, and, to left,
the stubble-field where her comrades were laughing and chattering around
the water-budge that had been drawn up in its midst. The girl’s head lay
black upon the sunset, but she was not of a dark complexion—her hair was
light brown, and her skin was only tanned from exposure, an exposure to
which she had not, perhaps, always been used, for the shape that showed
beneath her thin cotton dress was slenderer than that of most
field-workers.
She stood there a moment watching the moving groups yonder, and then
passed out through the gate on to the road. As she slammed it to behind
her, a tall young woman came swinging up a path to the left, her black
locks somewhat dishevelled and her bodice loose at the throat.
“Where are ye off to so glum, Jenny?” said she. “Come and ’ave a bit of
a lark. ’Ere’s your beau a-comin’ across the field.”
The girl didn’t stop.
“’E ain’t no beau o’ mine, nor I don’t want him to be,” said she, and
walked on quickly up the road.
“Oh, Lord no, o’ course not,” called out the other after her. “Ye don’t
mind ’im lookin’ arter ye all the ’opping-time, though! But I’m sure _I_
don’t want to take ’im from ye if ’e means business. ’E ain’t no
beauty!”
The man lounging across the stubble-field stopped; he was still within
ear-shot, as the girl knew. Jenny faced round on her.
“Ye’ll, please, not to say that again, Mary Ann Mitcham,” said she
stiffly. “I’ve told ye Mr. Martin ain’t no beau o’ mine, and that’s all
about it.” And she strode on again beside the hedge.
The other laughed as she swung herself over the gate and ran off across
the field; and she laughed again when she met the man and he gave her no
greeting, but passed her by with a sullen expression on his face. She
was used to calling that expression on to folk’s faces, and rather
enjoyed it than otherwise. She called it up again on the face of a
slatternly woman who stood at the door of one of the straw huts further
on with a fretful baby in her arms.
“Have ye seen Jenny anywheres, Mary Ann, my dear?” asked the woman. “I
want ’er to come and ’old this child a bit for me.”
“So as you may step up to the ‘Public’ for your supper, eh, Mrs.
Barnes,” laughed the girl as she ran. “Jenny’s always too good-natured,
mindin’ yer squallin’ brats for ye. One’d think ye was ’er mother
instead of only a neighbour. But she’s somethin’ better to do to-night:
she’s a-courtin’.”
“Ye’re a rude minx, and I don’t believe it,” answered the woman tartly.
“Why, Jenny never ’as no word to say for a man. And she’d nurse a child
all day and think it a treat. Ye can’t give _Jenny’s_ beau a name.”
“Can’t I then?” sneered the girl. “It’s Mr. Martin, that’s who her beau
is!”
The woman uttered an exclamation and stepped outside.
“Ye’re dreamin’,” she said. “He’s got somethin’ else to think of than
foolin’.”
“Ye can see ’em for yerself,” scoffed Mary Ann, pointing to the road
where the heads of the man and the girl were to be seen slowly passing
along above the privet hedge.
“Well, _’e_ ain’t much of a beau, then,” sneered the woman, “It’s
disgustin’. A widower wi’ a child to keep.”
Mary Ann was hurrying on, but she turned back.
“What!” she shrieked. “Who says so?”
"_I_ says so," answered the woman. “Why, this is his brat as I’ve got
’ere, so I ought to know it. ’E and his slip of a wife lived in my court
up in London, and when the mother died he guv me the child to mind. But
Lord, what ’e pays ain’t worth the bother.”
“I never!” exclaimed Mary Ann impressively. “Do Jenny know it?”
“No,” answered the woman, “and, look ’ere, don’t ye go saying nothink
about it neither. It’s little enough, but sich as it is I can’t afford
to lose it, and he swore he’d take the brat away if ever I said i’ the
place as it were his’n.”
Mary Ann laughed her resounding laugh.
“Don’t want no chaff, I suppose?” roared she. “I’ll think about it. If
Jenny ain’t goin’ to ’ave ’im, there’s no call to tell. But Jenny’s my
pal, and I’ll not promise.”
“If ye don’t I’ll scratch ye,” screamed the woman.
But Miss Mitcham had eluded her and escaped to the group beside the
water-budge, where there was more fun.
Meanwhile the man, shuffling in the dust, had caught up Jenny on the
road. He had a slow, weary sort of gait, and was evidently not of the
soil any more than the rest. In their different ways they all had an air
of city slums about them in spite of their tanned faces and hands torn
by ragged bines and rough hop-poles.
“What are ye goin’ to buy for supper to-night?” said he, after they had
tramped along a little way without a word. “The bacon ain’t p’tickler
good in this ’ere village, are it?”
He had a slow speech, but not unmusical, and the expression of his face,
though of the contemplative order, was frank and friendly, and suggested
none of the discontent that his words might have implied.
“No,” answered she. “But I ain’t goin’ to buy no supper to-night. I’ll
get a drink o’ milk from the farm presently. I ain’t ’ungry.”
“Ye can’t work if ye don’t eat,” said he, and then added shyly: “’Aven’t
ye got no money?”
She flushed a quick red, and he hastened to say apologetically: “Girls
are apt to send it all ’ome, I know.”
“I ain’t got no ’ome,” said she shortly, “nor yet any one as wants my
money.”
“What,” said he, “’aven’t you got no father nor mother?”
“No,” she answered; “I ’aven’t, and I don’t know as you’ve any call to
ask.”
“Beg pardon,” said the man, and then he began to whistle, and looked
away awkwardly. “I filled a can o’ water for ye at the budge,” said he
presently. “It’s by yer door.”
“Thank you,” said she. And then there was silence again.
They walked on thus another couple of hundred yards down the road, and
then turned aside beyond the hop-fields up a steep and shady lane that
was dark in the dusky light. Half way up there was a break in the trees
on one side through which one could see the evening sky beyond the
Scotch firs. Here Martin suddenly stopped and came close up to her.
“Miss,” said he, without any introduction, “I’ve noticed as ye’re short
wi’ me to-night, and I’ve been thinkin’ as p’r’aps ye’ve cause.”
She looked at him now; she had eyes like a startled fawn’s—now brown,
now grey.
“I _ain’t_ been,” she said.
“Yes,” insisted he, “and ye’ve cause. I’ve been courtin’ ye all the
’oppin’, and we don’t get on—and folk talk and vex ye.”
He paused a moment, but she only hung her head.
“But we’ll make it right now, if so be as ye’re willin’,” said he. And
still as she said nothing, he came closer, and tried to put his arm
round her waist.
Then she sprang back, her eyes more than ever startled. She was slender,
but she was strong, and she gave him such a thud in the chest as sent
him reeling against the bank.
“Keep your distance, if you please,” panted she. “I don’t want none o’
that. Ye’ve been hearin’ tales o’ me, and ye’ve thought ... but—well,
there ye’re mistaken.”
He picked up his cap, which had fallen off, and stood with it in his
hand.
“I don’t know what ye mean,” he said, a trifle sullenly. “I ain’t ’eard
no tales of ye. But I’m sorry I angered ye.”
“I ain’t angry,” said she, and she spoke impassively, her sudden fire
quenched as it was born. “Only I don’t want no courtin’.”
“I don’t think ye understand me,” said he, more softly. “I mean
honourable by ye. I want ye to stand up afore the parson wi’ me.”
She gave a start, but she did not look at him, nor did she utter a word.
Behind her head in the gap of the trees the huge arms of the windmill
made a black cross on the luminous sky where the reflections of the
afterglow were fading into a steely blue.
“I don’t want to git married,” said she at last, without lifting her
eyes.
He looked at her in doubt. Then he said as though with a sudden thought:
“It’s _you_ that’s ’eard tales o’ _me_, I’m thinkin’! But I’m comin’ to
that. I’ve been wed afore, and I’ve a brat—a boy. But I ’oped ye
wouldn’t let that stand in my way.”
She had looked up for a moment, but had as quickly looked away again,
and, after waiting a little, he went on:
“You said just now you’d no ’ome. It ain’t comfortable for a young maid
to ’ave no ’ome, and I’d work to give ye as good a one as most.”
“I don’t want no ’ome,” said she at last, sullenly.
He sighed a little. “It’s the brat ye’re afeard on,” murmured he sadly,
shaking his head.
“No it _ain’t_ then,” cried she quickly, almost fiercely. “I could love
a brat well enough.” She stopped short, and if he could have
distinguished her face in the dark he would have seen it flush hot and
red. But he could not, and she moved away from him—moved away, but came
back again. “There,” she said half surlily, “ye’ve got to know, and I’d
as lief tell ye myself. I’ve ’ad a brat o’ my own,” and she looked away
quickly.
For a moment he did not answer, then he seized her wrist roughly. “What,
you’re married then?” he muttered. “Well, ’pon my word, I think ye might
ha’ told a man when ye see’d as ’e were sweet on ye.”
She snatched her hand away. “I’m _not_ married,” she cried roughly.
There was silence, but as he did not speak, she had to go on.
“I think ye might make shift to see,” said she angrily. “O’ course a
girl don’t want to go a-talkin’ of it.” She caught her breath, but added
quickly in the same tone as before: “For ye could ha’ knowed I shouldn’t
be such a cheat as not to tell—when ye was goin’ to be’ave honourable to
_me_.”
He stood there full half a minute, gazing at her as one dazed. Then he
muttered: “How was I to guess?” and dropped his eyes.
He could hear her breathing hard, but she said no more, and after a
while he asked suddenly:
“Where is ’e? ’Ave ’e deserted ye—the sc——”
She interrupted him. “’E’s dead,” she said quickly. And then she added,
half whimpering: “’E said ’e would ha’ wed me, and p’r’aps ’e would.
Anyways it’s too late now.”
“And the brat?” asked he in a dull voice.
She moved her head restlessly, looking out to the rosy west. Then
dropping her voice to a whisper, she murmured softly:
“It’s dead too.”
He was awed involuntarily and answered nothing. He did not even dare
look at her face, but he could see by the rise and fall of her shoulders
that she was crying.
“Them as know I bore ’im,” she continued presently in an excited way,
“they say as I ought to thank my stars ’e’s dead and buried and can’t
tell no tales. That’s all _they_ knows about it. They didn’t never lose
a child, them folk didn’t! What if ’e ’ad ha’ told tales o’ my shame?
I’d ha’ put up with that, and willing, so as I’d ’ad ’im to work for.”
She choked down a sob, and wiped her eyes with the hem of her skirt.
“I’m sorry for ye, I’m sure,” said he drearily.
“Oh, ’e _were_ a pretty babe, Mr. Martin,” continued she, forgetful for
the moment of all but the memories that this seeming touch of sympathy
had awakened, and she turned to him with sweet and simple confidence.
“Just the prettiest ye ever seed! He might ha’ been a lady’s, so white
he were! I done all I could to save ’im, but it weren’t a bit o’ use.
And I ’eld ’im in my arms hours and hours arter ’e was dead—’cos I
couldn’t believe it, ye see. But I couldn’t put my breath into ’im,
though I’d ha’ done it if I could—Lord, I’d ha’ done it willin’!” She
drew in her breath with a quick gasp, and added hoarsely: “It do seem
’ard, don’t it?”
“Yes, it _do_ seem precious ’ard,” he repeated, but without looking at
her, and his voice as he said it was hard as iron.
In a moment her whole attitude changed. She drew herself up, as though
turned to stone, and looked at him quickly. The light was growing so dim
in the lane that she could not see his face. But there was no need; the
voice told plainly enough what the face was like, and immediately her
tears were quenched, and the softness in her shrank away, as from a
cruel gaze.
The afterglow was almost spent in the west, leaving only a warmer tone
upon the marsh and a more metallic light upon the stream that crossed
it; the moon, having risen out of the sea, was just level with the
eastern down, and the pine-stems upon its ridge crossed the white disc
darkly. Solitary figures coming from the mill on the hill’s crest,
strayed across the brown slope beneath them, and a group of men and
women returning to the camp sang snatches of song as they lounged along
the road in the hollow.
Jenny shook herself as she heard them.
“Good-night,” she said curtly. “I expec’ ye ain’t got nothing more to
say.”
“No, I don’t know as I ’ave,” murmured he slowly.
But almost before the words were out of his mouth, Jenny was far below
him on the steep lane, running as though for her life. He stood there,
still with his cap in his hand; there was a lump in his throat, and he
swore a quiet oath to himself as he watched her flit through the
twilight.
The fires of the “foreigners,” that had burnt so gaily in the hollow,
had all fallen to embers; the moon rode across an inky blue sky where
the afterglow had so late been warm; the camp was dead silent.
Martin rose from the straw within his hut and came out into the night,
for he was restless and could not sleep. He stood outside trying to take
comfort in a pipe, and looking up at the eastern sky where the windmill
still made the huge black cross on the blue. The stars were coming out,
but the moon’s light was fitful and the marsh-land beyond the hop-fields
was gloomy save where the stream was touched now and then into the
brightness of a glistening snake. A little dyke divided the
stubble-field from the meadow beyond it, where a white horse strayed in
the dusk. Martin thought he heard the wailing of an infant, and then the
dull crooning of a woman’s singing come from among the willows, and then
he saw a girl’s figure pacing up and down with a little bundle in her
arms. Presently the girl crossed over to the last hut in the camp, which
he knew to be Jenny’s, deposited the bundle within, came out again, and,
stretching her tired arms above her head, stood leaning a moment against
the straw.
He felt his heart stir; what did it mean? And he crossed the field at
once that he might know.
Yet he was not sure that he wanted to speak to her, and it struck him
that the sound of his footsteps crushing the stubble would arouse her.
But she stood neither seeing nor hearing, with her eyes fixed on the
sombre marsh-land yonder till a woman’s voice sounded in thick accents
calling down the field.
“Jenny,” it said, “Jenny, girl, where ’ve ye got to?”
Then she started, and placed herself quickly before the door of the hut,
and he as quickly withdrew behind it.
The woman shuffled over the stubble, catching her feet in it, and
reeling slightly as she walked.
“Give me the child,” said she indistinctly when she got close to the
girl. “I dursen’t let ye ’ave it no longer.”
Martin started now, for he saw that the woman was Mrs. Barnes.
“_Dursen’t_,” repeated Jenny savagely! “Ain’t I fitter to mind a child
than you? Yes—though you be his mother! A nice state ye’re in to-night
to mind a sick brat!”
“I ain’t in no state at all,” grumbled the woman feebly. “Give me the
child, I tell ye.”
“No, I sha’n’t,” answered Jenny, “so there! I’ve ’ad job enough wi’ the
poor mite, and he’s sleepin’ peaceful now. I ain’t a-goin’ to let you
throw him back in convulsions; no, not if ye was twenty times ’is
mother! Ye ain’t fit to ’ave ’im to-night, I tell ye. I’ll bring ’im in
the mornin’!”
“Oh, Lord, twenty times ’is mother,” echoed Mrs. Barnes, beginning to
laugh foolishly and as quickly changing the laugh to a whimper!
“Get ye’ gone, do,” said the girl, “ye’ll wake ’im again! I tell ye, ye
shall ’ave yer child in the mornin’.”
She went within, and the woman, unable to cope with any resistance,
shambled feebly off again, laughing and crying as she went.
Martin stepped forward out of the shadow, shaking his fist at her.
Inside the hut he could see Jenny on her knees beside a bundle of
shawls, on which she had laid the little one,—Jenny, tenderly arranging
ragged coverings more closely round a tiny body. Yes—Jenny on her knees
beside his own child, stroking it softly, singing pretty ditties to it
in an undertone, cherishing it with every sweet sound that bubbles to a
mother’s lips: her own was gone, but she had learnt the trick of
child-love that slumbers in every woman’s breast, and this strange and
lonely babe was soothing her sore heart.
Martin stood watching her, motionless, not daring to breathe. But there
was something in his throat that troubled him, and he lifted his hand to
his eyes, and in so doing rustled the straw of the hut against which he
stood.
She started.
“Who’s that?” she cried, jumping up.
Then he advanced slowly into the opening.
“It’s me,” he said humbly.
She motioned to him to go further off, and then she followed him outside
until they both stood in the full moonlight. She was trembling.
“Ye ’adn’t no call to come round ’ere at this time o’ night,” said she
in her old defiant tone—but her voice was low, for, stirred as she was,
she still remembered the sleeping babe.
“Nor I didn’t mean to,” said he, nowise offended and still apologetic.
“But I see’d ye hushin’ the brat, and I wondered what was up.”
“It’s Mrs. Barnes’s brat,” said she, a trifle coldly. “It’s sick, and
I’m mindin’ it for ’er. She ain’t fit to ’ave a child of ’er own.” She
said it almost roughly, and then lapsed into silence.
Martin sighed, and stood considering.
“It ain’t Mrs. Barnes’s brat,” said he at last.
She looked at him quickly.
“It ain’t Mrs. Barnes’s?” repeated she, puzzled. “Why, o’ course it is!
I fetched it to-night.” Then a quick suspicion of _his_ possible
suspicion crossing her mind she said, in a voice in which shame and
anger strangely wrestled: “Who’s do _you_ think it is?”
But he had no glimmering of her thought, and said in the same humble
tone as before:
“Well, ye see, I _know_ who’s ’tis—’cos it’s mine.”
She turned sharply, staring at him open-mouthed.
“Well, I never!” she ejaculated.
“Yes,” said he in the same awkward way, “that ’ere’s my boy that I told
ye of. Mrs. Barnes ’as ’ad the mindin’ of ’im—and I never knowed till
now what sort o’ mindin’ it was—but that ’ere’s my boy.”
“Who’d ha’ thought ’e was such a little ’un?” murmured Jenny
dreamily—“just as big as mine were.”
“Yes, ’e ain’t very old yet,” allowed the man, “only a year come Lord
Mayor’s Day, and his mother died as ’e were born. She was but sickly,
and ’e ain’t much. Not but what ’e might ha’ been better, but, Lord, a
man don’t know ’ow a child have got to be minded, bless ye.”
The old defiance that had flashed back into Jenny’s face a minute ago
had faded away again, and she was pale in the wan light.
“O’ course not,” she said commiseratingly, and yet with a quiet air of
superiority.
“Ah, _you_ know,” said he, with honest admiration. “But, there, I don’t
suppose ye’d give a thought to such a thing as mindin’ of _’im_?” he
murmured sheepishly. He had lifted his eyes to her, but he drew them
away again—while he waited.
“I’ve got my living to work for,” said she. “I shouldn’t ’ave time.”
Then he took heart of grace—he came close to her.
“But if there was some one to work for you,” said he. “If we was wed, so
to speak?”
She didn’t move, but her eyes grew startled, and then just a touch of
hardness came back into her face.
“Ye didn’t say that up yonder,” said she.
“No,” he said, “I’ll allow I was startled a bit at first. But ... well,
I know as you’re a good woman somehow ... and I love ye, Jenny—there! So
if you can forget, well, so can I.”
She stood, with her lips parted, gazing straight out across the
field—but a film of tears gathered slowly across her eyes.
Neither spoke, and the minutes sped by as in a dream, while the stars
rained down their tenderness.
But as she stood there with that sweet seriousness of thought on her
simple face, the babe, missing its lullaby, sent forth a piteous wail
from within.
Then she sprang to its side, and snatching it to her breast and bending
o’er it a face, tender as the moonlight that bathed her, she whispered
softly:
“I’ll think on it.”
A RETROSPECT
A RETROSPECT
A man and a woman stood in a country lane as the sun was setting. It was
where the lane broke out into the open ground of the common, and above
them on the hill a windmill was swinging gaunt, lazy arms against the
sky. On one side it looked down and across the marsh to the incoming
tide, and on the other it commanded miles of pasture-land and
hop-fields, and saw the Sussex Downs roll away beyond: behind it, on a
sky of opaque blue, the moon had just risen red, and looked at the
setting sun opposite. The man stood ruefully, gazing up at the mill, his
back half turned to the woman, who was talking fast and loud.
They were hop-pickers; not of those out of city slums, but of the tidier
and better class who come from distant villages for the sake of the
change and airing; there had been a gang of them, and they were all to
be sent home on the morrow.
“But o’ course it’s enough for me to say I want a thing for you to
gainsay me,” the woman was saying. She was a tall, dark, powerful young
person, and the man, with his slouching gait and thin, sallow face, was
evidently immeasurably her inferior in physical strength, and had a
meek, deprecating manner that made her words seem somewhat of a mockery.
“I’m sure I don’t want for to gainsay ye, Martha,” he replied humbly.
“But I don’t see why ye can’t go up to the mill and see Mrs. Moss
without me coming too. Ole friends is ole friends, o’ course, and ’tis
nat’ral comin’ back to th’ ole place—we should want to see ’em. But
there’s reasons for things, and reasons agin ’em, so to speak. You and
Milly Harkitt was none such friends when ye lived ’ere afore ye was
wed—if the sayin’s true.”
Martha laughed harshly.
“Sayin’s ain’t never true,” she said bluntly. “Else there’s a sayin’ as
you and she was friends if we wasn’t! Reasons for and reasons agin,
indeed! Milly’s wed since I see ’er, and I want to ’ave a look and see
if it’s altered ’er.”
The man blushed and smiled, but he neither retorted nor denied the
charge.
“She were a pritty gentle crittur,” was all he said, thoughtfully
looking beyond his wife. “I ’ope she bain’t altered.”
The woman looked at him sharply.
“Well, if ye want so much to know, ye’d best come and see,” she said
tartly.
He brought his slow gaze back to her.
“Is that all ye be goin’ up there for?” said he irrelevantly, and one
might have said, suspiciously.
“Never you mind what I’m goin’ for,” retorted she, stepping out up the
hill. “I be goin’ to please myself, and that’s enough. I’ll be ’ome to
supper, and mind you don’t go fallin’ in with no pals as you did last
night, and come ’ome late. I don’t know but what you ’adn’t best step up
and fetch me.”
“All right,” said the man as he turned away down the lane. “What time?”
“Eight o’clock,” she called back promptly. “And you know I don’t relish
waiting.”
“I won’t keep ye waitin’,” said he quietly. “I’ll stop outside for ye at
eight o’clock.”
“What, afraid to have a look at the girl!” laughed she again. And she
went on smartly up the hill. But when she got to the top she did not at
once turn into the garden that surrounded the house, but stood awhile in
the field, leaning her arms on the gate and staring out to the sunset.
She was not of the dreamy sort, but to-night she was thinking: thinking
a little bit of the man who had just left her—trying to remember just
how much she had heard about him and Milly, but thinking more still of
another young man who had many times stood at her side in yonder lane or
at this very gate whence she now watched the afterglow gild the purple
cloud-banks out west.
She had thought that she had loved the latter, and there could be no
doubt that he was younger and richer and comelier than the man whom she
had married, and he had bent tender eyes on her such as a girl loves.
But there had come a little rift between them, and when she had been
obliged to leave the village and go to keep house for an uncle some
distance off, the rift had widened, and then she had heard that he had
married another. That other was the very girl she had come to see
to-night, and she was just wondering whether she would like to meet the
man or no.
But as she was secretly determining on the exact measure of scorn she
would throw into her manner, and wondering if her beauty was in any way
dimmed since he had seen her, fate decided for her, for the door of the
mill-house opened, and she heard his voice on the threshold.
“Come, leave that whimperin’, Milly, do,” said the voice sharply, but
not unkindly. “I never see sich a gal! Ye be allers low-spirited
now-a-days. Why can’t ye be cheerful a-nussin’ o’ the baby, and let a
man go ’bout ’is business?”
“Oh, Dan, I don’t want ye to go to the ‘Public’ to-night,” said the
woman within, and there was no doubt that the tone did lay itself open
to the accusation of a whimper. “Ye come ’ome so late last night, and I
bain’t strong yet, ye know. I’ve been alone all day—I don’t want ye to
go out agin.”
“Late! Lor’ bless me, it weren’t gone ten o’clock!” retorted the man.
“You’d want a ’usbin’ allers ’oppin’ around ye! I bain’t that sort! When
be ye goin’ to pluck up and show a feller a jolly face, and get about
yer work agin—eh?”
“Ye’re niver goin’ to throw it up agin me as I bain’t strong, and baby
not six weeks old,” began the woman, the whimper bidding ominously fair
to swell to greater volume.
Then Martha heard a rough, quick, jovial expostulation, and then a big,
loud kiss; the whimpering grew softer, and a moment after the door
slammed to, and she saw a man come striding towards her down the
garden-walk in the dusk. At first she had a silly desire to run, but a
moment after she laughed at the very thought, and felt that she really
didn’t care. So she walked straight up to the garden-gate, and put her
hand on the latch at the very same instant as the man reached it.
“What be your business, ma’am, please?” he began, then quickly changing
his tone added: “Why I’m blowed if it ain’t Martha Bond!”
The young woman laughed.
“Oh, no, ’tain’t!” said she. “It’s Martha Hewson. I be married, same as
you.”
“Well, I’m pleased to ’ear it, I’m sure,” said the man, without being in
the least ruffled, “and no ill-will bore, I can see, which there bain’t
no cause, o’ course.”
“O’ course not,” agreed she. “Ill-will, indeed! I should like to know
what for?”
“Least said, soonest mended, I s’pose,” assented the man with a jolly
laugh. “And where might you be livin’ now-a-days?”
“Up to Wycombe,” answered she. “Me and my ’usbin’ come over ’ere to do a
bit o’ hop-pickin’. ’E bain’t over-strong, and I thought it ’ud do ’im
good. We be off to-morrer, and I thought I’d just step up and see yer
wife.”
“She’ll take it very kindly, I’m sure,” said the man doubtfully, but
rather glad to be rid of this visitor at any cost. “She bain’t very
well—she bain’t never strong same as other women,” he added. “You might
put a bit o’ spunk into ’er.”
And he led the way up the garden-walk.
Martha was half offended. She was not sure she had come to put spunk
into her old sweetheart’s wife—and surely Dan Moss was very dull to what
he used to be! She felt still more sorry she had come when she saw the
awkward shyness of the little woman whom they disturbed nursing her babe
at the fireside.
“’Ere be Mrs. Hewson, Martha Bond as was, come to see you,” said the
husband, and added hurriedly to the visitor: “There, Milly ’ll get ye a
cup o’ tea, ma’am, and you two ’ll ’ave a good bit of a gossip whiles I
steps down to the village. She was just a-sayin’ she were a bit
lonesome. Good-night to ye, and pleased to see ye look so ’earty.” And
he bustled out as quickly as he had bustled in.
“You must excuse ’im,” said the young mother, blushing for her man,
while she stilled the cries of the injured babe interrupted at his meal.
“Dan’s allers in a ’urry to be off.”
“May be ’e ’ave got business,” said Martha, civilly.
“Oh, no, ’e ain’t,” said the wife. “But Dan bain’t niver been a
stay-at-’ome man. ’Is mother were a rough customer they do say, and she
didn’t use ’im to it.”
“Well, and _I’ve_ ’eard tell she were too much sot on ’im altogether,”
laughed Martha. “Wouldn’t let ’im go out for ’alf a’ ’our’s chat but
what she’d call ’is dead father to mind when ’e come ’ome, and snivel
over ’im as if ’e was a child. A man couldn’t be expected to stan’
that.”
“P’r’aps not,” assented the other, considering. “All the same it bain’t
much use ’avin’ a man if ’e bain’t niver at ’ome. Maybe your ’usbin’
don’t care for company.”
“I’d catch im carin’ for any company but mine when I wanted his’n,”
declared Mrs. Hewson defiantly. “But I bain’t one to care for a man
allers draggin’ about—they be more in the way than hanythink. I can’t
niver find two words to say to Bill when once I’ve giv’ ’im ’is cup o’
tea or whativer it might be. It be more nor I can make out ’ow women can
bide men plaguin’ round ’em from mornin’ till night. Bill be too
stay-at-’ome by ’alf—though, to be sure, I do let ’im ’ave it if ’e come
’ome late o’ nights, that be certain,” she added, laughing.
The other woman stared at her a minute, speechless and wondering; then
she sighed.
“Well, I niver!” ejaculated she. “Pore feller!” and the thought flew
through her mind that she would not have treated him so.
“Pore feller indeed!” cried Mrs. Hewson indignantly. “Why, bain’t ’e
dead sot on me, and wouldn’t ’e rayther ’ave my tongue any day than
another gal’s palavers? What else should ’e be so stay-at-’ome for, I’d
like to know? Pore feller! What next?”
She settled her hat on her head with a quick, irritated movement, but
the next minute she laughed again.
“But belike you fancy a man allers a-dancin’ round you,” laughed she.
“Some gals do. I can swop a buss now and then as well as most, but I
like to get it over o’ proper times.”
Milly blushed, and shifted the baby to the other arm.
“I thought as iverybody liked their man to get time to admire ’em a
bit,” said she shyly.
“Is that what ye be after?” laughed Martha. “Lord, I wouldn’t give much
for Bill’s taste. ’E don’t know black from blue.”
“’E ’ave ’ad the taste ye wanted ’im to ’ave, I s’pose,” retorted the
little woman—“’e ’ave ’ad the taste to fancy you!”
Her delicate face flushed, and there was just a tinge of spite in her
tone, for could she not remember the day when Mr. Hewson’s taste had not
been for dark, powerful girls?
“Oh, yes, ’e ’ave ’ad _that_,” assented the other in an off-hand way.
"He knowed I were the only one as could ha’ made hanythink of ’im. If ’e
’ad ha’ married a pore gumptionless soul like some"—and Martha looked
out of the corner of the eye at her hostess—“’e wouldn’t ha’ been
nowhere! ’E needs a good strong, smart gal, ’e do, pore soul! Ye
wouldn’t b’lieve the time I be seein’ to ’im—as good as gold, but a pore
shiftless crittur! If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t ’ave bite nor sup
to put in our mouths. I be forced to put spunk into _’im_ same time as I
work for the lot.”
“I wouldn’t ha’ believed it,” said Milly Moss, rocking the child.
“Ah, you may then,” declared Martha emphatically. “It be a good job I
ain’t got no little ’un yet, for I’d ’ave two to see to then. You be to
be envied, you be, with a great, fine, strappin’ feller for a ’usbin’
what knows ’is own mind, and....”
And Martha stopped abruptly, for it had crossed her memory that she had
once upbraided Dan Moss in her heart for _not_ knowing his own mind, and
a quick dart of vexation ran through her because, in the heat of the
hour, she had both praised the man who had not followed up his
attentions to her, and run down the man who had.
She bit her lip and thought how she could repair her error, but her turn
for speech was gone.
“You do surprise me,” said the envied woman, opening a pair of pale blue
eyes very wide. “And I was jist a-thinkin’ what a lucky body you was to
’ave a man as stayed at ’ome and looked arter ye. For ye can’t think ’ow
lonesome I am o’ times! Dan ’e be such a favourite-like i’ the village.
Somebody’s allers askin’ ’im to go along wi’ ’em drinkin’ or spreein’
one way or another. O’ course I know ’e be rare and clever. ’E wouldn’t
make the mill pay as it do if ’e wasn’t. And I don’t grumble so long as
it’s work as takes im out—but I do think it’s a shame not never to get a
look-in at your own man till it’s time to go to sleep-like.”
Mrs. Moss took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes furtively, but
the baby waking at this interruption, she was forced to give all her
mind to hushing it.
Mrs. Hewson sat pondering.
She remembered that she had once thought that life with Dan Moss would
be rather a jolly affair, but if his jollity was always kept for
out-of-doors, it wasn’t all beer and skittles after all.
“Ye treat ’im too meek-like,” said she after a minute. “I wouldn’t mind
so much.”
“’Ow can ye ’elp mindin’ when ye’ve married a man?” retorted the other.
“Well, I’d be cheerfuller—I’d pay ’im back a bit in ’is own coin, I be
blowed if I wouldn’t,” laughed Martha.
Milly shook her head.
“Dan ain’t one to stand no nonsense,” said she. “I tried it on a bit
when we was fust wed, and blessed if ’e didn’t up and off it for a week!
Didn’t say nothink, mind you, but jist up and off it. Said it were
business, but o’ course _that_ wasn’t what I wanted!”
“Lor’ bless me!” ejaculated the other. “Well, I be pleased my Bill don’t
give me no tantrums. We ain’t ’ad a word ever since we was wed.”
“Oh, well, who said we had words? Everybody ’as their faults. We don’t
’ave no _words_,” retorted the miller’s wife, tossing her head a bit
proudly. And she got up and began busying herself over the tea.
She too was a little sorry she had let herself be betrayed into these
confidences.
Meanwhile outside, the moon had climbed the first steeps of the horizon,
and had put out the last fires of the sunset; the merest memory of gold
was left floating on the western clouds and yellowing the streak of
clear sky above the solemn, purple downs; but in the blue overhead the
moon had sway, and hung silver on the gently swaying plumes of the pines
upon the hills hard by.
Bill Hewson was climbing the hill in obedience to the promise given to
his wife an hour before.
But he was not alone; he had met Moss on the village green down yonder
by the “Public,” and Moss, in his genial way, had accosted him to wish
him joy of his marriage, and so it had come to pass that the two—never
more than the merest acquaintances when both lived in the village—had
fallen into intimate converse.
Hewson was panting a bit as he kept pace up the road beside his great,
long-limbed companion, for the air was coming briskly from the west, and
the first frosts were falling at night, and he was asthmatic.
“Ye didn’t ought to be out o’ nights now it’s turned so sharp,” said his
companion kindly.
“A man can’t afford to think o’ such things,” said Hewson.
“Well, leastways when there bain’t no need,” allowed the miller. “And ye
didn’t so much as put a drop inside ye at the bar to warm ye up for the
job.”
“I scarce ever touches sperrits,” said Hewson quietly. “Martha, she
don’t think it’s right.”
The miller stopped short in the road and stared at his comrade; but they
were in a wood now, and he couldn’t see his face.
“Martha, be——” he began. But he dropped a brown-paper parcel that he was
carrying and he turned the phrase into: “Drat the thing——” as he stooped
to pick it up.
“Yes, Martha don’t think it’s right, nor she don’t think it’s ’olesome
neither,” repeated the feebler man slowly,
Moss laughed long and loudly.
“Well, I be blessed if I’d go blowin’ up this ’ill as you be a-doin’
then,” said he at last. “No, not to fetch any woman under the sun, if
she wouldn’t allow me a swaller first to put the ’eart into my stomach,
so to speak! Ye be too easy, mate. Bain’t she well and ’earty and fit to
look arter ’erself?”
“Oh, she be well and ’earty enough,” allowed the husband. “I don’t know
as I iver see’d a ’eartier gal. But ... well, ye see, Martha don’t think
small beer of ’erself, and she _be_ a fine woman, ye’ll allow.”
“Oh, she be a fine woman and no mistake,” allowed the miller, smiling to
himself.
“I often wonders what it was made ’er take to the likes o’ me,” went on
the other, “for I bain’t no catch. And I allers feels I ought to make it
up to ’er, so to speak. But I don’t deny it do come a bit ’ard o’
times.”
“A bit of a Tartar, eh?” asked Moss confidentially.
“I won’t go so far as to say that,” replied the henpecked one as who
should refuse to admit a thing that he feared might be true. “She be a
just woman, she be, but she bain’t just what ye might call a gentle un’.
I’ve sometimes thought as she be too clever.”
“Ah. I don’t know as I care for ’em so clever as all that,” said the
miller. “I shouldn’t like a wife cleverer nor myself, now. But there be
them as gives up, like, every minute, and that bain’t all fun neither.
Why, Lor’ bless me, there be some women want ye to be at their elber to
’elp ’em tell whether the milk be sour or no. It be real contrairy o’
times. Ye be forced to go out-doors to get a minute’s peace.”
“What, talk at ye twenty to the dozen?” asked Hewson feelingly.
“Not so much talk as whine at ye! Make ye believe ye’re a downright
brute afore they’ve done. Till ye be forced to go and get a glass o’
beer into ye to see things straight agin.”
“Talkin’ be wuss,” said Hewson simply.
“Ah, ye ’aven’t tried whinin’,” retorted Moss. “You wait till you ’ave!”
“I bain’t likely to,” answered the other in a matter-of-fact way.
“Martha she bain’t given that way. And I be glad of it, now I hear what
you say. I did think—but, there, that’s neither here nor there. I don’t
mind sayin’ I’ve altered my mind since I’ve ’eard what you say. I likes
’em gentle, but I likes ’em spry.”
The miller shook his head doubtfully.
“I don’t believe ye can ’ave it both ways,” he said, with a great air of
wisdom. “They ’as their feelin’s when they’s soft-like, and feelin’s is
a darned noosance. Ye don’t get no dinner when feelin’s is on the go.”
“I wouldn’t stomach that,” declared Hewson, shaking his head. “The smart
ones they do look arter ye well, if they _don’t_ let ye call yer soul
yer own.”
“Blowed if I’d put up wi’ not bein’ master under my own roof, though,”
declared the miller emphatically. “I’d rather find the kitchen fire out,
by a long way, than ’ave my words snapped up when I be settin’ aside it.
I can’t abide temper in a woman nor more nor in a ’oss!”
“All the same a bit o’ warm fire and a cosy ’ome do come in comfortable
when a man be feelin’ a bit rocky,” urged Hewson more decisively than
usual. “No dinner—that be bad! I feel sorry for ye, neighbour, I do
indeed!”
The miller stood still and stared a minute, and then he broke into his
loud, resonant laugh.
“Oh, ye bain’t no call to be sorry for me,” he said cheerily. “I be
gettin’ on fust-rate, thank ye,” and he shifted the brown-paper parcel
from one arm to the other. “We was but passin’ opinions on the breeds
and pedigrees o’ the women-folk, as far as I be aware. Why, I’d rather
’ave all the pumps on at once than see the ricks a-burnin’ for ten
minutes. Each man to ’is taste, neighbour, and thank _you_ for a ’alf
hour’s exchange ’o notions, so to speak.”
Hewson smiled, a trifle bewildered.
“That be it,” said he genially. “Each man to ’is taste, or in other
words—let every one put up wi’ what ’e ’ave got. A blemish is a blemish,
but the mare may be sound for all that.”
“Sound!” began the miller, half angrily. But he had reached the top of
the hill; his own garden-gate was in sight, and his own house-door
opened and sent a flood of yellow light down the walk to put out the
white moonbeams on the hollyhocks and the sunflowers.
“Right ye be, man,” cried he good-humouredly, slapping his comrade
noisily on the back. “We won’t fight over ’em; there’s blemishes, I dare
say, but the mares be both sound for all that.”
And on the doorstep the women were exchanging a last word.
The miller’s wife, warmed to further unbosoming by a seductive cup of
tea, was pouring final confidences into Mrs. Hewson’s willing ear.
“If you’d believe it,” she was saying shyly, “there were a time when I
were nigh to fancyin’ Mr. Hewson myself. Not that there iver were much
atween us, and I don’t know as I could say ’e iver come nigh to askin’
me. But ’e were that kind and gentle, I thought as ’e’d make a nice,
considerin’ ’usbin’, and I thought I could ha’ got him if I’d tried.
But, Lor’, now I know ’e’ve so little sperrit, I don’t think as it’d ha’
suited at all.”
“Oh, don’t ye!” retorted Martha, with a good dash of honest viciousness
in her tones which the other was too dense or too pre-occupied to
notice.
“I ain’t got your ’ealth nor yet your managin’ ways, ye see,” Milly was
murmuring on softly. “Not but what I do pity you, my dear....”
“Well, then, ye needn’t to do no such thing,” interrupted Mrs. Hewson
sharply. “My man may be a bit soft o’ times—though ’ow you come to fancy
it, I be sure I don’t know—but ’e don’t come masterin’ it over a body,
nor yet ’e don’t spend his evenin’s at the ‘Public,’ and leave ’is wife
alone at the fire-side. If I was a chatterbox I might ’ave a word to say
’bout bygones too! But, Lor’ bless me, I niver was one to boast! Nor yet
to ’anker after showin’ up as I was once nigh upon makin’ a fool o’
myself!”
Martha laughed a rough laugh, and the ready eyes of the miller’s wife
filled with tears.
“My word, I don’t know what ye mean!” faltered she with quivering voice.
“But if anybody says as my Dan neglects ’is wife....”
“Well, there, least said soonest mended,” put in Martha Hewson
hurriedly, for she had seen two dark forms coming up the hill in the
moonlight. Her temper had been “up” at the slight which the other, in
her foolishness, had dealt to her “man”; and she had not the smallest
intention of hearing him made light of, however much she might grind him
down herself. But being a good-natured soul at bottom, and not anxious
moreover to give herself away, she was not going to have this silly
conversation overheard.
“I don’t know as it is,” began the foolish little woman, swallowing her
tears. “I shall tell Dan what ye said, and....”