the Major’s, but he had not been there all day. She had even been
herself to the “Public” on the village green to ferret out news of him,
but no one had met him since they had seen them together that morning on
the churchyard corner, and she began to feel pretty sure now that he had
gone on the spree to some more distant “diggings,” as he was wont to do
at times when he was thoroughly in with his bad companions and wanted to
be out of reach of her “worritin’.”
“I ’spect ’e be down at the Arbour,” moaned she to the little daughter
who sat laboriously darning a pair of stockings at her side, while she
herself passed the iron up and down over the fine damask table-linen
belonging to her best customers up at the “house.” And her gaze crept
out of the window across the marsh-land that swept to the sea from the
base of the cliff, on whose crest their cottage stood. She could not see
“the Harbour,” as the villagers called it, for it was three miles away
where the river oozed through muddy banks to the sea, but she could see
a bit of the long white road upon which he would come when he started
homewards.
“There were a brig due to-night,” she added, “and father do like to be
by when there be a brig due—the fellers keep so merry.”
She was silent a moment, taking up her goffering-tongs to goffer a
pillow-case frill and holding them to her cheek to test the heat.
“There, I do wish I ’adn’t been such a silly as to let out to Jim Casey
this morning!” she went on presently. “I might ha’ knowed ’e’d pay me
out somehow. ’E allers does.”
“I _’ate_ Jim Casey,” said the child, lifting serious brown eyes to her
mother’s face, for all the world like her father’s.
“And the Lord knows _I_ do,” declared the mother peevishly. “It be all
’is fault as father be as ’e be. ’E ’ave done more ’arm than the Lord
knows in this world, ’ave Casey.”
The child was silent. She didn’t understand, but she wasn’t meant to
understand, and she didn’t want to. She was used to having her mother
run on to her in an endless, peevish moan when things were “contrairy,”
and she liked to sit and listen and feel important without knowing why.
“I’d like to pay Casey out some day, and no mistake,” said the mother
vindictively.
And the little girl echoed the sentiment, looking up again with her
frank eyes in which vindictiveness had not yet learned to dwell. “Do,
mother,” she said, being sure of one thing only, and that was that she
did not like Jim Casey, because he somehow worked her father ill.
The mother’s face did not relax; she went on ironing desperately,
slapping the iron on to the linen and dropping it heavily on to the
stand again. But presently she looked up; she was folding the last
table-napkin, and she laid it on the pile. Her eyes were full of tears.
“Father ’ll be ’ome soon, I ’spect,” said Sue gently, watching her.
“The Lord knows,” sighed the mother, and if the child had had more
worldly wisdom she would have guessed that a fresh sting had crept into
her misery; “there be no tellin’! But _you_ ’aven’t got no need to
worrit. You go and bring the children in from their play, and get ’em
washed, and the supper spread, there’s a good child. I ’ope they ’aven’t
strayed far.”
She put up the back of her hand and dried her eyes as she stepped to the
door whence a flight of brick stairs led to the road along the cliff’s
edge.
All day long storm-clouds had been circling round the distant sister
town, and sweeping up across the marsh from the sea, piling themselves
together thick and dark, and emptying their heaviness upon the wide, sad
land. But, with the westering sun, they had lightened a bit, and there
were holes in them that let the blue through in patches, and, above the
ramparts of purple downs that enclosed the land that had once been
water, they had parted now, leaving a long red line between their own
murkiness and the sombre hue of the hills below: in one place the red
was of blood, and the black arms of the windmill on the down’s crest
made a cross upon it as of a Calvary.
Mrs. Wood did not notice the sunset, but she sighed as she looked out
into the waste below, where, slowly and steadily, thick mists were
rising from the dykes, or stealthily creeping across the marsh-land.
“My, it ’ave rained a lot,” said she, “the river be big. And I shouldn’t
be surprised if we ’ad a nasty sea-fog to-night too.”
“Well,” said the child smiling with quick intention, “father knows ’is
way ’cross the marsh, well enough.”
“Oh, I don’t s’pose ’e be likely to lose ’is way at this time o’ day,
drunk or sober,” allowed the mother, with another sigh. “That ain’t
all.”
And then she shaded her eyes and made out two dark and two fair-haired
curly heads in the group of children playing in the road, and called out
to them to come in to bed. She caught the last, the youngest, who was a
boy, in her arms as he came up the steps and hugged him, and laughed for
the first time that day as he kicked and struggled to get free.
“They’re in a rare mess, Sue,” she called out to the little elder
sister. “You’d best give ’em their supper first, while I step up wi’ the
linen. I won’t be long, but I must look in at the Post-office ’bout that
there job or I’ll be too late. Leave washin’ o’ Johnnie till I come in;
’e’ll be too much for you.”
She passed back into the dwelling-room, taking off her apron and rolling
down her sleeves as she went.
“The shirts can wait till the mornin’,” she added. “They want some
airin’ yet.”
“I ’ope ye’ll get the work at the new ’ouse, mother,” said Sue cheerily
as her mother went down the road; and she set the little brothers and
sisters around sitting on the doorstep and gave them their milk and dry
bread for supper.
But the luck was not in Mrs. Wood’s way that day; the job was gone
before she got to the Post-office. Miss Hearn assured her curtly that it
had been gone before she knew of her wanting it; it had gone to Widow
Collins.
“I should ha’ thought ye might ha’ guessed I should want it fast enough,
ma’am,” said poor Lucy humbly. “Widow Collins ain’t got no mouths to
feed now ’er son’s provided for, and I don’t never ’ave work enough, wi’
all I can get to feed them as counts upon me.”
“Well, I’m sorry for ye,” said the post-mistress, though her tone belied
her words, “but I’m bound to speak fair and honest to strangers
accordin’ to what I’m asked, ye know. And folk will put awkward
questions sometimes.”
Mrs. Wood flushed hot.
“’Tain’t fair, then,” said she, her voice trembling, but whether she
alluded to the question that had been put, or to the answer that had
been given, she did not specify. “If I do my work proper, and up to
time, I don’t think nothink else ain’t nobody’s business.”
“That’s as may be,” retorted the superior, pursing her lips, and Lucy
Wood went home.
She had heard no word of her husband—nothing but that Jim Casey had gone
to the sea-port, and thither she was forced to suppose Jerry had gone
too.
She washed her boy and put him to bed and bade Sue turn in too, and when
she had damped the linen ready for the morrow’s final ironing, she put a
light in the window, in case Jerry should come by the top way, and
closing the front door softly, slunk shyly down to the wall at the end
of the road to watch for that home-coming that she longed for and yet
dreaded.
Many a time had she thus watched and waited before, but somehow to-night
there was on her a deeper and more incomprehensible fear than she had
ever known.
A horrible and sinister sense of mystery seemed to hang over everything:
the moon was struggling with clouds that continually overswept and
swamped her, and even when she looked forth it was with no mild
radiance, but as though coldly trying to pierce some cruel secret; white
and dense the sea-fog overspread the marsh like a blanket, swaying even
up to the village on the cliff and floating softly down its streets and
around its old church in the big square graveyard. One could scarcely
see a yard in front of one, and two men who came smartly up the hill and
round the corner did not see Lucy as she hung over the wall peering down
the road.
“Pore Mrs. Wood, she’ll ’ave a job wi’ ’im to-night, she will!” said one
with a laugh. “I often wonders whether she guesses the worst on ’im and
just keeps dark on it for ’er pride’s sake.”
“Ye never can tell wi’ folk,” said the other sagely. “The gals from the
’Arbour don’t often come up this way, and I don’t s’pose no one’d go for
to tell ’er.”
“Lord love ye, ye can’t never tell what nasty turn one woman’d do
another,” declared Wilson. “Though I dare say she’d sooner put up wi’ it
all than be rid on ’im, if the truth was known. It be past crediting
what some women’ll look over in a man as they love.”
He started, for he felt a touch on his arm in the mist, and looking
round recognized Lucy.
“I was thinkin’ p’r’aps ye might ha’ seen my ’usband down at the
’Arbour, Mr. Wilson,” said she in a thin, panting voice, that told of
inner anguish bravely concealed. “’E ain’t come ’ome yet, and it be a
nasty aitchy night.”
The man turned away his eyes from her miserable, eager face and looked
at his comrade.
“Oh, don’t ye worrit, Mrs. Wood,” said the latter after a minute, during
which the two looked blankly at one another. “Jerry be all right. We did
see ’im down yonder, but ’e be wi’ a lot of ’em, and they’ll bring ’im
’ome, you can make sure.”
Bring him home! The words had an ominous sound, and she did not dare ask
more.
She looked wistfully down the hill—or down as much of it as one could
see in the damp, creeping atmosphere; the long, weary road across the
lonely plain, with the sad swish of the waves coming nearer the further
one went, till one reached the place where only white stones by the
dyke’s side marked the way across the marsh to the harbour—it was all
vividly present to her mind’s eye, and she knew it was no safe spot for
a drunken man to cross in a thick fog.
“’E might want to leave and come ’ome afore the others was ready,” she
said in the same thin, high voice. “I’ve ’alf a mind to go ’long the
road to meet ’im.”
“Lord love ye, Mrs. Wood, ye mustn’t do no such thing,” said the man
whom she had called Wilson, authoritatively. “The mist be as thick as
mush on the marsh, and it wouldn’t be safe. Your man be all right. The
boys wouldn’t never leave ’im—I know.”
She sighed; the assertion made it plainer than ever to her in what
condition they had last seen him. She drew the old shawl that she had
caught up in her haste tightly round her elbows and shivered.
“You go ’ome to the childer,” said the man kindly. “They be little uns;
they needs ye most, ye know.”
“Thank ye,” retorted she sharply, “I knows best for myself where’s I be
most needed. The childer’s in bed and asleep these hours gone.”
And she turned back to her old place by the wall, leaning on it and
gazing down into the marsh.
The men walked on, and were gone in the mist.
It was the last mortification that could be laid on her—that folk should
_know_—what she had known for long. But she was too actually sodden with
misery to care as she would have cared a year or two ago. For she knew
it—oh, yes, she knew it all! But she had never let any one guess that
she knew it, least of all him. Perhaps it was because of her pride, as
the man had surmised; perhaps it was because she had a vague hope that
by silence and patience she would best strengthen the thread that still
held him to her. She was only a simple woman, but she understood him
pretty well, and she knew that the thread was there; she knew that it
was weakness that led him away from her—weakness fortified by evil
counsel and evil comradeship. And in the darkness she clenched her poor
horny little hand and prayed that she might be even with Casey some day.
And meanwhile she waited, shivering in the fog, and her heart went out
in passionate longing to the man who was faithless to her, who neglected
her, who squandered her earnings, and was slowly bringing her to the
grave. Wilson had said: “It’s past crediting what some women’ll look
over in the man they love!”
But the minutes flew fast and grew into a long hour, and there was no
sign of Jerry, and at last the wife had to remember the mother and go
home to the babes.
Little Sue stirred.
“Be that father?” asked she drowsily.
“No, dear, not yet. You go to sleep,” said the mother,
“But ye won’t fret, mother, will you?” said the child again.
“Oh, no, dear, I won’t fret,” promised the poor soul, though her voice
would have given the lie to her words had the child not been dulled with
healthy weariness.
The little one turned round in bed, and the mother sat herself by the
window wrapping her shawl more closely around her.
But she did not keep her promise—she did fret. She sat and rocked
herself to and fro, and thought of all she might have done which she had
not done, and of all she had done that would have best been left undone.
Yes, she had worried him; she had been too sharp, too fretful. She had
not been able to make life gay for him—there were always so many cares;
and he hated cares and loved gaiety.
Only that very morning she had found fault with him, and been cross to
him before strangers; any man would hate that, and he hated it more than
most. Why had she been so foolish? No wonder he had gone to the Harbour
and to “them ’orrid girls.” It was her own fault. But when he came home,
she would not speak a word of reproach. He should just sleep it off and
not a word said. And she would get credit somehow to get him nice
dinners. If only it weren’t that nasty old Miss Hearn to whom the rent
was due!
And so she sat and planned and waited, and the lamp burned low, but he
did not come.
Sleep won on her after her hard day’s work and she dozed off, and as she
dozed she thought she was in the steep lane again where her Jerry had
courted her first, and she felt the scent of pines after a hot day sweet
in her nostrils, and the breath of kisses sweeter still upon her lips,
and the soft tenderness of the warm moonlight slowly persuading her
happy senses.
And she awoke with a start.
There was moonlight without, but it was wan and chill, and the only
scent was a scent of salt sea spray that was borne in upon the fog: but
there was a sound of voices in the night.
In a moment her hand was on the latch, and she was out on the threshold
above the brick steps.
A man and a woman were coming up them, but the man was not her husband.
It was Mr. Wilson, whom she had seen earlier in the evening—whom she had
overheard—wondering “if she knew.” A sudden wave of anger against him
swept over her, the foam of the mortification that she had so long
endured.
The blood went to her head.
“What d’ye want?” said she savagely, standing at the top of her steps as
though to guard her threshold.
But even as she spoke the words, the wave had passed over her, leaving
her cold and shivering. For Wilson was silent, and there was a look of
pity on his plain face. She looked at the woman: it was the doctor’s old
housekeeper.
“What do ye want?” she repeated, but there was less fierceness in the
voice now: it was half plaintive, half peevish.
The woman came two steps further up, but still Lucy guarded her
threshold.
“Hush!” she whispered hoarsely, “don’t wake the childer. If there be
trouble, say so. It won’t be nothin’ new for ye to tell me my man be
drunk. Ye be all on yer pleased enough to come and say so. And if the
truth was known I dare say ye wouldn’t mind sayin’ as ’e’d been down
with the bad girls at the ’Arbour as well,” added she recklessly. “You
be all on yer glad enough to say every bit o’ ill ye can on us both. Oh,
yes, I know ’ow you and Miss ’Earn lays yer ’eads together agin me,”
cried she, working up her anger the better to drown her fear. “I s’pose
ye think it do but serve me right if ’e should treat me bad seein’ as I
made myself too cheap to ’im at first. Oh, yes, don’t mind me—say it
out, do.”
She ended in a whimper, and the old woman looked helplessly back at the
man who waited lower down.
“Whativer shall we do wi’ ’er?” she whispered.
Mr. Wilson moved up.
“Look ’ere,” said he firmly, “we ain’t come to say no such things as you
fancy. We means kindly by ye—we wants to ’elp ye all we can. For there
_be_ trouble, missus, and ye got to brace up to meet it.”
“Yes,” repeated the old woman, “ye’ve got to brace yerself up and keep
yerself quiet, my dear.”
Lucy drew her shawl very tightly about her, and came down to them,
driving them, as it were, before her.
“I don’t want no noise ’ere,” she said surlily. “Where be ’e?”
“’E be at the doctor’s,” said Wilson.
“Yes, ’e be at the master’s,” repeated the woman—“there’ve been a bit of
a h’accident....”
Lucy pushed past her, and hurried round the corner and up the hill; the
two had hard work to keep up with her.
“Casey be in it,” she muttered to herself. “Casey done it, I know. I’d
like to be even wi’ Casey!” Then turning, she said fiercely, “Where be
’e?”
“Who?” asked Wilson.
“Casey,” said she.
“’E be ... ’e be took up,” answered the man.
Her face positively shone.
“What, took by the perlice?” she cried, clutching his arm. “Will ’e go
to prison?”
“Oh, yes, ’e’ll go to prison,” said the man.
“The Lord be praised!” she said, stopping dead.
The old woman, who had been unable to keep the pace, caught them up.
“Look ’ere, ye must look sharp,” she panted, “if ye want to see ’im
alive, my dear.”
“Alive? Who?” asked Lucy stupidly.
The old woman glanced at the man.
“I thought ye’d told ’er,” she said.
Lucy gazed at them.
“If ye mean as Casey ’ave killed my Jerry,” she began slowly, trembling
as she spoke.
“’E ain’t dead, my dear, ’e ain’t dead yet,” faltered the old
housekeeper.
Lucy began to run.
“Anyways it weren’t the blow Casey ’it ’im as done for ’im, Mrs. Wood,”
panted Wilson, keeping up with her, “Nobody don’t love Casey, but
’tweren’t all ’is fault. There _were_ a bit of a brawl—over a gal. Jerry
was drunk, ’e ’it out. Then the perlice come. Somebody did say Casey
split on Jerry, but if ’e did ’e be paid for it. For t’other boys ’elped
Jerry off—’e was allers a favourite with ’em—and Casey, seein’ ’isself
left-like, ’it out at the perlice. Nobody knows the rights o’t, but
Casey be took up. So’d Jerry ha’ been if ’e ’adn’t come by that fall on
the bridge. ’E was blind-drunk, and ’e missed ’is foot in the mist.”
“Casey done it,” was all Lucy said. “’Oo’s fault was it as ’e were
drunk?” And she ran on.
Lights appeared faintly before her through the murky mist; they shone
from the doctor’s house at the corner of the churchyard. The moon,
piercing the clouds for a moment, threw a wan light on the square tower
of the old church, on the summit of its massive buttresses, on the
lopped pine-tree beyond; but it was too feeble to illumine the dank
vapours that floated through the ghostly arches of the ruined transepts
and rested, almost opaquely, on the tops of the time-worn tombstones in
the graveyard.
There was a little knot of folk in the road hard by the surgery door;
the same lads were there who had stood at the same corner in the
morning, goading the wife to frenzy with their careless taunts, merrily
“chaffing” the man whom they had now carried home to die: they stood
aside, shamed and silent, to let the widow pass.
The doctor appeared in the doorway; he was a rough old man, and he had
often roughly upbraided this woman for bringing children into the world
at the risk of her life—children whom she was too frail to suckle and
too poor to properly feed; but he took her kindly by the hand now.
“Come,” said he gently.
Something in his voice told her the truth: she looked at him wildly.
Yet she would not understand.
“Where be ’e? I must see ’im alone,” she said, always speaking in that
hard, high voice. “We had words this mornin’ when we parted ... it were
that Casey’s fault ... I _must_ tell Jerry....”
“Hush!” said the doctor, solemnly, interrupting her. “You shall see him.
But you must be brave—for the sake of your children.”
“Oh, never mind the children,” cried she, half-petulantly. “I want
Jerry....”
“Hush!” said the doctor again. And he led her within into the surgery
where those lights were burning that she had seen through the mist as
she ran—cursing Casey in her heart.
There was a deep silence for a moment, and then those without heard a
great cry.
“Poor soul!” murmured the old housekeeper, wiping her eyes. “He were a
bad man to ’er, God knows! But—there—she loved ’im to the last, I do
b’lieve.”
A year had passed away. It was autumn again, and Lucy Wood sat out on
the threshold above her brick steps and gazed down into the marsh, and
across it to the distant town and harbour. Her delicately fair face was
wan and shrivelled, her eyes dull and sunken, her slender form now
emaciated. She had been very ill. The doctor had given her up, but he
had done all he could though he guessed well enough she could never pay
him, and to-day he had sent his trusty housekeeper with a bowl of her
special milk-broth, and to induce her to take a breath of fresh air in
the late September sunshine. For it was no stormy September this year:
the marsh lay brown and mellow with the hips and haws red on its hedges,
and the river stealing across it to the sea; and the sea was dappled
with the pale purple shadows cast upon its gently heaving surface by
little fleecy puffs in the serenest of skies, that was only barred by
the violet horizontal clouds of fine weather across the distance.
But the fine weather brought none of its peace to the widow; the placid
sunshine seemed only to make her the more gloomy, as though she were
fretting to have even the mist back again on the marsh—the mist through
which she had so often listened and trembled—the mist that brought her
the keenest memory of the worst, yet the best, that she had ever known
on earth.
Every one had said that when Lucy Wood got over the shock she would
“’ave ’er ’ealth again” as she had never had it through the last five
years of her wretched married life, and Miss Hearn had been “pleased to
think that the misguided woman wouldn’t ’ave nothing now to take ’er off
them pore children as she ’ad been so wicked as to bring into this weary
world.”
But every one had been wrong.
Miss Hearn had been shocked to see that the children looked less neat
than formerly, and were more rarely sent to school, and shook her curls
quite viciously when she declared that she should turn the woman out
after all if she didn’t pay her rent next quarter; and Miss Hearn would
have been more bitter than ever if she had heard the whisper that ran
round to the effect that poor Lucy had been known to take her drop of
comfort at times when she was most low. But the kindlier neighbours kept
her secret and tried to screen her. Only they shook their heads too when
the scarlet fever appeared in the village, and Tom and ’Lizabeth took
it, and the doctor upbraided the mother for carelessness, and perhaps
they might have been more down upon her still, but that the boy died,
and the mother collapsed entirely, so that there was nothing for it but
to help with the other children and nurse the woman—because there was no
one else to do it.
Thanks to these good folk and the handy and patient little elder
daughter, Lucy was creeping slowly back to life again, but it was
helplessly and unwillingly, and the doctor’s old housekeeper was trying
to put a little spirit into her this pleasant autumn day.
“Why, it’s a real treat to see ye out again, my dear,” she was saying
cheerily. “And ye look nicely; don’t she, Sue?” she called to the little
girl who was tidying up busily within.
The child came to the door to shake a duster; her plump, rosy checks
were thinner and sallower than of yore, and her round, brown eyes less
bright.
“Yes,” she said, speaking cheerfully, but looking across rather
doubtfully at the invalid; “mother do look a bit spryer.”
“Why, ye’d be about agin in no time if ye’d but use a little h’effort
yerself,” declared the old woman. “Doctor says so, and I’m sure ’e’d
ought to know, seein’ as ’e brought ye through them h’awful times ye
used to ’ave afore yer ’usbin’ was took.”
Lucy’s white face flushed as with anger.
“I didn’t ’ave no sich h’awful times as I’ve ’ad since!” she whined.
“There was summit to get better for then.”
The child bit her lip and went indoors. There was silence for a moment
while one could hear her clattering the irons down to the fire ready for
the bit of laundry-work she was trying hard to keep pace with against
the time mother should be fit to take it up again.
“Ye didn’t ought to talk so, Mrs. Wood,” said the woman. “What, ’aven’t
ye got your childer?”
“What ye’ve got don’t giv ye back what ye ’aven’t got,” she said, in the
same peevish tone.
“But ye ought to think o’ yer duty,” said the other.
Lucy flushed again.