to be ’shamed. As for the gals, Sue be fit for service now, and I’ve
’eard of a place for ’er down town, and my sister ’ave promised to ’ave
’Lizabeth out to the ’Arbour till she be old enough to do for ’erself.”
“Ain’t ye afraid o’ lettin’ a gal grow up at the ’Arbour?” said the
woman. “Don’t ye know what most o’ them comes to? And they do say....”
“What do they say?” cried Lucy fiercely.
“Lor’ a mercy,” said the woman, “ye didn’t ought to catch a body up so
sharp. I was only a-goin’ to say as they do say the air down by them
mud-banks ain’t ’ealthy for growin’ childer.”
“Oh, was that all?” said the widow, turning her face away.
The woman beside her shook her head, and lifted her eyes as much as to
say that this was altogether past her comprehension; then, presently, as
though to start a new subject of conversation, she said, cheerfully:
“’Ave ye ’eard as that Jim Casey ’ave got two years this time? ’E did
ought to ha’ got it long ago, but....”
She stopped suddenly, for Sue had come up behind her and was tugging at
her dress and making signs to her behind the mother’s back.
At first the old woman only gaped at the child, but slowly she seemed to
grasp the situation, and nodding and winking at her knowingly, finished
up lamely enough with: “but there, never mind, it don’t signify.”
The sick woman turned round and saw the child.
“Ye don’t need to worry, Sue,” said she, in just the same spiritless
tone as before. “I don’t take no ’eed o’ Jim Casey now. There was a time
I’d ha’ been pleased to be even with ’im for a-leadin’ astray of yer
pore father but, Lor’, ’tain’t no use now. I thought I was pleased ’e’d
come to grief that night ’e done ’is worst, but, Lor’, it didn’t bring
me my man back, and I don’t know now as it ’d ’elp me if Jim Casey was
to swing.”
“Lor’ a mercy!” ejaculated the old woman again.
And Sue wiped away a tear with the corner of her little apron; but the
mother did not heed.
“Come, there, now,” said the housekeeper, presently, “if ’ere don’t come
post-mistress to cheer ye up a bit! She told me she should step up this
arternoon to see ye ’bout the family’s washin’ up at the ’Ill. Old Widow
Collins died last week, ye know, and she thinks she can git it for ye,
may be.”
“I don’t want none o’ Miss ’Earn’s favours,” snapped Lucy. “She wouldn’t
gi’ me the job when I wanted it—she can keep it now.”
“Well, I’m sure,” sighed the other. “Ye didn’t ought to be so
ungrateful, ye didn’t. Anyways, ye’ll ’ave to tell her so yerself, for
I’m sure I won’t.”
“Oh, I’ll tell ’er,” said Lucy.
And the old woman stood aside in the doorway as the post-mistress—the
pink of respectability in rusty black—came slowly up the steps.
“Pleased to see ye yerself again,” said she, in tones that were meant to
be kind.
“Thank you,” replied Lucy curtly. “I’m not sure as I know what that is.”
Miss Hearn stared. She was forced to suppose that illness had affected
Mrs. Wood’s brain, for a mere laundress could never dare be impertinent
to _her_!
“Well, anyways on the road to work again,” said she conciliatingly. “And
I’ve brought ye a nice job,” she went on, with a patronizing shake of
her greasy black ringlets. "Pore old Mrs. Collins ’ave gone at
last"—this with a pious closing of the lids over the little black
eyes—“so I’ve asted the missus at the ‘’Ill ’ouse’ to take ye on
i’stead.”
“Thank ye; I ain’t fit for no more work yet,” said the widow
ungraciously.
“Nonsense!” declared the post-mistress authoritatively. “Ye’re in a good
way to be better nor ever ye’ve been in yer life, ain’t she, ma’am?”
turning to the old housekeeper, who still stood aside.
“The master do say she ’ave pulled through wonderful,” allowed the
person addressed.
“I ain’t never goin’ to be the same no more,” declared Lucy obstinately,
setting her lips tightly, and drawing her skinny little body together
with her own petulant movement.
“Ye ’aven’t got no business to talk so,” persisted the post-mistress
sharply. “Ye can be what you choose.”
“Well, I ain’t goin’ to be no different, then,” repeated Lucy doggedly.
“And I won’t take in no more work, thank ye.”
She tried to rise, but Miss Hearn held her with a mighty eye.
“Woman, do you know as you’re settin’ up yer ’orn against the Lord God
A’mighty?” said she solemnly. “And do you know as you’ll be punished
h’awful?”
“I been punished a’ready,” said Lucy.
“And if ye don’t do as ye ought by them as ye’ve brought into this
sinful vale, ye’ll be punished worse,” decreed Miss Hearn.
“Them above ’as done their worst by me,” said Lucy, with a wan smile. “I
don’t h’expec’ no more from them, and they don’t need to h’expec’ no
more from me.”
Miss Hearn lifted her hands to heaven in silent horror.
“There, now, ye know ye care for the childer,” said the old housekeeper,
from the doorway.
At the kind tones the tears sprang to Lucy’s eyes.
“There be enough for them,” she said.
“Not if ye pay yer way as ye should do,” said the post-mistress
sententiously. “Folk ’as been kind cos o’ yer misfortune, but ’tain’t in
reason they should keep it up. I’ve ’eard tell as ye ’an’t so much as
paid for the smart funeral ye thought fit to ’ave a year ago.”
A spark of anger flew to Lucy’s weary eyes.
“Then it’s a lie!” she cried. “If I’d owed for the bread I put into the
children’s mouths, I’d ha’ paid for that! And I don’t see what business
it is o’ nobody’s neither if I chose to spend my money so as my own
’usbin’ should be nailed down in a coffin better nor some.”
She ended in a whimper, and sat shaking, the tears slowly trickling down
her cheeks. But the post-mistress had no mercy. She was incensed at
being thus set at naught, and put no guard on her tongue.
“Ye’ll ’ave them children on the parish,” she said, “and a disgrace to
ye it’ll be! Ye ’ad wits enough and spunk enough so long as ’e was to do
for! Didn’t ye wrong ’em enough whiles ’e was livin’ but what ye must
wrong ’em worse now the Lord ’ave mercifully delivered ye from ’im? I’m
ashamed of ye, Lucy Wood! And all for the sake o’ a drunken blackguard
as couldn’t so much as keep ’isself to ye!”
Lucy had said she would never be the woman she was; but in a moment all
her old energy returned to her.
“What d’ye mean?” she said.
“Well, if ye don’t know ye’d p’ra’ps best should,” said the
post-mistress, half ashamed yet determined to have her say. “I mean as
yer man....”
But she stepped aside hurriedly, for Lucy had risen tottering to her
feet, and stood pointing to the road.
“Get out o’ ’ere!” interrupted she fiercely, her whole little body
trembling with rage. “I know well enough what ye mean! But if ye dare so
much as breathe a word agin my man in my ’ouse, I’ll knock ye down them
stairs.”
All Miss Hearn’s elderly blood flew in a purple flood to her face.
“Hush, for mercy’s sake, ye don’t know what ye’re sayin’,” cried the old
housekeeper in a frightened whisper.
“Yes, I do,” she said, quietly now. "Sue"—seeing the child standing in
the doorway with a white and terrified face—“Sue, don’t be frightened,
but come ’ere. We ain’t a-goin’ to ’ave father made light of, be we?
Miss ’Earn says I ought sooner to ha’ schooled you and ’Lizbeth than
’ave bought yer father a decent coffin. But ye ain’t o’ that mind, I
know!”
The child had come out on to the little terrace.
“No, mother,” said she valiantly, though in a low voice.
Lucy drew the girl to her and put her arm round her waist.
“We’ll stand up agin’ ’em when they take to makin’ light o’ yer father,
anyways,” panted she, as she watched Miss Hearn pound down the stairs,
muttering as she went. “And I’d take it very kindly o’ you if you’d see
as the neighbours ’ears o’ this and understands my meanin’,” she added
faintly, turning to the other old woman as she sank exhausted back into
her chair.
“Yes, yes, don’t you worry now,” said the latter, sorely perplexed and
scared as she tried to soothe her. “They’ll ’ear it all fast enough.”
“Sue be a good girl,” added the mother, patting the child feebly. “I
ain’t long for this world, but so long as I’m ’ere they sha’n’t speak
ill o’ my Jerry when I’m by, and Sue’ll stand by me in that.”
“Nobody won’t do it agin,” said the old woman. And then to the girl in
an undertone: “Get ’er to bed, dear. I’ll run and tell the doctor. I’m
afeard she might ha’ done ’erself a mischief.”
And she too stumped down the broken steps.
“I know I ’aven’t done the best for you and the little ’uns since father
went,” whimpered the mother. “But father were allers fust, and I never
couldn’t do nothin’ when ’e weren’t by. Ye’ll forgive me for it, Sue,
and p’r’aps God will too.”
The child did not answer for a moment. Then she said simply:
“O’ course father were allers fust.”
And wearily the mother repeated:
“Yes, father were allers fust.”
HIS LITTLE MAID
HIS LITTLE MAID
The waning of the hot midsummer day spread its mellow sunlight and its
long shadows across the marsh-land beside the sea. The haymakers had
been busy since daybreak; men, women and children labouring through the
hot hours, when the whole level was one scarcely varied monotony of
golden haze on soft-green meadows and pastures that grew yellower as
they neared the yellow beach; when the sun caked the pale brown earth in
the furrows between the crops and drew faint odours from the rush-grown
banks of the dykes where the moor-hen hid and the yellow iris bloomed;
when the blue waves sparkled, and the shots and shades of the shallows
purpled beneath the sun shining on the sea, and brought the only sense
of freshness that came to the sun-steeped plain.
But now slender amethyst clouds barred the horizon and shed parallel
shadows where the sky and sea melted together; the long line of white
foreland to left grew clearer beneath the slanting rays; the sun was
near to setting and the labourers were near to their rest.
Tom Wycombe stood beside the last waggon upon which he had just helped
to hoist the last load of hay.
It was not his own land, though he had his bit up on the hill behind the
old gateway of the ancient town. But he had given his day’s work to a
farmer, as many another neighbour had done likewise.
He was a man somewhere near fifty on its wrong side, square and fair and
rough-visaged, but the neighbours said kind of heart though sparing of
speech.
But then he was a widower, and it was said he had never been the same
man since he had become so, saving all his words and all his gentleness
for his little mite of a motherless daughter—all the kin that he had.
As he stood now, wiping his brow with his hand, he glanced about him as
though seeking something, and a woman guessing his mind, answered the
unasked question,
“She be down by the river,” she said, “with farmer Daring’s lad.”
The man looked uneasy.
“Ain’t no one looking after ’em?” asked he.
The woman smiled.
“Ye be over timid about that child, Mr. Wycombe,” she said. “Ye cosset
’er more than her mother would ha’ done. And ye didn’t ought to, ye
know. You’ll make ’er that tender and fearsome, she won’t be fit to
stand up to the world.”
The man did not reply; he turned away to give a last hoist to the hay as
the waggon moved off. He was used to these remarks from kindly
busy-bodies, and he never paid more than scant attention to them, but
went his own way as he listed.
“’E be downright silly over ’er, that’s what ’e be,” declared the woman
confidentially to a girl who had been working beside her.
“Be ’e ’er dad?” asked the girl, who was a stranger in the parish.
The woman laughed.
“What makes ye ask that?” said she.
“Well,” said the girl, “’e looks old to be ’er dad. I thought ’e might
be ’er gran-dad.”
“Oh, I see,” said the woman. “No, he ain’t ’er gran-dad.”
“Married a bit on in life p’r’aps,” said the other, tying the strings of
her sun-bonnet and speaking without any particular interest.
“That’s it,” assented the woman, “and more fool ’e. ’E _would_ ’ave a
young wife, and a pretty ’un too—and ’e turned forty.”
“Well, small blame to ’im there,” laughed the girl. “And so long as she
were pleased....”
“She!” sneered the woman. “Why ’e was rich, and he married nothin’ but a
shrimper’s darter down at the Harbour! ’Er face was ’er fortune if ever
one was, for she ’adn’t a brass farthing beside.”
They had gathered their rakes and forks together, and were making their
way across a little dyke into the road that wound across the marsh-land
to the village on the hill.
“Then the little ’un be like her mother,” said the younger woman. “She
don’t favour ’er father any way.”
“She be more like ’er mother than she be like Tom Wycombe, sartin sure,”
laughed the woman. “But that ain’t saying much. ’Er mother were darker
in the skin nor she be.”
“But they say she were rare ’andsome,” said the girl. “And now she’s
dead and buried, and ’im alone!”
“Yes, died in childbed, and ’im alone this four years and more to mind
that child. That’s what comes o’ marryin’,” said the woman, who was a
spinster.
“Pore soul!” murmured the girl feelingly, thinking of her own pretty
face and the pretty face that was underground. And added with keener
interest: “But ’e doated on er, o’ course.”
“Doated on ’er? I b’lieve ye,” sniggered the elder. “’E was a fool over
’er, and she knew it.”
“That’s why ’e be so soft on the little ’un, you bet,” declared the girl
wisely.
“That’s as may be,” said the woman. “’E’s mothered and fathered ’er ever
since she was born, at any rate. And _that_ set on his own way with ’er
too, ye wouldn’t believe! Won’t never take no advice from nobody. And
she’ll get the top ’and of ’im—same as ’er mother did! See if she don’t!
’E be a downright ninny over ’er.”
The man strode past as she spoke, and Mrs. Goodenough gave a start.
“Eavesdroppers don’t never ’ear no good o’ themselves,” remarked she
sententiously.
But Tom Wycombe had heeded neither the first nor the last remark.
His work was done and he was hastening to his child; he neither cared
for nor noticed any one else.
The sun, when it set, shed just as warm a glow over his heart as it did
over the marsh-land, though he did not put two and two together about
it. From the village on the hill, the flaming sky that reddened behind
the solemn buttresses of the ancient church, sent soft and palpitating
reflections over the quiet land that lay stretched below; and the tender
radiance reached to his patient spirit also. For he too had waited
through the hot hours for this blessed eventide that lay so calm and
peaceful a touch upon the seething earth, and the red in the west was
the signal for his rest and for his reward.
He hastened towards the one thing in the world that he loved—glad,
eager, and a little anxious as he always was when his little maid was,
even a stone’s throw, away from him.
And as he drew near to the river-bank where he had been told that she
was playing, his vague uneasiness began to take a sort of shape. For
there was a little knot of children gathered there—and they were not
noisily fighting or playing—but standing huddled together gazing into
the water, and two of them, who were girls, were crying, and one, who
was a boy, was stripping off his little jacket.
Wycombe dashed forward—throwing his harvesting tools on the ground as he
ran, and pulling off his coat.
The children parted as they saw him, speechless with terror; their
silence told him the truth, but he needed no telling—he had known it was
his Daisy who was in the water.
“Where?” was all he said, breathless.
“There, under the bridge,” cried a lad, pointing.
It was an awkward spot; he plunged and dived once, without success. But
the second time the little petticoats bubbled up before his eyes: he
seized them and scrambled up the bank with her, a little, inert mass
under his arm.
Mrs. Goodenough and the girl who was a stranger, had come running up,
and other neighbours followed.
“’Ot blankets and ’ot water to ’er feet,” said one; “and a drop o’
spirit in ’er inside be the thing,” suggested another; and a third, more
practical, ran up the steep bank towards the village, saying she would
fetch the doctor and get things ready in the cottage agin’ Mr. Wycombe
carried her up.
He had thrown himself upon the little body, breathing into it with all
his might, though with little knowledge of how to effect restoration.
But luckily the little one had been in the water but a moment, and she
was strong and lusty. In a few minutes she began to stir, then to open
her eyes, and then to cry, and at that the man seized her in his arms
and pressed her to his warm heart, and, waving the curious and
sympathizing little crowd aside, leapt to his feet and strode up the
hill with her on his neck.
It was late. The afterglow had died away, leaving no more than a warm
memory in the softer blue of the night sky, and a subtle sense of colour
that had been, in the fast darkening marsh-land where faint vapours and
floating mists were rising upon the dykes.
The doctor had been and gone, the neighbours had been cleared out
ruthlessly, and Tom Wycombe sat content once more beside the calmly
sleeping child. Her pretty rings of soft brown hair lay curling over the
white pillow, or creeping against her rich little sunburnt face, where
even now the fresh red colour glowed so warm and healthfully. Ruddy lips
were parted by a gentle breathing, and heavy lids with long lashes
veiled eyes that even Tom Wycombe, who was no poet, could have told were
blue in the waking as the blue sea beyond the green marsh-land.
Every one said that Daisy was the prettiest child in the village as her
mother had been its handsomest woman, in her different style.
Well enough had Tom Wycombe been aware of this latter fact, and
surprised enough, too, that Milly Moss had agreed to take him for a
mate—older than she and plain as he was—when there were so many lads
sighing around her. Twice he had asked and twice had been refused, but
the third time she had consented, and he had asked himself no questions
of why or wherefore, but had simply rejoiced in his luck. And she had
been a good wife: a bit quiet—as, indeed, she had always been with him,
even before marriage—but always dutiful, and he loved her as the working
man is not always inspired to love his wife, and did all in his power to
make up to her for the one disappointment of those happy years of wedded
life—the disappointment of childlessness.
Then at last a little one had come to them, and with her coming the
mother had died.
At first he had scarce wished for the sight of the child who had cost
him his wife; but as that feeling slowly faded, it gave place to just as
ardent a worship of the babe who was wife and daughter in one to him,
and he adored her blindly as he had adored the mother, and lived for
nothing else.
She stirred now, and he sprang to her side.
One dimpled brown arm was flung over the white coverlet and the other
fat hand pushed the golden-brown curls off the forehead. Then those blue
eyes—blue as speedwells in the spring hedges—opened wide, and when they
lighted on him the red mouth smiled.
“Dad—I be too ’ot,” said she.
“’Ot,” echoed he, alarmed, feeling her brow as the most careful mother
would have done. “May be ye’ve too many bed-clothes on. Ye see, ye was
cold when we put ye to bed.”
And he pulled the padded quilt off her.
“Yes,” said she, “I know, ’cos I tummled into the river. It _was_ cold.
’Oo pulled me out, Dad?”
“Why, I did, o’ course,” replied the man jealously. “’Oo else should?
But little girls mustn’t run away from their Daddies so far another time
and get playin’ by nasty rivers.”
“Tain’t a nasty river,” said the child, “I like it. But I won’t go
tummling in no more, Dad. ’Cos it frights ye, don’t it?”
“It do!” agreed the man fervently.
“And I might ha’ been drownded dead, I might,” added Daisy with
impressiveness, though of course without any understanding of the words
which she repeated merely as she had heard them from his lips when
enjoining caution upon her. “And then what would my poor old Dad ha’
done, wivout ’is little maid?”
“Whativer would he?” repeated Wycombe with a shudder, realizing the
terror in quite a different manner! And he sighed so deeply and looked
so scared that she was frightened too.
“But I bain’t goin’ away now, be I, Dad?” asked she, sitting up in bed,
uneasiness in the blue eyes.
Then he smiled, and folding her in his rough arms kissed her
passionately.
“No, darlin’, please God ye won’t never go away from your old Dad—not so
long as ’e be above ground,” added he, beneath his breath.
She flung her little arms round his neck and hugged him, and after a few
minutes, still softly kissing her, he said: “And now Daisy must kneel up
like a good girl and say ’er prayers ’cos she was too cold to say ’em
when she went to bed, and she’s got to thank God for sparin’ of ’er to
’er old Dad.”
And the little creature turned round dutifully and knelt, in her coarse
white night-dress, upon the little white bed, with her curly head dusky
in the twilight and her innocent face—tuned to momentary
seriousness—clear against the solemn blue of the night sky behind the
window-pane, and thanked God, as she was bid, for sparing her to her
dear Dad.
Then with a little laugh of satisfaction at a duty performed, and sleep
weighing the long lashes down once more, she turned and let him tuck her
up again in the cot, and nestled down as before into her pillow.
He watched her till she had dropped to sleep, and then he went out to
smoke his evening pipe on the bench beside the garden door. And as he
looked through the warm dusk across the warm plain to the sea, he kept
repeating to himself the words: “Thank God for sparin’ ’er to ’er old
Dad!” And his rugged, emotionless face was tender and solemn as he said
them, and there were tears in his eyes, but he brushed them hurriedly
away with his coat-sleeve as a knock sounded on the outer door. The
cottage looked to the sea, and its pretty garden overhung the cliff
above the wide marsh-land, but one door opened on to the road opposite
the ancient Abbey Church, whence the quavering clock was even now
striking its nine slow strokes. It was too late for a visitor, in all
conscience, and Tom Wycombe saw no reason why he should say “Come in.”
He did not say it, but the latch was lifted nevertheless, and Mrs.
Goodenough stepped warily into the cottage.
“And ’ow be our pretty little pet now?” said she, stealing up to the cot
in spite of the fact that Wycombe stood forbiddingly in front of it,
trying to bar the way. “Why, she looks as sound as a bell and as sweet
as clover,” added she, turning down the coverlet to peep at the child.
“But ye didn’t ought to keep ’er so ’ot, Mr. Wycombe. ’Tain’t ’olesome
for children.” And she drew off a blanket as she spoke.
A spasm of anger flew to the man’s heart.
“Thank ye,” said he shortly, replacing the covering, “but I’ll manage my
own child my own way, if _you_ please. And I’ll thank you not to
interfere.”
Mrs. Goodenough flushed.
“Oh, very well,” said she. “Then it weren’t no sort o’ good my turnin’
out at this time ’o night. I thought as you might need a woman to make
that poultice as I ’eard the doctor order for ’er chest if she should
cough.”
“No, thank ye,” said he in the same tone. “I can make a poultice as well
as most. But Daisy ain’t coughed once, and she don’t fancy poultices.”
“Oh, and she ain’t never to ’ave nothin’ as she don’t fancy, o’ course!”
sneered the woman. “Ye’d best bring ’er up a borned lady! She won’t
never ’ave no cause to ’ide ’er ’ead and be thankful for what she can
get—no, not she, I s’pose!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the man. “She’ll ’ave what I can give
’er so long as I be above ground. It’d be queer if she didn’t and she my
only one.”
“Yes, but ye won’t be above ground for ever, Tom Wycombe. Ye be old—and
she but a mite. And then what’ll she do? Folk may look askance at her
then as don’t now, mind ye! A pretty piece o’ goods you’re a-makin’ of
’er to stand what she’ll ’ave to stand!”
“What’ll she ’ave to stand?” asked Wycombe, suspicious, though he knew
not of what.
“Well, I’ve give ye warnin’s enough,” began the busybody evasively,
drawing her shawl pettishly around her preparatory to departure; but the
man interrupted her with a muttered oath.
“Yes, warnin’s enough and to spare, thank ye,” said he. “Daisy’s to my
likin’, and I don’t care to ’oo’s else’s she be or no! She be my child,
and I’ll bring ’er up as I please and be damned to them as don’t
approve.”
Mrs. Goodenough flushed. She was wont to be thought an oracle upon all
subjects connected with children, because she had, in her youth, been a
nurse for a year or so; and she had vowed in the village that she would
make Tom Wycombe hear reason about this brat.