righteous indignation in her quivering voice. “I never did ’old with
them dark lanes, and ’Melia knows it; but when it comes to
be’aving—well, there, ’Melia may be a bit light-’earted—I don’t say she
bain’t—but she comes o’ respectable folk, and none can say contrairy to
that.”
“Oh, Lor’ bless you, yes; no offence, I’m sure,” declared Martha Jones,
retreating. “Girls will be girls, so I say. But I’d make her do a bit at
them shirts to-night. ’Tis but fair to you.”
She nodded in an offhand, friendly way as she shambled down the rough
brick steps to the road—the matter dismissed from her mind. But the poor
widow drew many a laboured sigh from her aching breast as the iron
passed quickly or slowly over the white linen; and when she stepped to
the threshold now and then to look to the children playing in the road
there was more than the usual fret of work unfinished and worry to come
on her weary face, and Martha Jones’s friendly advice was the cause.
Meanwhile, in the sun-steeped hop-gardens down the hill towards the sea,
’Melia was taking her fill of health and fun.
It was very hot; beyond the waste of yellow turf—relieved by the richer
brown of nodding grasses at seedtime, and by the green of rushes along
the sides of brackish dykes, all of which went to form the mellow plain
between the village on the hill and the ocean in the distance—blue waves
rippled in the sunlight and the shallow water farther out was streaked
with purple shadows till a yellow dash in the distance told of scarce
covered sands.
She was a tall, powerful, dark girl, in every particular opposite to the
fragile woman over the ironing-board. Some strain of gipsy blood in the
unknown past must have bred those deep, dark eyes and kindled the quick
flash that pride, anger, or pleasure would stir in their brown softness.
And in her gait, too, and in her movements there was a fulness and a
freedom foreign to the less well-developed persons of most of her
companions. Was it any wonder that the lads liked her, that her merry
spirit and her hearty ways kept them good-tempered and civil, when a
gloomy face would sour the best of them—that ’Melia Shaw was a favourite
with every male creature, and not quite so popular with her own sex?
But for that, truth to tell, she seemed to care but little. She was
hail-fellow-well-met with everybody—girl and boy alike; but if anybody
presumed to “cheek” her, or to interfere with what she considered it
right and proper to do, that person repented of his or her indiscretion
in a very short space of time.
And to-day some one had ventured to interfere with ’Melia, and was
“catching it hot” in return. The imprudent person was a hard-featured
woman of about forty, who was cordially hated in the field because she
never looked up from her work, but picked more poles in an hour than
anybody else to right or left of her.
“Ye didn’t get much out o’ the lads yerself seemingly when _you_ was
young, Miss Crutch,” the girl was retorting with a merry toss of her
black head. “Maybe we young ’uns know a way worth two o’ that
now-a-days.”
And there was a roar of laughter in the field at her words, for Miss
Crutch was a single woman.
“Yer pore mother wouldn’t be pleased to ’ear ye speak so, anyway,”
remarked the spinster severely.
“You leave my mother alone,” retorted ’Melia, with one of those quick
flashes from her bright eyes. “_She_ knowed her way about, anyway.”
Another laugh around, but Miss Crutch said sourly, “Ay, pore soul, much
of a way _she_ cut out for herself! A widder in the prime o’ life wi’ a
pack of ungrateful children to moil and slave for. No wonder she be
broke and old afore her time.”
“Who says as they be ungrateful?” said ’Melia.
“Them as sees the oldest on ’em racin’ round to please ’erself instead
of ’elpin’ her,” retorted the old maid.
“Well, she don’t want _your_ ’elp to mind ’em anyway,” giggled the girl,
turning to empty her pocketful of hops into the bin and meeting as she
did so the grave eyes of a thick-set man of quiet aspect who was lifting
fresh poles for the pickers.
She lowered her own that were not in the habit of falling before any
one’s gaze, and her laugh was less confident as she added: “There’s
earnin’ as well as elpin’, ye see.”
“Oh, I say, ’ow much o’ your earnin’s gone ’ome, eh, ’Melia?” sneered a
fat girl hard by; but her mouth was stopped by a young fellow who
brushed past her quickly, and, stooping over ’Melia, pulled a hop-pole
out of the ground for her that was trying even her strength, and laid it
across for her ready to pick. The elder man, who was going on steadily
with his own work, smiled a little, and the girl who had spoken cried
out, “Lor! it ain’t every one of us gets _that_ done for us!”
’Melia looked a little conscious as she said, "Ye ’adn’t no call to do
it, thank ye, Mr. Farr. Mr. Wilkins ’ere"—nodding towards the other
man—“lays ’em ready for us.”
But she looked pleased as any other girl would have looked, and blushed
a bit under her brown skin at something the fellow said to her in an
undertone. The girls around sniggered and whispered together, but the
next minute ’Melia threw her jokes and laughter around her in just the
same wholesale and indiscriminate manner as usual, and the lads took
heart of grace again and gathered round her—each confident that he could
oust the stranger from her favour—and she was, as always, the centre of
life and fun and banter. Only he whom she had called Mr. Wilkins held
aloof, and went on steadily with his work without paying her any
attention, without even laying the poles as near to her hand as he did
to that of many another girl, and she—strange to say—never flung him
even one of her lightly casual words, never appealed to him for his
opinion, as she laughingly did to so many others.
“A good ’usband?” she was saying now with her merriest manner. “Well,
now, I wonder what sort that’d be? Some tell ye one thing and some
another, till ye don’t know what to believe, ’pon my word ye don’t. ’Ere
be Johnnie says he’ll give me every blessed thing I can want; but, Lor’
bless me, ’ow can I tell what I shall want? A proper man ’d find out for
ye, and give it ye into the bargain!”
The laugh went round louder than ever at this, and Johnnie declared he
would find out fast enough; but he was told that as he had never made a
good shot at her tastes yet she wasn’t likely to have any confidence in
him for the future, and Johnnie, crestfallen, fell into the rear.
“Nay,” continued she, “there be some as’ll tell ye a woman be happiest
when the man leads her a devil’s life; but there, I say it be according
to taste again, and ’ow am I to know till I’ve tried? No, no, there be
many a lad’s good for a day’s larking that’d never do to settle down
with! So ye may all take it I mean to lark around a bit more yet awhile,
and there be no tellin’ at all who I shall take in the end.”
“I wouldn’t wait too long, ’Melia. Ye mightn’t get asked so often as you
might think for,” sneered the fat girl again; and ’Melia—ready, as
usual—said that of course there was that danger to fear, but that she
would take her chance all the same. And at that the lads laughed so
vexatiously loud that the girls were vexed and bit their lips. By all of
which it is to be surmised that, fond as ’Melia was of frolic and
flattery, she had never even given the smallest portion of herself away,
thus far, and, as her poor mother had proudly said of her, was no more
than a bit light-hearted. Only to-day, for the first time, she had not
been quite honest with herself, and if she had chosen to confess it,
_did_ know who she would take in the end—provided he asked her!
But there was the rub. He had not yet asked her. There had been larking
enough, but nothing serious; and though you might possibly know how far
you dared go with a lad of your own village whom you had known all your
life, you did not feel quite so sure with a London chap, for the ways of
London chaps were cruel and uncertain, and everybody said you must needs
beware of them if you did not want to be led astray; and, though ’Melia
wanted as much fun as she could get, she had no intention of being led
astray.
So, if the truth were known, ’Melia was rather cross with herself than
otherwise that it should just happen to be this London chap who had made
her feel something that she had never somehow felt for any lad before.
She didn’t recognize it to herself as love, and she had scorned to
acknowledge it at first, but she knew very well now in the depths of her
heart that it was stronger than her will, and that she would take that
Mr. Farr fast enough if he were to ask her. What was it in him that was
making a fool of her? There was many a better-looking man among her own
acquaintance, and he had not even any of the dash that one was wont to
expect in one bred in the great world; while as for his condition in
life, it was absolutely dark to her, and she had always supposed she
would not sell her universally acknowledged charms but to a high bidder.
So ’Melia was ashamed of herself when—as the hoppers wandered up the
hill again that day at the sunsetting—she found herself loitering behind
with the chap from London, and actually consenting to a tryst that very
night under the lea of the down beneath the windmill—a moonlight tryst
with a stranger, a thing that she had never done in her life
before—gadabout as she too truly was, though not in the sense in which
the neighbours hinted it. Yes, ’Melia was ashamed of herself, but she
was going to do it all the same! So, of course, she was none the better
pleased when Mr. Wilkins—meeting her on the meadow’s brow after she had
parted from her new swain—said, speaking to her for the first time that
day, “’Melia Shaw, there’s Miss Crutch waitin’ for ye round by the
oast-house. She’s got a word to say to ye afore ye goes home.”
He spoke very seriously, looking her straight in the eyes as he had done
once before that day in the hop-field. There was nothing to take offence
at either in the words or the look; yet ’Melia fired up. Her conscience
was sore, and it did her good to fly out at somebody, and so she made
sure that the “word” that was going to be said was a word of warning
about that which she knew she was doing amiss.
“I haven’t got nothing to say to Miss Crutch,” cried she quickly. “She
be a nasty old backbitin’ crosspatch, and I ain’t a-goin’ to take
nothin’ from _’er_.”
Still the man looked at her quietly.
“Do you know what ’tis she ’ave got to say to ye?” asked he.
“I can make a good guess at it,” said she, with a toss of her head and a
short laugh. “Miss Crutch never got no courtin’ ’erself, and she don’t
like them as do.”
“There be courtin’ and courtin’,” began Wilkins in a low voice, “and
there’s a time for everythin’ ...” but she interrupted him passionately.
“There be folks as thinks a girl must needs be a born fool if she thinks
fit to take her own way,” cried she fiercely, but there was a quiver as
of tears in her voice. “But, Lor’ bless me, it be yourself ye’ve got to
choose for, and ye must choose your own—come what may.”
“Ay, that may be,” echoed the man, and she was far too preoccupied to
note the wistful way in which he said it. “But young maids can’t allers
be ’spected to know all the ways o’ this wicked world. We’ve knowed ye a
little ’un, ye see, and we don’t want ye to come to no ’arm.”
“’Arm!” exclaimed ’Melia impetuously, firing up at once; but he stopped
her.
“Well, anyways,” he said quietly, “ye won’t be thinkin’ o’ courtin’ just
now? ’Tain’t about that as Miss Crutch was wantin’ to speak with ye.”
“What then?” answered she moodily, as was not her wont.
“Maybe ye had best go up and see,” said he. But as she still stood
still, with ruffled brow, uneasily twisting a piece of grass round her
fingers, and as though meditating further speech, he added gently, “Yer
mother be sick.”
The change was instantaneous. She did not say a word, but she flashed a
quick, frightened look at him, and turned on her heel and fled. He
looked after her pitifully as her tall figure flitted down the lane
beside the wind-twisted pine-trees, behind whose red trunks the sun was
setting in a sea of crimson beyond the purple downs. He watched to see
if she would look for Miss Crutch, but she passed the oast-house by on
her right, and ran straight on down the lane till she came to the
turning that led to her home.
* * * * * * * *
The moonlight fell into that lane the same night as the clock of the old
Abbey struck its nine wavering strokes, fell so full upon it that the
shadow of the pines lay hard and black upon its whiteness, and that the
figure of a man sauntering leisurely along between its low stone walls
was conspicuous as in broad daylight. He had come up from the camp in
the marsh-land below, where the fires of those “hoppers” who were not
villagers burned brightly in the still night; he left the oast-houses on
his left, and before he came to the farm on the right he vaulted the low
paling and made off across the down to the windmill. He was not an
inhabitant or he would have known that that was not the shortest way
from the plain to his destination. And there—on the slopes under the
great spreading arms of the mill, with the dykes wandering rippleless
across the plain below, like winding streams of molten metal in the
moonlight—this man waited awhile patiently. He was not used to waiting,
and the scene before him engrossed him but little, so that when the
ashes of his pipe had burned themselves out and the moon was riding high
in the heavens, he grew weary of the tryst, and slowly but surely
incensed against the girl who had broken it. He was no beauty—many even
said that he was an ugly chap—but he knew that he always got his way
with women, and not infrequently even with men, and he never troubled
himself to wonder why, and would have been very much surprised if he had
been told that it was because folk were in a certain sense afraid of
him—afraid not of his strength, but of his selfishness—of the
selfishness that always managed to take that for which it had no
intention of paying.
It was the first time he remembered being baulked of what he had
intended to get, and his fury grew as the minutes sped past. He ground
out a fierce oath from between the white teeth that were the most
conspicuous thing in his face, and turned back across the down. The
“public” lay but a little way down the road to the village. He could
soon forget ’Melia Shaw, and she should repent bitterly of her folly.
Was ’Melia repenting already, and was it really of her folly that she
was repenting—of the folly of her wild and misguided craving? Or was she
mourning the broken tryst that it was now too late to keep?
Who can tell? Anyway, a duty had fallen across her path, so plain and
strong that she saw nothing else for the moment; for on the bed in the
corner of the little cottage on the brow of the hill Widow Shaw lay
motionless, speechless—struck down in the midst of her work—the soul
only alive still, and eager as it looked forth, piteous and beseeching,
from the weary grey eyes.
“It be them shirts she be frettin’ over,” said the neighbour, Martha
Jones, standing at the foot of the bed as ’Melia rushed in, white and
scared. “Ye didn’t ought to have left her to do it all. But it be jest
like what ye be always after.”
But Miss Crutch in the doorway, throwing a scornful glance at the girl,
tossed her head.
“Shirts,” echoed she with a laugh, “shirts, indeed! A pore mother ’ave
got somethin’ wuss nor shirts to think about when she knows her
daughter’s a-carryin’ on with good-for-nothing chaps as ’aven’t the fear
o’ God so much as in their backbone. No wonder the Lord ’ave stricken
’er!”
“Hush, now, do there!” cried a kindlier woman who had risen from beside
the bed, “ye’ll drive the poor lass crazy. The doctor says as she’ll get
over it this time, dear,” added she to ’Melia, “but she ’ave got to be
kep’ quiet, and he’ll call again presently.”
The girl had thrown herself on the bed, the younger children, who were
standing huddled together in a corner, clinging on to her skirts. At the
words she leapt to her feet.
“To be kep’ quiet!” echoed she fiercely. “Then clear out o’ ’ere all of
yer, if you please. I’ll see as she be kep’ quiet.”
The women quailed before her and made for the door, grumbling; all but
she who had spoken last, on whose arm ’Melia laid a detaining hand. Then
she threw herself once more on the bed.
“Lord! to think they must needs prate like that just now!” moaned she.
“And there ain’t no truth in it neither. No, mother, no, I ain’t
a-carryin’ on with no chap, I ain’t. And I’m sorry I didn’t do the
shirts for ye, I am. But they’ll all go ’ome to-night, same as if you
was well—I swear they will, mother! Oh, Lord! she won’t speak to me—not
a word! Whatever is it? Whatever shall I do?”
No, the mother could not speak, but the tired eyes grew quiet and
drooped presently in sleep, and there were tears in the black eyes of
the daughter as she gazed on her; and the neighbour, busying herself now
about the supper and the children, cried as she answered.
“She _can’t_ speak to ye, ’Melia,” said she. “She’s ’ad a stroke. But
she won’t die this time. They often lives years arter the first, only
they can’t never do no work again. Ye’ll ’ave to work for the lot. It’s
’ard on ye, dear, but ye’ve ’ad yer turn.”
And as she sat through the silent night, watching tenderly over the
mother whom she had neglected, and who had so bravely toiled for her,
and so proudly defended her, ’Melia looked her future quietly in the
face.
Yes; she would have to work for the lot. There would be no more larking.
Would there be no more love-making either? Would she never find that out
which she had not even desired to know till of late, which she had been
so nearly finding out to-night? The sound, common-sense of her present
nature told her that it was more than likely. How many men would care to
saddle themselves with a bed-ridden mother and a parcel of brats?
Was ’Melia repenting as he had said she should repent—repenting that
broken tryst that she knew in her heart she should never, never keep?
All her life she had always had what she wanted. But she had never
wanted anything as she wanted the love of this one man, who was a
stranger to her, and who was even now tramping away from her, miles away
already along the dusty road that led to the nearest town.
Every year when the harvest moon drew near the hoppers gathered into the
camp beneath the hill, and made their fires beside the straw huts in the
hollow, and every year the picking went on busily in the fields; but
there were some folk who said that there never was such a merry
“hopping” as there had been that year—for ’Melia never got time to go
back to it.
She worked hard to keep the laundry work together, and she did it,
though there were folk enough that said she would never succeed. One by
one the children grew up, and were put to service or to a trade, and at
last the mother was laid to rest in the graveyard, and ’Melia was left
with only one of her brood at her heels.
It had been a hard fight, and save for one hand that had often been
stretched out for her in the dark and unknown to herself—she had fought
it unaided.
There had been no time, as she had guessed, for larking, or trysting, or
love-making. And it was in a very quiet spirit that one autumn Sabbath,
when the hops were all in, ’Melia Shaw walked to church with a
middle-aged man named Bill Wilkins, and said a gentle and quite
untremulous “Yes” to the old question that is for ever being asked and
answered in so many and varied moods.
AN ONLY SON
AN ONLY SON
“’Ave you ’eard as Widow Collins’ lad be down from London, Mr.
Barfield?” said a little spare woman who stood willingly patient before
the counter of a small shop and watched the grocer’s deft fingers pack
up a neighbour’s tea and sugar before attending to her own demands.
It was dark, for it was eventide, and the shop did not face the sunset
that was going on brilliantly behind the pines at the top of the village
street; but any one could have told from the tone of the voice that
there was something more than common about Widow Collins’ lad.
Mr. Barfield lit an odoriferous paraffin lamp and hung it to a hook on
the low ceiling, amid a wonderful collection of boots and hats and
sunshades, of kettles and coils of rope and saucepans—and of Spanish
onions on strings.
“What, he that’s clerk in the London Post Office?” asked the other
customer with sudden interest.
“I never ’eard as she had no other, Mrs. Neave,” answered the first
speaker half crossly, for she was not pleased that the grocer should
give more attention to business than to her news; “and I s’pose its
’cause he’s the only one that she see’d fit to bring ’im up above ’is
station.” The lamp lit up a thin, pinched face that had once been
pretty with that frail, trivial prettiness that seems so strangely
ill-fitted for the hard life of daily labour, where it is nevertheless
so common. Mrs. Cave drew her ill-fitting little black jacket around
her with an irritability of gesture that told in itself how perpetual
struggles and over-fatigue had wrought on her. She had had no chance
of bringing up any one of _her_ seven boys above his station, for
laundry work only brought in a fair pittance in the summer time, when
the place was full of visitors, and Widow Collins had the monopoly of
the all-the-year-round families.
“Ah, it’s a sad mistake to bring ’em up above their stations,” said Mrs.
Neave piously, as she gathered up her purchases. “We’re sure to be
punished for it in the long run, as Mrs. Collins is bound to be one o’
these days.” Mrs. Neave, being a plumber’s wife, considered herself just
a cut above laundresses, and patronized them accordingly.
“Ah, how’s that?” asked Mr. Barfield, quite interested now, though he
ran busily round to the other side of the shop at the same time to fetch
a skein of yarn from his haberdashery counter for Mrs. Cave; “I thought
the lad was doin’ well, though to be sure pride is sure to ’ave a fall.”
As the prop and stay of the Dissenting Chapel round the corner, Mr.
Barfield often felt it his duty to add a pinch of righteousness to his
customers’ purchases to make up the weight, and Mrs. Neave, being the
wife of a fellow-warden, required special attention in this particular.
But Mrs. Cave tossed her head; though she was no warden’s wife she
needed no one to tell her how old Mrs. Collins was being punished, for,
secretive as was that absent lady, the little laundress would have
wormed the heart out of a stone. Manners, however, forbade that she
should take the word out of a neighbour’s mouth, so she held her peace,
though it was pain and grief to her, and let the plumber’s wife take up
the tale again.
“Well, the lad have married a woman with money, to be sure,” continued
that lady, sadly, almost as though she were grieved to have to allow the
fact, "but they do say"—and from the tone of the voice it was to be
supposed that Mrs. Neave knew of circumstances that would have mitigated
the joys of that match, but she was not permitted to make them known.
The grocer himself interrupted her.
“So I did ’ear,” he said quickly, almost betraying a certain
satisfaction of his own at being able to add his mite to the gossip, “in
the fish-trade.”
“I know nothin’ about that,” began Mrs. Neave again, feebly peevish, but
at this open avowal of incompetence Mrs. Cave could keep peace no
longer. It was more than flesh and blood could stand, and she burst in
scornfully.
“Fish-trade, indeed,” cried she. “Why, it’s a restaur_ant_, and a smart
one too, in some part o’ London they calls ’Igh ’Olborn. But though he
did catch her with that ’andsome, softy face o’ his, she be that sort of
a person she won’t look at ’is poor relations, and won’t so much as let
’im ask ’is own mother to ’is own ’ouse.”
Mrs. Cave looked triumphantly round for her effect, and she got it.
The plumber’s wife ejaculated, “Well, I never!” and was speechless,
though whether her emotion resulted from horror at the younger Mrs.
Collins’ arrogance, or from astonishment at Mrs. Cave’s audacity in
taking the speech from off her very tongue was not clear; and Mr.
Barfield made a strange little noise with his lips indicative of
amazement and dismay, not unmixed with religious disapproval.
“And I should say it was more nor a year since he was even here to see
her last,” said he sententiously. “And well I remember it must be
fifteen year since she’s been alone to slave and toil for that boy.”