I could swear she went without ’er dinner so as ’e should be schooled
better than others. And shabby she’ll go to her dyin’ day—though one’d
think she might take a bit of ’elp from ’im now as ’e’s got others to
keep ’im, and she not so much as the bit o’ comfort o’ seein’ ’im now
and again. But it be all ’er pride—it be pride as has kep’ ’er up all
these years. Pride to ’ave ’im better than ’erself. And this is ’ow
she’s served.”
There was an honest ring in Mrs. Cave’s indignation, and who was to
tell—certainly not herself—that there was a spice of satisfaction in it
as well?
“Poor soul!” murmured Mrs. Neave. “Though it do serve ’er right for
settin’ up her horn as she do.”
“Well, there,” declared the grocer, returning to his usual cheeriness,
“she’s got the satisfaction o’ seein’ him a gentleman. I suppose ’e’ll
scarce pass the word to his old acquaintance as equals when ’e walks to
church with ’er to-morrow mornin’. That ought to be a reward to any
woman.”
“She’ll look us all in the face and no mistake to-morrow,” said Mrs.
Cave, moving to the door, but even as she did so, envy and satisfaction
were both merged in wonder pure and simple as she beheld striding down
the village street in the dusk, the figure of a tall young man, bearing
a large wicker basket under his arm.
“Well, I’m blest,” cried she, gasping, “if that ain’t—but, no, it never
can be Johnnie Collins!”
Mrs. Neave was at her side in a moment, and Mr. Barfield sidled quickly
from behind his counter and stood beside the two women at the door.
“Well, I never!” ejaculated Mrs. Neave again. “Why, he’s carrying his
mother’s linen ’ome same as he used to do before he went to London!”
Mr. Barfield whistled, and they all three stood staring commiseratingly
at the handsome youth, who quite unconcernedly swung along the road and
disappeared down a bye-lane at the corner. “Well, I wouldn’t ha’
believed it not if you’d ha’ told me!” murmured Mrs. Cave. And at the
same time, her eyes wandering to Mr. Barfield’s face, went past him down
the hill, and saw Widow Collins herself toiling a little painfully up
towards the shop from the sea. “Hush!” she whispered, dragging Mrs.
Neave within again, “’ere she comes, I do declare!”
They all stood waiting, and the widow came on slowly, looking neither to
right nor to left. She passed the shop, at first noting none of them,
but then turned back and, merely giving a casual nod to Mrs. Neave as
she brushed by her, walked straight in and up to the counter, whither
Mr. Barfield had quickly retreated.
“A pound of Dutch cheese,” said she shortly, without preliminary
greeting of any sort. “A nice fresh cut, please.”
She looked at the cheese and not at Mr. Barfield. She was a
hard-featured woman—thin and tall, with sad keen eyes, wherein there was
no gleam of the cheerfulness that some might have expected to see there
because of that unwonted presence in her lonely home yonder.
“I ’ear you’ve your son ’ome, Mrs. Collins,” said Mr. Barfield,
pleasantly, paring off the outer rind of the cheese as he spoke, for he
knew the customers that he was forced to humour. “Married, ain’t he?
Wife with him?”
“No,” answered the woman, shortly. “His wife is visitin’ her own folk.”
Mrs. Cave glanced at Mrs. Neave as who should say, “I told you so,” but
the latter took it as a hint to proceed, and said quickly to the widow:
“Ah, but you’ll be goin’ up to London presently. That’ll be nicer for
you than ’avin’ visitors at ’ome. She’s a well-to-do woman, ain’t she,
your son’s wife? So she’ll ’ave time to leave her work a bit to show ye
round the place.”
“Yes, she’s a rich woman,” answered the widow, looking the speaker in
the face with that quiet self-satisfaction that was the special
annoyance of the female portion of the village. “But if she ’ave got
time to leave ’er work, I ’aven’t got time to leave mine. I’ve my
customers to think of.”
Whether Mrs. Cave saw a covert taunt in this remark or not, it seemed
somehow to goad her into speech.
“Well, anyways you must be rare and pleased to see your son just the
same simple lad as ’e always was, now ’e could play the gentleman if he
liked,” said she.
The remark should have seemed innocent enough, and what most mothers
would have flushed with pride to hear, but Mrs. Cave was clever, and
knew her prey.
The widow glanced at her sharply, uneasily, and laid her money down on
the counter.
“Look alive, Mr. Barfield, please,” said she, “I’m late to-night.”
The slight was too great to be borne. Mrs. Cave moved to the doorway.
“Oh, you don’t need to ’urry,” said she, tartly. “’E be only just gone
round the corner to the Parsonage with your basket o’ linen. ’E won’t be
back just yet.”
A faint tremor ran through Mrs. Collins’ body even to the hand that she
stretched out to take her parcel, but she said nothing, and to any
observer less keen than the rival laundress, the tremor was but a shiver
that was easily accounted for by the sea-fog that was slowly sweeping up
across the marsh below.
“Well, I wish you joy o’ getting him back so well set up,” said Mr.
Barfield, good-naturedly, as he tied the knot in the string. “It must do
your ’eart good, I’m sure, to have him by to give you a ’and again when
you ’ave to work for yourself all the year round.”
The widow looked at him, and in her eyes was a hardness that might well
have chilled a braver man.
“Thank you,” she said coldly, “I don’t know as one day makes much odds.”
Mr. Barfield was silent, and so indeed was Mrs. Cave, but the plumber’s
wife, blundering on, said patronizingly:
“There now, you oughtn’t to take it so ungrateful, and him so nice and
obliging to you. There’s some lads ’ud be so stuck up with being raised
up—why, they might think it beneath ’em to do such a job!”
Mrs. Cave smiled, and then laughed outright, and the old woman’s eyes
grew harder than ever.
Mr. Barfield brought her change—two coppers and a threepenny-bit—and
laid it on the counter before her. She took it up without a word, nodded
good-night a trifle more surlily than usual, and without unlocking her
set lips or turning her eyes once upon either of the two women, passed
out into the dusk. Her face was as thunder.
“Well, ’pon my word, it ain’t no sort o’ use tryin’ to be civil and
kindly to ’er,” sighed Mrs. Neave; but Mr. Barfield, who had seen the
widow’s face, felt a vague sense of pity rise in his calculating little
soul, and said as he stuck his pen briskly behind his ear after
“entering” Mrs. Neave’s purchase:
“We can’t always just tell, ye know. She may be glad enough to get a
sight of ’im though she do talk so short, and as like as not she never
sent him round with the linen at all.”
Mrs. Cave was already in the road; she was watching the mother, who set
her face once more to the sunset, and, whipped by the creeping mist,
struggled on to the cross-roads, where a line of straight pine-stems
stood black against the sky that flamed beyond the downs: the downs were
blue with mist and the sky was red—red and angry—and the spare bent
figure made a spot upon it, and that little spot was the blackest in the
whole scene.
“No,” said Mrs. Cave decisively, to those within, “I shouldn’t think she
did send him round with it! I should like to know what a body’d want to
spend years toilin’ and moilin’ for, except to have the boy cut a bit of
a figure when ’e come back among them as knowed ’im a little dirty brat!
_She_ sent him indeed!”
Mrs. Cave stuck her sharp little nose in the air, and Mrs. Neave
retorted stoutly:
“Well, if she didn’t send ’im, I should say she’d be all the better
pleased. I s’pose she’s fond o’ the lad arter her fashion, though, to be
sure, she showed it a queer way when ’e was little. My boys do say ’e
was that frightened of her there was times when they’d a job to get him
to go ’ome.”
“And yet,” put in the grocer, “I can call to mind the day when he fell
into the river down yonder. Some one ran up and told ’er of it, and
didn’t know whether the child was alive or dead, and they do say she
went down all of a ’eap like a corpse of lead. And the doctor told my
wife she’s never been the same woman since. And yet when the neighbours
brought ’im in drippin’’ wet and queer—if she mustn’t needs go rating
’im for it all the while she was a puttin’ ’im to bed. I know she spoke
quite sharp to me when I went round at night to ask after ’im, and yet I
could swear I ’eard her cryin’ over ’im soft and a kissin’ of ’im whiles
he slept, as I stood waitin’ at the door.”
“She’s a curious piece of goods,” sighed Mrs. Neave, “for though it
don’t scarce seem like truth, I can recollect I see’d her once bring him
a jam-tart to ’s tea when ’e was spudding thistles one day down in the
marsh, and if you’d believe it, she kissed ’im just as one of us might
ha’ done, ’cos he looked so pleased.” Mrs. Neave glanced at Mrs. Cave as
one expecting to be disbelieved, but that shrewder lady only just looked
her over and then burst into a loud laugh.
“Lord,” said she, “ye don’t understand the likes of ’er, that be
certain!” and with a hasty nod to the company she passed on quickly up
the street.
The after-glow had faded from the sky behind the downs, and the sea-mist
had ceased to hurry across the marsh towards them, but had crumbled and
massed itself into mounds and ridges that hung or floated over the wide,
brown plain beneath the village—warmed and illumined by the rays of the
bright October moon that had risen red out of the sea. Upon the little
public terrace overhanging the marsh-land, the village lads were
gathered for their evening pipe; they sat grouped beneath the thatched
roof of the pent-house, men and boys together, while outside, upon the
paved walk, a few women lounged with babies, taking their leisure too
after the day’s labour. Mrs. Cave came down among them; she had given
the family its supper, and had put a goodly portion of it to bed, but
she had left the washing-up to her eldest girl—for Mrs. Cave was sighing
for more gossip upon the great event of the day, and here she knew that
she should find it.
“Be my Jim ’ere?” cried she, as she approached, alluding to her husband,
who was indeed very rarely anywhere else, unless it were at the
public-house.
“Yes, o’ course he be! Let the man ’ave his leisure a bit,” grinned a
slatternly girl. And for the moment Mrs. Cave seemed only too much
inclined to obey her.
For within with the men it was Johnnie Collins again, and Mrs. Cave’s
keen eyes had noticed a black figure standing just opposite in the
shadow of the old gateway, that gave zest to the situation.
“He might as well ha’ brought ’is smart missus round for us to ’ave a
look at,” said one, “but I s’pose we ain’t fit for such as ’im
now-a-days.”
“Lord, it ain’t Johnnie’s fault,” said another for Johnnie, though
sometimes envied for the odd shillings he used to earn as a lad, through
lending his handsome face and figure to be an artist’s model—had yet
ever been a favourite, for he had been the easiest, most good-natured
comrade in the world, and could always be led anywhere by any one.
“No, there ain’t no beastly pride about Johnnie!” declared a third, “but
they say as ’is missus leads ’im a smarter dance nor ever ’is ’ard old
mother did, and won’t let ’im come nigh the old lady now, so as ’e has
to get away on the sly.”
Mrs. Cave strained her eyes, for she saw the gaunt figure creep out of
the shadow at these words and quietly climb the village street; it was
the widow as she had thought. Yes, and positively—lounging slowly down
towards her—was that very son of hers in his elegant suit of grey
homespun. It was as good as a play. Mrs. Cave hurried softly down the
steps by the terrace and warily followed Widow Collins up the road.
Curiosity was certainly Mrs. Cave’s besetting sin.
“Why, mother,” said the young man softly, “where have you been? I just
went round to the Vicarage with your basket of linen, and when I got in
again you were gone. Who would ever have thought to find you
a-gossiping! But, there, indeed it does my heart good to see you
hob-nobbing with the neighbours, and not so lonesome as you might be.”
The old woman took no note of this that to her might have seemed a weird
jest. She did not even smile, but she said quickly: “I’m sorry you went
round with the linen, John. There weren’t no call. I’ve got used to
doing it myself now, and I don’t like it meddled with.”
“Why, I always used to,” he began.
But she interrupted him sharply. “Never you mind what you used to do,”
she said pettishly, as though half ashamed of herself. “You ain’t here
all the year round, nor I don’t want you—and what I do every week you
needn’t to do just for once.”
“What, are you going to blame me now for being up in London,” he began,
nervously laughing, “when it was you drove me there first?”
“Blame you!” she cried, and then stopped. “There,” she said, “you let me
be, that’s all I want. I’ll see to myself so long as I’m above ground.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she laid a quick, trembling hand on
his coat-sleeve.
“Ye used to have to mind me,” she said, and her voice shook a little,
“for, Lord knows, I was a bit ’ard with you o’ times! Ye’ve got to do
other’s bidding now, and I’m glad on it. But ye’ll mind your mother
to-day for the last time.”
Mrs. Cave, as she played eavesdropper, involuntarily thought of the day
when her neighbour had seen the widow give a jam-tart to the lad on the
sly, and she looked for her to kiss him now as she had kissed him then.
But the old woman’s keen ear had caught the sound of the step behind
her, and though the young fellow stooped towards her impulsively she
pushed him back.
“Come,” she whispered, “let’s get ’ome to supper,” and she tried to
hurry up the road, but not before Mrs. Cave had placed herself abreast
of them, and holding out a friendly hand to Johnnie, had said
effusively: “There, now, I thought it were Mr. Collins! But, ’pon my
word, it be so long since we’ve seen you ’ere, there ain’t no knowing
you again. And you so smart, too! Why, you’ll scare care to shake hands
with a poor body like me.”
They all three stopped, and Johnnie blushed as he took her hand, perhaps
with shame or perhaps with annoyance, knowing that the woman must have
overheard his mother’s foregoing words—but the mother’s own face was as
iron.
Mrs. Cave walked graciously on beside them, but the widow never glanced
at her nor took any heed of her, but presently just stopped short in the
road, and, hastily producing from her pocket the yellow envelope of a
telegram, said quickly to her son: “There, I declare, I’d clean forgot!
And I come down here on purpose to find ye too! The post-mistress
brought this ’ere for ye.” And she held it out to him as she spoke.
The young man’s face fell a little, and he held the document in his hand
as though fearing to open it.
He had stopped walking, and Mrs. Cave stopped too, and as neither mother
nor son spoke she said pleasantly to the former: “Well, now I ’ope
there’s no ill news to spoil your treat for you, Mrs. Collins, for I’m
sure you’ll be proud to show him off to us all to-morrow o’ church time,
and small blame to you. Though to be sure,” added she, turning to the
young man, while the battered bow in her well-worn bonnet positively
wagged with her eagerness, “ye might ha’ brought your wife with ye to
see your old friends! For all folk do say she’s a lady born and bred,
and it stands to reason we ain’t good enough for such as that.”
Mrs. Cave smiled, and Mrs. Collins’ face wore a mingled expression of
pride and scorn, as she listened. She had forgotten the telegram; she
lifted her head royally, gazing with satisfaction in her weary eyes at
this handsome son of hers who was outwardly so like a gentleman that she
might well be excused for thinking that folk really supposed him to be
one. She thought he was one, and little guessed that she had blindly
done her best to crush out of him those natural qualities of devotion
and tenderness that were really the most like to what she desired him to
be. If she had been angry with him for compromising his dignity, it was
just because she was proud of him. She was proud even of his
condescension to her. Yes, she was proud in secret to-night, but
to-morrow she would be proud openly—before them all. It would be a
triumph that would more than repay her for many patient years.
But Johnnie had opened the telegram. His face had changed; one could see
it even in the shifting light of conflicting moon and twilight. There
had been some sort of assurance in it before, and it had been gay and
smiling; now it was tremulous, ashamed, and frightened.
He took out his watch, and the joyful pride faded out of the old woman’s
face as she saw him do it.
“When’s the last train to Seacombe?” said he.
“Half-past nine,” answered Mrs. Cave, for the mother seemed suddenly to
have lost the power of speech. “But whatever do you want to know that
for?”
Johnnie turned to his mother. There was a sort of shame-faced humility
in his attitude that belied an attempted swagger in his speech. “I shall
have to go into Seacombe to-night, mother,” said he. “It’s very
important. It’s—well, it’s business, you see, and a man must think of
that first of all.”
“Lawk-a-mercy!” cried Mrs. Cave. “And you scarce ’ere a few hours! Why,
there ain’t no business to do on a Saturday night, man! And you’ll never
get a train back in time for church in the morning. You’d never
disappoint your mother of that?”
But the old woman had recovered her composure now, and answered him.
“Business be always first,” said she, “to them as wants to get on in the
world; and it wouldn’t be a mother as’d want her son to miss it. Come,
John, there’ll just be time to get your supper afore ye go.”
The two went up the street together, and Mrs. Cave stood staring after
them. Then she went back to the “Look-out,” and gave the benefit of her
investigations to the village.
“It be my belief as that message were from ’is wife,” cried she. “It be
my belief she was cross at ’im coming ’ere, and wasn’t going to let him
stay a minute longer. And, Lord, any one might know he’d never dare say
a masterful woman nay—be it wife or be it mother! Well, it serves the
old soul right. She brought ’im up above ’is station, and she druv ’im
and druv ’im all the time ’e was young, and, ’pon my word, ’e be just
like a poor sheep as don’t know which way to run if there ain’t some one
behind ’im with a stick.”
“Yet there’s good in the lad, I do believe,” said the grocer, who had
just honoured the terrace for a few moments with his presence on his way
home from the shop; “and one can’t choose but be sorry for the woman,
for she’s worked ’ard for ’im.”
“Lor’ bless ye, _she_ don’t mind,” laughed Mrs. Cave. “She’d rather ’ave
’im druv—though it be away from ’er—than not see ’im keep the ’igh road.
She knows well enough as some one ’ave got to drive ’im. But we sha’n’t
see Mrs. Collins at chapel to-morrow mornin’.”
In the latter part of her surmise Mrs. Cave was not correct. Mrs.
Collins appeared at chapel, sternly neat in her rusty black, and was
more gracious than she had ever been known to be before. As the little
congregation poured out into the mellow autumn sunshine, where the
birches were silver and yellow against the blue sky, and against the
purple downs, and where the creepers lay crimson upon the grey walls of
the cottages, a burly old farmer came up to her when she was returning
Mrs. Cave’s commiserating greeting. “Why, Mrs. Collins, that son o’
your’s ’ave grown a smart young man, and no mistake,” said he. “I seen
’im get out o’ the train last night at Seacombe. There was a lady come
to meet ’im. A fine dressed-up lady she were too, as might ha’ held up
’er ’ead with the best. It was ’is wife, as I made out. Lucy he called
her.”
Mrs. Cave, who had pressed up to hear, shot a hasty glance at Mr.
Barfield, and nodded her head.
But the widow did not notice it. Her eyes were far away on the dancing
sea that shone so blue beyond the mile of yellow marsh where the street
opened at the turn down the hill; she dropped the heavy lids over the
triumph that was in them, but a flush crept to her sunken cheek, and she
pressed her thin lips together as though to crush the smile that she
knew hovered around them.
“Yes,” she said, demurely, “Lucy be the name of my son’s wife.”
“Well, and a handsome couple they make, then,” declared the farmer, “and
well-to-do, too, as it seems. They druv off in a ’ired fly, they did.
They’ll be driving over here next and driving you off along wi’ ’em.”
Again Mrs. Collins closed her lips over a smile. “I’m too old for
strange places,” said she quietly.
“Well, well,” said the farmer, “you’ve a son to be proud of anyways.
He’s done well for himself.”
Then Mrs. Collins lifted her eyes. “He ’ave done what I meant ’im to
do,” she said slowly, “and I _am_ proud of him.”
She stood a moment looking round upon them all one after another, as
though tasting her triumph. Then she shook hands with the farmer, nodded
to the rest, and went away slowly to her lonely cottage against the
downs.
The farmer smiled rather foolishly, looking after her. He knew the widow
but little. “Rather a queer sort of a body, ain’t she?” said he
questioningly.
“Aye, sir, that she be indeed,” put in Mrs. Cave, the ever-ready. “If
you’d believe it, she’d sooner never ’ave seed that son of hers again
than ’ave ’ad ’im marry a girl of his own station as wouldn’t have took
’im away from ’er to make a gentleman of ’im. _There’s_ pride for ye!”
The farmer looked surprised, but the grocer—approaching at that moment,
fresh from his responsible Sunday duties in his irreproachable black
clothes—put in his word cheerily.
“Oh,” said he, “the women make him out too bad. ’E’s not a bad sort.
’E’ll be sure to come back and see her again.”
And after that the congregation dispersed to their homes.
But though Johnnie Collins was not a bad sort, though he often begged
his mother in a vague sort of way to come up to London and see him, and
showed nothing but disappointment when she persistently refused,
something always happened at the last moment to prevent him from coming
down to see her.
He often wrote to her and often, too, sent her little sums of money,
which the post-mistress declared she always cashed with a very sour
face; and once his letter said that he intended to come and bring his
little son to see grandmother. But “business” as usual intervened, and
the little lad was sent down at last with a maidservant—the fresh air
being considered beneficial for him after some childish ailment. Then it
was that the old tree might have been said, as it were, to bloom afresh.
All the tenderness that out of a Spartan pursuit of a distinct and
difficult object had been withheld from her own boy’s childhood was
lavished upon this little flower of her strange ambition.
Mrs. Cave and Mrs. Neave and Mr. Barfield all had tales to tell of this
secret but undoubted transformation. The fair-haired babe and his stern
grandmother were seen wandering along the lanes hand in hand as the
twilight fell upon the day’s work, or when the August moon rose at the
sun-setting—gold upon the golden harvest land. He was seen teazing her
at the wash-tub, she patiently submitting, and she was even known beyond
a doubt to have caught him in her arms in the open churchyard where the
whole village might have seen her, and to have kissed him there to her
heart’s content.
And even when that glad three weeks was over, and the boy went back to
his parents, there were those who declared that the light never faded
again from the old woman’s eyes till she was laid in the grave not two
months afterwards.
Some one found her dead one day beside her own lonely fireside. In her
hand was a letter from her son; it contained a £5 note, and said he
wished it could have been more, but that they had an establishment to
keep up now and their expenses were heavy.
Mrs. Neave was shocked, but Mrs. Cave declared that Johnnie had
fulfilled all that his mother required of him, and that if she could but
have known that he walked behind her coffin in a well-brushed suit of
black broad-cloth, it would have added the last touch to her perfect
satisfaction.
Be that as it may, and though the neighbours pitied her, there was a
peaceful and a triumphant smile on the dead, old face.
A WOMAN’S WAGER
A WOMAN’S WAGER
The postman came swinging down the village street. It was morning, but
the street was already astir, for though it was but early spring, and
the apple-blossom was not yet out, the weather was warm, and those who
found spare moments managed to get to the cottage doors and look out
upon the sunshine.
At the corner the mill-wheel was going round, and upon the bridge that
spanned the stream a knot of girls had gathered, with whom the miller’s
son and a young farmer on his way to the early train were holding merry
converse.