trick, and I knew that soon as ever I’d done it, but it was me that did
it, and it’s me as has got to pay.”
“Ye seem bound to stand up for Lambert,” growled Frewin.
Letty looked up; she clenched her fist.
“I _’ate_ ’im,” said she between her teeth. “Yes, I do,” she repeated,
though half shame-facedly, as he gazed at her surprised. “I _’ate_ ’im,
’cos it was ’im as made me do it.”
“’Ate ’im, do you?” echoed Frewin, with the ghost of a contented smile.
“Well, may be that’s fair.”
“I don’t care if it’s fair or no,” declared Letty stoutly. “May be it
ain’t, for I’d ought to ha’ known better myself, but I ’ate ’im all the
same. Though that ain’t no reason why you should mention the matter to
’im, for it stands to reason I’d no call to agree to what ’e said, and
it’s me as ’as got to pay.”
“It was ’e ought to ha’ known better,” grumbled Frewin again, still with
a scowl on his honest face, “for ’e’s a man, and you expect a man to
know better nor a girl.” But, after a pause, the scowl fading just a
trifle, and the smile broadening instead: “So you ’ate ’im, do you?” he
asked once more.
Letty dried her eyes afresh, and it was her turn to smile just a wee
little bit. She had watched these symptoms before—for was she not the
village belle?—and even in the midst of her misery and remorse she could
not help smiling as she recognized them under a new guise.
“O’ course I do,” she repeated emphatically. Then she turned and pulled
down another sheet off the line, and another and another, till her arms
were quite full.
Meanwhile Frewin stood watching her, indecision in every line of his
face and figure. She was very pretty, very graceful about her work, very
strong and hearty. Her fresh cheeks were pink even amid the pink
blossom, and her golden hair shone against the golden sky, where the sun
was setting on a bank of soft rose-washed grey clouds behind the trees
of the orchard.
“I s’pose anyways ye are sure to be taken up to-morrow evening?” said he
at last. “A pretty girl like you always is o’ Sundays.”
“Well, if you know as I’m taken up, I s’pose I must be,” said she with a
little pout.
“Ye didn’t answer just now,” he said.
“Maybe ye didn’t ask,” retorted she.
“Well, there, I’ll ask now,” said he with a bit of a shame-faced laugh.
“Ye ’ave got a way with ye, miss, and no mistake!”
“Don’t ask to please me,” she said with the old toss of the little head.
But the smile took the venom out of the words, and Frewin bowed beneath
it as he had been slowly bowing ever since he first felt the flash of
it.
“No, I’ll ask to please myself,” said he. And he went up to her and took
her one free hand in his. Then the blushes crept right up into the
bright hair, and there was silence.
“But we won’t walk hereabouts,” murmured she after a pause. “I’d not
like to meet—folks. I tell ye what I should like if mother ’ll spare me,
and that’d be for to go off right early and up in the train to see yer
poor mother.”
“Would ye now?” declared he, well satisfied. “She’d be rare and pleased.
Then that’s what we’ll do.”
The grey eyes stole a look at him.
“And by-gones to be by-gones?” begged she timidly. “And not a word to
Charlie Lambert?”
He frowned a little.
“That’s as I sees fit,” said he.
“No, it’s as I sees fit,” murmured she softly, and her face was very
close to his.
He smiled vaguely.
“You leave Charlie Lambert to me,” she added presently. “He pretty soon
knew I was off it as soon as I was on. He’s got a flea o’ mine in his
ear a’ready, and ’e’ll ’ave another if ’e don’t look out. You leave ’em
all to me.”
“I s’pose everybody’s bound to do yer bidding sooner or later,” laughed
Frewin half ruefully, “me as well as most.”
“Yes, don’t you make no mistake about that,” smiled she. “And what’s
more, don’t ye ever go for to fancy that because I was such a bold-faced
silly as to lay that wager I ever went for to win it. If ever there was
a man I _didn’t_ try to catch, it was you.”
Frewin laughed.
“Ye’ve caught me though,” said he.
“That’s as may be,” she said. “But I was too frightened at what I’d done
to fish for you.”
“P’r’aps that’s ’ow ye caught me then,” he said. “And p’r’aps that’s ’ow
I must needs forgive ye!”
So the wager was won, but never paid.
For the trip to town was so deftly managed from a neighbouring station
in the early hours of the Sunday, that nobody guessed it had taken
place; and on the evening of the same day upon the old bridge, Letty
swore a bold, brave lie that she had lost what she declared she had
never tried to win. The laugh against her was loud, but then so was her
own in reply, and when, six weeks later, instead of accepting Mr.
Lambert’s gloves, she accepted Bob Frewin himself, she was too happy to
care which way the laugh went. But to tell the truth, folk are
good-natured enough; and if the girls suspected Letty’s little fraud,
and, nudging one another, declared she was a clever one, they had no
objection to her triumph, for Charlie Lambert was the better match of
the two, and he was left for somebody else.
A NE’ER-DO-WEEL
A NE’ER-DO-WEEL
Two women and a lad came down the hill towards the stream on a frosty
January evening at sunset.
It had been a good typical Christmas, and though the snow had partially
disappeared, the river ran grey in the cold air, and the frost sparkled
on the twigs of willows and on the brown stalks of tall water plants
upon the banks.
The lad lounged easily along with his cap on the back of his head, his
hands in his breeches pockets, and his pipe in his mouth; but the women
bore burthens—one a bundle of brushwood on her head, the other a sack of
potatoes—and as they reached the bridge they stopped to rest them awhile
on its old brick parapet.
“’Old yer row, do!” the boy was saying. “What do it matter to you
whether old Jeremiah ’ave a-turned me off agin or no? Ain’t I my own
master?”
“Oh, ye’re yer own master safe enough,” retorted the woman, a
sharp-featured body of middle age. “There ain’t nobody as ’ll worrit
’emselves much over ye now ye’ve put yer pore mother underground. If
that’s what ye wanted when ye set to work to break ’er ’eart, why ye’ve
got it.”
“Well, I want it now anyways,” retorted the lad with a brutal laugh.
“You’re an ungrateful beast, that’s what ye are!” said the woman
shrilly. “I’d ’ave guv ye bite and sup for a night or two, for my pore
sister’s sake, till ye got work again; but I shan’t now.”
“Nobody asted ye to!” laughed the lad. “When ye guv me a shake-down
before ye said ye did it for ’er, but ye wanted my earnin’s all the
same. And when I was turned off the farm ye turned me out in the road.
I’d sooner shift for myself, thank ye!”
“Do it, then!” retorted the woman. “It looks like it, it do, and you
sent adrift agin this very night! Lord, to think the devil o’ drink can
get into a lad afore ’e’s forgot ’is mother’s milk!”
“If you don’t stop that jaw I’ll——” began the boy.
But the other woman laid a hand on his arm. She had a fresher, plumper,
kindlier face than her neighbour, and she gave him a little friendly
push as she whispered—
“There, now, there, she’s yer own mother’s sister ye know. You go ’ome.”
“Mother’s sister be damned,” said the lad irreverently. “She’s come that
dodge over me long enough. She wouldn’t lift a finger to ’elp me, and I
won’t ’ave no more of ’er preachments. I ain’t got no one to think of,
and what I earns I’ll spend as I please.”
“A jolly lot you ever did hanything else,” began the aunt afresh, but
the neighbour stopped her mouth.
“Now you go ’ome, Nat, you go on ’ome,” reiterated she to the boy; and
“Can’t ye see as yer on’y aggrawatin’ the lad, Mary Ann?” she whispered
to the woman. “Let ’im be, do! Maybe ’e misses his ’ome and his pore
mother more than you thinks for.”
But Nat laughed as he blew the ashes from his pipe.
“Ye needn’t trouble to speak up for me, marm,” he sneered. “Lord, she
don’t ’urt me, bless you,” and he snapped his fingers in the direction
of his relative. “A precious sight I ever cared for the women-folk’s
jaw. Oh, yes, I’ll go _’ome_,” and something that somehow did not belong
to the scowl flitted across the passionate young face that
self-indulgence had so sorrowfully marred. “I’ll go _’ome_! But where I
goes there I bides—ye ’ear that? No one ain’t got no right to interfere
wi’ me. I won’t never darken _your_ doors no more, and if I’m a-goin’ to
the devil I’ll go my own way.”
He stuck his cap on the back of his head again and his hands in his
pockets, and lounged up the road singing a scrap of a low song in a
louder voice than he could keep quite steady.
“It’s a pity, so it is,” murmured the stout woman, looking after him.
“There was the makin’s of a nice lad in ’im once, I’ll be sworn.”
“You’re a new comer to the place,” retorted Mary Ann, “and that’s all
you knows! If ’is pore mother didn’t fret the very guts out of ’erself
a-tryin’ to bring ’im up respeckable! But the devil of ’is father were
in ’im—that’s where it was. The low brute that man was! And died same as
’e lived. Found on the road—i’stead o’ dyin’ respeckable in ’is bed! As
if ’e ’adn’t ha’ done the woman injury enough! Why—there was a Crowner’s
inquest and all! But, Lor’, when all was said and done, I declare I
niver spent a comfortabler ’alf hour than when I seed ’em nail ’im down!
For, ye see, I says to myself: ‘Clara ’ll take on a bit, but she’s well
rid on ’im. She can work to bring _one_ up, and the boy ’ll soon be able
to work for ’er.’ Lord, I didn’t reckon as ’e’d be a wuss devil nor ’is
father, bad luck to ’im!”
“May be ’is pore mother spoiled ’im, being but the one, so to speak,”
said the other half apologetically.
“Spoiled ’im!” laughed the other, preparing to shoulder her burthen
again. “I reckon she did! Many’s the time I swore she’d be punished for
it!”
“Well, I s’pose she was,” said the neighbour simply. “There, pore soul,
I’m sorry for ’er.”
“’E broke ’er ’eart, ’e did, the young scoundrel,” growled Mary Ann, as
she hitched the bundle of brushwood forward on to her back. “And I’m
sure I ’ope he’ll break his own neck.”
“Oh, come, don’t say that,” murmured the gentler spirit reprovingly. “I
dare say ’e’s lonesome enough anyways.”
“Lonesome!” sneered the incensed relative. “Much use ’e made of ’er
company when ’e’d got it! Out on the roads, or what not, from night till
morn and more! Didn’t ye ’ear ’im say precious little ’e cared for the
women’s jaw? Precious little ’e did. Precious little ’e cared for aught
about ’er, pore soul. Why, ’e was dead drunk the very day of ’er
funeral!”
Mary Ann trudged forward as she spoke, hurling the words out against the
wind under the penthouse of her burthen, and the sympathetic neighbour,
standing behind her with her hands in her hips, shook her head sadly.
“That was bad,” she murmured, “that was bad, sure enough.”
Then she too turned to take up her load.
The potatoes were heavy; she failed to raise them on to her back at the
first effort.
Just then the gate on to the railway line slammed to, and a girl coming
down on to the bridge hurried forward and gave her a lift with them.
“Thank ye, thank ye,” said the woman. And when she had settled her
burthen comfortably, glancing up to see who had helped her, she added
again: “Oh, thank ye. Ye’re a stranger in the parish, ain’t ye?”
The girl blushed. She was pretty enough, but she was thin and pale, not
to say wan, and her cotton dress was poor covering for the wintry day,
and her ill-fitting black jacket and shabby straw hat betokened an even
greater poverty than was usual in the village.
She blushed as one who knew the tone and the words, and was wont to
understand beneath them the insinuation, “You’re a tramp.”
But she was mistaken. The woman before her prided herself on knowing a
respectable female when she saw her, and though poor and miserable, the
girl did not look “a bad ’un.”
“I’m a-goin’ on further,” said she evasively.
“Oh!” said the woman again. Then, as not wishing to be inquisitive, she
added, “Well, thank ye. I wish ye a good evenin’. It’s cold weather;
it’s best to walk fast to keep warm.”
And she nodded, moving on quickly to suit her action to her words.
“Good evenin’,” said the girl.
But she did not follow the advice.
Though she carried but the smallest of little bundles, she rested it on
the brick parapet as the women had done with their heavier loads, and
stood looking down the river into the afterglow.
It was four o’clock. The sun had set, and the poplars that crossed the
stream and the fields, dividing meadow-land from water-cress grounds,
shot straight arrows against a pale crimson sky, that was cool even in
its fire in the cold, crisp air. Every little bare twig on the slender,
bare boughs of the poplars pointed upwards; the willows by the river,
though less spare and less commanding, modestly followed their example;
the sky might have been constraining with its tender glory, but the
girl—after one glance around on the clear-cut winter landscape, so calm
with the patience of waiting Nature, but so cruelly silent with the
dearth of stirring life—fastened her eyes on the water and on the water
alone.
The long strings of half-dead, slimy weed that swayed idly to and fro,
attached and yet floating, like the traveller’s joy on a summer’s day
a-moving in the wind—or better, yes, much better still—like some dank,
clinging cotton stuffs, held to the gravel bed by some heavy weight, yet
erring softly, saturated with much water, on the bosom of the
stream—these seemed to fascinate her beyond the power to tear away her
gaze.
At last she shivered—the frost was intense—and lifted her head and
sighed, a long, miserable, moaning sigh. Then she put her hand in her
pocket and drew forth a letter—a letter and a thimble.
The moon, that had risen in time to see the sun go down, had just crept
high enough in the sky to shine through the bare branches of the elms in
the meadow beside the lower stream: it shone now upon the paper which
the girl held trembling in her hand.
“Don’t ye come back here,” said the letter. “There ain’t no work to be
got ’ere, and I’ve my hands full enough to keep them as are left.”
There was more, but she did not read it. She crushed the paper in her
hands, and let it flutter slowly down into the water, but the thimble
she put back into her pocket. Then she rested her two elbows on the
brick parapet and leaned her head in them and cried softly to herself,
still looking down into the darkening water as it lapped to and fro over
the swaying body of weeds.
A bell sounded from the village on the hill; it cut clear and sharp
across the frosty air; it was the bell from the straw-plaiting factory,
sending the girls home from their day’s work. She knew it well enough,
and roused herself at the sound, moving her hand to take up her little
bundle once more. But in the waning light she pushed it forward instead
of grasping it, and, in spite of a quick clutch, it slipped over the
rounded edge of the parapet and fell with a thud into the river below.
She gave a little cry as she followed it with her eyes, leaning over a
long way to try and descry it in the green water beneath.
But there was nothing to be seen but the same swaying, dank body of
weeds. And presently she gave a low, harsh laugh, and shrugged her
shoulders, and pulling her miserable little black jacket across her
chest, as though to persuade it to cling more closely to her frail,
shivering body, she turned away and walked quickly up the by-path that
led to the high road above.
Lights were burning in the cottage windows along the village street, and
from the little straw factory on the left-hand side beside the Baptist
chapel, the women were pouring forth into the road—some gay, some weary,
some young, and some middle-aged, some hurrying to other duties at home,
some loitering to chatter and chaff—most of them noisy, but all of them
busy with work done and to do.
The girl watched them askance, drawing back under the shadow of the
hedgerow, for the moon had not risen far enough yet to illumine the way,
and the shadows had grown dark. When all had passed by or dispersed she
moved out again, and stepped up to the door whence they had issued, and
which still stood ajar on to the road.
She knocked at it and a woman appeared.
“What d’ye want?” said she.
Her tone was not unkind but it was sharp—the tone of a woman with her
hands full of work, and no time for those who have theirs empty. The
girl answered surlily.
“I want work,” she said.
“Well, there ain’t none to be ’ad ’ere.”
“I’m used to the straw-plaiting and shape-sewing too,” said the girl
more humbly.
“Well, ye must go elsewhere. We’re full up ’ere,” said the woman, “and
shall be for weeks, as far as I know. ’Ave ye got a reference?”
The girl nodded.
“Sort of, I s’pose,” said the woman shrewdly.
“I’ve got my character,” repeated the girl doggedly.
“Well, ye must take it elsewhere then,” said the woman again. “I’m sorry
for ye. Good-night.”
And she shut the door quietly.
The girl turned away. She did not speak, nor even mutter, nor even sigh.
But her wan little face was set and hard.
She looked down the road towards the open country, and up it where the
cottages clustered, and she chose the forward way.
Wayfarers had almost cleared out of the village street, for it was quite
dark now and bitterly cold; fires were burning and supper was preparing
behind frosty windows and scanty window-curtains. Here and there a weary
labourer or hurrying house-wife trudged past, but most people were
indoors by now, most people were at home.
The girl walked on till she came near to the public-house near the
village-end, where the signpost points separate fingers up the fork of
the road.
There was a solitary lamp above the post-office hard by, and she stopped
under it and put her hand in her pocket; the thimble and one halfpenny
was all that she drew out, and she put them back again.
Then she looked behind her.
There was no one by, no one coming, and she crept stealthily up to the
window of the “public,” and laid her face against the cold pane, gazing
into the light and brightness and warmth within.
There were four or five men clustered round a table near the fire, and a
few more standing at the bar with a couple of girls.
One of them at the table was singing in a loud voice; he was young—very
young—and it was a good voice, and whatever were the words, the ditty
seemed to please the company.
There was a roar of laughter every now and then, and whenever he stopped
a cry of “Go on, Nat, go on, lad! That’s right,” and so forth.
The boy grew more and more excited, and the men cheered, and the girls
clapped their hands and bent themselves double with laughter, and then
the men laughed again till they coughed and choked with their merriment.
The song was funny, or the point lay in the youth of the singer.
And the girl outside listened.
Twice she crept to the door, twice had the knob in her hand to open and
go in, and twice her pluck seemed to fail. The song stopped, there was a
lull within; the warmth drew her as a magnet, and the third time she
turned the handle. But she stood with the door ajar; for on a sudden
there was a sound of chairs moved, of scuffling, of quick words and
quick retorts within; the laughter was changed to angry altercation,
words of which she could not catch the sense were flung to and fro, and
all at once a man threw the door wide, and the lad who had been singing
was suddenly flung forth into the road.
The girl started back at the first noise, then turned and fled into the
darkness.
But the boy stood where they had hurled him, and the men slammed the
door to again behind him.
There had been furious words in his mouth when he had made his
ignominious exit, but they had died suddenly away as though frozen in
his throat, and his limbs, that had struggled to deal revenge on his
foes, had become paralyzed, his hot face had turned white with fear; he
stood as one petrified, horror-struck, gazing after the thin cotton
dress that flitted away in the gloom.
The clamour went on within, some angry, some grossly laughing, some
striving to pacify.
The landlord had come down to the door, and after looking out through
the glass, had half opened it and had glanced out. But the lad had drawn
aside under the eaves.
“Why didn’t ’e keep ’is ’ands off what weren’t ’is?” one was saying
angrily.
“’E’s gettin’ too cheeky by ’alf,” said another.
“Well, ’e shan’t come into my bar no more,” declared the landlord
decisively, turning back into the room. “Many’s the time I’ve ’ad a mind
to say so afore, when ’is pore mother used to come a-loiterin’ and
waitin’ out there in the cold to try and fetch ’im ’ome. Mighty little
’e ever cared for ’er, nor anythin’ as _she_ might ha’ said. But so long
as ’e be’aved I ’adn’t the right to turn ’im out. ’E’s done for ’isself
to-night though, and ’e don’t come in no more.”
“Good riddance too,” said one of the girls, settling her hair that had
been loosened in the scuffle; and the landlord closed the door and drew
the curtain across it.
But the lad outside made no effort to re-enter. He did not seem to have
heard what had passed within his earshot.
He stood stock-still as they had left him, slowly rubbing his head with
a trembling hand.
“Rot,” said he at last, to himself, with a feeble attempt at a laugh.
“Ghosts! There ain’t no sich things as ghosts!”
Then he took a few steps forward, slowly and unsteadily, for he was
drunk; not, however, in the direction of the village, and of his rough
and lonely lodging, but between the hedges of the narrow lane beyond,
where the figure had flitted before him.
Perhaps he had made a mistake; down that lane to the left stood the
cottage, deserted now, where he had spent all the years of his life,
alone—ever since he could remember—with the mother whom he had neglected
and ill-treated, whom they all told him that he had killed.
The words buzzed wearily through his aching brain.
“Mighty little ’e ever cared for _’er_, nor anythin’ as _she_ might ha’
said!”
Yes, it was jolly true too!
And his own words, spoken an hour ago, echoed back again: “Precious
little I ever cared for the women-folk’s jaw!”
It was as they said: he had killed her, and he had never cared for her,
he had never mourned her, he had been drunk the day of her very funeral;
he never missed her now.
He stumbled on. The winter twilight had faded long since, and the moon
had slipped behind a cloud. The lane was quite dark, and he could no
longer make out the swish of the white cotton skirt which he had fancied
he had seen against the hedgerow. Nevertheless he stumbled on.
The old home lay close at hand; the well-known turning to it struck off
here to the left. It stood in a field a little back from the road; there
was an apple-tree in front of it and behind it, in the meadow that
stretched down to the river, their cow used to feed in the days before
his mother had had to sell her.
He stumbled on. Here, by the fence, she was wont to come down of a
morning to see him off to work, of an evening to welcome him home,
and—yes—often and often o’ night time to watch for him along the dark
and lonely road, when he was coming home—as he was coming to-night—full
of drink.
Home? Yes, it was home _then_, little as he had appreciated it.
He stopped at the fence, and steadied himself on its worn and worm-eaten
bar.
The moonlight was leaking through the cloud again, and dimly lit the
thatched roof of the cottage, whose blank windows and sealed door looked
sadly across the field at him.
The latched gate was close to his hand: he opened it and went in, and
the moon shone out more brightly.
The apple-tree was bare, the climbing blush rose and hardy
canary-creeper on the porch were barren and leafless, the frost lay hard
and crisp on the neglected garden path where he had often seen her
watering the peonies and the sweet-william, or dressing the hollyhocks
in some leisure moment. It was cold and lifeless now in the cold
moonlight, but he saw it in sunlight and in summer, when the vegetables
were green in the tiny plot of land, when the few sweet-peas scented the
air, or when the apples were red on the tree.
He had never noticed any of it then, but now he was sure there had been
sweet-peas and hollyhocks, and that he had seen his mother cutting the
cabbages beyond them.
He scratched his head, he could not make himself out.
If it had been daylight no power would have led him to open that gate
and steal into this forgotten corner, but even so he could not make
himself out.
The cold air had been sobering him fast, but he told himself that he was
drunk.