_"She went and got married, that 'ard-'earted girl,_
_And it was not to a Wicount, and it was not to a Hearl."_
Here Billy always interrupted, exclaiming delightedly, "That's _you_,
you know!" and demanded the verse again.
There was one friend from whom Billy exacted no songs. This was old
Williams, the gardener. He was a very good gardener, but deaf. Billy
was the only person whom he could hear well. He really had no notion of
singing, that gardener. So he told Billy tales in broad Gloucestershire
instead, and Billy trotted after him, assisting in all his horticultural
operations, and they loved each other.
But the fever had got a hold upon Billy, it was such a hot July.
At last a Sunday came, when those who loved him best feared that he
could not last through the day. At morning service the curate gave it
out that "the prayers of the congregation, are desired for William
Wargrave Ainger"; then he paused, and with a ring of supplication in his
voice, which startled the listening people, said, "little Billy Ainger,
whom we love--who lies grievously sick."
"William Wargrave Ainger" had fallen on inattentive ears, but the
familiar name struck home, and the congregation prayed.
In the pause which followed the words "especially those for whom our
prayers are desired," the deaf gardener's voice was heard to say "Amen";
but no one smiled at him that Sunday.
The Earl had no surplice to take off, so he reached Billy's house first;
but the curate caught him at the drive gate, for the curate ran.
There was no sound in the house but the voice of Billy's mother, singing
to him, over and over again, the same old nursery rhyme. It ran:
"O do not come, but go away--
Away with your eyes that peep;
O do not come to Billy's house,
For Billy is going to sleep."
It has a quaint lilting tune, and Billy loved it, but he could not
sleep.
His father came down to the Earl and the curate, and silently they
followed him up into the darkened nursery. Billy smiled when he saw
them. He could not speak, he was so tired.
His mother knelt at the head of his bed, singing tirelessly. His father
knelt down at the other side, devouring the thin, flushed, little face
with loving, sorrowful eyes. The curate knelt down at the foot of the
bed, and the Earl, who made no attempt to wipe the tears from off his
ruddy cheeks, knelt by a chair. By the darkened window sat the pretty
hospital nurse, in her white cap and apron.
"O do not come to Billy's house," the mother's voice went on. Then she
sang more softly, and suddenly there was silence:
Billy had gone to sleep.
The drive gate clicked, a quick step sounded on the gravel outside. It
was the doctor. He came hastily into the room, and, stepping softly over
to Billy's mother, lifted her up, and set her in a chair.
He took her place, laying his hand on the child's pulse, and on his
forehead. Then he said in a whisper, "He'll do, he's gone to sleep."
The three men rose from their knees, as Billy's mother fell on hers,
with the first tears she had shed, in all that weary week.
They followed the doctor out of the room, and crept downstairs into the
hall. The doctor pushed Billy's father into the dining-room, saying,
"You must give me some lunch. I want to see the little chap again, in
twenty minutes or so--what the deuce was the matter with you all? Did
you think he was dead?"
"_I_ did," said the Earl, in an awestruck whisper.
"Go away!" said the doctor testily; "go away, you long-faced lunatics,
and leave us in peace!"
The two young men turned and went into the drive, where they found
Williams, waiting for news. The Earl went up to the old man, and put
his mouth to his ear, saying loudly, and with pauses between each
word--"He--is better--he's asleep--the doctor--says--he'll do."
Williams blew his nose noisily, in a large red handkerchief; then said
huskily, "The Lard be praised! your lardship, the Lard _be_ praised!"
Then the Earl and Williams shook hands; and the curate and Williams
shook hands. The two young men shut the gate softly, and went down the
road.
The curate went to lunch with the Earl. They had champagne, and the Earl
grew frivolous, as his manner is; he has not much dignity, and he and
the curate are old friends, for they were at Eton and "the House"
together.
"I say, old chap!" said the Earl confidentially, "you were jolly careful
that the Almighty should make no mistake, this morning."
The curate leaned back in his chair, and with more than a reminiscence
of their college tutor in his manner, remarked, "In matters of
importance, it is well to be strictly accurate."
*IV*
*AT BLUE HOUSE LOCK*
The life of Dorcas Heaven, who keeps the Blue House Lock, is somewhat
lonely and monotonous. Her post is more or less of a sinecure, for but
few barges pass along that bit of the canal. Indeed, the canal itself,
though winding through the prettiest bit of country in the
neighbourhood, is only navigable during a wet season. After a drought
it grows so shallow that cows are wont to stand derisively in the very
middle of it, cooling their legs.
Elijah, husband of Dorcas, is a labourer on a farm some two miles off.
As the path alongside the canal leads to nowhere in particular, there is
not much traffic; but when a barge does come, Dorcas "bustles her about
sharpish," and there is a great to-do. She looks upon herself as more
or less the hostess of the occupants of the barge. "They change the
weather and pass the time of day," their destination and their business
are exhaustively discussed, and when at length stillness settles down
over the Blue House, when there is no sound but the cry of a peewit or
the rustle of a water-rat in the rushes, Dorcas fetches a chair into the
doorway and sinks upon it, exclaiming, "'Law! what a paladum it have
been, to be sure!"
On Sunday mornings Dorcas does not go to church, for "Elijah do like a
bit o' meat of a Sunday," and Dorcas is a good wife first and a good
churchwoman second. She therefore defers her attendance until evening,
when Elijah accompanies her. While the bit o' meat is in course of
preparation he strolls round for "a bit of a talk" with one "Ethni
Harman, licensed to sell beer and tobacco," whose house of cheer lies on
the outskirts of the town, and where the very latest electioneering news
is to be had. Elijah has been heard to express an opinion to the effect
that "there ain't no 'arm in going to church twice, for them as it
suits, but once, along of my missus, be enough for I."
Had it been in Elijah's nature to be astonished at anything, he would
have felt some surprise at the amiability with which Dorcas had lately
speeded him on his way to "The Cat and Compasses" on Sunday mornings.
She had at one time been rather given to inconvenient suggestions as
that "them peas want sticking, and the salery be ready for banking,"
when Elijah would fain have been sunning himself upon the bench outside
Ethni Harman's hospitable door, a mug of cider and like-minded friend
beside him. He usually fell in with his wife's suggestions, for he was
a man who loved a quiet life, and Dorcas--when annoyed on Sunday--was
apt to carry on her domestic duties with unnecessary vigour far into the
night on Monday.
The fact was that, of late, Sunday mornings had become for Dorcas the
corner-stone of her week, and in this wise: it did not as a rule take
long to get Elijah's dinner under way; this done, Dorcas would take her
chair into the doorway, and read her Bible. She generally chose the
Book of Revelation, carefully forming the words with her lips and
following each with gnarled and work-worn forefinger. With Dorcas, as
with many people whose lives are somewhat hard and monotonous, the
prospect of a suite of rooms in one of the many mansions was extremely
pleasant. Moreover, the Cotswold peasant dearly loves any form of
spectacle, and although Dorcas could not pronounce, far less understand,
many of the words she met with, there was a sense of pageant all around
her as she read; while her appreciation of the city which has "no need
of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it," was as purely sensuous
as that of any disciple of Wagner himself.
"And now, a little wind and shy" scattered the apple-blossoms over the
path, and the Sunday silence was broken by a clear child-voice. To
Dorcas such sound was as the skirl of the pipes to a Highlander in a far
country; her heart beat quick and her cheeks grew redder, and she rushed
out to see who "was a-comin'"; for Dorcas had "put away four" in the
"cemetrary" on the Fletborough road, and one had lived to be four years
old. Besides, to let any one pass the Blue House without "givin' of 'em
good-day!" was a thing she had never done--"not once in twenty year."
So she laid her Bible on the chair, covering it with a clean white
handkerchief, and crossed the few feet of garden which lay between her
cottage and the towing-path.
A sturdy little boy, in reefer coat and muffin cap, with round, fresh
little face, and cheeks pink as the petals of the apple-blossom nearest
the calyx, danced with excitement on the bank as he watched his father
gathering some yellow "flags" which grew at the water's edge. The
attendant father--parents and such were always a secondary consideration
with Dorcas--was not very successful, as the ground was soft and
slippery.
"Is it wet down there, dad? Can I come? Oh, get that big one just over
there! Won't muth be pleased? What dirty boots you'll have! Shall I
hold your stick for you to cling on to?"
Then he noticed Dorcas. "Good-morning!" said he with gay courtesy.
"Isn't it a fine May morning?"
"It be that surely, little master!" answered Dorcas in high delight.
Then "the little gentleman's dada"--he never achieved a separate
identity in the mind of Dorcas--scrambled up from the swamp in which he
had been standing. He, too, proved most approachable, and she learned
that the youthful potentate in the reefer jacket had never walked so far
before, that the "scroped out old quarry" just beyond the Blue House was
his destination, and that he would probably come again next Sunday.
He came every Sunday morning all through that summer, and always with
his dad. Sometimes they went tapping for fossils in the disused quarry,
sometimes they came with butterfly-nets and caught "Tortoiseshells" and
"Wall-Browns," and upon one great occasion a "Fritillary." But whatever
they sought or whatever they caught, Dorcas was always, as who should
say, "in at the death," and shared the excitement and the triumph with
them.
The little gentleman was very friendly--a child is quick to recognise an
admirer as any pretty woman--and it is possible that the attendant
father understood and indulged the childless woman's craving for a
child's affection. Sometimes Dorcas felt a qualm of conscience, and
wondered whether her adored young gentleman ought not rather to be in
church these sunny Sunday mornings; though had he been in church he
certainly could have been nowhere in the neighbourhood of the Blue
House. But she was comforted when she heard that he went with his
mother to a children's service in the afternoon. Henceforth she gave
herself up to the study of natural history and the worship of her dear
"little gentleman" with a light heart.
Even in winter he sometimes came "of a fine Sunday," and Dorcas would
spend many hours of the following week vainly trying to determine
whether she admired him most in a sailor suit, or in the breeches and
gaiters of which he was so proud. One never-to-be-forgotten day the
rain came down in torrents just as her sultan and his grand vizier
reached the Blue House. They took shelter with Dorcas, and the sultan
was graciously pleased to be lifted up that he might reach a certain mug
from the top shelf of the dresser--a mug which had belonged to "'im as
wer gone." Dorcas made gingerbread cats and ducks, and her artistic
efforts went so far as to attempt a king "with a crown upon 'is 'ead."
After regaling himself with these delicacies her sultan would hold up a
rosy face, ornamented by sundry sticky streaks, to be kissed in
farewell; and when she had watched him round the bend of the canal her
eyes would grow dim, and she would go back to the Book of Revelation,
murmuring another favourite quotation to herself, "The Lard gave and the
Lard 'ave took away. Blessed be the name of the Lard."
Of course the many charms of the "little gentleman" were duly reported
to Elijah, and the residence of Ethni Harman took on a reflected glory
from the fact that it was but a stone's throw from that of her sultan.
It was a wet summer, and there came four wet Sundays one after the
other. Vainly did Dorcas try to fix her mind on the streets of jasper,
while all the time she was straining her ears for the sound of the
little voice that never chimed into the stillness. She grew to hate the
patter of the rain, on the path outside; even the fact that the canal,
for once, was full, and three barges passed in one week, did not console
her. The gingerbread animals grew stale and crumbly between two plates,
and the gorgeous mug, "A Present from Fairford," was put back on the top
shelf of the dresser again.
The weather changed, and there came a lovely Sunday. Elijah set off to
the "Cat and Compasses" as usual; Dorcas bustled about with a pleasant
sense of expectation and went and stood on the towing-path, her eyes
fixed on the distant bridge. Some boys went by to bathe beyond the
second bend, with laughter and shouting. Then the only sound was the
hum of bees settled on the purple scabious growing a-top the crumbling
Cotswold wall.
On Monday Dorcas could bear it no longer. "I be that tewey and narvous,
I don't know what I be about," she remarked, as she locked the door of
the Blue House and hid the key under the mat. Should a barge
come--well, it must manage somehow! Barges were never in a hurry. She
had come to a momentous decision. She was going to inquire after her
"little gentleman." Whether he was ill or gone for a holiday, or was
merely forgetful, she would find out and end this dreadful suspense.
She was a very simple-minded woman, but in her heart of hearts she felt
a little sore with the grand vizier, for she had a notion that he was by
no means ignorant of what these Sunday visits meant to her.
"I believe 'e'd 'ave come afore this if 'e'd been let. 'A be that
meek-'earted 'a wouldn't 'urt a vloi, let alone a 'oman," she said to
herself with a half sob. She was convinced that her sultan could not
forget so utterly the humblest of his slaves. So she put on her best
clothes and tight elastic-sided boots, with lots of little white buttons
adorning the fronts.
At the Blue House, Dorcas was never either self-conscious or shy; but
when she reached her sultan's palace, having timidly pushed open the
drive gate, she became aware that the new boots creaked horribly, and
that perspiration was dropping from her eyebrows into her eyes. Having
mopped her face, and generally pulled herself together, she managed to
reach the front door, though her knees trembled, and her heart fluttered
like a caged bird.
Never was such a noisy bell! It clanged and echoed in most alarming
fashion; she wished that the stone steps would open and swallow her up.
What would they think of her for daring to make such a clatter?
Besides--and at the dreadful thought she nearly cried out--of course she
ought to have gone to the back door.
For full five minutes she stood on the steps, listening for any sound
inside the house, but all was perfectly quiet. She turned and went into
the drive, meaning to go round to the back door, when it occurred to her
to look back at the house; she had been far too nervous to do so as she
came in. The lower windows were shuttered, and all the blinds were
down.
They had gone then! and it was empty. "And they never didn't bring 'im
for to say good-bye to me."
Life's little tragedies generally happen to the lonely. What in a full
and happy life ranks but as an episode, becomes an epoch in the
sad-coloured days of lean monotony. Dorcas wiped her eyes more than
once, on her way home, and went heavily for many days. Elijah saw that
she was fretting, and tried to distract her by news from the town, and
occasional suggestions that she should go over "and see sister-law" in
an adjacent village; but beyond her necessary journeys to the town to
buy such stores as she could afford, Dorcas never left home. She
scrubbed the kitchen table till she grudged to sully its whiteness by so
much as a yellow bowl, and she made herself a warm new winter dress,
but, for all her industry, the time hung heavy on her hands, and she
never forgot her "little gentleman." The wet season was followed by an
Indian summer of exceptional beauty. "The spirit of October, mild and
boon," was in the air; the tottering Cotswold wall, which laid its
wayward length on the far side of the footway, was covered by sprays of
crimson blackberry, mingled with the fluffy greyness of "old man's
beard." Dorcas no longer stared hungrily down the towing-path on Sunday
morning, but she did not forget; and, in token of her remembrance, the
twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation was marked in her Bible
by a little woollen glove with a large hole in the thumb. Her sultan had
dropped it during his last visit.
The birds sang as though it were spring, and Dorcas began to read aloud
to herself to keep her thoughts from wandering. "And God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes," whispered the kind Gloucestershire
voice, when suddenly, above the triumphant voices of the birds, above
the soft wash of the water among the yellowing reeds, rang that clear
sound for which the soul of Dorcas had hungered so cruelly.
"I wonder if the lady at the Blue House will know me again, Dad!"
* * * * *
It seemed as though the grand vizier had not been so greatly to blame
after all. He had been suddenly called away to the north of Scotland;
and although he had left directions that before the sultan and the
household followed him that potentate was to be taken to say good-bye
"to the lady at the Blue House," although the sultan himself had
repeatedly suggested the propriety of such a pilgrimage, his nurse had
always considered the road too muddy.
"I thought, sir, as you was all gone fur good and all," said Dorcas,
with a catch in her voice; "and I were that taken to I never made no
inquiries."
On his way home the grand vizier was rather silent. Once or twice he
made a queer little face, and seemed to swallow something in his throat.
At last he quoted, but not to the sultan, "By heavens, it is pitiful,
the bootless love of women for children in Vanity Fair." The rosy-faced
child, who had been wondering why the usual Sunday service of
gingerbread had been omitted, was rather surprised, but nevertheless
asked curiously, "Are you thinking of the Blue House lady, Dad?"
His father stooped down hastily and kissed him.
*V*
*KETURAH*
On Mondays the doctor stayed at the surgery to see patients from two
till seven. He did not live at the surgery, oh, dear no! but had a fine
house, with a carriage drive and a conservatory, right at the other end
of the town. The waiting-room was very full on Mondays, people came
from all parts to see the doctor; moreover, it was market-day, and the
pursuit of health could be combined with that of business.
It was getting late, and only two people were left in the
waiting-room--a shabby, nervous-looking woman and a handsome lad of
sixteen, who had come to consult the doctor about a sprained thumb.
"One of the gentry," thought the woman to herself, as she noted the trim
riding-breeches and the leather on his shoulders.
From time to time she looked anxiously at the clock, clasping and
unclasping her thin, work-worn hands.
A door banged outside, the consulting-room bell pealed, signifying that
an interview was over. It was the lad's turn next. He stretched his
long legs preparatory to obeying the expected summons, when the woman
rose hastily and came and stood in front of him, saying eagerly, "Sir,
will you let me go in out of my turn? I won't keep the doctor a minute;
it's to ask him to come to my child who is very ill. I've been away far
too long as it is, but I'd no one as I could send."
"Of course, of course!" exclaimed the lad, who had risen to his feet
when she first spoke, looking very shy and embarrassed, "and I am
awfully sorry, you know, but the doctor will be sure to do it good.
He's 'A one,' you know----"
At this moment the door opened and a voice cried, "Next, please!" and
the little woman, casting a grateful look behind her, hurried into the
presence of the doctor. He looked up surprised as she entered--poor
people generally came on Thursdays.
"Well?" he demanded. With rich and poor alike the doctor's manners were
always somewhat abrupt. He was saving of speech, though it is true that
he expanded under the smiles of youth and beauty.
"Please, sir, could you come and see my little girl? She's bin ill now
these three weeks; she don't get no better, and she does nothing but
cough, and seems that hot and restless, and is that weak----"
"What have you done?" interrupted the doctor.
"I've kep' 'er in bed and giv' 'er 'Dinver's Lung Tonic.' My 'usband,
'e don't 'old with doctors--'e's a Plymouth Brother, and don't seek
advice----"
The doctor growled out something about "nonsense," prefaced by a
somewhat forcible adjective, then "All right! I'll come. Where do you
live?"
After giving her address, the woman held out to him a little screw of
paper. He waved it aside impatiently, saying, "Haven't seen her yet,"
held the door open, and the woman hurried out.
"I'll come directly," he shouted after her. His heart was much softer
than his manners.
"These Plimmy brothers are the biggest lunatics going," he said to
himself, "with their faith-healing and their providence-mongering. I'd
like to dose the lot of them."
The doctor was not accurate in his diagnosis of the sect in question,
but in his own mind lumped together every sort of religious enthusiasm.
* * * * *
Matthew Moulder, baker, was an upright, God-fearing man, foreman to the
baker--our little town boasts but one. He turned out excellent bread;
moreover, he was a good husband, a conscientious if not affectionate
father, and a diligent worshipper in that upper room, wherein assembled
a handful of people of similar religious views. He indulged himself in
few pleasures, and rather wondered at the frivolity of his neighbours,
who took life with that cheerful philosophy still to be found in
portions of England which yet remain to justify the description
"merrie."
His wife was meek-hearted, and easily ruled; she never questioned his
authority, but having early laid to heart the maxim that "what a man
doesn't know can't vex him," she was careful to vex Matthew as seldom as
possible.
How, then, did these two sedate and respectable persons come by such a
child as their daughter Keturah?
Keturah of the elf-locks and great wine-coloured eyes. Keturah, who
danced and sang and giggled the live-long day; who yawned in sermons and
played "handy-pandy" with herself, while her father uplifted his voice
in prayer. Who turned up in the hunting-field when she ought to have
been safe in school, ever ready to open gates for the "gentry," with
dazzling smiles, showing the whitest of white teeth, and with curtsies
that suggested drawing-rooms rather than the village lane.
At the little school, which she attended with a fitfulness perplexing in
the extreme to the worthy mistress, she did her lessons far better and
more quickly than anybody else. There was no doubt about it, Keturah
was a "character."
While there were but few people outside the row of cottages where they
lived who even knew Matthew and his wife by sight, everybody knew
Keturah. Always in mischief, always _en evidence_, always doing the
unexpected, undaunted by misfortunes and punishments which would have
struck terror into the heart of any well-regulated little girl; she had,
during her six months' residence in our midst, attained to a notoriety
which was apparently as much a matter of indifference to her as it was
painful to her parents. Her father looked upon her as a cross to be
borne with Christian fortitude. He wrestled in prayer on her behalf,
and on occasion with Keturah herself, accentuating his remarks by means
of a stick. But, as Thomas Beames, her slave and shadow, remarked on
one occasion, when they played truant to attend a meet some seven miles
off, "They'll beat we when us do get 'ome; but us'll 'ave our fun fust."
Thomas was a round-faced, in no way extraordinarily small boy, who was
dominated by Keturah's stronger character; he loved her, why, he himself
could not have told. Perhaps because he admired the way she always made
sure of her "fun" regardless of consequences--a disregard the stranger
in Keturah's case, for Nemesis was by no means leaden-footed. As a
rule, the punishment was in very truth the other half of the crime.
She loved her mother, and regarded her father much in the same light
that he regarded her, with this difference that she looked for no change
in him, but with a philosophy as pagan as the rest of her conduct
accepted his existence as a necessary evil. Indeed, had Matthew but
known it, she extracted considerable "fun" out of circumventing him.
But Keturah had fallen on evil days. A fishing expedition, during which
she tumbled into the canal, and after which she walked about till she
was, as she put it, "moderate dry"--"at least not to notice"--had ended
in the mysterious illness to which the doctor had just been called.
Matthew Moulder had gone that evening to a prayer-meeting in a
neighbouring village, where he would stay the night with a hospitable
brother; this fact, taken together with the fact that Keturah seemed
most alarmingly ill, had given her mother the courage to call in the
doctor.
He had seen Keturah, had expressed himself with his customary vigour as
to the imbecility of people who could treat a case of acute pneumonia
with "Dinver's Lung Tonic" for sole remedy, and now he had returned to
the little bedroom to have a final look at the child.
She was too weak to raise herself on her elbow, but she turned her head
on the doctor's entrance. "Shall I go to hell?" she asked, devouring
his face with her great fever-bright eyes.
The doctor started. She had not volunteered any remark before.
"God bless my soul, no!" he exclaimed. "You'll go to Weston-super-Mare
when you're well enough."