Chapter V: Part 5

“I come across a little maid down at the foot of the ’ill,” said he, closing the door after him, “and she asted me if I was a-comin’ up to the farm. I don’t know how she guessed I might be, but she said I was to give ye this ’ere letter ’cos she’d got to go to school, and she’d come up in the arternoon for the penny.”

Bess held out a trembling hand and he put the letter into it.

“But it ain’t for you, are it?” said he, puzzled.

There did not seem to be much blood in the whole of the girl’s body before, but all there was rushed to her face now; her eyes shone and a faint smile flickered across her lips.

“Yes, yes,” murmured she, forgetting caution in her joy; “it’s for me!”

She did not open it, she held it in her hand gazing at it. She knew well enough what it said—it said that he was there, waiting for her, coming to her, loving her: the knowledge that she had it to read when she liked was enough.

“You’re never ’vertising for a situation,” said Preston, aghast, “and your father so well to do!”

The words recalled her to herself.

“No, no,” she said quickly. “O’ course not.”

Preston looked away, twirling his cap in his hands. He did not like to ask her why her own name was not on the letter; that would have seemed like prying. So he was silent.

“Won’t ye sit down?” said Bess, in a minute. “Father’s out, but he’ll be back soon, and mother ’ll be down in a minit. Unless ye’d like to leave a message?”

“No, I ain’t got no message,” said he. “I seed yer father this morning.” He paused, and then added nervously: “If the truth’s to be known, I come to see _you_.”

Bess did not answer. She was not surprised, and it did not occur to her to pretend to be so. She was vexed, but looking down at the letter in her hand she was so happy that she forgot it.

He woke her from that dream.

“I seed yer father this morning,” he was repeating. “He said ’e thought I’d best not wait till Sunday come round again.” He paused once more, and then with a blush blurted forth—“’E said as ’ow ’twas ’is opinion I was a-beatin’ about the bush too much, and you’d sooner ’ave the thing done and settled with off-’and.”

“Done and settled with,” faltered Bess quite awake now!

“Yes—regardin’ me and you,” he went on more courageously. “It’d be a good marriage. I ain’t no beauty, nor yet much for smartness, may be. But I can give ye a comfortable ’ome, and I ain’t got no bad ’abits. I’d make ye a good ’usband, s’elp me God.”

She put her hand to her head. The words recalled something to her, but she was so dizzy she could not remember what. Then it flashed across her that Charley had used them down there in the wood, under the falling leaves the night when he had kissed her good-bye.

She sat down, looking at her letter.

“I’ve been to blame,” she said. “I oughtn’t to ha’ let ye come at all. I ought to ha’ told ye at the first.”

“What?” said he.

She looked up at him with contrite eyes.

“I couldn’t wed ye,” she answered. “I couldn’t—no ways. Ye wouldn’t wish it if ye was to know.”

“I know they say there’s another chap,” said Preston bluntly. “But they say ye can’t ’ave ’im anyways, so ye might just as well ’ave me as set and fret ’ere. Ye’d ’ave a comfortable ’ome and no worry. I ain’t a worritin’ sort.”

“Ye wouldn’t wish it if ye was to know,” repeated Bess softly. And then she rose and made a step towards him. Something was on her tongue, something inspired by his honest, stolid face. But it was never said.

A door banged in the background, a heavy step ground the kitchen floor; her hand fell at her side and her mouth twitched, and her father flung the door open and stood before them.

He looked at them both and laughed.

“Well, ’ave ye settled it at last, Jim?” said he. “My word, we was spryer at catchin’ ’em o’ my time.”

There was silence and his face turned sour.

“Well, out wi’ it, man,” said he.

“Miss don’t seem to fancy me,” said the poor fellow, driven to speak.

“What?” roared the farmer, turning to her.

His ruddy colour became purple, his eyes grew small and wicked; travelling downward from her face they fell upon the letter which she still unconsciously held.

“What’s that?” said he, snatching it from her.

She drew in her breath with sudden dismay and held out a trembling hand.

“Don’t, ah, don’t!” she cried. “It ain’t for you.”

He laughed harshly.

“It ain’t for you, anyways,” he said, looking at the superscription. “And as I don’t know some one o’ the name o’ A. B. in this ’ere ’ouse, I’d best open it and find out who _’tis_ for.”

And he tore the cover as he spoke.

The girl tottered where she stood, and stretched out a hand to steady herself against the mantelpiece.

Preston had made two steps towards the door, but a furious gesture from the farmer had been more than he dared disobey, and he stayed where he was, still twirling his hat in his hands.

The old man’s face grew livid as he read; then, with a muttered curse, he crushed the paper in his hand and tossed it into the fire.

Bess made no effort to save her property; the flames curled round it and swallowed it at once. Her lips had parted as though she would have cried out, but no sound came from them; she only leant a little more heavily against the mantelpiece and her face went white.

Her father made a step towards her, and pushed her into a chair.

For an instant he glared at her; then slowly putting his hands in his pockets, he turned to the crest-fallen suitor.

“Ye ain’t pressin’ enough, man!” laughed he unpleasantly. “Try her again. She won’t say ye nay. That’s on’y coyness. Oh, no, she won’t say ye nay.”

And he slapped Preston loudly on the back, laughing again, and so passed back into the kitchen, still muttering, “Oh, no, she won’t say ye nay.”

But still Farmer Benson reckoned without his host.

Bess sat still, and the young man looked at her askance from time to time.

“Were the letter from t’other chap?” asked he at last.

“Yes,” she said.

“It’s a pity ’e burned it,” declared Preston sympathetically. “P’r’aps it might ’ave told ye somethin’ as ye wanted to know.”

“Yes,” assented Bess, “it’s a pity ’e burned it.”

“D’ye think it might ha’ been to tell ye the lad had changed ’is mind?” asked he.

She did not smile. She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “He’s a-comin’ back to fetch me.”

“Oh,” said Preston, “he is, is he? Will yer father stomach it then, d’ye think?”

“I don’t know,” said Bess, looking at him. “But there’ll be some way.”

No misgiving occurred to her in confiding her secret to this new suitor; instinctively she felt he was her best friend.

“Yes, yes,” said he soothingly, “p’r’aps there will. Anyways,” he added after a minute, “I understand as ye don’t care to give yer word to no other chap just now. So we’ll let that be.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He took the door-knob in his hand.

“If I can do anything to ’elp ye, I’d be pleased,” he said. “And if it should fall through arter all, and ye seemed to feel ye could change yer mind, why in course I shall allers be willin’, ye know. I ain’t a changeable man. Ye can bear in mind that it’d be a comfortable ’ome and no worritin’.”

Bess lifted grateful eyes to his.

“You wouldn’t want it if ye knew all,” she repeated.

“Well, I ain’t a changeable man,” was his reply once more. “And I’ll be willin’ to serve ye at any time. Good-arternoon.”

He left her and she sat still, gazing into the fire.

She was grateful to Jim Preston—very grateful to him; she felt that she had one more friend in the world than she had thought to have an hour ago; still, her perplexity and trouble were greater than anything else could be. Jim Preston could do no more for her than what he had done—than promise not to renew his suit. And she sat gazing into the flames that had swallowed her last hope.

She saw her father join the young man at the garden gate, and walk with him down the road; she saw him stop suddenly, shaking his stick in the air, then stride forward, striking it furiously against the stones. She knew that what he was hearing was in no way appeasing his wrath against her; but she was past trembling, only she knew that she must make up her mind at once—before he came home—as to what she must do.

Yes; and there was only one thing she _could_ do: go to Charley. Somehow or other she must find him and go to him—_at once_. And still she sat looking into the red embers, where fluttered the gossamer remnants of her lost letter—the letter that would have told her what to do—where to find him who alone could save her.

A lump rose in her throat, but she choked it down. That the letter should have come at all showed that Charley was safe, and if he was safe he loved her, he would protect her. Why should she cry? Surely she could trace him somehow!

She swallowed her grief and set herself to think, seriously, practically, as she had never been wont to think before. But the more she thought the better she realized that she could not find Charley—that she had no clue to his whereabouts—that there was nothing, nothing to be done but to wait till he came.

Yet perhaps the letter had said that he was not coming, that he dared not show himself, or that for some other reason it was best she should come to him. Lady Day was past when he had promised her to return, and perhaps that was the reason. He had told her in that letter where to come to him, and the letter was gone, and its secret with it.

She rose, pressing her hands to her aching brow. How dared she wait for him—even a week longer? A week would seem little to him, guessing naught of her trouble: but if he knew, if he only knew!... For at any moment her secret might be discovered, and then her father might kill her! Yes, she believed he would kill her!

Ah, she must go, she must go at once. She must leave home, leave the village; take refuge somewhere, in some place where she was not known, and try to find work and invent some means of letting Charley know.

Her mother came into the room. She had her best dress on, but her eyes were red and she had a scared look.

“What,” said she, looking round, “is he gone? Well, ’ave ye settled it?”

“Settled what?” replied Bess wearily.

“Why, bless the girl, settled to marry Jim Preston, to be sure,” said Mrs. Benson, peevishly. “It ain’t no good to keep on a-beatin’ about the bush. Ye’ll ’ave to do it sooner or later.”

“I can’t marry Mr. Preston, mother,” repeated the poor creature in a dull voice. “I told you and father I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to _him_ any ways. I’ve told ’im so, and ’e ain’t goin’ to ask me no more.”

Mrs. Benson let herself flop into a chair.

“Ye’ll be the death o’ me, Bess,” she whimpered. “Ain’t goin’ to ask ye no more! Lord, what’ll yer father say?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl. “I told Mr. Preston he wouldn’t want to marry me if he knew all, and he ain’t goin’ to ask me no more.”

Mrs. Benson lifted a pair of scared eyes before her daughter and looked at her searchingly.

“Whatever did ye tell ’im?” whispered she.

“No more than that, mother,” said Bess. “But I can’t never marry nobody but Charley Chiswick, and if I don’t marry ’im I must bide single.”

“Lord-a-mercy, and to think we must needs come to this!” moaned the mother. “And we allers ’olding our ’eads so ’igh in the village and fit to do it too! Nobody won’t be able to say no more that Mary Benson’s nasty proud! I sha’n’t dare look folk in the face, I sha’n’t! I sha’n’t dare go to church.”

“Mother,” said the girl, disregarding her complaint and suddenly and desperately resolving to make one first and last appeal to the only possible helper she had—“mother, won’t ye ’elp me to marry Charley Chiswick? Won’t ye?”

Her voice shook for the first time and she looked up piteously.

But the mother turned away her eyes.

“’Elp ye to marry Charley Chiswick!” echoed she stupidly. “Why, father’d kill me for it, ye know ’e would, Bess! ’Ow can ye ask such a thing and you knowing ’ow set on ’e is against it all?”

Mrs. Benson fell a-crying again, and Bess turned away with a sigh.

“Why, ’e told me I was to lock ye up if ye ’adn’t come to no understanding with Jim Preston, ’e did. ‘Mary,’ says he, ‘she ain’t fit to go out-doors, and out-doors she don’t go till she goes as Jim Preston’s wife.’ Ye knows as well as me what father is. There ain’t no gainsayin’ father.”

Bess raked the fire together. The last ashes of her letter had disappeared.

“Very well,” said she quietly. “Ye needn’t trouble to lock me up, mother. I won’t come down no more till father sends for me.”

She folded away the duster with which she had been doing her work and went out of the room. And the mother sat there only feebly crying and listlessly listening to the young footfall as it lightly shook the rafters of the old chamber overhead.

The night had descended and the stars shone. There had been a row down-stairs, and a woman’s scream had pierced to the bedroom where Bess sat alone in the dark. She had held her breath a moment, but such scenes were of too frequent occurrence for her to be deeply frightened, and presently her mother came up carrying a candle in her hand and bringing the bread-and-water that was to be her only food. She was still crying, but she did not speak, not even when the girl, with a sudden tightening at her heart, went up to her and threw her arms round her neck.

“Oh, mother, mother,” whispered she, “I’m real sorry to bring all this trouble upon ye—I’m real sorry!”

She smoothed the thin, bleached hair and kissed the wrinkled brow, and the mother cried more copiously, and for an instant strained her daughter to her breast, but she quickly shook her head, and, as though afraid of herself, hastened away as she had come, taking the light with her.

And Bess sat down again and waited.

The twilight was gone, the stars brightened, and the darkness deepened. The two pine-trees that stood over against the farm-buildings across the road, shook their solemn heads against the inky sky out of which the blue had been drained by the stars.

Bess was glad of the stars, for they gave her courage, but she was also glad that there was no moon, and glad too that although she could hear the footsteps of a belated labourer echo clear along the road, she could scarcely see his figure under the opposite hedge.

That which she had to do needed darkness to cover it.

Slowly the house grew silent: her father had been out to the “Public,” and had come in again; she had heard him grumbling and swearing in the kitchen as he had grumbled and sworn so often before; then her mother raked the fire out and the two came up-stairs slowly and went to bed. Presently the heavy breathing that had put her to sleep many a night through the thin partition, sounded again along the wall, only to-night it did not put her to sleep.

When the night was two hours older and the village lay dead quiet, Bess rose up and silently bade good-bye to all that she had known in her short, young life: good-bye to the father whom she feared, to the mother whom she dared not trust, good-bye to the virgin bedroom, good-bye to all the foolish little keepsakes of childhood; and with dry eyes, with a spirit that was too tremulous to grieve, yet with a trust as great and a courage as high as ever, made her modest little bundle of clothes, and slid noiselessly down the stairs.

She dared not unlatch the door, but the kitchen-window was low and she managed easily to drop from it into the garden; the hens sat asleep on their perch, and though the dog stirred it was only to wag his tail and lick her hand at the first whisper of her voice.

She shivered as she felt the cold night air—shivered in spirit as well as in body, but Charley was waiting for her, Charley would make all good to her again, and she would not be afraid.

A bend in the lane was hiding the old house from view, and she turned and looked at it for the last time: it was the home of her happy childhood, before her father had become morose and savage, before her mother had grown peevish and tearful—the only home she had ever known, for was she not a child still? It was cold and silent, and smiled no good-bye to her as she left it behind—left it wondering what home would next be hers and when and if safely she might reach it.

But beside her as she walked lay the wood—barren now of leaves beneath the wintry sky, but full of many and tender memories, and with the thought of kisses upon her lips, she went gallantly forth to the unknown.

The stars shone steadily: she lifted her eyes to them and was comforted, for they smiled on her as the eyes of her lover. But one fell down the sky as she looked—fell from its triumphant height, away into the darkness below the edge of the world. She turned another corner, and was lost in the deeper shadow of the wood.

A merry April day drew to its close. The buds on the elms had burst from pink to green, the almond-blossom was at the rosiest of its bloom, the daffodils along the garden-walk were crowning themselves with gold, the blue-bells began to colour the brown earth in the graveyard of the very leaves that had fluttered softly upon a pair of young lovers in October last.

The sun had just set, and a line of ruddy light glowed behind the still sparsely-clad trees of that same wood when Charley Chiswick stepped from the train into the little station below the hill.

He fancied that the porter stared at him strangely, and that two labourers who met him on the platform grinned as he passed, but he only nodded to the one and passed the others by, and running quickly down the steps, took the road to the farm.

A little red-haired maid was playing by the wayside. He stopped and looked at her, considering.

“Will you take a bit of a letter up to Benson’s for me, little un?” said he presently.

“Iss,” said she staring at him. “Will they give me a penny for it, same as Bess used to?”

Something in the turn of the phrase struck a sudden chill to the lad’s heart, but he shirked investigating the matter and only said:

“What, ’ave you took letters up there before?”

“Iss,” repeated the child. “I carried one up, and Bess giv me a penny. But it was school-time when post-mistress giv me the other, so I giv it to Mr. Preston for ’er. And Bess didn’t giv me no penny.”

“I’ll give ye the penny,” said Chiswick, “and another for this ’un if ye’ll run with it. But ye mustn’t give it to no Mr. Preston. Maybe ’e never give it to ’er. And ye’d best bide yer chance, and slip it into ’er ’and when nobody ain’t by.”

The child stared open-mouthed.

“But Bess ain’t at ’ome,” said she. “She ’ave goned away.”

His heart dropped.

“Gone away!” muttered he, stupidly.

“Iss, well-nigh upon a month ago,” said the little one.

He passed his hand across his forehead. He had told her to wait—for that he had nearly got a home ready for her now, and that he was surely coming to fetch her—coming very soon. She could never have got his letter. But if she had gone she could only have gone to him. How was it he had missed her? A horror came over him! Had he ever told her where he lived in London? A month ago! Where had she been during that long month?

“Maybe she ’ave come ’ome agin now,” said he feebly. “You run up and see, there’s a good little girl. And if she ain’t there, you ask Mr. Benson if they ’aven’t got no news of ’er. But don’t say I sent ye, mind. Only come and tell me arterwards and you shall ’ave a whole sixpence. I’ll wait for you in the wood—see, yonder by the gate.”

The child nodded and ran away pleased, and Charley climbed the grassy slope and cut across the common to the wood.

It was not till he was there that it struck him he was standing by the very gate where he had stood one windy night, seven months ago—with _her_. It had been a rough night then; yet, though sad indeed at parting, they were full of courage and hope: the sky was blue now and the world was full of promise, but in his breast he knew that hope was dying.

He stood there, gazing. Behind the ricks and barns the smoke from the farm-house chimney curled up to a cruelly placid heaven amid the budding boughs of the elms; the sheep browsed peacefully upon the pastures, and the little lambs played to and fro, but Bess did not come stealing forth and running across amongst them, joyful too, as he had so often pictured her to himself at this meeting. Bess did not come, and there was no peace in his heart; he was frightened—frightened at the awful “inevitable” that he saw marching upon him.

Presently the little maid issued forth alone, and crept crying across the mead. It was long before she took courage to come to him, long before he could still her sobs enough to hear her words.

Farmer had got hold of her, Farmer had sworn at her, and she was frightened. For when she had asked for Bess, he had said a bad word, and had talked very loud, and had looked very fierce, and had made her cry. Pressed as to what he had said, she sobbed out that he had sworn “Bess would never come ’ome no more,” that he “didn’t know where she was, nor didn’t care, for ’e never wanted to see ’er no more,” and that any person, little girl or other, who should come inquiring for her would be treated “same as” herself.

The sobs had burst into a howl at the end of this speech, but Charley stood as one dazed, gazing out through the soft evening light upon the quiet landscape with a mist before his eyes. He attempted no comfort, and the child cried on, stopping sometimes to gaze at him amazed. But at last he seemed to shake himself, and, fetching a deep sigh, put his hand in his pocket and gave a sixpence to the little one, bidding her run home to tea.

She needed no second persuasion, and when she was gone he turned slowly away and went down the hill to the station. He had made up his mind now. If Bess had gone, she had gone to try and find him. He must go back to London, he must go back to every place in that vast and terrible city where he had ever set foot. He would not let himself remember that it was an absolutely foolish and bootless search: it was all he could do, and he must do it at once.

But at the station they told him that there was no train for an hour and a half, and he turned into the “Public” hard by to get something to keep up his spirits before starting.

The bar was full, for it was a Saturday, and tongues were wagging noisily. But there was a lull as he came in, and he was sure—yes, he was quite sure this time—that men looked at him curiously.

He nodded carelessly to those whom he knew, and walking up to the counter ordered his drink.

A young man stood beside it: a short, thick-set young man with flaxen hair. He didn’t know him, and they did not speak, but a lad of about his own age lounged up to him.

“Well, Charley Chiswick, gettin’ on pretty fair since ye left the old place?” asked he.

The fair young man turned round and looked at Charley on hearing this; he noticed it.

“Yes, thank ye,” said he to the questioner, “nicely. It were a fight at first, but I’ve got my foot well in now.”

“London?” inquired an old labourer laconically, between the puffs of his pipe.

“Yes,” replied the lad.

“What trade?” asked a third.

“Carpentering,” said Charley. “I’m in a good firm now—City ways.”

There was a pause, and then the first speaker volunteered the information that “Farmer Benson ain’t come to no better mind ’bout that right o’ way, and ’ave took to drink wus nor ever,” and that he didn’t suppose “Farmer Chiswick’d give in neither.”

“I never knowed my father to give in,” said Charley, half sadly.

“No,” agreed the other, “if old folks weren’t so darned obstinate, there mightn’t be so much mischief in the world as what there is! It serve ’em right—it do!”

Charley looked up quickly. There seemed somehow to be more in this speech than it said; but the fellow who had spoken it slunk away and retired into the background, and again the lad felt as though many eyes were upon him; and he began to guess why: folk pitied him. He drank his glass in silence, and thought he would go and wait in the lanes till his time was up.

But some one in the background wanted to have his word too, and called out cheerily:

“So now ye ’ave come back to look arter the young ’ooman yourself, eh? I call it real ’ansome of ye, Charley, on’y it’s a bit late.”

There was a murmur of “Hush!” all round, but the speaker, who seemed to have had a drop too much, would not be silenced.

“Preston ’ere’s the one to tell ye most obout _’er_,” laughed he. “’E ’ad the last buss. That old rascal up at the Farm’d ’ave made ’er wed ’im, but ’e can thank ’is stars ’e’s well out o’ _that_.”

Folk surrounded the mischievous talker, and argued with him, and Preston accosted young Chiswick.

“Don’t ye believe a word of it,” said he in an undertone. “Your girl wouldn’t ’ave none o’ me. She told me so flat. And I guess that’s why she runned away.”

“Thank ye,” said Charley huskily, holding out his hand which the other grasped.

“I’d never ’ave asked ’er if I’d ha’ known the rights of it,” added the young farmer, “but I live over t’other side o’ the county, and I hadn’t heard no talk then. But she were true to ye, and if she’d ’ave ’ad a sight o’ that letter....”

“Ay,” said the lad eagerly, “that was my letter ... what of it?”

“Why, t’ old villain burned it afore ’er very eyes, and she not read a word of it,” said Preston.

Charley clutched the counter; he was dizzy. He knew now that his last hope had vanished: it was impossible that she should know where to seek him in London. His head dropped forward.

“But you mustn’t believe one word o’ what they say agin ’er,” began the farmer once more, “for I’d take my oath....”

He did not finish his sentence, for the head went up again.

“Say agin ’er?” repeated the lad slowly, but in a clear voice.

Preston looked foolish, but the meddler in the background, whom the peacemakers had not been able to quiet, pushed up to the bar.

“Well, ’say agin ’er’” mimicked he. “And what shouldn’t they say agin ’er? You’re well out of it, my lad, and Preston ’ere too. She’s no better nor she should be. Why, ’twas plain to every eye.”

The boy’s face went crimson and then dead white again.

“Ye lie,” said he in a clear voice again, looking round steadily on the little company: “ye lie.”

For a moment there was a disagreeable silence, and in that silence there flashed suddenly into the lover’s mind the true explanation of this awful aspersion upon his girl.

He was a father! More than ever now must he find her. He would find her, but first of all he would avenge her. He stood stock still, and those who watched him wondered perhaps at the strange variety of expression that flitted across his face.

Bess was true to him, Bess was the mother of his child ... and he waited for his adversary to come on.

For he knew well enough that the word he had spoken would not pass unnoticed; the man to whom he had said it was in drink, and his rage was the quicker and the more unreasoning.

But lest there should be any mistake, Charley repeated the word.

“You lie,” he said again. “And if ye don’t like that ye may come on.”

And the man came on. The others no longer attempted to hold him back; they only watched to see fair play.

But they did not watch long.

Charley’s adversary was a little man, but he had the strength of two ordinary men, and, if the poor lad had known it, was the best boxer in the county.

He did not know it, but it would not have made any difference.

He staggered under the first blow, but dealt a good one in return, and prepared for the second. But the second threw him.

There was a laugh, and they looked to see this man, who was so quick to take offence yet was so easily beaten, get up to defend himself.

But Charley did not get up.

There was a confused murmur that gradually grew to dismay. Those nearest the door went out, and those surrounding the boxer dragged him quickly after them, as the landlady—summoned by the barmaid—came hastily round to the front.

She threw a scathing word at the gaping knot of ne’er-do-wells that was left. In a moment the place was cleared of all but one man, who knelt with her beside the prostrate body: it was young Preston.

“Shall I fetch the doctor?” he said.

“The barmaid’s gone,” answered the woman.

She did what she could for him, but she shook her head.

Once he opened his eyes, but his mind was gone before.

“Is it a boy or a girl, Bess?” he said. And then he murmured—“Bless you—my wife!”

It was his last word.

When the doctor ran in it was too late; Charley Chiswick was dead. He had struck his head in falling against the iron of the fender; and there was another cause too—a faulty heart. It wouldn’t even be manslaughter at the inquest.

But Charley Chiswick was dead.

When Jim Preston got home that night he found a letter waiting for him. It was from the Sister-in-charge of a London Hospital, and told him that Bess Benson had died that morning after prematurely giving birth to a son. The girl had asked her to write to him and to beg him to find Charley Chiswick, and tell him that he was a father. After that she had sunk into unconsciousness, and had not known that her babe had passed away before her.

Jim Preston stood dazed with the letter in his hand. He remembered how he had offered to serve her that day when he had told her that he should not change, though he would trouble her no more. She had taken him at his word, she had trusted him, unwelcome lover though he had been; yes, she had trusted him—and him only. He was grateful to her.

He gazed at the message—the useless message from a dead mother and a dead child to the father who had followed them before it had reached him. Then he put the letter in his breast-pocket and buttoned his coat tightly across it.

A BROKEN TRYST

A BROKEN TRYST

“Lor’, yes, ’Melia be off to the ’op-pickin’ again, sure enough,” grumbled a shrivelled and careworn little woman, who stood bent over an ironing-board just inside of a poor cottage on the brow of the hill. “Though, as I says to ’er, it’d be more worth my while for ye to stay at ’ome to-day and help me with this washin’, for it be more than one pair of ’ands can do to get all them shirts ready to go ’ome to the Priory to-night.”

“Why, ye ought to make that girl mind ye better, Mrs. Shaw, indeed ye ought,” declared the neighbour to whom this feeble complaint was addressed, and who stood poised on the threshold, twisting the pinch of starch that she had come to borrow in a paper, and throwing back her advice as she prepared to descend the steps into the road.

“Well, it don’t seem much use talkin’ to girls now-a-days,” moaned the mother helplessly. “They be all so mighty sure they know all about it. In my time it weren’t considered respectable for a young woman to go ’op-pickin’ all by ’erself like that; but, Lor’, things be all changed since I were young.”

“Maybe they ain’t so much changed as you think for, ’Liza Shaw,” nodded the neighbour—Martha Jones by name—sententiously. “There be some as say she be too much with the men, be your daughter; there be some as says as she be too fond o’ feathers and fashions and sick-like; and there be some as can chaff her about them dark lanes of a summer night.”

Mrs. Shaw flushed all over her poor wrinkled, sallow face as she put down one iron and took up another with a trembling hand, holding it to her cheek to test the heat.

“I should like to know who they can be, then,” said she with a note of 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.”