Chapter VI: Part 6

The women quailed before her and made for the door, grumbling; all but she who had spoken last, on whose arm ’Melia laid a detaining hand. Then she threw herself once more on the bed.

“Lord! to think they must needs prate like that just now!” moaned she. “And there ain’t no truth in it neither. No, mother, no, I ain’t a-carryin’ on with no chap, I ain’t. And I’m sorry I didn’t do the shirts for ye, I am. But they’ll all go ’ome to-night, same as if you was well—I swear they will, mother! Oh, Lord! she won’t speak to me—not a word! Whatever is it? Whatever shall I do?”

No, the mother could not speak, but the tired eyes grew quiet and drooped presently in sleep, and there were tears in the black eyes of the daughter as she gazed on her; and the neighbour, busying herself now about the supper and the children, cried as she answered.

“She _can’t_ speak to ye, ’Melia,” said she. “She’s ’ad a stroke. But she won’t die this time. They often lives years arter the first, only they can’t never do no work again. Ye’ll ’ave to work for the lot. It’s ’ard on ye, dear, but ye’ve ’ad yer turn.”

And as she sat through the silent night, watching tenderly over the mother whom she had neglected, and who had so bravely toiled for her, and so proudly defended her, ’Melia looked her future quietly in the face.

Yes; she would have to work for the lot. There would be no more larking. Would there be no more love-making either? Would she never find that out which she had not even desired to know till of late, which she had been so nearly finding out to-night? The sound, common-sense of her present nature told her that it was more than likely. How many men would care to saddle themselves with a bed-ridden mother and a parcel of brats?

Was ’Melia repenting as he had said she should repent—repenting that broken tryst that she knew in her heart she should never, never keep? All her life she had always had what she wanted. But she had never wanted anything as she wanted the love of this one man, who was a stranger to her, and who was even now tramping away from her, miles away already along the dusty road that led to the nearest town.

Every year when the harvest moon drew near the hoppers gathered into the camp beneath the hill, and made their fires beside the straw huts in the hollow, and every year the picking went on busily in the fields; but there were some folk who said that there never was such a merry “hopping” as there had been that year—for ’Melia never got time to go back to it.

She worked hard to keep the laundry work together, and she did it, though there were folk enough that said she would never succeed. One by one the children grew up, and were put to service or to a trade, and at last the mother was laid to rest in the graveyard, and ’Melia was left with only one of her brood at her heels.

It had been a hard fight, and save for one hand that had often been stretched out for her in the dark and unknown to herself—she had fought it unaided.

There had been no time, as she had guessed, for larking, or trysting, or love-making. And it was in a very quiet spirit that one autumn Sabbath, when the hops were all in, ’Melia Shaw walked to church with a middle-aged man named Bill Wilkins, and said a gentle and quite untremulous “Yes” to the old question that is for ever being asked and answered in so many and varied moods.

AN ONLY SON

AN ONLY SON

“’Ave you ’eard as Widow Collins’ lad be down from London, Mr. Barfield?” said a little spare woman who stood willingly patient before the counter of a small shop and watched the grocer’s deft fingers pack up a neighbour’s tea and sugar before attending to her own demands.

It was dark, for it was eventide, and the shop did not face the sunset that was going on brilliantly behind the pines at the top of the village street; but any one could have told from the tone of the voice that there was something more than common about Widow Collins’ lad.

Mr. Barfield lit an odoriferous paraffin lamp and hung it to a hook on the low ceiling, amid a wonderful collection of boots and hats and sunshades, of kettles and coils of rope and saucepans—and of Spanish onions on strings.

“What, he that’s clerk in the London Post Office?” asked the other customer with sudden interest.

“I never ’eard as she had no other, Mrs. Neave,” answered the first speaker half crossly, for she was not pleased that the grocer should give more attention to business than to her news; “and I s’pose its ’cause he’s the only one that she see’d fit to bring ’im up above ’is station.” The lamp lit up a thin, pinched face that had once been pretty with that frail, trivial prettiness that seems so strangely ill-fitted for the hard life of daily labour, where it is nevertheless so common. Mrs. Cave drew her ill-fitting little black jacket around her with an irritability of gesture that told in itself how perpetual struggles and over-fatigue had wrought on her. She had had no chance of bringing up any one of _her_ seven boys above his station, for laundry work only brought in a fair pittance in the summer time, when the place was full of visitors, and Widow Collins had the monopoly of the all-the-year-round families.

“Ah, it’s a sad mistake to bring ’em up above their stations,” said Mrs. Neave piously, as she gathered up her purchases. “We’re sure to be punished for it in the long run, as Mrs. Collins is bound to be one o’ these days.” Mrs. Neave, being a plumber’s wife, considered herself just a cut above laundresses, and patronized them accordingly.

“Ah, how’s that?” asked Mr. Barfield, quite interested now, though he ran busily round to the other side of the shop at the same time to fetch a skein of yarn from his haberdashery counter for Mrs. Cave; “I thought the lad was doin’ well, though to be sure pride is sure to ’ave a fall.” As the prop and stay of the Dissenting Chapel round the corner, Mr. Barfield often felt it his duty to add a pinch of righteousness to his customers’ purchases to make up the weight, and Mrs. Neave, being the wife of a fellow-warden, required special attention in this particular.

But Mrs. Cave tossed her head; though she was no warden’s wife she needed no one to tell her how old Mrs. Collins was being punished, for, secretive as was that absent lady, the little laundress would have wormed the heart out of a stone. Manners, however, forbade that she should take the word out of a neighbour’s mouth, so she held her peace, though it was pain and grief to her, and let the plumber’s wife take up the tale again.

“Well, the lad have married a woman with money, to be sure,” continued that lady, sadly, almost as though she were grieved to have to allow the fact, "but they do say"—and from the tone of the voice it was to be supposed that Mrs. Neave knew of circumstances that would have mitigated the joys of that match, but she was not permitted to make them known.

The grocer himself interrupted her.

“So I did ’ear,” he said quickly, almost betraying a certain satisfaction of his own at being able to add his mite to the gossip, “in the fish-trade.”

“I know nothin’ about that,” began Mrs. Neave again, feebly peevish, but at this open avowal of incompetence Mrs. Cave could keep peace no longer. It was more than flesh and blood could stand, and she burst in scornfully.

“Fish-trade, indeed,” cried she. “Why, it’s a restaur_ant_, and a smart one too, in some part o’ London they calls ’Igh ’Olborn. But though he did catch her with that ’andsome, softy face o’ his, she be that sort of a person she won’t look at ’is poor relations, and won’t so much as let ’im ask ’is own mother to ’is own ’ouse.”

Mrs. Cave looked triumphantly round for her effect, and she got it.

The plumber’s wife ejaculated, “Well, I never!” and was speechless, though whether her emotion resulted from horror at the younger Mrs. Collins’ arrogance, or from astonishment at Mrs. Cave’s audacity in taking the speech from off her very tongue was not clear; and Mr. Barfield made a strange little noise with his lips indicative of amazement and dismay, not unmixed with religious disapproval.

“And I should say it was more nor a year since he was even here to see her last,” said he sententiously. “And well I remember it must be fifteen year since she’s been alone to slave and toil for that boy.”

“Fifteen? Why, it be twenty,” cried the laundress. “And many’s the time I could swear she went without ’er dinner so as ’e should be schooled better than others. And shabby she’ll go to her dyin’ day—though one’d think she might take a bit of ’elp from ’im now as ’e’s got others to keep ’im, and she not so much as the bit o’ comfort o’ seein’ ’im now and again. But it be all ’er pride—it be pride as has kep’ ’er up all these years. Pride to ’ave ’im better than ’erself. And this is ’ow she’s served.”

There was an honest ring in Mrs. Cave’s indignation, and who was to tell—certainly not herself—that there was a spice of satisfaction in it as well?

“Poor soul!” murmured Mrs. Neave. “Though it do serve ’er right for settin’ up her horn as she do.”

“Well, there,” declared the grocer, returning to his usual cheeriness, “she’s got the satisfaction o’ seein’ him a gentleman. I suppose ’e’ll scarce pass the word to his old acquaintance as equals when ’e walks to church with ’er to-morrow mornin’. That ought to be a reward to any woman.”

“She’ll look us all in the face and no mistake to-morrow,” said Mrs. Cave, moving to the door, but even as she did so, envy and satisfaction were both merged in wonder pure and simple as she beheld striding down the village street in the dusk, the figure of a tall young man, bearing a large wicker basket under his arm.

“Well, I’m blest,” cried she, gasping, “if that ain’t—but, no, it never can be Johnnie Collins!”

Mrs. Neave was at her side in a moment, and Mr. Barfield sidled quickly from behind his counter and stood beside the two women at the door.

“Well, I never!” ejaculated Mrs. Neave again. “Why, he’s carrying his mother’s linen ’ome same as he used to do before he went to London!”

Mr. Barfield whistled, and they all three stood staring commiseratingly at the handsome youth, who quite unconcernedly swung along the road and disappeared down a bye-lane at the corner. “Well, I wouldn’t ha’ believed it not if you’d ha’ told me!” murmured Mrs. Cave. And at the same time, her eyes wandering to Mr. Barfield’s face, went past him down the hill, and saw Widow Collins herself toiling a little painfully up towards the shop from the sea. “Hush!” she whispered, dragging Mrs. Neave within again, “’ere she comes, I do declare!”

They all stood waiting, and the widow came on slowly, looking neither to right nor to left. She passed the shop, at first noting none of them, but then turned back and, merely giving a casual nod to Mrs. Neave as she brushed by her, walked straight in and up to the counter, whither Mr. Barfield had quickly retreated.

“A pound of Dutch cheese,” said she shortly, without preliminary greeting of any sort. “A nice fresh cut, please.”

She looked at the cheese and not at Mr. Barfield. She was a hard-featured woman—thin and tall, with sad keen eyes, wherein there was no gleam of the cheerfulness that some might have expected to see there because of that unwonted presence in her lonely home yonder.

“I ’ear you’ve your son ’ome, Mrs. Collins,” said Mr. Barfield, pleasantly, paring off the outer rind of the cheese as he spoke, for he knew the customers that he was forced to humour. “Married, ain’t he? Wife with him?”

“No,” answered the woman, shortly. “His wife is visitin’ her own folk.”

Mrs. Cave glanced at Mrs. Neave as who should say, “I told you so,” but the latter took it as a hint to proceed, and said quickly to the widow:

“Ah, but you’ll be goin’ up to London presently. That’ll be nicer for you than ’avin’ visitors at ’ome. She’s a well-to-do woman, ain’t she, your son’s wife? So she’ll ’ave time to leave her work a bit to show ye round the place.”

“Yes, she’s a rich woman,” answered the widow, looking the speaker in the face with that quiet self-satisfaction that was the special annoyance of the female portion of the village. “But if she ’ave got time to leave ’er work, I ’aven’t got time to leave mine. I’ve my customers to think of.”

Whether Mrs. Cave saw a covert taunt in this remark or not, it seemed somehow to goad her into speech.

“Well, anyways you must be rare and pleased to see your son just the same simple lad as ’e always was, now ’e could play the gentleman if he liked,” said she.

The remark should have seemed innocent enough, and what most mothers would have flushed with pride to hear, but Mrs. Cave was clever, and knew her prey.

The widow glanced at her sharply, uneasily, and laid her money down on the counter.

“Look alive, Mr. Barfield, please,” said she, “I’m late to-night.”

The slight was too great to be borne. Mrs. Cave moved to the doorway.

“Oh, you don’t need to ’urry,” said she, tartly. “’E be only just gone round the corner to the Parsonage with your basket o’ linen. ’E won’t be back just yet.”

A faint tremor ran through Mrs. Collins’ body even to the hand that she stretched out to take her parcel, but she said nothing, and to any observer less keen than the rival laundress, the tremor was but a shiver that was easily accounted for by the sea-fog that was slowly sweeping up across the marsh below.

“Well, I wish you joy o’ getting him back so well set up,” said Mr. Barfield, good-naturedly, as he tied the knot in the string. “It must do your ’eart good, I’m sure, to have him by to give you a ’and again when you ’ave to work for yourself all the year round.”

The widow looked at him, and in her eyes was a hardness that might well have chilled a braver man.

“Thank you,” she said coldly, “I don’t know as one day makes much odds.”

Mr. Barfield was silent, and so indeed was Mrs. Cave, but the plumber’s wife, blundering on, said patronizingly:

“There now, you oughtn’t to take it so ungrateful, and him so nice and obliging to you. There’s some lads ’ud be so stuck up with being raised up—why, they might think it beneath ’em to do such a job!”

Mrs. Cave smiled, and then laughed outright, and the old woman’s eyes grew harder than ever.

Mr. Barfield brought her change—two coppers and a threepenny-bit—and laid it on the counter before her. She took it up without a word, nodded good-night a trifle more surlily than usual, and without unlocking her set lips or turning her eyes once upon either of the two women, passed out into the dusk. Her face was as thunder.

“Well, ’pon my word, it ain’t no sort o’ use tryin’ to be civil and kindly to ’er,” sighed Mrs. Neave; but Mr. Barfield, who had seen the widow’s face, felt a vague sense of pity rise in his calculating little soul, and said as he stuck his pen briskly behind his ear after “entering” Mrs. Neave’s purchase:

“We can’t always just tell, ye know. She may be glad enough to get a sight of ’im though she do talk so short, and as like as not she never sent him round with the linen at all.”

Mrs. Cave was already in the road; she was watching the mother, who set her face once more to the sunset, and, whipped by the creeping mist, struggled on to the cross-roads, where a line of straight pine-stems stood black against the sky that flamed beyond the downs: the downs were blue with mist and the sky was red—red and angry—and the spare bent figure made a spot upon it, and that little spot was the blackest in the whole scene.

“No,” said Mrs. Cave decisively, to those within, “I shouldn’t think she did send him round with it! I should like to know what a body’d want to spend years toilin’ and moilin’ for, except to have the boy cut a bit of a figure when ’e come back among them as knowed ’im a little dirty brat! _She_ sent him indeed!”

Mrs. Cave stuck her sharp little nose in the air, and Mrs. Neave retorted stoutly:

“Well, if she didn’t send ’im, I should say she’d be all the better pleased. I s’pose she’s fond o’ the lad arter her fashion, though, to be sure, she showed it a queer way when ’e was little. My boys do say ’e was that frightened of her there was times when they’d a job to get him to go ’ome.”

“And yet,” put in the grocer, “I can call to mind the day when he fell into the river down yonder. Some one ran up and told ’er of it, and didn’t know whether the child was alive or dead, and they do say she went down all of a ’eap like a corpse of lead. And the doctor told my wife she’s never been the same woman since. And yet when the neighbours brought ’im in drippin’’ wet and queer—if she mustn’t needs go rating ’im for it all the while she was a puttin’ ’im to bed. I know she spoke quite sharp to me when I went round at night to ask after ’im, and yet I could swear I ’eard her cryin’ over ’im soft and a kissin’ of ’im whiles he slept, as I stood waitin’ at the door.”

“She’s a curious piece of goods,” sighed Mrs. Neave, “for though it don’t scarce seem like truth, I can recollect I see’d her once bring him a jam-tart to ’s tea when ’e was spudding thistles one day down in the marsh, and if you’d believe it, she kissed ’im just as one of us might ha’ done, ’cos he looked so pleased.” Mrs. Neave glanced at Mrs. Cave as one expecting to be disbelieved, but that shrewder lady only just looked her over and then burst into a loud laugh.

“Lord,” said she, “ye don’t understand the likes of ’er, that be certain!” and with a hasty nod to the company she passed on quickly up the street.

The after-glow had faded from the sky behind the downs, and the sea-mist had ceased to hurry across the marsh towards them, but had crumbled and massed itself into mounds and ridges that hung or floated over the wide, brown plain beneath the village—warmed and illumined by the rays of the bright October moon that had risen red out of the sea. Upon the little public terrace overhanging the marsh-land, the village lads were gathered for their evening pipe; they sat grouped beneath the thatched roof of the pent-house, men and boys together, while outside, upon the paved walk, a few women lounged with babies, taking their leisure too after the day’s labour. Mrs. Cave came down among them; she had given the family its supper, and had put a goodly portion of it to bed, but she had left the washing-up to her eldest girl—for Mrs. Cave was sighing for more gossip upon the great event of the day, and here she knew that she should find it.

“Be my Jim ’ere?” cried she, as she approached, alluding to her husband, who was indeed very rarely anywhere else, unless it were at the public-house.

“Yes, o’ course he be! Let the man ’ave his leisure a bit,” grinned a slatternly girl. And for the moment Mrs. Cave seemed only too much inclined to obey her.

For within with the men it was Johnnie Collins again, and Mrs. Cave’s keen eyes had noticed a black figure standing just opposite in the shadow of the old gateway, that gave zest to the situation.

“He might as well ha’ brought ’is smart missus round for us to ’ave a look at,” said one, “but I s’pose we ain’t fit for such as ’im now-a-days.”

“Lord, it ain’t Johnnie’s fault,” said another for Johnnie, though sometimes envied for the odd shillings he used to earn as a lad, through lending his handsome face and figure to be an artist’s model—had yet ever been a favourite, for he had been the easiest, most good-natured comrade in the world, and could always be led anywhere by any one.

“No, there ain’t no beastly pride about Johnnie!” declared a third, “but they say as ’is missus leads ’im a smarter dance nor ever ’is ’ard old mother did, and won’t let ’im come nigh the old lady now, so as ’e has to get away on the sly.”

Mrs. Cave strained her eyes, for she saw the gaunt figure creep out of the shadow at these words and quietly climb the village street; it was the widow as she had thought. Yes, and positively—lounging slowly down towards her—was that very son of hers in his elegant suit of grey homespun. It was as good as a play. Mrs. Cave hurried softly down the steps by the terrace and warily followed Widow Collins up the road. Curiosity was certainly Mrs. Cave’s besetting sin.

“Why, mother,” said the young man softly, “where have you been? I just went round to the Vicarage with your basket of linen, and when I got in again you were gone. Who would ever have thought to find you a-gossiping! But, there, indeed it does my heart good to see you hob-nobbing with the neighbours, and not so lonesome as you might be.”

The old woman took no note of this that to her might have seemed a weird jest. She did not even smile, but she said quickly: “I’m sorry you went round with the linen, John. There weren’t no call. I’ve got used to doing it myself now, and I don’t like it meddled with.”

“Why, I always used to,” he began.

But she interrupted him sharply. “Never you mind what you used to do,” she said pettishly, as though half ashamed of herself. “You ain’t here all the year round, nor I don’t want you—and what I do every week you needn’t to do just for once.”

“What, are you going to blame me now for being up in London,” he began, nervously laughing, “when it was you drove me there first?”

“Blame you!” she cried, and then stopped. “There,” she said, “you let me be, that’s all I want. I’ll see to myself so long as I’m above ground.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she laid a quick, trembling hand on his coat-sleeve.

“Ye used to have to mind me,” she said, and her voice shook a little, “for, Lord knows, I was a bit ’ard with you o’ times! Ye’ve got to do other’s bidding now, and I’m glad on it. But ye’ll mind your mother to-day for the last time.”

Mrs. Cave, as she played eavesdropper, involuntarily thought of the day when her neighbour had seen the widow give a jam-tart to the lad on the sly, and she looked for her to kiss him now as she had kissed him then. But the old woman’s keen ear had caught the sound of the step behind her, and though the young fellow stooped towards her impulsively she pushed him back.

“Come,” she whispered, “let’s get ’ome to supper,” and she tried to hurry up the road, but not before Mrs. Cave had placed herself abreast of them, and holding out a friendly hand to Johnnie, had said effusively: “There, now, I thought it were Mr. Collins! But, ’pon my word, it be so long since we’ve seen you ’ere, there ain’t no knowing you again. And you so smart, too! Why, you’ll scare care to shake hands with a poor body like me.”

They all three stopped, and Johnnie blushed as he took her hand, perhaps with shame or perhaps with annoyance, knowing that the woman must have overheard his mother’s foregoing words—but the mother’s own face was as iron.

Mrs. Cave walked graciously on beside them, but the widow never glanced at her nor took any heed of her, but presently just stopped short in the road, and, hastily producing from her pocket the yellow envelope of a telegram, said quickly to her son: “There, I declare, I’d clean forgot! And I come down here on purpose to find ye too! The post-mistress brought this ’ere for ye.” And she held it out to him as she spoke.

The young man’s face fell a little, and he held the document in his hand as though fearing to open it.

He had stopped walking, and Mrs. Cave stopped too, and as neither mother nor son spoke she said pleasantly to the former: “Well, now I ’ope there’s no ill news to spoil your treat for you, Mrs. Collins, for I’m sure you’ll be proud to show him off to us all to-morrow o’ church time, and small blame to you. Though to be sure,” added she, turning to the young man, while the battered bow in her well-worn bonnet positively wagged with her eagerness, “ye might ha’ brought your wife with ye to see your old friends! For all folk do say she’s a lady born and bred, and it stands to reason we ain’t good enough for such as that.”

Mrs. Cave smiled, and Mrs. Collins’ face wore a mingled expression of pride and scorn, as she listened. She had forgotten the telegram; she lifted her head royally, gazing with satisfaction in her weary eyes at this handsome son of hers who was outwardly so like a gentleman that she might well be excused for thinking that folk really supposed him to be one. She thought he was one, and little guessed that she had blindly done her best to crush out of him those natural qualities of devotion and tenderness that were really the most like to what she desired him to be. If she had been angry with him for compromising his dignity, it was just because she was proud of him. She was proud even of his condescension to her. Yes, she was proud in secret to-night, but to-morrow she would be proud openly—before them all. It would be a triumph that would more than repay her for many patient years.

But Johnnie had opened the telegram. His face had changed; one could see it even in the shifting light of conflicting moon and twilight. There had been some sort of assurance in it before, and it had been gay and smiling; now it was tremulous, ashamed, and frightened.

He took out his watch, and the joyful pride faded out of the old woman’s face as she saw him do it.

“When’s the last train to Seacombe?” said he.

“Half-past nine,” answered Mrs. Cave, for the mother seemed suddenly to have lost the power of speech. “But whatever do you want to know that for?”

Johnnie turned to his mother. There was a sort of shame-faced humility in his attitude that belied an attempted swagger in his speech. “I shall have to go into Seacombe to-night, mother,” said he. “It’s very important. It’s—well, it’s business, you see, and a man must think of that first of all.”

“Lawk-a-mercy!” cried Mrs. Cave. “And you scarce ’ere a few hours! Why, there ain’t no business to do on a Saturday night, man! And you’ll never get a train back in time for church in the morning. You’d never disappoint your mother of that?”

But the old woman had recovered her composure now, and answered him.

“Business be always first,” said she, “to them as wants to get on in the world; and it wouldn’t be a mother as’d want her son to miss it. Come, John, there’ll just be time to get your supper afore ye go.”

The two went up the street together, and Mrs. Cave stood staring after them. Then she went back to the “Look-out,” and gave the benefit of her investigations to the village.

“It be my belief as that message were from ’is wife,” cried she. “It be my belief she was cross at ’im coming ’ere, and wasn’t going to let him stay a minute longer. And, Lord, any one might know he’d never dare say a masterful woman nay—be it wife or be it mother! Well, it serves the old soul right. She brought ’im up above ’is station, and she druv ’im and druv ’im all the time ’e was young, and, ’pon my word, ’e be just like a poor sheep as don’t know which way to run if there ain’t some one behind ’im with a stick.”

“Yet there’s good in the lad, I do believe,” said the grocer, who had just honoured the terrace for a few moments with his presence on his way home from the shop; “and one can’t choose but be sorry for the woman, for she’s worked ’ard for ’im.”

“Lor’ bless ye, _she_ don’t mind,” laughed Mrs. Cave. “She’d rather ’ave ’im druv—though it be away from ’er—than not see ’im keep the ’igh road. She knows well enough as some one ’ave got to drive ’im. But we sha’n’t see Mrs. Collins at chapel to-morrow mornin’.”

In the latter part of her surmise Mrs. Cave was not correct. Mrs. Collins appeared at chapel, sternly neat in her rusty black, and was more gracious than she had ever been known to be before. As the little congregation poured out into the mellow autumn sunshine, where the birches were silver and yellow against the blue sky, and against the purple downs, and where the creepers lay crimson upon the grey walls of the cottages, a burly old farmer came up to her when she was returning Mrs. Cave’s commiserating greeting. “Why, Mrs. Collins, that son o’ your’s ’ave grown a smart young man, and no mistake,” said he. “I seen ’im get out o’ the train last night at Seacombe. There was a lady come to meet ’im. A fine dressed-up lady she were too, as might ha’ held up ’er ’ead with the best. It was ’is wife, as I made out. Lucy he called her.”

Mrs. Cave, who had pressed up to hear, shot a hasty glance at Mr. Barfield, and nodded her head.

But the widow did not notice it. Her eyes were far away on the dancing sea that shone so blue beyond the mile of yellow marsh where the street opened at the turn down the hill; she dropped the heavy lids over the triumph that was in them, but a flush crept to her sunken cheek, and she pressed her thin lips together as though to crush the smile that she knew hovered around them.

“Yes,” she said, demurely, “Lucy be the name of my son’s wife.”

“Well, and a handsome couple they make, then,” declared the farmer, “and well-to-do, too, as it seems. They druv off in a ’ired fly, they did. They’ll be driving over here next and driving you off along wi’ ’em.”

Again Mrs. Collins closed her lips over a smile. “I’m too old for strange places,” said she quietly.

“Well, well,” said the farmer, “you’ve a son to be proud of anyways. He’s done well for himself.”

Then Mrs. Collins lifted her eyes. “He ’ave done what I meant ’im to do,” she said slowly, “and I _am_ proud of him.”

She stood a moment looking round upon them all one after another, as though tasting her triumph. Then she shook hands with the farmer, nodded to the rest, and went away slowly to her lonely cottage against the downs.

The farmer smiled rather foolishly, looking after her. He knew the widow but little. “Rather a queer sort of a body, ain’t she?” said he questioningly.

“Aye, sir, that she be indeed,” put in Mrs. Cave, the ever-ready. “If you’d believe it, she’d sooner never ’ave seed that son of hers again than ’ave ’ad ’im marry a girl of his own station as wouldn’t have took ’im away from ’er to make a gentleman of ’im. _There’s_ pride for ye!”

The farmer looked surprised, but the grocer—approaching at that moment, fresh from his responsible Sunday duties in his irreproachable black clothes—put in his word cheerily.

“Oh,” said he, “the women make him out too bad. ’E’s not a bad sort. ’E’ll be sure to come back and see her again.”

And after that the congregation dispersed to their homes.

But though Johnnie Collins was not a bad sort, though he often begged his mother in a vague sort of way to come up to London and see him, and showed nothing but disappointment when she persistently refused, something always happened at the last moment to prevent him from coming down to see her.

He often wrote to her and often, too, sent her little sums of money, which the post-mistress declared she always cashed with a very sour face; and once his letter said that he intended to come and bring his little son to see grandmother. But “business” as usual intervened, and the little lad was sent down at last with a maidservant—the fresh air being considered beneficial for him after some childish ailment. Then it was that the old tree might have been said, as it were, to bloom afresh. All the tenderness that out of a Spartan pursuit of a distinct and difficult object had been withheld from her own boy’s childhood was lavished upon this little flower of her strange ambition.

Mrs. Cave and Mrs. Neave and Mr. Barfield all had tales to tell of this secret but undoubted transformation. The fair-haired babe and his stern grandmother were seen wandering along the lanes hand in hand as the twilight fell upon the day’s work, or when the August moon rose at the sun-setting—gold upon the golden harvest land. He was seen teazing her at the wash-tub, she patiently submitting, and she was even known beyond a doubt to have caught him in her arms in the open churchyard where the whole village might have seen her, and to have kissed him there to her heart’s content.

And even when that glad three weeks was over, and the boy went back to his parents, there were those who declared that the light never faded again from the old woman’s eyes till she was laid in the grave not two months afterwards.

Some one found her dead one day beside her own lonely fireside. In her hand was a letter from her son; it contained a £5 note, and said he wished it could have been more, but that they had an establishment to keep up now and their expenses were heavy.

Mrs. Neave was shocked, but Mrs. Cave declared that Johnnie had fulfilled all that his mother required of him, and that if she could but have known that he walked behind her coffin in a well-brushed suit of black broad-cloth, it would have added the last touch to her perfect satisfaction.

Be that as it may, and though the neighbours pitied her, there was a peaceful and a triumphant smile on the dead, old face.

A WOMAN’S WAGER

A WOMAN’S WAGER

The postman came swinging down the village street. It was morning, but the street was already astir, for though it was but early spring, and the apple-blossom was not yet out, the weather was warm, and those who found spare moments managed to get to the cottage doors and look out upon the sunshine.

At the corner the mill-wheel was going round, and upon the bridge that spanned the stream a knot of girls had gathered, with whom the miller’s son and a young farmer on his way to the early train were holding merry converse.

The postman came past. He bore the character of a surly fellow, though he was young yet, and should have been too well-mannered not to throw a civil word to a pretty girl. But some said he had been disappointed in love, and had sworn never to look at woman more.

“What, never a letter for me?” cried the foremost of the girls, planting herself full in his path as he went by. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re a postman for, Mr. Frewin, for it don’t seem to me as if ye ever had nothing to carry!”

She planted her arms akimbo and laughed in his face, her own a blaze of sweet merriment, too pretty to be bold, and too frank and sincere to be anything but captivating.

But Ben Frewin neither answered nor looked up, and the girl drew back baffled, but no wit discomposed, as he strode past her.

“Not a bit of it, ye’ll never do it, Letty,” laughed another of the girls, and the young farmer lit his pipe with a merry twinkle in his eye.

“Well, I shouldn’t like to say as Miss Letty couldn’t do any blessed thing as she pleased,” declared he gallantly, “but I’m bound to allow, it don’t look likely so far.” And he nodded to them all round as he went on his way to the station.

“What don’t look like it?” asked the young miller, coming out of the mill with his whitened face. He had not heard the last passage of arms.

“’Ere’s Letty Cox swears she’ll get Mr. Frewin to be her beau for a Sunday evening,” laughed one of the girls, nudging her friend good-humouredly.

The miller looked at Letty sharply; then he smiled.

“Bob Frewin ’ain’t been seen walking with a young ’ooman since Bett throwed him over,” said he.

“Well that ain’t no reason,” smiled Letty with a little pout, and a killing glance from under the black fringes of her soft grey eyes.

The miller answered it as it became him to do, and the girl who had spoken before giggled: “Lor, ain’t she just a bit set up?” said she.

But the miller did not seem to mind.

“Ye promised to walk with _me_ next Sunday though,” said he persuasively.

“There’s no tellin’ what I might be wantin’ to do next Sunday,” said she. “It might be rainin’ for aught we know.”

“It might,” allowed he. “But again it mightn’t, and if it don’t—well, ye promised.”

“Did I then?” repeated Letty innocently. “Well, there’s other Sundays, and I bet Mr. Frewin shall walk with me one on ’em.”

“Done with you for a pair o’ gloves,” cried the miller, laughing, “for I bet he won’t!” And Letty flushed and demurred, for such a precise arrangement as this had not occurred to her; but the girls were delighted and wouldn’t let her refuse.

“They’ll be sure to be a nice pair, Letty,” whispered they. And Letty thought so too, and since she was so very, very sure to succeed, it seemed a pity to forego both the gift and the glory of winning it.

“All right then,” said she at last, blushing still and smiling; “when ’ave it got to be?”

“Sunday come three weeks,” declared he; but the other girls meant to see fair play, and vowed that this was far, very far from it.

“Well, if a woman can’t make a fool of a man in three weeks, she ain’t goin’ to do it at all,” answered he. “Ye did for me in one!”

There was a roar at this, and at that very moment the cause of all this commotion strode back again down the road passing the bridge by on the left this time, with his bundle of sorted letters in his right hand and his bag slung in front of him. He might very well have heard the miller’s last words, for they had been spoken in a loud voice, but his face was inscrutable, though the scowl upon it had deepened momentarily.

“Well,” added the miller, as he watched him pass, “I’ll grant ye you’ve a tough job, so we’ll say Sunday come four weeks. That’ll throw ye in Bank ’Oliday, and I’m sure that ought to count double.”

The girls giggled afresh as the miller went indoors.

“My, what a lark, Letty,” said one. “I wish it was me. My best gloves ain’t fit to be seen. But I don’t suppose ye’ll get ’em.”

And then they all parted and ran off to their various jobs, and left Letty, with the only one who lived up her way, to climb the village street to the old farm.

“I wish now as I ’adn’t done it,” sighed the girl half seriously.

But the other rallied and encouraged her, envying her secretly between whiles.

The farm stood above the village, on a common that was breezy when the valley lay languid in the heat; cherry and plum-trees were a-bloom in the orchard, and daffodils along the sides of the straight brick-paved walk that led from the gate to the old-fashioned porch.

As Letty stood in that porch the very self-same evening drying her plump brown arms on a cloth after washing up the tea-things, the postman stopped at the gate and began looking through the letters in his left hand.

The girl hung down her head and blushed; she was resolved, but she had not thought she would have to begin so soon; she was not ready.

As it so happened she could not have opened her campaign more neatly. He had always set her down as a bit of a bold-faced hussy, and had never looked at her properly, but with her eyes cast down, and her fresh cheek flushed with a modest pink, he was fain to take a good stare at her, waiting for her to come down to the gate and take the letter as usual.

But somehow she did not come, and he was forced to go up the garden walk to the porch.

“I’ve got something for ye at last,” said he stiffly as she did not speak. “I ’ope it’ll be good news.” And he handed the letter.

Still she did not look up; her courage had all forsaken her.

“Shall I lay it down ’ere?” said he, pointing to the window-sill.

“Yes, do,” answered she, “my ’ands is wet;” and then she stole a glance at him and he felt the softness of her grey eyes flash suddenly into his.

She lowered hers again at once, but the first shot in the war had been most successfully fired, although she did not guess it.

He blushed.

“Good evening to you,” said he hastily.

And he strode down the path again and swung to the latch-gate with a jerk.

Again Letty was sorry that she had made that silly wager.

The days passed by, and the postman had not come again to the farm with a letter, neither would the now unwilling besieger of his heart have found an opportunity of addressing him again, even had she desired to do so.

He kept himself aloof, and not all the chaff of more envious companions, nor the merry persuasion of her clever friends, could induce the girl to accost him as she had so frankly done before she had undertaken to win him.

The miller’s Sunday came round. In fresh shirt-front and well-brushed hat he turned up, as arranged, to take her for the promised walk.

“It’s goin’ to rain,” said Letty, “the clouds is awful black.”

“We won’t go far,” answered the young man, “and I can ’old the umbrella over your ’at and feathers if it should come down a bit.”

So Letty went, but it was against her will, though she couldn’t have told you why, for the miller was a likely man for a husband, seeing that he was as handsome a fellow as any in the village, and had about the best prospects. She laughed and chatted and chaffed, however, as was her wont, and how was the postman to know, when they met him presently going soberly to evening church with his old mother, that she was not quite so merry for the rest of the way, and went home quite half-an-hour earlier than she had intended?

But that might have been because the rain came down as she had prophesied, and she had supper to get at home, and could not risk being late by staying at the mill till the storm was over, as the miller’s mother had begged her to do.

Nevertheless her skirt was drenched when she got to the top of the hill. Perhaps it was a fellow feeling in the matter of having one’s Sunday best spoilt that made her take her courage in both hands and accost the postman when she met him again, just at her own door, walking without any protection against the weather in his black broad-cloth and tall hat.

“Won’t ye take the loan o’ my umbrella, Mr. Frewin?” said she timidly. “It’s comin’ down wonderful hard.”

Ben Frewin stopped, and as luck would have it, looked at her.

Her eyes were wistful, and there was a bashful sort of appeal in them that he had never seen there before. _He_ could not account for it, but she might have done so; that is to say, she might have done so if she had been in the habit of analyzing her feelings. As it was, she did not know that shame for what she had undertaken was at the bottom of the sudden fit of apologetic coyness that made her so doubly and unconsciously fascinating.

From any one else, and still more from her at any other moment, Frewin would curtly have refused the offered civility. But she looked so timid and so anxious, standing there in the rain with her skirts gathered round her, and the umbrella half held out towards him, that he hadn’t the courage to snub her.

“Well, it’s real kind of you,” said he. “But ye’ll have to run indoors first, or ye’ll spoil yer pretty ’at.”

She turned and tripped up the path, and he must needs of course follow, the gate slamming to behind him. At the porch she closed the umbrella and held it out to him, but a voice from within called out authoritatively:

“Whatever don’t ye ask Mr. Frewin to step indoors for, Letty? Ye’ll both get wet to the skin out there.”

“Please won’t ye come in?” repeated the girl obediently. “Mother and me ’ll be very pleased.” And of course she had to lift those grey eyes up to his again, and though he had sworn that he would never cross glance with theirs more, yet he found his gaze entangled afresh, and for an instant did not remove it. Then his senses awoke to their danger, and he donned his armour again hastily.

“Thank ye,” said he almost roughly, “I won’t come in now, if you please. And there ain’t no call to trouble ye for the humbrella neither. The rain’s a’most over.”

She was looking out into the garden, and would not see that disputed article which he was holding out towards her.

“Oh no,” declared she. “It’s pourin’ still. Mother won’t be pleased if ye don’t step in for five minutes.”

But he was on his guard now, and obdurate.

“Not to-night,” said he shortly. And he placed the umbrella beside her against the lintel of the door. “Men ain’t afraid of a drop o’ rain, ye know, same as a girl’d be for sake of ’er smart clothes. It’s lucky for you it didn’t come on so ’ard when you was out a-walking with Mr. Lambert.”

Mr. Lambert was the young miller, and at any other time Letty would have tittered delighted at this covert proof of jealousy. But to-night she was half-hurt and half-frightened at it, and shrank back into herself.

“As you please,” answered she, pouting a little. And when he had gone, and she went in to get the tea, she was quite cross at being scolded for not having made him come in, and cross again with her friend who ran over from her home opposite when the storm was past, and congratulated her upon having got that far towards the winning of her bet.

“I don’t want to win no bet,” declared she. “He’s a uncivil sort of a chap, and I don’t know as I cares to ’ave nothink to do with ’im. And what’s more, I don’t think as bettin’s nice for girls, and I don’t know as I shall go on with it.”

“Well, whatever did ye do it for then?” cried the other.

“Because ye was all a-worryin’ of me on, I suppose,” retorted Letty, with a sharpness very unlike her usual merry and good-humoured self.

“Ye didn’t ought to go for a thing and not stick to it,” said her friend, vexed to see such a good piece of fun fall flat. “But there, ye’ll do it yet. Ye never was one to cry ‘’Ware!’ There’s no ’arm in it. It’s only for a bit of a lark, and he’s fair sport, he’s such a mooney, thinkin’ as he can walk through without seein’ us. I like his cheek.”

“Well, there’s no tellin’ what I may do and what I mayn’t do,” said Letty, tossing her head, and in that she was perfectly right, and many had said it of her before.

“The gloves’ll be beauties, that I’ll take my oath of,” said the girl encouragingly as she went.

Nevertheless time passed, and nothing of great moment occurred in this interesting duel that so many were eagerly watching, while one at least of the combatants was unaware of being engaged in it.

One day, coming home from the next station where she had been to see a married sister, Letty found herself alone in the same carriage with Bob Frewin, who had had occasion to go to the town hard by. And though no one could exactly accuse him of an on-coming disposition, any one who had seen him would have allowed that the postman was more friendly than he had been to a girl for many a long day. Letty had noticed it herself, and though piqued by his manner on that wet Sunday, she had begun with her proudest and most off-hand mood—the mood that always “fetched” the men, but which, to do her justice, she would not have dreamed of intentionally trying on such a tough customer—she lapsed into her apologetic and gentle manner long before the journey was over. And when they reached their destination, and Letty, in shame-faced distress, found that she had dropped her return ticket, and must pay the fare over again, it was not Frewin’s loan that she would accept to replenish her empty purse. As it so happened, Mr. Lambert was there, going off to London, and it was his shilling that Letty chose to take, declaring that as he lived close by, she could the more easily repay it.

It was what the men called a woman’s excuse that didn’t bear sifting, and it naturally had the effect of sending Frewin off with a flea in his ear and a sour face, so that the miller very cheerfully declared to Letty in confidence, that he didn’t see any call to buy the gloves in readiness, as he had intended to do that very day.

Things, in fact, were not going at all hopefully for Letty’s wager, which was perhaps the reason why she was going about with a more serious expression than her careless beauty had ever worn before, and why she never appeared on the bridge of an evening now, and even went past knots of her old comrades in the village with a hasty nod or such a conscious bit of chaff as might have betrayed to any one her unusual state of mind.

Bank Holiday loomed in the near distance without the wager being any nearer the winning than three weeks ago. And if it had not been for an unforeseen incident perhaps it would never have been won at all. But won it was, and this was how it came about.