Chapter I: WAS promised to William, in a manner of speaking, close upon seven

year. What I mean to say is, when he was nigh upon fourteen, and was to go away to his uncle in Somerset to learn farming, he gave me a kiss and half of a broken sixpence, and said--

'Kate, I shall never think of any girl but you, and you must never think of any chap but me.'

And the Lord in His goodness knows that I never did.

Father and mother laughed a bit, and called it child's nonsense; but they was willing enough for all that, for William was a likely chap, and would be well-to-do when his good father died, which I am sure I never wished nor prayed for. All the trouble come from his going to Somerset to learn farming, for his uncle that was there was a Roman, and he taught William a good deal more than he set out to learn, so that presently nothing would do but William must turn Roman Catholic himself. I didn't mind, bless you. I never could see what there was to make such a fuss about betwixt the two lots of them. Lord love us! we're all Christians, I should hope. But father and mother was dreadful put out when the letter come saying William had been 'received' (like as if he was a parcel come by carrier). Father, he says--

'Well, Kate, least said soonest mended. But I had rather see you laid out on the best bed upstairs than I'd see you married to William, a son of the Scarlet Woman.'

In my silly innocence I couldn't think what he meant, for William's mother was a decent body, who wore a lilac print on week-days and a plain black gown on Sunday for all she was a well-to-do farmer's wife, and might have gone smart as a cock pheasant.

It was at tea-time, and I was a-crying on to my bread-and-butter, and mother sniffing a little for company behind the tea-tray, and father, he bangs down his fist in a way to make the cups rattle again, and he says--

'You've got to give him up, my girl. You write and tell him so, and I'll take the letter as I go down to the church to-night to practice. I've been a good father to you, and you must be a good girl to me; and if you was to marry him, him being what he is, I'd never speak to you again in this world or the next.'

'You wouldn't have any chance in the next, I'm afraid, James,' said my mother gently, 'for her poor soul, it couldn't hope to go to the blessed place after that.'

'I should hope not,' said my father, and with that he got up and went out, half his tea not drunk left in the mug.

Well, I wrote that letter, and I told William right enough that him and me could never be anything but friends, and that he must think of me as a sister, and that was what father told me to say. But I hope it wasn't very wrong of me to put in a little bit of my own, and this is what I said after I had told him about the friend and sister--

'But, dear William,' says I, 'I shall never love anybody but you, that you may rely, and I will live an old maid to the end of my days rather than take up with any other chap; and I should like to see you once, if convenient, before we part for ever, to tell you all this, and to say "Good-bye" and "God bless you." So you must find out a way to let me know quiet when you come home from learning the farming in Somerset.'

And may I be forgiven the deceitfulness, and what I may call the impudence of it! I really did give father that same letter to post, and him believing me to be a better girl than I was, to my shame, posted it, not doubting that I had only wrote what he told me.

That was the saddest summer ever I had. The roses was nothing to me, nor the lavender neither, that I had always been so fond of; and as for the raspberries, I don't believe I should have cared if there hadn't been one on the canes; and even the little chickens, I thought them a bother, and--it goes to my heart to say it--a whole sitting was eaten by the rats in consequence. Everything seemed to go wrong. The butter was twice as long a-coming as ever I knowed it, and the broad beans got black fly, and father lost half his hay with the weather. If it had been me that had done something unkind, father would have said it was a Providence on me. But, of course, I knew better than to speak up to my own father, with his hay lying rotting and smoking in the ten-acre, and telling him he was a-being judged.

Well, the harvest was got in. It was neither here nor there. I have seen better years and I have seen worse. And October come. I was getting to bed one night; at least, I hadn't begun to undress, for I was sitting there with William's letters, as he had wrote me from time to time while he was in Somerset, and I was reading them over and thinking of William, silly fashion, as a young girl will, and wishing it had been me was a Roman Catholic and him a Protestant, because then I could have gone into a convent like the wicked people in father's story-books. I was in that state of silliness, you see, that I would have liked to do something for William, even if it was only going into a convent--to be bricked up alive, perhaps. And then I hears a scratch, scratch, scratching, and 'Drat the mice,' says I; but I didn't take any notice, and then there was a little tap, tapping, like a bird would make with its beak on the window-pane, and I went and opened it, thinking it was a bird that had lost its way and was coming foolish-like, as they will, to the light. So I drew the curtain and opened the window, and it was--William!

'Oh, go away, do,' says I; 'father will hear you.'

He had climbed up by the pear-tree that grew right and left up the wall, and--

'I ask your pardon,' says he, 'my pretty sweetheart, for making so free as to come to your window this time of night, but there didn't seem any other way.'

'Oh, go, dear William, do go,' says I. I expected every moment to see the door open and father put his head in.

'I'm not going,' said William, 'till you tell me where you'll meet me to say "Good-bye" and "God bless you," like you said in the letter.'

Though I knew the whole parish better than I know the palm of my hand, if you'll believe me, I couldn't for the life of me for the moment think of any place where I could meet William, and I stood like a fool, trembling. Oh, what a jump I gave when I heard a noise like a heavy foot in the garden outside!

'Oh! it's father got round. Oh! he'll kill you, William. Oh! whatever shall we do?'

'Nonsense!' said William, and he caught hold of my shoulder and gave me a gentle little shake. 'It was only one of these pears as I kicked off. They must be as hard as iron to fall like that.'

Then he gave me a kiss, and I said: 'Then I'll meet you by the Parson's Shave to-morrow at half-past five, and do go. My heart's a-beating so I can hardly hear myself speak.'

'Poor little bird!' says William. Then he kissed me again and off he went; and considering how quiet he came, so that even I couldn't hear him, you would not believe the noise he made getting down that pear-tree. I thought every minute some one would be coming in to see what was happening.

Well, the next day I went about my work as frightened as a rabbit, and my heart beating fit to choke me, trying not to think of what I had promised to do. At tea-time father says, looking straight before him--

'William Birt has come home, Kate. You remember I've got your promise not to pass no words with him, him being where he is, without the fold, among the dogs and things.'

And I didn't answer back, though I knew well enough it wasn't honest; but he hadn't got my word. Father had brought me up careful and kind, and I knew my duty to my parents, and I meant to do it, too. But I couldn't help thinking I owed a little bit of a duty to William, and I meant doing that, so far as keeping my promise to meet him that afternoon went. So after tea I says, and I do think it is almost the only lie I ever told--

'Mother,' I says, 'I've got the jumping toothache, and it's that bad I can hardly see to thread my needle.'

Then she says, as I knew she would, her being as kind an old soul as ever trod: 'Go and lie down a bit and put the old sheepskin coat over your head, and I'll get on with the darning.'

So I went upstairs trembling all over. I took the bolster and pillow and put them under the covers, to look as like me as I could, and I put the old sheepskin coat at the top of all; and as you come into the room any one would have thought it was me lying there with the toothache. Then I took my hat and shawl and I went out, quiet as a mouse, through the dairy. When I got to the Parson's Shave there was William, and I was so glad to see him, I didn't think of nothing else for full half a minute. Then William said--

'It's only one field to the church. Why not go up there and sit in the porch? See, it's coming on to rain.'

So he took my arm, and we started across the field, where all the days of the year but one you would not meet a soul. We went up through the churchyard. It was 'most dark, but I wasn't a bit afraid with William's arm round me. But when we got to the porch and had sat down, I was sorry I'd come, for I heard feet on the road below, and they stopped outside the lychgate.

'Come, quick,' says I, 'or we're caught like rats in a trap. If I am going to give you up to please father, I may as well please him all round. There's no reason why he should know I've seen you.'

'So we stole on our tiptoes round to the little door that is hardly ever fastened, and so through to the tower. Father being one of the bellringers, I knew every step. There's a stone seat cut out of the wall in the bellringers' loft, and there we sat down again, and I was just going to tell him again what I had said in the letter about being his sister and a friend, which seemed to comfort me somehow, though William has told me since it never would have him, when William, he gripped my hand like iron, and ''S-sh!' says he, 'listen.' And I listened, and oh! what I felt when I heard footsteps coming up the tower. I didn't dare speak a word to him, and only kept tight hold of his hand, and pulled him along till we got to the tower steps, and went on up. But I says to myself, 'Oh, what's my head made of, to forget that it's practising night? and Him the church was built for only knows how long they won't be here practising!' We went on up the twisted cobwebby stairs, with bits of broken birds' nests that crackled under our feet that loud I thought for sure the folks below must hear us; and we got into the belfry, and there William was for staying, but I whispered to him--

'If you hear them bells when they're all a-going, you won't never hear much else. We must get on up out of it unless we want to be deaf the rest of our lives.'

And it was pitch dark in the belfry, except for the little grey slits where the shuttered windows are. The owls and starlings were frightened, I suppose, at hearing us, though why they should have been, I don't know, being used to the bells; and they flew about round us liker ghosts than anything feathered, and one great owl flopped out right into my face, till I nearly screamed again. It was all very, very dusty, and not being able to see, and being afraid to strike a light, we had to feel along the big beams for our way between the bells, I going first, because I knew the way, and reaching back a hand every now and then to see that William was coming after me safe and sound. On hands and knees we had to go for safety, and all the while I was dreading they would start the bells a-going and, maybe, shake William, who wasn't as used to it as I was, off the beams, and him perhaps be smashed to pieces by the bells as they swung.

I don't know how long it took us to get across the belfry to the corner where the ladder is that leads up to the tower-top. William says it must have been about a couple of minutes, but I think it was much more like half an hour. I thought we should never get there, and oh! what it was to me when I came to the end of the last beam, and got my foot down on the firm floor again, and the ladder in my hand, and William behind me! So up we went, me first again, because I knew the way and the fastenings of the door. And that part of it wasn't so bad, for I will say, if you've got to go up a long ladder, it's better to go up in the dark, when you can't see what's below you if you happen to slip; and I got up and opened the door, and it was light out of doors and fresh with the rain--though that had stopped now.

Then William would take his coat off, and put it round me, for all I begged him not, and presently the tower began to shake and the bells began, and directly they began I knew what they was up to.

'O William,' I says, 'it's Grandsire Triples, and there's five thousand and fifty changes to 'em, and it's a matter of three hours!'

But he couldn't hear a word I said for the bells. So then I took his coat and my shawl, and we wrapped them round both our heads to shut the bells out, and then we could hear each other speak inside.

I'm not going to write down all I said nor all he said, which was only foolishness--and besides, it come to nothing after all. But somehow the time wasn't long; and it's a funny thing, but unhappy and happy you can be at the same time when you are with one you love and are going to leave. William, he begged and prayed of me not to give him up. But I said I knew my duty, and he said he hoped I would think better of it, and I said, 'No, never,' and then we kissed each other again, and the bells went on, and on, and on, clingle, clangle, clingle, chim, chime, chim, chime, till I was 'most dazed, and felt as if I had lived up there all my life, and was going to live up there twenty lives longer.

'I'll wait for you all my life long,' says William. 'Not that I wish the old man any harm, but it's not in the nature of things your father can live for ever, and then--'

'It ain't no use thinking of that, William,' said I. 'Father is sure to make me promise never to have you--when he's dying, and I can't refuse him anything. It's just the kind of thing he'd think of.'

Perhaps you will think William ought to have made more stand, for everybody likes a masterful man; but what stand can you make when you are up in a belfry with the bells shouting and yelling at you, and when the girl you are with won't listen to reason? And you have no idea what them bells were. Often and often since then I have started up in the bed thinking I heard them again. It was enough to drive one distracted.

'Well,' says William, 'you'll give me up, but I'll never give you up; and you mark my words, you and me will be man and wife some day.'

And as he said it, the bells stopped sudden in the middle of a change. The rain had come on again. It was very chill up there. My teeth was chattering, and so was William's, though he pretended he did it for the joke.

'Let's get inside again,' says he. 'Perhaps they are going home, and if they are not, we can stay there till they begin it again.'

So we opened the door and crept down the ladder. There was light now coming up from the bellringers' loft through the holes in the floor, and we got down to the belfry easy, and as we got to the bottom of the ladder I heard my father's voice in the loft below--

'I don't believe it,' he was shouting. 'It can't be true. She's a God-fearing girl.'

And then I heard my mother. 'Come home, James,' she said, 'come home--it's true. I told you you was too hard on them. Young folks will be young folks, and now, perhaps, our little girl has come to shame instead of being married decent, as she might have been, though Roman.'

Then there was silence for a bit, and then my father says, speaking softer, 'Tell me again. I can't think but what I'm dreaming.'

Then mother says--'Don't I tell you she said she'd got the toothache, and she was going to lie down a bit, and I went to take her up some camomiles I'd been hotting, and she wasn't there, and her bolsters and pillows, poor lamb, made up to pretend she was, and Johnson's Ben, he see her along of William Birt by the Parson's Shave with his arm round her--God forgive them both!'

Then says my father, 'Here's an end on't. She's no daughter o' mine. If she was to come back to me, I'd turn her out of doors. Don't let any one name her name to me never no more. I hain't got no daughter,' he said, 'and may the Lord--'

I think my mother put her hands afore his mouth, for he stopped short, and mother, she said--

'Don't curse them, James. You'll be sorry for it, and they'll have trouble enough without that.'

And with that father and mother must have gone away, and the other ringers stood talking a bit.

'She'd best not come back,' said the leader, John Evans. 'Out a-gallivanting with a young chap from five to eight as I understand! What's the good of coming back? She's lost her character, and a gal without a character, she's like--like--'

'Like a public-house without a licence,' said the second ringer.

'Or a cart without a horse,' said the treble.

There was only one man spoke up for me--that was Jim Piper at the general shop. 'I don't believe no harm of that gal,' says he, 'no more nor I would of my own missus, nor yet of him.'

'Well, let's hope for the best,' said the others. But I had a sort of feeling they was hoping for the worst, because when things goes wrong, it's always more amusing for the lookers-on than when everything goes right. Presently they went clattering down the steps, and all was dark, and there was me and William among the cobwebs and the owls, holding each other's hands, and as cold as stone, both of us.

'Well?' says William, when everything was quiet again.

'Well!' says I. 'Good-bye, William. He won't be as hard as his word, and if I couldn't give you all my life to be a good wife to you, I have given you my character, it seems; not willing, it's true; but there's nothing I should grudge you, William, and I don't regret it, and good-bye.'

But he held my hands tight.

'Good-bye, William,' I says again. 'I'm going. I'm going home.'

'Yes, my girl,' says he, 'you are going home; you're going home with me to my mother.' And he was masterful enough then, I can tell you. 'If your father would throw you off without knowing the rights or wrongs of the story, it's not for him you should be giving up your happiness and mine, my girl. Come home to my mother, and let me see the man who dares to say anything against my wife.'

And whether it was father's being so hard and saying what he did about me before all those men, or whether it was me knowing that mother had stood up for us secret all the time, or whether it was because I loved William so much, or because he loved me so much, I don't know. But I didn't say another word, only began to cry, and we got downstairs and straight home to William's mother, and we told her all about it; and we was cried in church next Sunday, and I stayed with the old lady until we was married, and many a year after; and a good mother she was to me, though only in law, and a good granny to our children when they come. And I wasn't so unhappy as you may think, because mother come to see me directly, and she was at our wedding; and father, he didn't say anything to prevent her going.

When I was churched after my first, and the boy was christened--in our own church, for I had made William promise it should be so if ever we had any--mother was there, and she said to me: 'Take the child,' she said, 'and go to your father at home; and when he sees the child, he'll come round, I'll lay a crown; for his bark,' she says, 'was allus worse than his bite.'

And I did so, and the pears was hard and red on the wall as they was the night William climbed up to my window, and I went into the kitchen, and there was father sitting in his big chair, and the Bible on the table in front of him, with his spectacles; but he wasn't reading, and if it had been any one else but father, I should have said he had been crying. And so I went in, and I showed him the baby, and I said--

'Look, father, here's our little baby; and he's named James, for you, father, and christened in church the same as I was. And now I have got a child of my own,' says I, for he didn't speak, 'dear father, I know what it is to have a child of your own go against your wishes, and please God mine never will--or against yours either. But I couldn't help it, and O father, do forgive me!'

And he didn't say anything, but he kissed the boy, and he kissed him again. And presently he says--

'It's 'most time your mother was home from church. Won't you be setting the tea, Kate?'

So I give him the baby to hold, for I knew everything was all right betwixt us.

And all the children have been christened in the church. But I think when father is taken from us--which in the nature of things he must be, though long may it be first!--I think I shall be a Roman Catholic too; for it doesn't seem to me to matter much one way or the other, and it would please William very much, and I am sure it wouldn't hurt me. And what's the good of being married to the best man in the world if you can't do a little thing like that to please him?

A DEATH-BED CONFESSION

AND so you think I shall go to heaven when I die, sir! And why? Because I have spent my time and what bits of money I've had in looking after the poor in this parish! And I would do it again if I had my time to come over again; but it will take more than that to wipe out my sins, and God forgive me if I can't always believe that even His mercy will be equal to it. You're a clergyman, and you ought to know. I think sometimes the black heart in me, that started me on that deed, must have come from the devil, and that I am his child after all, and shall go back to him at the last. Don't look so shocked, sir. That's not what I really believe; it's only what I sometimes fear I ought to believe, when I wake up in the chill night and think things over, lying here alone.

To see me old and prim, with my cap and little checked shawl, you'd never think that I was once one of the two prettiest girls on all the South Downs. But I was, and my cousin Lilian was the other. We lived at Whitecroft together at our uncle's. He was a well-to-do farmer, as well-to-do as a farmer could be in such times as those, and on such land as that.

Whenever I hear people say 'home,' it's Whitecroft I think of, with its narrow windows and thatch roof and the farm-buildings about it, and the bits of trees all bent one way with the wind from the sea.

Whitecroft stands on a shoulder of the Downs, and on a clear day you can see right out to sea and over the hollow where Felscombe lies cuddled down close and warm, with its elms and its church, and its bright bits of gardens. They are sheltered from the sea wind down there, but there's nothing to break the wing of it as it rolls across the Downs on to Whitecroft; and of a night Lilian and I used to lie and listen to the wind banging the windows, and know that the chimneys were rocking over our heads, and feel the house move to and fro with the strength of the wind like as if it was the swing of a cradle.

Lilian and I had come there, little things, and uncle had brought us up together, and we loved each other like sisters until that happened, and this is the first time I have told a human soul about it; and if being sorry can pay for things--well, but I'm afraid there are some things nothing can pay for.

It was one wild windy night, when, if you should open the door an inch, everything in the house jarred and rattled. We were sitting round the fire, uncle and Lilian and me, us with our knitting and him asleep in his newspaper, and nobody could have gone to sleep with a wind like that but a man who has been bred and born at sea, or on the South Downs.

Lilian and I were talking over our new winter dresses, when there come a knock at the side door, not nigh so loud as some of the noises the wind made, but not being used to it, uncle sat up, wide awake, and said, 'Hark!' In a minute it come again, and then I went to the door and opened it a bit. There was some one outside who began to speak as soon as he saw the light, but I could not hear what he said for the roaring of the wind, and the cracking of the trees outside.

'Shut that door!' uncle shouted from the parlour. 'Let the dog in, whatever he is, and let him tell his tale this side the oak.'

So I let him in and shut the door after him, and I had better have shut to the lid of my own coffin after me.

Him that I let in was dripping wet, and all spent with fighting the wind on these Downs, where it is like a lion roaring for its prey, and will go nigh to kill you, if you fight it long enough. He leaned against the wall and said--

'I have lost my way, and I have had a nasty fall. I think there is something wrong with my arm--hollow--slip--light--hospitality beg your pardon, I'm sure,' and with that he fainted dead off on the cocoanut matting at my feet.

Uncle came out when I screamed, and we got the stranger in and put him on the big couch by the fire. Uncle was nursing up with one of his bad attacks of bronchitis, the same thing that carried him off in the end, and the first thing he said when he'd felt the poor chap's arm down was--

'This is a bad break. Which of you girls will go and wake one of the waggoners to fetch Doctor from Felscombe?'

'I will,' I said.

But before I went I got out the port wine and the brandy, and bade Lilian rub his hands a bit, and be sure she didn't let him see her looking frightened when he come to.

Why did I do that? Because the Lord made me to be a fool--giving him her pretty face to be the first thing he looked at when he come to after that long, dreary spell on the Downs, and that black journey into the strange place where people go to when they faint.

But everything that there was of me ached to be of some use to him. So I went, and once outside the door it seemed easier to take Brown Bess and go myself to Felscombe than to rouse the waggoners, who were but sleepy and slow-headed at the best of times. So I saddled Brown Bess myself and started.

It was but a small way across the Downs that I had to lead her, it being almost as much as both of us could do to keep our feet in the fury of the wind. Then you go down the steep hill into the village, and as soon as we had passed the brow, it was easy and I mounted. I was down there in less time than it would have taken to rouse one of those heavy-headed carters; and Doctor, he come back with me, walking beside Brown Bess with his hand on her bridle, he not being by any means loth to come out such a night, because, forsooth, it was me that fetched him. Oh yes! I might have married him if I had wanted to, and more than one better man than him; but that's neither here nor there.

When we got in, we found Lilian kneeling by the sofa rubbing the young man's hands as I had told her to, and his eyes were open, and there was a bit of colour in his cheek, and he was looking at her like as any one but a fool might have known he would look; and the Doctor, he saw it too, and looked at me and grinned; and if I had been God, that grin should have been his last. No, I don't mean to be irreverent, but it's true, all the same.

Well, the arm was set, and when he was a bit easier we settled round the fire, and he told us that his name was Edgar Linley, and he was an artist, and had been painting the angry sunset that had come before that night's storm, and got caught in the dusk and so lost his way, as many do on our Downs at home, some not so lucky as him to see a light and get to it.

This Mr. Linley had a way with him like no other man I ever see; not only a way to please women with, but men too. I never saw my uncle so taken up with anybody; and the long and the short of it was that he stayed there a month, and we nursed him; and at the end of the month I knew no more than I had known that evening when I had seen him looking at Lilian; but he and Lilian, they had learned a deal in that time.

And one evening I was at my bedroom window, and I see them coming up the path in the red light of the evening, walking very close together, and I went down very quick to the parlour, where uncle was just come in to his tea and taking his big boots off, and I sat down there, for I wanted to hear how they'd say it, though I knew well enough what they had got to say. And they came in and he says, very frank and cheery--

'Mr. Verinder,' he says, 'Lilian and I have made up our minds to take each other, with your consent, for better, for worse.'

And uncle was as pleased as Punch; and as for me, I didn't believe in God then, or I should have prayed Him to strike them both down dead as they stood.

Why did I hate them so? And you call yourself a man and a parson, and one that knows the heart of man! Why did I hate them? Because I loved him as no woman will ever love you, sir, if you'll pardon me being so bold, if you live to be a thousand.

He would have understood all about everything with half what I have been telling you. As it is, I sometimes think that he understood, for he was very gentle with me and kind, not making too much of Lilian when I was by, yet never with a look or a word that wasn't the look and the word of her good, true lover; and she was very happy, for she loved him as much as that blue-and-white teacup kind of woman can love; and that's more than I thought for at the time.

He was an orphan, and well off, and there was nothing to wait for, so the wedding was fixed for early in the new year; and I sewed at her new clothes with a marrow of lead in every bone of my fingers.

A truly understanding person might get some meaning out of my words when I say that I loved her in my heart all the time that I was hating her; and the devil himself must have sent out my soul and made use of the rest of me on that night I shall tell you about presently.

It was in the sharp, short, frosty days that brought in Christmas that uncle came home one day from Lewes, looking thunder black, with an eye like fire and a mouth like stone. And he walked straight into the kitchen where we three were making toast for tea, for Edgar was one of us by this time, and lent a hand at all such little things as young folks can be merry over together. And uncle says--

'Leave my house, young man; it's an honest house and a clean, and no fit place for a sinful swine. Get out,' he says, '"For without are dogs--"'

With that he went on with a long text of Revelation that I won't repeat to you, sir, for I know your ears are nice, and it's out of one of the plainest-spoken parts of the Bible. Edgar turned as white as a sheet.

'I swear to God,' he said, 'I wasn't to blame. I know what you have heard, but if I can't whiten myself without blacking a woman

I'll live and die as black as hell,' he says. 'But I don't need whitening with those that love me,' he says, looking at Lilian and then at me--oh! yes, he looked at me then.

I said, 'No, indeed,' and so did Lilian; but she began to cry, and before we had time to think what it was all about, he had taken his hat and kissed Lilian and was gone. But he turned back at the door again.

'I'll write to you,' he says to Lilian, 'but I don't cross this door again till those words are unsaid,' and so he was gone.

Him being gone, uncle told us what he had heard in Lewes, and what all folks there believed to be the truth; how young Edgar had carried on, as men may not, with a young married woman, the grocer's wife where he lodged, the end of it being that she drowned herself in a pond near by, leaving as her last word that he was the cause of it; and so he may have been, but not the way my uncle and the folk at Lewes thought, I'll stake my soul. God makes His troubles in dozens; He don't make a new patterned one for every back. I wasn't the only woman who ever loved Edgar Linley without encouragement and without hope, and risked her soul because she was mad with loving him.

But when uncle had told us all this with a black look on his face I never had seen before, he said--

'Girls, I have always been a clean liver, and I have brought you up in the fear of the Lord. I don't want to judge any man, and Lilian is of age and her own mistress. It's not for me to say what she shall or shan't do, but if she marries that scoundrel, she has my curse here and hereafter, and not one penny of my money, if it was to save her from the workhouse.'

After that we were sad enough at Whitecroft. But in two days come a letter from Edgar to Lilian; and when she had read it, she looked at me and said, 'O Isabel, whatever shall I do? I never can marry without dear uncle's consent,' and I turned and went from her without a word, because I couldn't bear to see her arguing and considering what to do, when the best thing in the world was to her hand for the taking.

All the next week she cried all day and most of the night. Then uncle went to London, my belief being it was to alter his will, so that if Lilian married Edgar, she should feel it in her pocket, anyhow, and he was to stay all night, and the farm servants slept out of the house, and we were without a maid at the time. So Lilian and me were left alone at Whitecroft.

Lilian and I didn't sleep in one room now. I had made some excuse to sleep on the other side of the house, because I couldn't bear to wake up of mornings and see her lying there so pretty, looking like a lily in her white nightgown and her fair hair all tumbled about her face. It was more than any woman could have borne to see her lying there, and think that early in the new year it was him that would see her lying like that of a morning.

And that night the place seemed very quiet and empty, as if there was more room in it for being unhappy in. When Lilian had taken her candle and gone up to bed, I walked through all the rooms below, as uncle's habit was, to see that all was fast for the night. It was as I set the bolt on the door of the little lean-to shed, where the faggots were kept, that the devil entered into me all in a breath; and I thought of Lilian upstairs in her white bed, and of how the day must come, when he would see how pretty she looked and white, and I said to myself, 'No, it never shall, not if I burn for it too.'

I hope you are understanding me. I sometimes think there is something done to folks when they are learning to be parsons as takes out of them a part of a natural person's understandingness; and I would rather have told the doctor, but then he couldn't have told me whether these are the kind of things Christ died to make His Father forgive, and I suppose you can.

What I did was this. I clean forgot all about uncle and how fond I was of Whitecroft, and how much I had always loved Lilian (and I loved her then, though I know you can't understand me when I say so), and I took all them faggots, dragging them across the sanded floor of the kitchen, and I put them in the parlour in the little wing to the left, and just under Lilian's bedroom, and I laid them under the wooden corner cupboard where the best china is, and then I poured oil and brandy all over, and set it alight.

Then I put on my hat and jacket, buttoning it all the way down, as quiet as if I was going down to the village for a pound of candles. And I made sure all was burning free, and out of the front door I went and up on to the Downs, and there I set me down under the wall where I could see Whitecroft.

And I watched to see the old place burn down; and at first there was no light to be seen.

But presently I see the parlour windows get redder and redder, and soon I knew the curtains had caught, and then there was a light in Lilian's bedroom. I see the bars of the window as you do in the ruined mill when the sun is setting behind it; and the light got more and more, till I see the stone above the front door that tells how it was builded by one of our name this long time since; and at that, as sudden as he had come, the devil left me, and I knew all in a minute that I was crouched against a wall, very cold, and my hands hooked into my hair over my ears, and my knees drawn up under my chin; and there was the old house on fire, the dear old house, with Lilian inside it in her little white bed, being burnt to death, and me her murderer! And with that I got up, and I remember I was stiff, as if I had been screwing myself all close together to keep from knowing what it was I had been a-doing. I ran down the meadow to our house faster than I ever ran in my life, in at the door, and up the stairs, all blue and black, and hidden up with coppery-coloured smoke.

I don't know how I got up them stairs, for they were beginning to burn too. I opened her door--all red and glowing it was inside! like an oven when you open it to rake out the ashes on a baking-day. And I tried to get in, because all I wanted then was to save her--to get her out safe and sound, if I had to roast myself for it, because we had been brought up together from little things, and I loved her like a sister. And while I was trying to get my jacket off and round my head, something gave way right under my feet, and I seemed to fall straight into hell!

I was badly burnt, and what handsomeness there was about my face was pretty well scorched out of it by that night's work; and I didn't know anything for a bit.

When I come to myself, they had got me into bed bound up with cotton-wool and oil and things. And the first thing I did was to sit up and try to tear them off.

'You'll kill yourself,' says the nurse.

'Thank you,' says I, 'that's the best thing I can do, now Lilian is dead.'

And with that the nurse gives a laugh. 'Oh, that's what's on your mind, is it?' says she. 'Doctor said there was something. Miss Lilian had run away that night to her young man. Lucky for her! She's luckier than you, poor thing! And they're married and living in lodgings at Brighton, and she's been over to see you every day.'

That day she came again. I lay still and let her thank me for having tried to save her; for the farm men had seen the fire, and had come up in time to see me go up the staircase to her room, and they had pulled me out. She believes to this day the fire was an accident, and that I would have sacrificed my life for her. And so I would; she's right there.

I wasn't going to make her unhappy by telling her the real truth, because she was as fond of me as I was of her; and she has been as happy as the day is long, all her life long, and so she deserves.

And as for me, I stayed on with uncle at the farm until he died of that bronchitis I told you of, and the little wing was built up again, and the lichen has grown on it, so that now you could hardly tell it is only forty years old; and he left me all his money, and when he died, and Whitecroft went to a distant relation, I came here to do what bits of good I could.

And I have never told the truth about this to any one but you. I couldn't have told it to any one as cared, but I know you don't. So that makes it easy.

HER MARRIAGE LINES

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