Part 12

“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.