Part 13

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.

It was a bright, clear spring morning. A keen east wind was blowing the cherry-blossom about, and the narcissus and daffodils along the cottage path swayed beneath it; but the sun was shining, and it was a good drying day, so Letty had just set to at the week’s washing, and was standing with her arms white in suds, when she saw Frewin open the gate and come slowly—very slowly—up to the door. She dried her hands and went to open it.

He held out a black-edged letter towards her.

“I’m sure I ’ope it ain’t bad news,” said he sadly.

She took it with a frightened face, still drying her hands mechanically. He turned his back, preparing to depart; yet he waited until she had opened it.

A little low ripple of laughter broke from her.

“Well, I suppose I ought to be ashamed to laugh,” said she. “But, Lor’, it give me such a fright I can’t ’elp but be pleased. Ye see, my brother’s away at sea, and it do give ye a turn when ye get a thing like this. But it’s only to say as old Aunt Porter’s gone, and she’s been bedridden and childish this ten years, and I ’aven’t seed her for twenty! Mother’d say it weren’t seemly of me not to take on, but, truth to tell, I’m so pleased it ain’t Jim, I can’t seem to mind much.”

“O’ course not,” assented the postman. "Old folks is bound to go,"—and he sighed—“and when they’s lost their wits and their limbs ’tis but a ’appy release, as the saying is. Well, I’m glad it ain’t nothink wrong with yer brother,” he said as he turned to go. But he said it sadly, and sighed again.

Letty put the letter in her pocket, and lifted her eyes to his with their sweetest, kindest look.

“It’s very friendly o’ you to mind whether the news was good or bad,” said she with a little laugh. “I’m sure it ain’t many as’d care a rap. Do you mind all the black-edged letters as ye give round now?”

There was just a thought of roguishness in the smile, and just a suspicion of the old coquettish air in the tilt of the dainty face; but it must only have been from habit, for the pretty grey eyes were a little dewy still, and the voice had none of the usual raillery in its tone.

But Frewin did not answer her question, and his quiet young face was still sad and preoccupied as he said:

“I’m in trouble myself to-day. I’d be sorry to bring the same to anybody.”

Her expression changed at once; every trace of coquetry was wiped out of it in a twinkling. She came a step nearer to him.

“In trouble!” echoed she. “Now I _am_ sorry. But p’r’aps ye wouldn’t care to tell, me being but a stranger, so to speak.”

“I don’t know as you’re so much a stranger,” he began, and then he broke off. “I ha’n’t got nobody but mother,” he added in a moment, irrelevantly.

“What, she ain’t sick?” cried the girl quickly, with real feeling in her voice.

“Got to go to the ’orspital,” answered Frewin shortly. “It’s her eyes. They say as she’ll be stone blind if she don’t ’ave su’thing done immediate. They say as it’d be coward-like o’ me not to persuade her to it, for it’s sarten-sure to be all right; but, Lor’, I ain’t got no faith in doctors.”

Letty was silent—most likely she shared his opinion, and could find nothing consolatory to say, but her pretty face was full of sympathy. He allowed himself one piece of comfort; he looked at it. Their eyes met, and hers filled with tears; but not before she had poured something into his that was not only sympathy.

“Good-day,” said he quickly, and in another minute he was hurrying down the road.

But the wager was won, though the village little guessed it, and though Letty gave that part of the matter never a thought just then—never a thought till Bank Holiday came and went without her having so much as a bit of a swain for the day—never a thought till the girls came up and laughed at her, and pitied her for having spent it sitting alone in the chimney-corner.

Then she thought of it, but not as they imagined. She did not tell them that she might have had the handsome miller for a “walking-stick” without any trouble at all—that he had laughingly declared he was in luck’s way, since he was like to keep the gloves and get her company as well, upon which she had tossed her head with all those old airs of supremacy which so forsook her in her intercourse with Bob Frewin, and told him that he might keep the gloves and welcome, but that her company he should never have again; she did not tell them that she might have been winning her wager that very afternoon, but that the young postman had been obliged to use this one day off duty to take his mother up to the hospital; she did not tell them, because she was doing her very best to forget she had ever made that wager at all.

But she was destined to win it for all that. The operation on the old woman’s eyes passed off most successfully, and every morning and every evening as Bob Frewin strode up and down the village street, with his post-bag swinging in front of him, and his sorted bundle of letters in his left hand, Letty managed to be somewhere about in the garden or the porch just to hear the last news of the invalid.

When Saturday evening came, the weather, that had been wet all the week, cleared up for a fine Sunday; it was the very last Sunday that was left to win the wager in, but it was not on that account that Letty’s heart beat as she saw Frewin stop at the wicket, and not seeing her in the front garden, fumble a minute at the latch, and come half reluctantly up to the porch.

She was glad that she was in the orchard beside the house, taking down the linen that she had hung out in the morning to dry—for the big apple-tree, that was pink with budding bloom, sheltered her, and from behind the sheet that she was just going to unfasten from the line she could watch him unseen.

But she wondered whether her mother would say where she was, and she just edged a little further beyond her ambuscade as she saw him turn away from the door.

Her heart beat, but—yes, mother had told, or else he had seen her, for he came towards her through the side wicket.

Then she came forward, and her smile was so tremulous, and her cheeks so blushing, that he seemed to forget all his stand-offishness and any cause of offence that he might have, and to take heart of grace from her bashfulness.

“Ye are busy,” said he, “but I won’t keep ye long. Mother’s getting on first-rate, and the Sister has writ me a line for her. There’s a message for you in it.”

The grey eyes went up to his.

“I do call that kind,” said she. “What is it?”

It was the young man who blushed now.

“It’s a foolish message,” said he with a little laugh. “But mothers are that way. Anyway it don’t seem fair not to give it ye.”

“Oh, never mind,” faltered the girl, for there was a misgiving at her heart. But he had taken the letter out of his pocket.

“Tell Letty Cox,” he said, “as I thank her for her kindness to my lad in his trouble.”

“Kindness!” repeated she tremulously, and with downcast face.

“Well, when a feller’s a bit down, miss, ye wouldn’t think how it sort o’ cheers ’im up to ’ave somebody ’pear to care. It’s not many thinks of an old woman, but mother’s all the world to me.”

“O’ course she is,” murmured Letty.

“Leastways,” added the postman, rather darkly, “I didn’t think as I should ever think of another female but ’er again.”

“No,” said Letty softly.

“But there’s never no tellin’ what folks’ll do—man nor woman,” added Frewin wisely.

“No,” said Letty again.

And then there was a pause, during which she unfixed another white sheet from against the gentle blue of the evening sky.

“You’ll excuse me if I’m too free, miss,” said Frewin presently. “But you see—well, there, it was talk o’ the village, so ye must ’ave ’eard it with the rest! I was fooled once, and that’s the truth, and I don’t mean to be fooled again.”

There was no answer, and Letty’s face was somehow hidden behind the blushing blossom of a low branch of the apple-tree.

“So p’r’aps you’d excuse me,” he repeated, “if I was to ask you, as a plain man, whether you was a-walkin’ with Lambert o’ Bank ’Oliday when I was in town?”

The face emerged from behind its leafy screen, and was no longer tremulous but haughty.

“Well, it _is_ a queer question,” said she, “and no mistake! But,” she added quickly, seeing him turn away,—“well, there, I don’t mind answering: Mr. Lambert asked me, but I didn’t fancy ’im. I sat alone all day.”

And it may have been the shame of such a confession from an acknowledged village belle that called the blush again to her cheek.

“Ye don’t say so, now,” declared the man, pleased. “Ye see, ye took Lambert’s loan as against mine the other day at the station, and, one thing and another—well, there—a man ain’t goin’ to be fooled twice, you bet.”

At the last word she hung her head lower than ever, and there was another pause.

At last he said, sheepishly now: “But I don’t s’pose ye would walk with me next Sunday. Though it seems clearin’ up for a nice day.”

He waited for an answer, but none came. Only after a minute or so a little sound as of stifled sobbing came from behind the white screen.

“Lor, whatever is the matter?” cried Frewin aghast. “Is it me that’s upset ye, my dear? There, ye don’t need to come if ye don’t want to. Any girl can say a feller nay. There’s no ’arm done yet.”

But still she cried on.

“I’d come right enough,” faltered she at last, between the sobs. “But—but there _is_ ’arm done.”

And then suddenly she dried her eyes, and looked up at him with frank, fearless gaze.

“Your mother said as I’d been kind to ye, Mr. Frewin,” said she. “But I ’ain’t been—for I’ve behaved bad to ye. Yes, I ’ave. And ye said as you weren’t goin’ to be fooled again. And—and I like ye too well to fool ye, and that’s truth. And—and so I’d rather tell ye as I _’ave_ fooled ye already.”

His face went white, and he stared at her.

“Fooled me!” echoed he. “Not a bit of it!”

“Yes, I ’ave,” insisted she doggedly. “The girls said ye was a rude, surly chap as wouldn’t throw a word to any of us, and I swore I’d make you. And then Charlie Lambert dared me to, and wagered me a pair o’ gloves it’d be no go. It was just a lark,” said she half defiantly, but then added, with a tell-tale throb of the voice, “though you can’t say as I’ve ever done it.”

Frewin did not smile, the unconscious humour of the phrase did not seem to strike him; he was upset.

“It was a dirty trick to play on a chap,” said he at last, “and Lambert shall pay me out for it.”

“No, come, that ain’t fair,” said Letty quickly. “It _was_ a dirty trick, and I knew that soon as ever I’d done it, but it was me that did it, and it’s me as has got to pay.”

“Ye seem bound to stand up for Lambert,” growled Frewin.

Letty looked up; she clenched her fist.

“I _’ate_ ’im,” said she between her teeth. “Yes, I do,” she repeated, though half shame-facedly, as he gazed at her surprised. “I _’ate_ ’im, ’cos it was ’im as made me do it.”

“’Ate ’im, do you?” echoed Frewin, with the ghost of a contented smile. “Well, may be that’s fair.”

“I don’t care if it’s fair or no,” declared Letty stoutly. “May be it ain’t, for I’d ought to ha’ known better myself, but I ’ate ’im all the same. Though that ain’t no reason why you should mention the matter to ’im, for it stands to reason I’d no call to agree to what ’e said, and it’s me as ’as got to pay.”

“It was ’e ought to ha’ known better,” grumbled Frewin again, still with a scowl on his honest face, “for ’e’s a man, and you expect a man to know better nor a girl.” But, after a pause, the scowl fading just a trifle, and the smile broadening instead: “So you ’ate ’im, do you?” he asked once more.

Letty dried her eyes afresh, and it was her turn to smile just a wee little bit. She had watched these symptoms before—for was she not the village belle?—and even in the midst of her misery and remorse she could not help smiling as she recognized them under a new guise.

“O’ course I do,” she repeated emphatically. Then she turned and pulled down another sheet off the line, and another and another, till her arms were quite full.

Meanwhile Frewin stood watching her, indecision in every line of his face and figure. She was very pretty, very graceful about her work, very strong and hearty. Her fresh cheeks were pink even amid the pink blossom, and her golden hair shone against the golden sky, where the sun was setting on a bank of soft rose-washed grey clouds behind the trees of the orchard.

“I s’pose anyways ye are sure to be taken up to-morrow evening?” said he at last. “A pretty girl like you always is o’ Sundays.”

“Well, if you know as I’m taken up, I s’pose I must be,” said she with a little pout.

“Ye didn’t answer just now,” he said.

“Maybe ye didn’t ask,” retorted she.

“Well, there, I’ll ask now,” said he with a bit of a shame-faced laugh. “Ye ’ave got a way with ye, miss, and no mistake!”

“Don’t ask to please me,” she said with the old toss of the little head. But the smile took the venom out of the words, and Frewin bowed beneath it as he had been slowly bowing ever since he first felt the flash of it.

“No, I’ll ask to please myself,” said he. And he went up to her and took her one free hand in his. Then the blushes crept right up into the bright hair, and there was silence.

“But we won’t walk hereabouts,” murmured she after a pause. “I’d not like to meet—folks. I tell ye what I should like if mother ’ll spare me, and that’d be for to go off right early and up in the train to see yer poor mother.”

“Would ye now?” declared he, well satisfied. “She’d be rare and pleased. Then that’s what we’ll do.”

The grey eyes stole a look at him.

“And by-gones to be by-gones?” begged she timidly. “And not a word to Charlie Lambert?”

He frowned a little.

“That’s as I sees fit,” said he.

“No, it’s as I sees fit,” murmured she softly, and her face was very close to his.

He smiled vaguely.

“You leave Charlie Lambert to me,” she added presently. “He pretty soon knew I was off it as soon as I was on. He’s got a flea o’ mine in his ear a’ready, and ’e’ll ’ave another if ’e don’t look out. You leave ’em all to me.”

“I s’pose everybody’s bound to do yer bidding sooner or later,” laughed Frewin half ruefully, “me as well as most.”

“Yes, don’t you make no mistake about that,” smiled she. “And what’s more, don’t ye ever go for to fancy that because I was such a bold-faced silly as to lay that wager I ever went for to win it. If ever there was a man I _didn’t_ try to catch, it was you.”

Frewin laughed.

“Ye’ve caught me though,” said he.

“That’s as may be,” she said. “But I was too frightened at what I’d done to fish for you.”

“P’r’aps that’s ’ow ye caught me then,” he said. “And p’r’aps that’s ’ow I must needs forgive ye!”

So the wager was won, but never paid.

For the trip to town was so deftly managed from a neighbouring station in the early hours of the Sunday, that nobody guessed it had taken place; and on the evening of the same day upon the old bridge, Letty swore a bold, brave lie that she had lost what she declared she had never tried to win. The laugh against her was loud, but then so was her own in reply, and when, six weeks later, instead of accepting Mr. Lambert’s gloves, she accepted Bob Frewin himself, she was too happy to care which way the laugh went. But to tell the truth, folk are good-natured enough; and if the girls suspected Letty’s little fraud, and, nudging one another, declared she was a clever one, they had no objection to her triumph, for Charlie Lambert was the better match of the two, and he was left for somebody else.

A NE’ER-DO-WEEL

A NE’ER-DO-WEEL

Two women and a lad came down the hill towards the stream on a frosty January evening at sunset.

It had been a good typical Christmas, and though the snow had partially disappeared, the river ran grey in the cold air, and the frost sparkled on the twigs of willows and on the brown stalks of tall water plants upon the banks.

The lad lounged easily along with his cap on the back of his head, his hands in his breeches pockets, and his pipe in his mouth; but the women bore burthens—one a bundle of brushwood on her head, the other a sack of potatoes—and as they reached the bridge they stopped to rest them awhile on its old brick parapet.

“’Old yer row, do!” the boy was saying. “What do it matter to you whether old Jeremiah ’ave a-turned me off agin or no? Ain’t I my own master?”

“Oh, ye’re yer own master safe enough,” retorted the woman, a sharp-featured body of middle age. “There ain’t nobody as ’ll worrit ’emselves much over ye now ye’ve put yer pore mother underground. If that’s what ye wanted when ye set to work to break ’er ’eart, why ye’ve got it.”

“Well, I want it now anyways,” retorted the lad with a brutal laugh.

“You’re an ungrateful beast, that’s what ye are!” said the woman shrilly. “I’d ’ave guv ye bite and sup for a night or two, for my pore sister’s sake, till ye got work again; but I shan’t now.”

“Nobody asted ye to!” laughed the lad. “When ye guv me a shake-down before ye said ye did it for ’er, but ye wanted my earnin’s all the same. And when I was turned off the farm ye turned me out in the road. I’d sooner shift for myself, thank ye!”

“Do it, then!” retorted the woman. “It looks like it, it do, and you sent adrift agin this very night! Lord, to think the devil o’ drink can get into a lad afore ’e’s forgot ’is mother’s milk!”

“If you don’t stop that jaw I’ll——” began the boy.

But the other woman laid a hand on his arm. She had a fresher, plumper, kindlier face than her neighbour, and she gave him a little friendly push as she whispered—

“There, now, there, she’s yer own mother’s sister ye know. You go ’ome.”

“Mother’s sister be damned,” said the lad irreverently. “She’s come that dodge over me long enough. She wouldn’t lift a finger to ’elp me, and I won’t ’ave no more of ’er preachments. I ain’t got no one to think of, and what I earns I’ll spend as I please.”

“A jolly lot you ever did hanything else,” began the aunt afresh, but the neighbour stopped her mouth.

“Now you go ’ome, Nat, you go on ’ome,” reiterated she to the boy; and “Can’t ye see as yer on’y aggrawatin’ the lad, Mary Ann?” she whispered to the woman. “Let ’im be, do! Maybe ’e misses his ’ome and his pore mother more than you thinks for.”

But Nat laughed as he blew the ashes from his pipe.

“Ye needn’t trouble to speak up for me, marm,” he sneered. “Lord, she don’t ’urt me, bless you,” and he snapped his fingers in the direction of his relative. “A precious sight I ever cared for the women-folk’s jaw. Oh, yes, I’ll go _’ome_,” and something that somehow did not belong to the scowl flitted across the passionate young face that self-indulgence had so sorrowfully marred. “I’ll go _’ome_! But where I goes there I bides—ye ’ear that? No one ain’t got no right to interfere wi’ me. I won’t never darken _your_ doors no more, and if I’m a-goin’ to the devil I’ll go my own way.”

He stuck his cap on the back of his head again and his hands in his pockets, and lounged up the road singing a scrap of a low song in a louder voice than he could keep quite steady.

“It’s a pity, so it is,” murmured the stout woman, looking after him. “There was the makin’s of a nice lad in ’im once, I’ll be sworn.”

“You’re a new comer to the place,” retorted Mary Ann, “and that’s all you knows! If ’is pore mother didn’t fret the very guts out of ’erself a-tryin’ to bring ’im up respeckable! But the devil of ’is father were in ’im—that’s where it was. The low brute that man was! And died same as ’e lived. Found on the road—i’stead o’ dyin’ respeckable in ’is bed! As if ’e ’adn’t ha’ done the woman injury enough! Why—there was a Crowner’s inquest and all! But, Lor’, when all was said and done, I declare I niver spent a comfortabler ’alf hour than when I seed ’em nail ’im down! For, ye see, I says to myself: ‘Clara ’ll take on a bit, but she’s well rid on ’im. She can work to bring _one_ up, and the boy ’ll soon be able to work for ’er.’ Lord, I didn’t reckon as ’e’d be a wuss devil nor ’is father, bad luck to ’im!”

“May be ’is pore mother spoiled ’im, being but the one, so to speak,” said the other half apologetically.

“Spoiled ’im!” laughed the other, preparing to shoulder her burthen again. “I reckon she did! Many’s the time I swore she’d be punished for it!”

“Well, I s’pose she was,” said the neighbour simply. “There, pore soul, I’m sorry for ’er.”

“’E broke ’er ’eart, ’e did, the young scoundrel,” growled Mary Ann, as she hitched the bundle of brushwood forward on to her back. “And I’m sure I ’ope he’ll break his own neck.”

“Oh, come, don’t say that,” murmured the gentler spirit reprovingly. “I dare say ’e’s lonesome enough anyways.”

“Lonesome!” sneered the incensed relative. “Much use ’e made of ’er company when ’e’d got it! Out on the roads, or what not, from night till morn and more! Didn’t ye ’ear ’im say precious little ’e cared for the women’s jaw? Precious little ’e did. Precious little ’e cared for aught about ’er, pore soul. Why, ’e was dead drunk the very day of ’er funeral!”

Mary Ann trudged forward as she spoke, hurling the words out against the wind under the penthouse of her burthen, and the sympathetic neighbour, standing behind her with her hands in her hips, shook her head sadly.

“That was bad,” she murmured, “that was bad, sure enough.”

Then she too turned to take up her load.

The potatoes were heavy; she failed to raise them on to her back at the first effort.

Just then the gate on to the railway line slammed to, and a girl coming down on to the bridge hurried forward and gave her a lift with them.

“Thank ye, thank ye,” said the woman. And when she had settled her burthen comfortably, glancing up to see who had helped her, she added again: “Oh, thank ye. Ye’re a stranger in the parish, ain’t ye?”