Part 4

“I think o’ the example, ma’am,” she whispered, her eyelids positively quivering with righteousness as she proceeded to her work. “I’ve done more for Mrs. Wood than I should ha’ done a’ready. Many’s the time I’ve overlooked it when she were late with my rent. And yet she earns as good as most, and I didn’t ought to. We must think o’ the deservin’ fust.”

“Well, she ’ave done the best she could for ’er childer ye must allow,” argued the other. “They’s the cleanest and best be’aved children in the village—everybody says so—and allers at school, ’cept Sue, as stays to ’elp ’er mother now. Nobody can’t say but what Lucy Wood ’aven’t toiled for ’em all, and ’alf killed ’erself too! The master told me if ever she was to ’ave another turn same as that she ’ad last winter, she couldn’t get over it no-ways.”

“Folk must lie as they’ve made their beds,” repeated Miss Hearn, pitilessly. “If she ’ad ha’ kep’ ’erself _to_ ’erself she wouldn’t ha’ ’ad no sich turns at all.”

“Well, ye can’t expect girls to bide single,” began the other; but the post-mistress handed her postal order with: “Six and sixpence, ma’am, please,” in such a business-like voice that the torrent of her speech was checked.

She took out the money sadly. She had seen trouble enough in the doctor’s house to have a kindly corner in her heart, disciplinarian though she professed herself.

“Nobody wouldn’t deny but what poor Lucy would ha’ done better if she ’adn’t never ha’ seen that Jerry,” she began again; “and if the Lord was to be minded to take ’im, o’ course she could do much better for ’erself and the childer....”

“That may be _very_ like,” interrupted the tyrant sternly. “Nevertheless, ye’ll please not to take the Lord’s name in vain on _my_ premises! We poor sinners ain’t got nothin’ to do wi’ the ways o’ Providence.”

“No offence,” said the visitor cheerily. “I’m sure _I_ don’t want to presume to interfere with Them above; and p’r’aps Lucy mightn’t be pleased, though it would make things so much easier for ’er. She do seem sot on ’im still, don’t she? I often wonder,” she added confidentially, “if she guesses as ’e ain’t true to ’er.”

Miss Hearn assumed a more shocked expression than ever.

“When a woman ’ave so far forgot ’erself there’s _no_ length she won’t go to!” said she sententiously. “She ain’t never ’ad no proper pride—and she won’t get it now. Always a-defendin’ and a-upholdin’ o’ ’im! It’s terrible to witness!”

“Yes, it’s my belief she loves ’im still,” said the doctor’s housekeeper reflectively.

And then the postman came in with the mail-bag, and the post-mistress was forced to make up for lost time, and look sharp stamping the letters. The visitor hastened to depart.

If she could have seen the object of her good-natured consideration a few hours later she would certainly have been inclined to endorse her own opinion that Lucy loved him still.

All the day long she had been watching for him, and no cries of children nor weary attention to work, nor quaint, practical comfort from her wise little first-born, could dull her ear to every footstep along the stony road outside, or steel her heart against the silent misery that was slowly creeping around and upon it.

Father had not been home either to dinner or to tea. She had sent Sue to the Major’s, but he had not been there all day. She had even been herself to the “Public” on the village green to ferret out news of him, but no one had met him since they had seen them together that morning on the churchyard corner, and she began to feel pretty sure now that he had gone on the spree to some more distant “diggings,” as he was wont to do at times when he was thoroughly in with his bad companions and wanted to be out of reach of her “worritin’.”

“I ’spect ’e be down at the Arbour,” moaned she to the little daughter who sat laboriously darning a pair of stockings at her side, while she herself passed the iron up and down over the fine damask table-linen belonging to her best customers up at the “house.” And her gaze crept out of the window across the marsh-land that swept to the sea from the base of the cliff, on whose crest their cottage stood. She could not see “the Harbour,” as the villagers called it, for it was three miles away where the river oozed through muddy banks to the sea, but she could see a bit of the long white road upon which he would come when he started homewards.

“There were a brig due to-night,” she added, “and father do like to be by when there be a brig due—the fellers keep so merry.”

She was silent a moment, taking up her goffering-tongs to goffer a pillow-case frill and holding them to her cheek to test the heat.

“There, I do wish I ’adn’t been such a silly as to let out to Jim Casey this morning!” she went on presently. “I might ha’ knowed ’e’d pay me out somehow. ’E allers does.”

“I _’ate_ Jim Casey,” said the child, lifting serious brown eyes to her mother’s face, for all the world like her father’s.

“And the Lord knows _I_ do,” declared the mother peevishly. “It be all ’is fault as father be as ’e be. ’E ’ave done more ’arm than the Lord knows in this world, ’ave Casey.”

The child was silent. She didn’t understand, but she wasn’t meant to understand, and she didn’t want to. She was used to having her mother run on to her in an endless, peevish moan when things were “contrairy,” and she liked to sit and listen and feel important without knowing why.

“I’d like to pay Casey out some day, and no mistake,” said the mother vindictively.

And the little girl echoed the sentiment, looking up again with her frank eyes in which vindictiveness had not yet learned to dwell. “Do, mother,” she said, being sure of one thing only, and that was that she did not like Jim Casey, because he somehow worked her father ill.

The mother’s face did not relax; she went on ironing desperately, slapping the iron on to the linen and dropping it heavily on to the stand again. But presently she looked up; she was folding the last table-napkin, and she laid it on the pile. Her eyes were full of tears.

“Father ’ll be ’ome soon, I ’spect,” said Sue gently, watching her.

“The Lord knows,” sighed the mother, and if the child had had more worldly wisdom she would have guessed that a fresh sting had crept into her misery; “there be no tellin’! But _you_ ’aven’t got no need to worrit. You go and bring the children in from their play, and get ’em washed, and the supper spread, there’s a good child. I ’ope they ’aven’t strayed far.”

She put up the back of her hand and dried her eyes as she stepped to the door whence a flight of brick stairs led to the road along the cliff’s edge.

All day long storm-clouds had been circling round the distant sister town, and sweeping up across the marsh from the sea, piling themselves together thick and dark, and emptying their heaviness upon the wide, sad land. But, with the westering sun, they had lightened a bit, and there were holes in them that let the blue through in patches, and, above the ramparts of purple downs that enclosed the land that had once been water, they had parted now, leaving a long red line between their own murkiness and the sombre hue of the hills below: in one place the red was of blood, and the black arms of the windmill on the down’s crest made a cross upon it as of a Calvary.

Mrs. Wood did not notice the sunset, but she sighed as she looked out into the waste below, where, slowly and steadily, thick mists were rising from the dykes, or stealthily creeping across the marsh-land.

“My, it ’ave rained a lot,” said she, “the river be big. And I shouldn’t be surprised if we ’ad a nasty sea-fog to-night too.”

“Well,” said the child smiling with quick intention, “father knows ’is way ’cross the marsh, well enough.”

“Oh, I don’t s’pose ’e be likely to lose ’is way at this time o’ day, drunk or sober,” allowed the mother, with another sigh. “That ain’t all.”

And then she shaded her eyes and made out two dark and two fair-haired curly heads in the group of children playing in the road, and called out to them to come in to bed. She caught the last, the youngest, who was a boy, in her arms as he came up the steps and hugged him, and laughed for the first time that day as he kicked and struggled to get free.

“They’re in a rare mess, Sue,” she called out to the little elder sister. “You’d best give ’em their supper first, while I step up wi’ the linen. I won’t be long, but I must look in at the Post-office ’bout that there job or I’ll be too late. Leave washin’ o’ Johnnie till I come in; ’e’ll be too much for you.”

She passed back into the dwelling-room, taking off her apron and rolling down her sleeves as she went.

“The shirts can wait till the mornin’,” she added. “They want some airin’ yet.”

“I ’ope ye’ll get the work at the new ’ouse, mother,” said Sue cheerily as her mother went down the road; and she set the little brothers and sisters around sitting on the doorstep and gave them their milk and dry bread for supper.

But the luck was not in Mrs. Wood’s way that day; the job was gone before she got to the Post-office. Miss Hearn assured her curtly that it had been gone before she knew of her wanting it; it had gone to Widow Collins.

“I should ha’ thought ye might ha’ guessed I should want it fast enough, ma’am,” said poor Lucy humbly. “Widow Collins ain’t got no mouths to feed now ’er son’s provided for, and I don’t never ’ave work enough, wi’ all I can get to feed them as counts upon me.”

“Well, I’m sorry for ye,” said the post-mistress, though her tone belied her words, “but I’m bound to speak fair and honest to strangers accordin’ to what I’m asked, ye know. And folk will put awkward questions sometimes.”

Mrs. Wood flushed hot.

“’Tain’t fair, then,” said she, her voice trembling, but whether she alluded to the question that had been put, or to the answer that had been given, she did not specify. “If I do my work proper, and up to time, I don’t think nothink else ain’t nobody’s business.”

“That’s as may be,” retorted the superior, pursing her lips, and Lucy Wood went home.

She had heard no word of her husband—nothing but that Jim Casey had gone to the sea-port, and thither she was forced to suppose Jerry had gone too.

She washed her boy and put him to bed and bade Sue turn in too, and when she had damped the linen ready for the morrow’s final ironing, she put a light in the window, in case Jerry should come by the top way, and closing the front door softly, slunk shyly down to the wall at the end of the road to watch for that home-coming that she longed for and yet dreaded.

Many a time had she thus watched and waited before, but somehow to-night there was on her a deeper and more incomprehensible fear than she had ever known.

A horrible and sinister sense of mystery seemed to hang over everything: the moon was struggling with clouds that continually overswept and swamped her, and even when she looked forth it was with no mild radiance, but as though coldly trying to pierce some cruel secret; white and dense the sea-fog overspread the marsh like a blanket, swaying even up to the village on the cliff and floating softly down its streets and around its old church in the big square graveyard. One could scarcely see a yard in front of one, and two men who came smartly up the hill and round the corner did not see Lucy as she hung over the wall peering down the road.

“Pore Mrs. Wood, she’ll ’ave a job wi’ ’im to-night, she will!” said one with a laugh. “I often wonders whether she guesses the worst on ’im and just keeps dark on it for ’er pride’s sake.”

“Ye never can tell wi’ folk,” said the other sagely. “The gals from the ’Arbour don’t often come up this way, and I don’t s’pose no one’d go for to tell ’er.”

“Lord love ye, ye can’t never tell what nasty turn one woman’d do another,” declared Wilson. “Though I dare say she’d sooner put up wi’ it all than be rid on ’im, if the truth was known. It be past crediting what some women’ll look over in a man as they love.”

He started, for he felt a touch on his arm in the mist, and looking round recognized Lucy.

“I was thinkin’ p’r’aps ye might ha’ seen my ’usband down at the ’Arbour, Mr. Wilson,” said she in a thin, panting voice, that told of inner anguish bravely concealed. “’E ain’t come ’ome yet, and it be a nasty aitchy night.”

The man turned away his eyes from her miserable, eager face and looked at his comrade.

“Oh, don’t ye worrit, Mrs. Wood,” said the latter after a minute, during which the two looked blankly at one another. “Jerry be all right. We did see ’im down yonder, but ’e be wi’ a lot of ’em, and they’ll bring ’im ’ome, you can make sure.”

Bring him home! The words had an ominous sound, and she did not dare ask more.

She looked wistfully down the hill—or down as much of it as one could see in the damp, creeping atmosphere; the long, weary road across the lonely plain, with the sad swish of the waves coming nearer the further one went, till one reached the place where only white stones by the dyke’s side marked the way across the marsh to the harbour—it was all vividly present to her mind’s eye, and she knew it was no safe spot for a drunken man to cross in a thick fog.

“’E might want to leave and come ’ome afore the others was ready,” she said in the same thin, high voice. “I’ve ’alf a mind to go ’long the road to meet ’im.”

“Lord love ye, Mrs. Wood, ye mustn’t do no such thing,” said the man whom she had called Wilson, authoritatively. “The mist be as thick as mush on the marsh, and it wouldn’t be safe. Your man be all right. The boys wouldn’t never leave ’im—I know.”

She sighed; the assertion made it plainer than ever to her in what condition they had last seen him. She drew the old shawl that she had caught up in her haste tightly round her elbows and shivered.

“You go ’ome to the childer,” said the man kindly. “They be little uns; they needs ye most, ye know.”

“Thank ye,” retorted she sharply, “I knows best for myself where’s I be most needed. The childer’s in bed and asleep these hours gone.”

And she turned back to her old place by the wall, leaning on it and gazing down into the marsh.

The men walked on, and were gone in the mist.

It was the last mortification that could be laid on her—that folk should _know_—what she had known for long. But she was too actually sodden with misery to care as she would have cared a year or two ago. For she knew it—oh, yes, she knew it all! But she had never let any one guess that she knew it, least of all him. Perhaps it was because of her pride, as the man had surmised; perhaps it was because she had a vague hope that by silence and patience she would best strengthen the thread that still held him to her. She was only a simple woman, but she understood him pretty well, and she knew that the thread was there; she knew that it was weakness that led him away from her—weakness fortified by evil counsel and evil comradeship. And in the darkness she clenched her poor horny little hand and prayed that she might be even with Casey some day.

And meanwhile she waited, shivering in the fog, and her heart went out in passionate longing to the man who was faithless to her, who neglected her, who squandered her earnings, and was slowly bringing her to the grave. Wilson had said: “It’s past crediting what some women’ll look over in the man they love!”

But the minutes flew fast and grew into a long hour, and there was no sign of Jerry, and at last the wife had to remember the mother and go home to the babes.

Little Sue stirred.

“Be that father?” asked she drowsily.

“No, dear, not yet. You go to sleep,” said the mother,

“But ye won’t fret, mother, will you?” said the child again.

“Oh, no, dear, I won’t fret,” promised the poor soul, though her voice would have given the lie to her words had the child not been dulled with healthy weariness.

The little one turned round in bed, and the mother sat herself by the window wrapping her shawl more closely around her.

But she did not keep her promise—she did fret. She sat and rocked herself to and fro, and thought of all she might have done which she had not done, and of all she had done that would have best been left undone.

Yes, she had worried him; she had been too sharp, too fretful. She had not been able to make life gay for him—there were always so many cares; and he hated cares and loved gaiety.

Only that very morning she had found fault with him, and been cross to him before strangers; any man would hate that, and he hated it more than most. Why had she been so foolish? No wonder he had gone to the Harbour and to “them ’orrid girls.” It was her own fault. But when he came home, she would not speak a word of reproach. He should just sleep it off and not a word said. And she would get credit somehow to get him nice dinners. If only it weren’t that nasty old Miss Hearn to whom the rent was due!

And so she sat and planned and waited, and the lamp burned low, but he did not come.

Sleep won on her after her hard day’s work and she dozed off, and as she dozed she thought she was in the steep lane again where her Jerry had courted her first, and she felt the scent of pines after a hot day sweet in her nostrils, and the breath of kisses sweeter still upon her lips, and the soft tenderness of the warm moonlight slowly persuading her happy senses.

And she awoke with a start.

There was moonlight without, but it was wan and chill, and the only scent was a scent of salt sea spray that was borne in upon the fog: but there was a sound of voices in the night.

In a moment her hand was on the latch, and she was out on the threshold above the brick steps.

A man and a woman were coming up them, but the man was not her husband. It was Mr. Wilson, whom she had seen earlier in the evening—whom she had overheard—wondering “if she knew.” A sudden wave of anger against him swept over her, the foam of the mortification that she had so long endured.

The blood went to her head.

“What d’ye want?” said she savagely, standing at the top of her steps as though to guard her threshold.

But even as she spoke the words, the wave had passed over her, leaving her cold and shivering. For Wilson was silent, and there was a look of pity on his plain face. She looked at the woman: it was the doctor’s old housekeeper.

“What do ye want?” she repeated, but there was less fierceness in the voice now: it was half plaintive, half peevish.

The woman came two steps further up, but still Lucy guarded her threshold.

“Hush!” she whispered hoarsely, “don’t wake the childer. If there be trouble, say so. It won’t be nothin’ new for ye to tell me my man be drunk. Ye be all on yer pleased enough to come and say so. And if the truth was known I dare say ye wouldn’t mind sayin’ as ’e’d been down with the bad girls at the ’Arbour as well,” added she recklessly. “You be all on yer glad enough to say every bit o’ ill ye can on us both. Oh, yes, I know ’ow you and Miss ’Earn lays yer ’eads together agin me,” cried she, working up her anger the better to drown her fear. “I s’pose ye think it do but serve me right if ’e should treat me bad seein’ as I made myself too cheap to ’im at first. Oh, yes, don’t mind me—say it out, do.”

She ended in a whimper, and the old woman looked helplessly back at the man who waited lower down.

“Whativer shall we do wi’ ’er?” she whispered.

Mr. Wilson moved up.

“Look ’ere,” said he firmly, “we ain’t come to say no such things as you fancy. We means kindly by ye—we wants to ’elp ye all we can. For there _be_ trouble, missus, and ye got to brace up to meet it.”

“Yes,” repeated the old woman, “ye’ve got to brace yerself up and keep yerself quiet, my dear.”

Lucy drew her shawl very tightly about her, and came down to them, driving them, as it were, before her.

“I don’t want no noise ’ere,” she said surlily. “Where be ’e?”

“’E be at the doctor’s,” said Wilson.

“Yes, ’e be at the master’s,” repeated the woman—“there’ve been a bit of a h’accident....”

Lucy pushed past her, and hurried round the corner and up the hill; the two had hard work to keep up with her.

“Casey be in it,” she muttered to herself. “Casey done it, I know. I’d like to be even wi’ Casey!” Then turning, she said fiercely, “Where be ’e?”

“Who?” asked Wilson.

“Casey,” said she.

“’E be ... ’e be took up,” answered the man.

Her face positively shone.

“What, took by the perlice?” she cried, clutching his arm. “Will ’e go to prison?”

“Oh, yes, ’e’ll go to prison,” said the man.

“The Lord be praised!” she said, stopping dead.

The old woman, who had been unable to keep the pace, caught them up.

“Look ’ere, ye must look sharp,” she panted, “if ye want to see ’im alive, my dear.”

“Alive? Who?” asked Lucy stupidly.

The old woman glanced at the man.

“I thought ye’d told ’er,” she said.

Lucy gazed at them.

“If ye mean as Casey ’ave killed my Jerry,” she began slowly, trembling as she spoke.

“’E ain’t dead, my dear, ’e ain’t dead yet,” faltered the old housekeeper.

Lucy began to run.

“Anyways it weren’t the blow Casey ’it ’im as done for ’im, Mrs. Wood,” panted Wilson, keeping up with her, “Nobody don’t love Casey, but ’tweren’t all ’is fault. There _were_ a bit of a brawl—over a gal. Jerry was drunk, ’e ’it out. Then the perlice come. Somebody did say Casey split on Jerry, but if ’e did ’e be paid for it. For t’other boys ’elped Jerry off—’e was allers a favourite with ’em—and Casey, seein’ ’isself left-like, ’it out at the perlice. Nobody knows the rights o’t, but Casey be took up. So’d Jerry ha’ been if ’e ’adn’t come by that fall on the bridge. ’E was blind-drunk, and ’e missed ’is foot in the mist.”

“Casey done it,” was all Lucy said. “’Oo’s fault was it as ’e were drunk?” And she ran on.

Lights appeared faintly before her through the murky mist; they shone from the doctor’s house at the corner of the churchyard. The moon, piercing the clouds for a moment, threw a wan light on the square tower of the old church, on the summit of its massive buttresses, on the lopped pine-tree beyond; but it was too feeble to illumine the dank vapours that floated through the ghostly arches of the ruined transepts and rested, almost opaquely, on the tops of the time-worn tombstones in the graveyard.

There was a little knot of folk in the road hard by the surgery door; the same lads were there who had stood at the same corner in the morning, goading the wife to frenzy with their careless taunts, merrily “chaffing” the man whom they had now carried home to die: they stood aside, shamed and silent, to let the widow pass.

The doctor appeared in the doorway; he was a rough old man, and he had often roughly upbraided this woman for bringing children into the world at the risk of her life—children whom she was too frail to suckle and too poor to properly feed; but he took her kindly by the hand now.

“Come,” said he gently.

Something in his voice told her the truth: she looked at him wildly.

Yet she would not understand.

“Where be ’e? I must see ’im alone,” she said, always speaking in that hard, high voice. “We had words this mornin’ when we parted ... it were that Casey’s fault ... I _must_ tell Jerry....”

“Hush!” said the doctor, solemnly, interrupting her. “You shall see him. But you must be brave—for the sake of your children.”

“Oh, never mind the children,” cried she, half-petulantly. “I want Jerry....”

“Hush!” said the doctor again. And he led her within into the surgery where those lights were burning that she had seen through the mist as she ran—cursing Casey in her heart.

There was a deep silence for a moment, and then those without heard a great cry.

“Poor soul!” murmured the old housekeeper, wiping her eyes. “He were a bad man to ’er, God knows! But—there—she loved ’im to the last, I do b’lieve.”