Part 5

A year had passed away. It was autumn again, and Lucy Wood sat out on the threshold above her brick steps and gazed down into the marsh, and across it to the distant town and harbour. Her delicately fair face was wan and shrivelled, her eyes dull and sunken, her slender form now emaciated. She had been very ill. The doctor had given her up, but he had done all he could though he guessed well enough she could never pay him, and to-day he had sent his trusty housekeeper with a bowl of her special milk-broth, and to induce her to take a breath of fresh air in the late September sunshine. For it was no stormy September this year: the marsh lay brown and mellow with the hips and haws red on its hedges, and the river stealing across it to the sea; and the sea was dappled with the pale purple shadows cast upon its gently heaving surface by little fleecy puffs in the serenest of skies, that was only barred by the violet horizontal clouds of fine weather across the distance.

But the fine weather brought none of its peace to the widow; the placid sunshine seemed only to make her the more gloomy, as though she were fretting to have even the mist back again on the marsh—the mist through which she had so often listened and trembled—the mist that brought her the keenest memory of the worst, yet the best, that she had ever known on earth.

Every one had said that when Lucy Wood got over the shock she would “’ave ’er ’ealth again” as she had never had it through the last five years of her wretched married life, and Miss Hearn had been “pleased to think that the misguided woman wouldn’t ’ave nothing now to take ’er off them pore children as she ’ad been so wicked as to bring into this weary world.”

But every one had been wrong.

Miss Hearn had been shocked to see that the children looked less neat than formerly, and were more rarely sent to school, and shook her curls quite viciously when she declared that she should turn the woman out after all if she didn’t pay her rent next quarter; and Miss Hearn would have been more bitter than ever if she had heard the whisper that ran round to the effect that poor Lucy had been known to take her drop of comfort at times when she was most low. But the kindlier neighbours kept her secret and tried to screen her. Only they shook their heads too when the scarlet fever appeared in the village, and Tom and ’Lizabeth took it, and the doctor upbraided the mother for carelessness, and perhaps they might have been more down upon her still, but that the boy died, and the mother collapsed entirely, so that there was nothing for it but to help with the other children and nurse the woman—because there was no one else to do it.

Thanks to these good folk and the handy and patient little elder daughter, Lucy was creeping slowly back to life again, but it was helplessly and unwillingly, and the doctor’s old housekeeper was trying to put a little spirit into her this pleasant autumn day.

“Why, it’s a real treat to see ye out again, my dear,” she was saying cheerily. “And ye look nicely; don’t she, Sue?” she called to the little girl who was tidying up busily within.

The child came to the door to shake a duster; her plump, rosy checks were thinner and sallower than of yore, and her round, brown eyes less bright.

“Yes,” she said, speaking cheerfully, but looking across rather doubtfully at the invalid; “mother do look a bit spryer.”

“Why, ye’d be about agin in no time if ye’d but use a little h’effort yerself,” declared the old woman. “Doctor says so, and I’m sure ’e’d ought to know, seein’ as ’e brought ye through them h’awful times ye used to ’ave afore yer ’usbin’ was took.”

Lucy’s white face flushed as with anger.

“I didn’t ’ave no sich h’awful times as I’ve ’ad since!” she whined. “There was summit to get better for then.”

The child bit her lip and went indoors. There was silence for a moment while one could hear her clattering the irons down to the fire ready for the bit of laundry-work she was trying hard to keep pace with against the time mother should be fit to take it up again.

“Ye didn’t ought to talk so, Mrs. Wood,” said the woman. “What, ’aven’t ye got your childer?”

“What ye’ve got don’t giv ye back what ye ’aven’t got,” she said, in the same peevish tone.

“But ye ought to think o’ yer duty,” said the other.

Lucy flushed again.

“Oh, I’ve done my duty ’s well as most,” she said. “I don’t feel no call to be ’shamed. As for the gals, Sue be fit for service now, and I’ve ’eard of a place for ’er down town, and my sister ’ave promised to ’ave ’Lizabeth out to the ’Arbour till she be old enough to do for ’erself.”

“Ain’t ye afraid o’ lettin’ a gal grow up at the ’Arbour?” said the woman. “Don’t ye know what most o’ them comes to? And they do say....”

“What do they say?” cried Lucy fiercely.

“Lor’ a mercy,” said the woman, “ye didn’t ought to catch a body up so sharp. I was only a-goin’ to say as they do say the air down by them mud-banks ain’t ’ealthy for growin’ childer.”

“Oh, was that all?” said the widow, turning her face away.

The woman beside her shook her head, and lifted her eyes as much as to say that this was altogether past her comprehension; then, presently, as though to start a new subject of conversation, she said, cheerfully:

“’Ave ye ’eard as that Jim Casey ’ave got two years this time? ’E did ought to ha’ got it long ago, but....”

She stopped suddenly, for Sue had come up behind her and was tugging at her dress and making signs to her behind the mother’s back.

At first the old woman only gaped at the child, but slowly she seemed to grasp the situation, and nodding and winking at her knowingly, finished up lamely enough with: “but there, never mind, it don’t signify.”

The sick woman turned round and saw the child.

“Ye don’t need to worry, Sue,” said she, in just the same spiritless tone as before. “I don’t take no ’eed o’ Jim Casey now. There was a time I’d ha’ been pleased to be even with ’im for a-leadin’ astray of yer pore father but, Lor’, ’tain’t no use now. I thought I was pleased ’e’d come to grief that night ’e done ’is worst, but, Lor’, it didn’t bring me my man back, and I don’t know now as it ’d ’elp me if Jim Casey was to swing.”

“Lor’ a mercy!” ejaculated the old woman again.

And Sue wiped away a tear with the corner of her little apron; but the mother did not heed.

“Come, there, now,” said the housekeeper, presently, “if ’ere don’t come post-mistress to cheer ye up a bit! She told me she should step up this arternoon to see ye ’bout the family’s washin’ up at the ’Ill. Old Widow Collins died last week, ye know, and she thinks she can git it for ye, may be.”

“I don’t want none o’ Miss ’Earn’s favours,” snapped Lucy. “She wouldn’t gi’ me the job when I wanted it—she can keep it now.”

“Well, I’m sure,” sighed the other. “Ye didn’t ought to be so ungrateful, ye didn’t. Anyways, ye’ll ’ave to tell her so yerself, for I’m sure I won’t.”

“Oh, I’ll tell ’er,” said Lucy.

And the old woman stood aside in the doorway as the post-mistress—the pink of respectability in rusty black—came slowly up the steps.

“Pleased to see ye yerself again,” said she, in tones that were meant to be kind.

“Thank you,” replied Lucy curtly. “I’m not sure as I know what that is.”

Miss Hearn stared. She was forced to suppose that illness had affected Mrs. Wood’s brain, for a mere laundress could never dare be impertinent to _her_!

“Well, anyways on the road to work again,” said she conciliatingly. “And I’ve brought ye a nice job,” she went on, with a patronizing shake of her greasy black ringlets. "Pore old Mrs. Collins ’ave gone at last"—this with a pious closing of the lids over the little black eyes—“so I’ve asted the missus at the ‘’Ill ’ouse’ to take ye on i’stead.”

“Thank ye; I ain’t fit for no more work yet,” said the widow ungraciously.

“Nonsense!” declared the post-mistress authoritatively. “Ye’re in a good way to be better nor ever ye’ve been in yer life, ain’t she, ma’am?” turning to the old housekeeper, who still stood aside.

“The master do say she ’ave pulled through wonderful,” allowed the person addressed.

“I ain’t never goin’ to be the same no more,” declared Lucy obstinately, setting her lips tightly, and drawing her skinny little body together with her own petulant movement.

“Ye ’aven’t got no business to talk so,” persisted the post-mistress sharply. “Ye can be what you choose.”

“Well, I ain’t goin’ to be no different, then,” repeated Lucy doggedly. “And I won’t take in no more work, thank ye.”

She tried to rise, but Miss Hearn held her with a mighty eye.

“Woman, do you know as you’re settin’ up yer ’orn against the Lord God A’mighty?” said she solemnly. “And do you know as you’ll be punished h’awful?”

“I been punished a’ready,” said Lucy.

“And if ye don’t do as ye ought by them as ye’ve brought into this sinful vale, ye’ll be punished worse,” decreed Miss Hearn.

“Them above ’as done their worst by me,” said Lucy, with a wan smile. “I don’t h’expec’ no more from them, and they don’t need to h’expec’ no more from me.”

Miss Hearn lifted her hands to heaven in silent horror.

“There, now, ye know ye care for the childer,” said the old housekeeper, from the doorway.

At the kind tones the tears sprang to Lucy’s eyes.

“There be enough for them,” she said.

“Not if ye pay yer way as ye should do,” said the post-mistress sententiously. “Folk ’as been kind cos o’ yer misfortune, but ’tain’t in reason they should keep it up. I’ve ’eard tell as ye ’an’t so much as paid for the smart funeral ye thought fit to ’ave a year ago.”

A spark of anger flew to Lucy’s weary eyes.

“Then it’s a lie!” she cried. “If I’d owed for the bread I put into the children’s mouths, I’d ha’ paid for that! And I don’t see what business it is o’ nobody’s neither if I chose to spend my money so as my own ’usbin’ should be nailed down in a coffin better nor some.”

She ended in a whimper, and sat shaking, the tears slowly trickling down her cheeks. But the post-mistress had no mercy. She was incensed at being thus set at naught, and put no guard on her tongue.

“Ye’ll ’ave them children on the parish,” she said, “and a disgrace to ye it’ll be! Ye ’ad wits enough and spunk enough so long as ’e was to do for! Didn’t ye wrong ’em enough whiles ’e was livin’ but what ye must wrong ’em worse now the Lord ’ave mercifully delivered ye from ’im? I’m ashamed of ye, Lucy Wood! And all for the sake o’ a drunken blackguard as couldn’t so much as keep ’isself to ye!”

Lucy had said she would never be the woman she was; but in a moment all her old energy returned to her.

“What d’ye mean?” she said.

“Well, if ye don’t know ye’d p’ra’ps best should,” said the post-mistress, half ashamed yet determined to have her say. “I mean as yer man....”

But she stepped aside hurriedly, for Lucy had risen tottering to her feet, and stood pointing to the road.

“Get out o’ ’ere!” interrupted she fiercely, her whole little body trembling with rage. “I know well enough what ye mean! But if ye dare so much as breathe a word agin my man in my ’ouse, I’ll knock ye down them stairs.”

All Miss Hearn’s elderly blood flew in a purple flood to her face.

“Hush, for mercy’s sake, ye don’t know what ye’re sayin’,” cried the old housekeeper in a frightened whisper.

“Yes, I do,” she said, quietly now. "Sue"—seeing the child standing in the doorway with a white and terrified face—“Sue, don’t be frightened, but come ’ere. We ain’t a-goin’ to ’ave father made light of, be we? Miss ’Earn says I ought sooner to ha’ schooled you and ’Lizbeth than ’ave bought yer father a decent coffin. But ye ain’t o’ that mind, I know!”

The child had come out on to the little terrace.

“No, mother,” said she valiantly, though in a low voice.

Lucy drew the girl to her and put her arm round her waist.

“We’ll stand up agin’ ’em when they take to makin’ light o’ yer father, anyways,” panted she, as she watched Miss Hearn pound down the stairs, muttering as she went. “And I’d take it very kindly o’ you if you’d see as the neighbours ’ears o’ this and understands my meanin’,” she added faintly, turning to the other old woman as she sank exhausted back into her chair.

“Yes, yes, don’t you worry now,” said the latter, sorely perplexed and scared as she tried to soothe her. “They’ll ’ear it all fast enough.”

“Sue be a good girl,” added the mother, patting the child feebly. “I ain’t long for this world, but so long as I’m ’ere they sha’n’t speak ill o’ my Jerry when I’m by, and Sue’ll stand by me in that.”

“Nobody won’t do it agin,” said the old woman. And then to the girl in an undertone: “Get ’er to bed, dear. I’ll run and tell the doctor. I’m afeard she might ha’ done ’erself a mischief.”

And she too stumped down the broken steps.

“I know I ’aven’t done the best for you and the little ’uns since father went,” whimpered the mother. “But father were allers fust, and I never couldn’t do nothin’ when ’e weren’t by. Ye’ll forgive me for it, Sue, and p’r’aps God will too.”

The child did not answer for a moment. Then she said simply:

“O’ course father were allers fust.”

And wearily the mother repeated:

“Yes, father were allers fust.”

HIS LITTLE MAID

HIS LITTLE MAID

The waning of the hot midsummer day spread its mellow sunlight and its long shadows across the marsh-land beside the sea. The haymakers had been busy since daybreak; men, women and children labouring through the hot hours, when the whole level was one scarcely varied monotony of golden haze on soft-green meadows and pastures that grew yellower as they neared the yellow beach; when the sun caked the pale brown earth in the furrows between the crops and drew faint odours from the rush-grown banks of the dykes where the moor-hen hid and the yellow iris bloomed; when the blue waves sparkled, and the shots and shades of the shallows purpled beneath the sun shining on the sea, and brought the only sense of freshness that came to the sun-steeped plain.

But now slender amethyst clouds barred the horizon and shed parallel shadows where the sky and sea melted together; the long line of white foreland to left grew clearer beneath the slanting rays; the sun was near to setting and the labourers were near to their rest.

Tom Wycombe stood beside the last waggon upon which he had just helped to hoist the last load of hay.

It was not his own land, though he had his bit up on the hill behind the old gateway of the ancient town. But he had given his day’s work to a farmer, as many another neighbour had done likewise.

He was a man somewhere near fifty on its wrong side, square and fair and rough-visaged, but the neighbours said kind of heart though sparing of speech.

But then he was a widower, and it was said he had never been the same man since he had become so, saving all his words and all his gentleness for his little mite of a motherless daughter—all the kin that he had.

As he stood now, wiping his brow with his hand, he glanced about him as though seeking something, and a woman guessing his mind, answered the unasked question,

“She be down by the river,” she said, “with farmer Daring’s lad.”

The man looked uneasy.

“Ain’t no one looking after ’em?” asked he.

The woman smiled.

“Ye be over timid about that child, Mr. Wycombe,” she said. “Ye cosset ’er more than her mother would ha’ done. And ye didn’t ought to, ye know. You’ll make ’er that tender and fearsome, she won’t be fit to stand up to the world.”

The man did not reply; he turned away to give a last hoist to the hay as the waggon moved off. He was used to these remarks from kindly busy-bodies, and he never paid more than scant attention to them, but went his own way as he listed.

“’E be downright silly over ’er, that’s what ’e be,” declared the woman confidentially to a girl who had been working beside her.

“Be ’e ’er dad?” asked the girl, who was a stranger in the parish.

The woman laughed.

“What makes ye ask that?” said she.

“Well,” said the girl, “’e looks old to be ’er dad. I thought ’e might be ’er gran-dad.”

“Oh, I see,” said the woman. “No, he ain’t ’er gran-dad.”

“Married a bit on in life p’r’aps,” said the other, tying the strings of her sun-bonnet and speaking without any particular interest.

“That’s it,” assented the woman, “and more fool ’e. ’E _would_ ’ave a young wife, and a pretty ’un too—and ’e turned forty.”

“Well, small blame to ’im there,” laughed the girl. “And so long as she were pleased....”

“She!” sneered the woman. “Why ’e was rich, and he married nothin’ but a shrimper’s darter down at the Harbour! ’Er face was ’er fortune if ever one was, for she ’adn’t a brass farthing beside.”

They had gathered their rakes and forks together, and were making their way across a little dyke into the road that wound across the marsh-land to the village on the hill.

“Then the little ’un be like her mother,” said the younger woman. “She don’t favour ’er father any way.”

“She be more like ’er mother than she be like Tom Wycombe, sartin sure,” laughed the woman. “But that ain’t saying much. ’Er mother were darker in the skin nor she be.”

“But they say she were rare ’andsome,” said the girl. “And now she’s dead and buried, and ’im alone!”

“Yes, died in childbed, and ’im alone this four years and more to mind that child. That’s what comes o’ marryin’,” said the woman, who was a spinster.

“Pore soul!” murmured the girl feelingly, thinking of her own pretty face and the pretty face that was underground. And added with keener interest: “But ’e doated on er, o’ course.”

“Doated on ’er? I b’lieve ye,” sniggered the elder. “’E was a fool over ’er, and she knew it.”

“That’s why ’e be so soft on the little ’un, you bet,” declared the girl wisely.

“That’s as may be,” said the woman. “’E’s mothered and fathered ’er ever since she was born, at any rate. And _that_ set on his own way with ’er too, ye wouldn’t believe! Won’t never take no advice from nobody. And she’ll get the top ’and of ’im—same as ’er mother did! See if she don’t! ’E be a downright ninny over ’er.”

The man strode past as she spoke, and Mrs. Goodenough gave a start.

“Eavesdroppers don’t never ’ear no good o’ themselves,” remarked she sententiously.

But Tom Wycombe had heeded neither the first nor the last remark.

His work was done and he was hastening to his child; he neither cared for nor noticed any one else.

The sun, when it set, shed just as warm a glow over his heart as it did over the marsh-land, though he did not put two and two together about it. From the village on the hill, the flaming sky that reddened behind the solemn buttresses of the ancient church, sent soft and palpitating reflections over the quiet land that lay stretched below; and the tender radiance reached to his patient spirit also. For he too had waited through the hot hours for this blessed eventide that lay so calm and peaceful a touch upon the seething earth, and the red in the west was the signal for his rest and for his reward.

He hastened towards the one thing in the world that he loved—glad, eager, and a little anxious as he always was when his little maid was, even a stone’s throw, away from him.

And as he drew near to the river-bank where he had been told that she was playing, his vague uneasiness began to take a sort of shape. For there was a little knot of children gathered there—and they were not noisily fighting or playing—but standing huddled together gazing into the water, and two of them, who were girls, were crying, and one, who was a boy, was stripping off his little jacket.

Wycombe dashed forward—throwing his harvesting tools on the ground as he ran, and pulling off his coat.

The children parted as they saw him, speechless with terror; their silence told him the truth, but he needed no telling—he had known it was his Daisy who was in the water.

“Where?” was all he said, breathless.

“There, under the bridge,” cried a lad, pointing.

It was an awkward spot; he plunged and dived once, without success. But the second time the little petticoats bubbled up before his eyes: he seized them and scrambled up the bank with her, a little, inert mass under his arm.

Mrs. Goodenough and the girl who was a stranger, had come running up, and other neighbours followed.

“’Ot blankets and ’ot water to ’er feet,” said one; “and a drop o’ spirit in ’er inside be the thing,” suggested another; and a third, more practical, ran up the steep bank towards the village, saying she would fetch the doctor and get things ready in the cottage agin’ Mr. Wycombe carried her up.

He had thrown himself upon the little body, breathing into it with all his might, though with little knowledge of how to effect restoration.

But luckily the little one had been in the water but a moment, and she was strong and lusty. In a few minutes she began to stir, then to open her eyes, and then to cry, and at that the man seized her in his arms and pressed her to his warm heart, and, waving the curious and sympathizing little crowd aside, leapt to his feet and strode up the hill with her on his neck.

It was late. The afterglow had died away, leaving no more than a warm memory in the softer blue of the night sky, and a subtle sense of colour that had been, in the fast darkening marsh-land where faint vapours and floating mists were rising upon the dykes.

The doctor had been and gone, the neighbours had been cleared out ruthlessly, and Tom Wycombe sat content once more beside the calmly sleeping child. Her pretty rings of soft brown hair lay curling over the white pillow, or creeping against her rich little sunburnt face, where even now the fresh red colour glowed so warm and healthfully. Ruddy lips were parted by a gentle breathing, and heavy lids with long lashes veiled eyes that even Tom Wycombe, who was no poet, could have told were blue in the waking as the blue sea beyond the green marsh-land.

Every one said that Daisy was the prettiest child in the village as her mother had been its handsomest woman, in her different style.

Well enough had Tom Wycombe been aware of this latter fact, and surprised enough, too, that Milly Moss had agreed to take him for a mate—older than she and plain as he was—when there were so many lads sighing around her. Twice he had asked and twice had been refused, but the third time she had consented, and he had asked himself no questions of why or wherefore, but had simply rejoiced in his luck. And she had been a good wife: a bit quiet—as, indeed, she had always been with him, even before marriage—but always dutiful, and he loved her as the working man is not always inspired to love his wife, and did all in his power to make up to her for the one disappointment of those happy years of wedded life—the disappointment of childlessness.

Then at last a little one had come to them, and with her coming the mother had died.

At first he had scarce wished for the sight of the child who had cost him his wife; but as that feeling slowly faded, it gave place to just as ardent a worship of the babe who was wife and daughter in one to him, and he adored her blindly as he had adored the mother, and lived for nothing else.

She stirred now, and he sprang to her side.

One dimpled brown arm was flung over the white coverlet and the other fat hand pushed the golden-brown curls off the forehead. Then those blue eyes—blue as speedwells in the spring hedges—opened wide, and when they lighted on him the red mouth smiled.

“Dad—I be too ’ot,” said she.

“’Ot,” echoed he, alarmed, feeling her brow as the most careful mother would have done. “May be ye’ve too many bed-clothes on. Ye see, ye was cold when we put ye to bed.”

And he pulled the padded quilt off her.

“Yes,” said she, “I know, ’cos I tummled into the river. It _was_ cold. ’Oo pulled me out, Dad?”

“Why, I did, o’ course,” replied the man jealously. “’Oo else should? But little girls mustn’t run away from their Daddies so far another time and get playin’ by nasty rivers.”