Part 16

“As for fightin’,” put in the shrewd-faced little man who formed the third party to the discussion, and whose opinion carried weight in the neighbourhood, for his vocation of carrier enabled him to pick up many items of news during his daily round, “as for fightin’, Mrs. Bunce, I don’t mean to make little o’ your husband, but there bain’t nothin’ wonderful about him doin’ a lot o’ fightin’. They all done that--’twas what they were sent out for, and not a bit more credit to any of ’em nor for me to go joggin’ along behind the wold horse here.”

Both women reddened, and turned upon him angrily.

“If ye do think such things, ye did ought to be ashamed to say ’em,” cried Mrs. Andrews. “’Eroes--’tis what they be every man of ’em, Mr. Bright; and you did ought to know it, seein’ as ’twas wrote up plain over the very Corn Exchange the day as peace was declared. ‘All Honour to Our ’Eroes,’ it said, in them little coloured lamps so ’andsome as it could be; and bain’t there a song about ‘they’re ’eroes every one’?”

“And I’m sure ye can’t say,” chimed in little Mrs. Bunce, nodding her curly head emphatically, “as it be the same thing for a man to sit snug in his cart behind the quietest old harse in Darset as it is to leave your wife and your home and--and everything, and to go riskin’ your life among Boers and Blacks in them wild parts out abroad.”

“E-es,” agreed her neighbour, making common cause with her against the enemy, “e-es, indeed, Mrs. Bunce. And your little boy wasn’t so much as born when his dada was took away, was he? Many a time, I dare say, you did think to yourself as he’d never see the face of his child. I d’ ’low he thought the same hisself goin’ off, poor fellow! Ye’ll agree that was a bit hard on the man, Mr. Bright, so little credit as ye be willin’ to allow our soldiers. Ye’ll agree ’twas hard on the man to go off, leavin’ his missus to get through her trouble alone, and the child the first child, too, mind ye.”

“If it had been the tenth you wouldn’t pity him so much,” said the carrier, with a dry chuckle. “There’s some as don’t think so much o’ them things. Jim Marshall, now--says I to Jim t’other day, ‘Jim,’ I says, ‘I hear you’ve got an increase to your family’; and poor Jim, he looks at me and says, ‘E-es,’ he says, ‘more hardship’.”

Chuckling sardonically, he gathered up his reins and jogged on again, the women looking after him with indignant faces.

As the green “shed” of his van disappeared round the corner, their eyes by mutual accord reverted to each other, and Mrs. Andrews laughed disdainfully.

“’Tis a queer cranky sort of body,” she remarked; “a bachelor man. What can you expect?”

Mrs. Bunce’s face was still pink with wrath, but she smiled upon the other woman.

“I should think your Jan did ought to come home soon now,” she said handsomely; gratitude for Mrs. Andrews’ timely sympathy causing her to be for the moment almost willing to admit there might be another soldier of some merit in the British Army besides Private William Bunce.

“I’m sure I hope so,” responded her neighbour rather dismally. “You are safe to get your husband back next week, anyhow.”

“Next week,” echoed Nellie Bunce joyfully. “Yes, he says in his last letter they was to start in a week, and I’ve a-counted up the time, and he did ought to land at Southampton Saturday week.”

“I d’ ’low ye’ll be busy gettin’ all ready for him,” said the older woman, falling into an easy attitude with her hands on her hips, the better to contemplate her pretty neighbour.

“I d’ ’low I be,” responded Nellie, enthusiastically. “I be goin’ to give en the best welcome I can, ye mid be sure. I be cleanin’ up the house fro’ top to bottom, and I be goin’ to paper the kitchen. I’ve bought paper already; I reckon I could easy do it myself; the wall aint so very high and the room bain’t too big neither.”

“’Tis a stiffish job for a woman though,” returned Mrs. Andrews, dubiously. “If Andrews wasn’t so bad with the lumbagey, I’d get en to lend ye a hand; but he’s that stiff, poor man, he can scarcely so much as turn hisself in bed.”

“Oh, I’ll manage,” returned Mrs. Bunce, nodding brightly. “I’m a great one for contrivin’, and ’t’ull be summat to tell Bill as I’ve a-done it myself.”

“It’ll take you all your time,” protested Mrs. Andrews, and they parted.

During the ensuing days Nellie was indeed up to her eyes in work, carrying out vigorously her plan of cleaning and polishing the house from top to bottom. Baby Billy, who had hitherto considered himself a person of very great importance, found himself hustled hither and thither as he had never been in the whole of his existence, a period extending over about thirty months.

On one particular afternoon, when every washable article in the house was in Nellie’s tub, he was bidden to play out of doors, and finding the maternal eye less on the alert than usual, surreptitiously opened the garden gate and wandered to the forbidden precincts of the lane.

He trotted along for nearly a quarter of a mile, until he reached a particularly delectable corner graced by a large rubbish-heap, which he proceeded to investigate with huge satisfaction, carrying one treasure after another over the way, sitting down to examine it, and immediately rolling on to his legs again to procure some yet more coveted object.

At last, however, he secured two prizes, than which nothing more desirable could be imagined, and with a sigh of satisfaction toddled for the last time across the lane and sat down to enjoy them at his leisure. The broken jam-pot was immediately filled with sand, while the rusty knife, grasped by its fragmentary handle, could be used in a variety of ways--so Billy discovered--as a spade, as a saw, as a chopper.

He was engaged in mincing a dock leaf very small on a flat stone, his mouth opening and shutting in accompaniment to his labours, when he was suddenly hailed by somebody who had abruptly turned the corner of the lane, somebody who was probably on his way from the town.

“Hello!” cried this somebody.

“Hello!” responded Billy, pausing with his knife poised in mid-air and looking up with a pair of very big and very blue eyes. He had to tilt his head quite a long way back to do so, for the newcomer was tall. Billy was a little startled; to begin with the newcomer was a man, and he was not sure that he liked men--they cracked whips sometimes, and spoke loud and gruff, particularly when, as occasionally happened, Billy chanced to run across the road immediately in front of their horses; then he had funny brown clothes--nobody that Billy had ever seen wore clothes like that; and he had a brown face too, a face so very, very brown that it gave his blue eyes a strange look. Billy was secretly a good deal frightened, but being a soldier’s son he only clutched his knife the harder and said, “Hello!” again, as the stranger continued to look at him without speaking.

“I rather think I ought to know you, my lad,” said the man at last, in a queer quavering voice. “I’d swear by that little cocked nose. What’s your name, eh?”

“Billy,” responded the child promptly.

“Right you are!” cried the man, and he caught him up in his arms, knife and jam-pot and all. “Let’s hear the rest of it, though. Billy what?”

“I want to get down,” asserted the urchin, vigorously struggling. “I want to get down and make a pudden for my dada.”

The man grimaced, and instantly set the child upon his legs.

“Perhaps we’ve made a mistake after all,” he said; “perhaps you are some other chap’s Billy. Where does your dada live, young ’un?--tell us that.”

Billy had by this time squatted on the ground again, and was once more chopping at his dock leaf. He did not answer until the man had twice repeated his question, then he explained.

“My dada’s tummin’ home. He’s tummin’ in a ship--and a puff-puff,” he added, as an after-thought.

“Right you are,” cried the brown-faced man again, and he caught him up in his arms once more and kissed him. “I thought I’d know my little woman’s nose among a thousand, and yours is so like it as one pea is like another. Come, let’s go and look for mammy.”

Billy was at first disposed to protest, but something at once merry and tender in the man’s blue eyes disarmed suspicion; and when he presently found himself hoisted on a broad shoulder, and was thus carried at galloping speed down the lane and through the village; when, moreover, this self-constituted steed actually vaulted the garden gate, and covered the tiny path that intervened between it and the cottage door with two strides, he was not only reassured but jubilant.

They could see “mammy” bending over the wash-tub through the open kitchen door, very red in the face, very wet and draggled as to dress, and with one end of her hair straggling down; and the queer thing was that at sight of her the man suddenly came to a standstill and uttered a kind of choking cry. And then mammy turned round and dropped the shirt she had been wringing out, and fairly screamed as she came rushing across the kitchen. Then laughing and crying together she flung her arms round the brown man’s neck, heedless of the danger to which she was exposing herself from the broken jam-pot and the rusty knife which Billy was still brandishing; and kissed him, and rocked backwards and forwards with him, and seemed altogether to have taken leave of her senses.

After a moment’s breathless pause of astonishment, Billy thought it time to assert himself. He dropped his two treasures on the floor and burst into a loud wail. Then clutching hold of the newcomer’s close-cropped fair head, he endeavoured with all his might to pull it away from the curly one that was pressed so close to it. And then mammy looked up, and her eyes were all wet, but her mouth was laughing.

“You mustn’t do that, sonny,” she said. “This is dada! Dada’s come home.”

Billy was dumb with dismay and disappointment, partly at the discovery that the much-talked-of and hitherto unimagined dada was a man, partly because he was such a very brown man, but chiefly because he had arrived shorn of the glories of the ship and the puff-puff which he had understood were to accompany him. So he sat still and rather sulky on the khaki shoulder while Private Bunce explained how he had caught sight of the little chap, and how he at once “spotted” him by that little nose of his, and how disappointed he had been when for a moment he had thought it was not his Billy after all, but some other quite uninteresting Billy belonging to another fellow.

“But I found him all right,” he summed up triumphantly, “and I found you, little woman--lookin’ tip-top you are, just about! Lard, it do seem a mortal time since I left you, my girl.”

“Oh, Bill, I meant to have everything so nice for ’ee,” cried Nellie. “Dear, to think there’s nothin’ ready! I’m sure I’m not fit to be seen myself.”

She glanced regretfully towards the wash-tub. Her pink blouse was in there--the blouse Bill had always said he liked--and her lace collar and the little ruffles for her wrists. The old blue cotton gown which she wore was not only faded and patched, but soiled and almost wet through.

“You’re lookin’ just splendid though,” cried her husband. “Why, that there’s the very gown you used to wear when we went a-coortin’--I mind it well--that little wavy stripe. I used to think it the prettiest thing I ever did see. And here’s the little curl comin’ down what I used to kiss when we was a-walkin’ down by the river.”

“Oh, Bill, is it comin’ down? I wanted to be so tidy and nice. I reckoned ye was comin’ next week, ye know.”

“I come over wi’ the colonel. He come across a bit sooner nor we expected, bein’ knocked up wi’ one thing and another. ‘The sooner the better,’ thinks I.”

“Of course,” cried Nellie fervently; “the sooner the better indeed. But we be all in a caddle here. There, the window curtains and the best table-cloth and the very bed-quilt is in the tub, and I haven’t got any meat in the house! I thought Billy and me ud go a bit short this week, so’s to have a reg’lar feast when you did come home. And--and----”

“Now, don’t you fret, old girl; we hadn’t no table-cloth nor yet bed-quilts out on the veldt. And as for meat--blowed if I do care so very much for meat. But I tell ye what I would like.”

“What?” cried Nellie breathlessly.

“What I would like more nor any earthly thing,” said Bill emphatically, but with a twinkle in his eye, “is just ’taters--’taters done wi’ a bit o’ drippin’, hot and tasty, the way you did often do ’em.”

Nellie drew a long breath of relief.

“Them’s easy got,” she said jubilantly, but almost immediately her face fell again. “It do seem a poor kind o’ welcome,” she murmured, “and I----”

Private Bunce deposited his son and heir upon the floor, the better to bestow a really satisfactory embrace upon the little sunburnt woman. She was exceedingly damp and smelt very strongly of soap, but he did not seem to mind.

“Now, look here,” he said, “you couldn’t give I a better welcome nor what you’ve a-done. This here’s home--home as I did so often think of and long for; and here you be, my wold ’ooman, lookin’ just same as ever--just same as I so often seed ye in my mind, and I used to dream about ye many a time, and wake up and find mysel’ lyin’ on the sand. This here’s home and this here’s my little ’ooman--and I don’t want nothin’ else, wi’out it’s this young shaver,” he added as an after-thought.

And so, while the wash-tub steamed away unheeded in the back premises, a very merry party sat down to an impromptu meal. The ’taters were duly set forth, and Nellie, cleaned up and tidy, poured out tea, and Private Bunce cut huge slices from the crusty loaf, and declared he hadn’t had such a blow-out, no, not since he sailed from Southampton.

“To my mind, Nellie,” he cried presently, “the room do seem to look more cheerful-like wi’out the winder curtains. A body notices the paper more--the dear old paper what I did stick up for ’ee myself.”

Nellie opened her mouth as though to speak, but changed her mind and closed it again.

“I tell you what it is,” cried Private Bunce enthusiastically, “the place wouldn’t look itself wi’out that wall-paper. I wouldn’t have it changed for anything.”

Then Nellie burst out laughing and clapped her hands.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW.

They were cutting Farmer Fowler’s largest hayfield; it was eleven o’clock, and the men had just “knocked off” for the light meal known in those parts as “nuncheon”. A big flagon of cider was being passed round from one to the other, accompanied by goodly slices of bread and cheese. The farmer himself stood a little apart under the shade of a large elm which grew midway in the hedgerow that divided this field from its neighbour, paying a half scornful attention to the scraps of talk with which the labourers seasoned their meal. He himself was not given to self-indulgence, and inwardly chafed at the loss of this half-hour from the busiest time of the day. He had worked as hard as any of his men, and was, indeed, hardly to be distinguished from them, except by the better quality of his clothes. He was a tall, strong-looking fellow, with a face as sunburnt as any of theirs, and arms as muscular and brown. He was coatless, and wore a great chip hat; his shirt-sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his shirt was open at the throat. Two teams of horses stood in the shadow of the hedge, plucking at the twigs or stretching down their necks towards the grass which they could not reach; the vast field, half cut, lay shimmering before him in a blaze of light; the dome overhead glowed almost to whiteness, for the sun at this hour was intolerably hot. Yet even as the master gazed, impatiently longing for the moment when he could set his hinds to work again, he saw a figure rapidly crossing the field, looking from right to left, as though in search of some one. It was the figure of a young woman; so much he could divine from the shapely outline and springing ease of motion, but her face was at first lost to him under the deep shade of her broad-brimmed hat. She approached the group of labourers first, and made some query in a tone too low for him to distinguish the words. He saw his foreman, however, turn towards the tree beneath which he himself stood and jerk his thumb over his shoulder. Evidently the young woman had come in search of him.

She made her way towards him, walking more slowly, and indicating by her aspect a certain amount of diffidence. A comely girl--he could see that now--dark-eyed, dark-haired, and glowing with health and life.

“If you please, sir,” she began timidly, “I came--my father sent me. It’s about the taxes.”

She drew from her pocket a little blue paper of familiar aspect; the demand-note for the rates collected four times a year by the Overseers of the Branstone Union. The angry colour glowed in Jacob Fowler’s face as he twitched the paper from her hand.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he cried; “what have you got to do with it?”

“I am Isaac Masters’ daughter, of Little Branstone,” she said hastily. “He collects the rates for our parish, but he’s very ill in bed. He’s had a stroke, poor Father has, and I’m doing his work for him.”

“He should have known better than to send you to me,” returned Jacob, still wrathfully. “I never heard sich a tale i’ my life. Sendin’ a maid to collect the rates! Dally! Where will the women-folk stop?”

“Nobody else made any objection,” said the girl, with a little toss of her head. “I’ve got it all right, except yours; and Father thought I’d best come and ask for it.”

“Then you can tell your father as he did make a very great mistake,” thundered Fowler. “’Tis bad enough to be bothered about they dalled rates wi’out havin’ a woman set up over you.”

He tore the paper into fragments as he spoke, scattering them to the breeze. “There, you jist turn about and go home-along, my maid, and tell your father that’s my answer. If your father bain’t fit to do his work hissel’, he did ought to get somebody else to do it for ’en--some other man. The notion o’ sendin’ a maid! I never did hear o’ sich a piece o’ cheek!”

The girl, without waiting for the end of his indignant commentary, had turned about as he had advised, and was now walking swiftly away, her head held very high, angry tears on her thick lashes. Jacob impatiently jerked out his watch; it wanted still ten minutes of the time when work would have to be resumed. He dropped the watch into his pocket again, whistling under his breath, a good deal out of tune. Once more fragments of the men’s talk reached his unwilling ears.

“That be Bethia Masters, that be--a wonderful good maid. They d’ say the wold man ’ud be fair lost wi’out her. The Parish Council did give her leave to take his place for a bit so long as there was a chance he mid get better.” “She be a shapely maid and a vitty one.” “E-es, she’s well enough; looks a bit tired now, walkin’ i’ the heat three mile here and three mile back.” “E-es, and a sarcin’ at the end o’t,” chuckled one old fellow under his breath. “Our maister, he did gi’ ’t to her! I heerd ’en. Our maister bain’t partial to payin’ rates at any time, and he didn’t reckon for to hand over his money to a ’ooman.”

Farmer Fowler watched the retreating figure idly; it was true she was a shapely maid. How lightly and rapidly she walked: ’twas a long way, too--three miles and more. He could have wished he had not been quite so hard with her. He might have asked her to sit down and rest for a while; he might have offered her a glass of cider. He almost wondered at his own outburst of irritation as he looked back on it now, and watched the girl’s retreating form with an increasing sense of shame.

The toilsome day was over at last, the horses stabled, the men fed. Farmer Fowler was smoking the pipe of peace in his trellised porch with a pleasant sense of weariness. It was good to rest there under the honeysuckle in the twilight, and to think of how much had been accomplished during the long sunny hours which had preceded it.

The sound of a light foot caused him to raise his eyes, which he had partially closed a few moments before, and the ensuing click of the garden gate made him sit upright and crane forward his head. A girl’s figure was making its way down the little paved path, a girl’s voice once more greeted him tremulously.

“If you please, Mr. Fowler, I’m sorry to trouble you, but----”

Jacob Fowler in the evening was a different person to the Jacob Fowler of the fields; he stretched out his hand and drew her forward by the sleeve.

“Sit down, my maid,” he said; “sit ye down. You’ve a-had a longish walk, and for the second time to-day, too.”

Bethia came into the shadow of the porch; her face looked pale in the dim light, and he could see the bosom of her light dress rise and fall quickly with her rapid breath.

“If you please, sir,” she began again, “I know you’ll be vexed, but Father, he’s very much undone about the taxes. He’ll be gettin’ into trouble, he says, if he doesn’t send the money off to-morrow. He made me come back and ask you again. We’d take it very kind if you’d let us have what’s owing, sir.”

Her tremulous tone smote Jacob; stretching out his big hand once more, he patted her shoulder encouragingly.

“There, don’t ye be afeard, my maid; don’t ye. I’ll not bite ye.”

A dimple peeped out near Bethia’s lip. “You very nearly did bite me this morning,” she said.

“Nay, now,” returned Jacob, smiling beneath his thick beard, “I weren’t a-goin’ to bite ye; I was on’y barkin’, maid. Lard, if you did know I, you’d say wi’ the rest of ’em that my bark was worse nor my bite. There! what about this trifle o’ money as I owe for the rates? How much is it? Dally! I don’t know how ’tis, but it fair goes agen me to pay out money for taxes. It do seem so unfair when a man’s farm’s his own--land and house and all--for Government to go and say, ‘You’ve a-got a house, and you’ve a-got land as your father and grandfather have a-bought wi’ their own money--you must pay out for that, my lad; you must hand over whatever we pleases to ax for.’ ’Tisn’t as if they’d consult a man. If they was to say to I, ‘Mr. Fowler, you be a warmish man, and there’s a good few poor folk up i’ the union; what be you willin’ to allow us for them?’ I’d call that fair enough, and I’d tell ’em straight-out what I _was_ willin’ to ’low. But no; they goes and settles it all among theirselves wi’ never a word to nobody, and jist sends out a paper wi’out by your leave or wi’ your leave. ‘You _be_ to pay so much, whether you do like it or whether you don’t.’ ’Tain’t fair.”

“I dare say it isn’t, sir,” rejoined Bethia, very meekly; “but I’m not askin’ you on account of the Government--I’m just askin’ you for Father’s sake. He’s fretting terribly, and the doctor says he oughtn’t to upset himself.”

“Well, I don’t mind if I do make an end o’ this here business for your father’s sake, maidy; but I d’ ’low I’d jist so soon do it for yours.”

“For mine!”

“E-es, because you do ask I so pretty. I did speak a bit sharp to ye this mornin’, but it was along o’ being vexed wi’ the Government--I wasn’t really vexed wi’ _you_, my dear.”

Bethia began to laugh; her little white teeth flashed out in the most charming way--her bright eyes lit up. Jacob gazed at her with increasing favour.

“I bain’t vexed wi’ you, my dear,” he repeated affably, and then suddenly standing up, darted into the house. In a few minutes he emerged again carrying a little packet, which he handed to her.

“It be all there, wrapped up i’ that bit o’ paper; you’d best count it and see as it be right. Will ye take a glass o’ milk or summat?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Fowler; I’m very much obliged, but I think I must be getting home now. It’s growin’ dark, and my father will be anxious.”

“Wouldn’t you like nothin’?” insisted Jacob. “A posy o’ flowers or summat? There’s a-many of ’em growin’ i’ the garden, and nobody ever thinks for to pick ’em.”