Part 10

Both couples were interrupted in their respective conversations by a rattle of wheels, shouts, a waving of colours, and up came a light cart occupied by a couple of men, one driving, both vociferating, one brandishing a whip, the other waving a parti-coloured sheet attached to a stick. The cart was drawn by a donkey with coloured rosettes, and was urged forward by the whip, at the end of which was a favour, accentuated with a bunch of thorns. The donkey, stung by the thorns, frightened by the yells, was galloping, and the banner was streaming in the air.

“Hurrah! Vote for Popjoy!” yelled the man with the flag as he flourished it over his head, and, swinging round the corner, the donkey came almost against the bearer with the coffin, and swerved so suddenly that the banner-bearer lost his balance, and was precipitated from the cart into the road, and fell at the feet of Jack Weldon.

“What are you doing there?” shouted the fallen man. “I’ll have a law passed to get the likes of you transported for life!”

He tried to rise, but found that he could not, and began to swear.

Then Mrs. Weldon pushed forward.

“Thomas!” she cried, in a voice harsh with indignation, “do you know where you be? and to whom you speak, you ill-conditioned tadpole?”

“I know well enough. I’m on the road—and I’ve hurt my leg somehow.”

“Do you know what you be?” again exclaimed Mrs. Weldon.

“I should think I did. I’m a free and enlightened elector.”

“Look up, Thomas Leveridge, from where you lie, stopping your little Rosie on the way to her grave.”

“Ah!” threw in the woman from the toll-gate, “if you, her own father, won’t come home to see your own sick and dying child, we, who’re no relations, must bury her without consideration of you.”

Then up came the companion of the prostrate man, who by this time had mastered the ass.

“I say, Thomas Leveridge! what’s to be done?” he asked.

The man on the road did not answer at once; he looked with glazed eyes and quivering mouth at the little chest. He tried to speak, but he could not. He tried to raise himself, but was powerless.

“Shall we get you into the cart?” asked his comrade.

“Ay,” answered Leveridge; “take me home. I can’t go nowhere else. Poor Marianne!”

Some hours later the little funeral party returned to Woodman’s Well, without the deal chest, walking at an accelerated pace—or rather, let me say that the old women walked fast; the young mourners lagged. Eventually they got home, and Jack entered the cottage of the Leveridges. Without a word he ascended the rickety staircase. It was strewn with scraps of coloured paper, on which were stray letters of the exhortation, “Vote for Popjoy!”

He might have been following a paper-chase; for at intervals along the road, down the lane, these coloured scraps had shown the way to the cottage. They had fallen from the hand of the injured man as he had been conveyed home, and on his way had torn the posters, and strewn them.

On the bed in the upper chamber lay Thomas Leveridge. A surgeon had already been there, and had pronounced the hip dislocated and a bone broken. He had replaced the joint and had spliced the bone. Leveridge was condemned to occupy his bed for some weeks. Beside him sat his wife, with red eyes and pale cheeks; on the floor was a cradle, empty; and she, inadvertently, was rocking it with her foot. Her heart was too full for words.

Jack looked at the man. Leveridge had turned his face to the wall, and was breathing hard; and at intervals a convulsive movement interrupted his long-drawn inspirations. He put up his hand to lay hold of the coverlet and draw it over his shoulder, and it shook—he could catch hold of nothing.

Jack did not speak. He thought: Let him cry, it will do him good. Tears will wash out his fault; and a fault it was in him to neglect home, even for his political party. Home claims first duties, then come others. If we begin the other way on, we are setting a steeple weathercock downwards, and laying the foundations in the clouds.

Presently Leveridge turned his face round, but would not let the light shine on his eyes; therefore he moved it on the pillow to where it was crossed by the shadow of his wife. Then he sighed and said, “Such a child as was my Rosie! There is no angel in heaven like her. Dear me! I was all for patching of the Constitution, and never mended up my own house. I am a mason, and did not put a bit of plaster to that crack in the wall; and the wind blew in on my little Rosie, and the draught killed her. I’m sure if I were dying——”

“You are not dying,” said his wife; “you are only laid by for a bit.”

“Ay,” said Thomas, “I’m tied to home by my leg, and serve me right; and now I can’t go to the poll.” He began to kick about.

“You must not do that,” said Mrs. Leveridge. “The doctor said you were to lie still.”

“I can’t help it, Marianne,” said the mason. “I’m real hearty glad I can’t go to the poll. It just serves me right, and touches me where I’m most tender. When I think of what I have done in leaving you alone, and my Rosie ill, I feel that ashamed as I’d like to dive under the bedclothes and never come up no more. Now look here, Jack. You are not a married man, nor thinking of it.”

“No,” said Jack, retreating a step; “I’m rather too young, thank you kindly.”

“No offence, it was well meant,” said the mason. “What I was going to say to you——But there, I hear your name called below. Run and see who wants you.”

The young man descended the stairs. At the foot stood Kate with a newspaper in her hand.

“Were you calling me?” asked Jack.

“I wanted to know if you’d be so very good as to go over the advertisements with me,” said Kate timidly. “I am a poor scholar; and I want to know if there is something in the paper that might suit me.”

“I’ll do it,” said Jack. He took the newspaper and spread it out on the kitchen table under the latticed window. “Let’s see—what do you want?”

“Go right through, if you please.”

“‘Messrs. Hampton will sell by auction this day that desirable——’”

“No, Jack, I’m not going to stand that.”

“‘Tenders are invited for new offices.’”

“That’s hardly in my way.”

“‘Three thousand gentlemen’s cast-off suits, overcoats, boots——’”

“No, I shouldn’t know what to do with them all.”

“‘Electrical engineering. A vacancy for an articled pupil.’”

Kate hesitated. “I don’t quite understand. I can feed pigs, bake, and milk. Is it anything to do with that?”

“No; as far as I can make out, it has to do with electioneering.”

“Then I’ll have nothing to say to it. Go on to the next.”

“‘Bake,’ you said. Then here goes. ‘Wanted at once, a man well up in smalls. State salary.’”

“But I’m not a man. Is there nothing that will suit me?”

“Here is something new,” said Jack, and he began to laugh. “‘Matrimony.—Bachelor, tall, handsome, healthy, good social position, possessing gold mines, and £2000 per annum, wishes to meet with a lady with view to marriage. Send full particulars. State age. Send photo. Thoroughly genuine.’”

“That’s the situation for me, to a hair! Do answer, Jack. I’m twenty-one.”

“But the photo?”

“I have none.”

“Then what is the good of answering? There will be such a run on this gentleman.”

“You think so, Jack?”

“Sure of it.”

“But not such desirable females as me.”

“There’s no photo,” said the young man sternly.

“But I can get myself photygraphed.”

“And by that time he will be caught up.”

“You think so?”

“Sure of it.”

“It is very hard to find a place.”

“I don’t quite know what you want. Here are a pair of roller-skates advertised, and here is a light phaeton.”

“No,” said Kate decidedly. “That’s not matrimonial, and it’s matrimonial I like: read another.”

“There is no other.”

“Then read over the first again.”

Jack did so. Kate mused.

“Look here, Jack,” said she. “Write for me and give a good description; and say I’ll be photygraphed the first opportunity.”

“That’s no good—he’ll think you colour yourself too high.”

“But if _you_ describe me, Jack.”

“Well—here goes. Bright eyes, rosy cheeks, with a little dimple just at the corner of the mouth, and dark hair that shines, and lips—” Jack threw down the paper on the floor, put his foot on it, and burst forth with, “Drat it! If it’s matrimonial you want, come along with me back to Sugden to the parson, and we’ll ask him to read the banns next Sunday. But perhaps you’re too tired?”

“I—I tired? Bless you, I could run all the way.”

* * * * *

After a few weeks Thomas Leveridge was able to get about; and though he could not go at once to a distance for work, he was able to do small jobs near home. The squire came to Woodman’s Well. Complaints had been made by the sanitary officer that the cottages were ruinous and unhealthy.

“I’ll tell you what,” said he to Leveridge, “I will have them put into thorough repair and send the bill to old Rumage, who’s got the life-rights. If he won’t pay, then the cottages are mine.”

“And may I do them up?”

“Most assuredly.”

“That is famous,” said the mason; “then I shall have time to whitewash and make sweet before the wedding.”

“Wedding? What wedding? I thought there had been a burial—that the place was insanitary, and that——”

“Well, sir, out of Death cometh Life. A funeral sometimes leads to a marriage.”

* * * * *

A year and a day had passed since this conversation; then there issued from two houses at Woodman’s Well two little parties on their way to the parish church.

But this time no little coffin was carried to the graveyard; on the contrary, two lusty little infants were being conveyed to the baptismal font; and the parties issued respectively from the cottage of the Leveridges and from that of the Weldons. And as both parties arrived at the toll-gate, the woman who inhabited the toll-house issued forth, to act as sponsor to both babes.

And as she walked along she said to old Mrs. Weldon, “Who ever would have thought it, last time us two went this way?”

“Who ever would?” answered Mrs. Weldon; “but Jack might have gone far and fared worse.”

“And then—Thomas Leveridge?”

“He’s taken to caring for home first, and politics come second only.”

“Well, well! The last time we were here together it was to a burying; but it is true, that sayin’ of Scriptur’, ‘From Death we have passed to Life.’”

CICELY CROWE

CICELY CROWE

I

Our house is a long one; it takes two minutes to walk from one end to the other, consequently by the time one has gone from the principal staircase at the east extremity to the kitchen at the west, one is older by two minutes; whether one has grown in the time I am unable to say, never having taken measures before starting and on arriving. It is satisfactory that the staircase and not the dining-room occupies the extreme east, otherwise we should always partake of cold meals.

But as if the main block of the house were not, in all conscience, long enough, at some unknown period since its first construction a back kitchen was added beyond the kitchen, farther west, and then, a little room only reached by a stair farther west still. This little “prophet’s chamber” was, however, one used within my recollection for the keeping of the feathers of geese and fowls that had been plucked, where they accumulated till sufficient for the composition of a feather bed, when they were picked, cleaned, baked, and made up.

Before this final process I well remember, as a child of eight or nine, scrambling into this little chamber, and then rolling and dancing among the feathers, and making, as I believed, a snowstorm about me. The after effects were not conducive to comfort; and I remember that the process of scrubbing and cleansing me and my clothes after this snowstorm was both irksome and lengthy. That experience was never repeated, not only because of the cleansing process, but also because I was put across my father’s knee, and the lesson not to play with feathers and raise snowstorms was impressed on me with a square ruler, till my father got hot in the face, and I—hot, elsewhere.

The same little stair that conducted to the feather room, also gave admission to a low garret above the back kitchen.

This garret contained all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable lumber.

My dear father, who was an enthusiast for novelties, bought every possible invention that conduced to the saving of time by cooks—patent egg-boilers, lemon-squeezers, apple-parers, digesting pots, &c. These the cooks “chucked” up into the lumber place with mighty disdain, and went on in their old ways. Moreover, into it went all the pans that they had left unscoured till rust had eaten through them, all the kettles that began to leak, by letting them fall on the stone floor; a coffee roaster that the then reigning cook refused to use, because it was less trouble to employ ready-roasted coffee; a mortar, the bottom of which had been knocked out, because she would pound almonds in it on her lap instead of on the table; a tobacco canister in which bird’s-eye was kept for a lover when he came on a visit. In fact, this garret was an emporium of objects illustrative of kitchen wastefulness, and indicative of my father’s good-nature.

No one ever visited this garret except the cook when “chucking away” some of “master’s newfangled nonsense,” or when putting away some damaged article out of reach of her mistress’s eye, consequently it was wholly given over to rats, that raced about in it with a boldness only equalled by that of cook when she looked straight into my mother’s eyes and said there never had been, so long as she had been in the house, one of these articles my mother missed, as the coffee-roaster, or the china mortar, or the stewing pan, or the bronchitis kettle; or when my father sent inquiries about such articles as the lemon-squeezer, or the apple-parer, or the cream-whipper.

The rats got their pickings in this garret: they licked out the dirty frying-pans in which was grease, they consumed the contents of the pie-dishes that had been burnt in the oven with crust adhering to them, and nibbled at the rabbit-skins that had been put away there to be sold to the rag-and-bone man when he came round.

I knew of this garret, and loved it, loved it almost as dearly as did the rats. My mother and father did not like my visiting it, as I came away from it very dirty in hands and face, and with clothing often torn by nails; and cook never would endure that I should visit it for reasons of her own. Consequently, visits to it were surreptitious, and made at rare intervals.

We had, when I was about thirteen, a maid of the name of Cicely Crowe; she was an excellent servant, with a passionate love of neatness, did her work well and conscientiously, but had not the most amiable disposition or the most gracious manner. She was not a bad-tempered woman, never violent, but, just as a diamond is said to be off colour if the least lacking in absolute clearness, so may she be said to have been off temper. She was very kind-hearted, but it seemed to go against her pride to do a kind thing in a kind way. She never saw the good in anything, only the faults. We all liked Cicely, but we all wished she would try to be more pleasing. However, we have each our blurs in this world, one in one way, one in another, and had Cicely’s mood been sunny, and her manner sparkling, why she would have been snapped up at once, and half the young men in the village would have been quarrelling as to who should have her. It was just this uncertainty in her temper which deterred them, and kept her in our service so many years.

She was a very pretty girl, was Cicely, with brown hair, so neat that never was a hair out of place, and with large hazel eyes, and such a complexion!—cream and strawberry were nothing to it, and the colour palpitated under her transparent skin like the flush of the evening sun on far-off delicate clouds.

The lads of the village said to each other, “What a lass that Cicely is, but—” And our friends said to my mother, “What a very nice, respectable servant girl you have in Cicely.” “Oh dear, yes,” answered my mother, “she is everything that could be desired, but—” And her fellow-servants all said, “We have nothing to say against Cicely, but—” And we children remarked to each other, “Cicely is tremendously nice, but—” No one ever got any further than “but—,” for no one could bring it over the lips to say a word in depreciation of Cicely.

Now it fell out all on a summer’s day that cook had gone off for a holiday, and the kitchen-maid had sickened with measles and been sent home, and with great trepidation, and with a tremulous voice, and an appeal in her eyes, my mother had asked Cicely if she _would_, under the circumstances, boil the potatoes and the greens for the early dinner on that Sunday. There was nothing to roast, nothing to stew; cook had made cold pies and shapes, and so on, to last till her return.

Cicely replied ungraciously that everything was put on her, but she supposed she must do it, and then turned her back on my mother and went off to change her gown. As I have said, it was Sunday. I had a sore throat, and so was not allowed to go to church, and was bidden remain at home, not go outside the doors, and keep myself warm.

Now I had calculated on this, and had borrowed a rat-trap from the gardener, and when Cicely was upstairs putting on such garments as she deemed suitable for peeling potatoes and shelling peas, and cooking them, I slipped up the stairs into the garret, hugging the trap, and holding a piece of cheese-rind I had surreptitiously seized on and had roasted over my candle. I was resolved on spending the time whilst my parents were at church in catching a rat. There was a loose slate in the roof and I tilted this up, peeped out, and watched my father and mother, brothers and sisters, and the governess stalk away from the front door in their Sunday suits, with prayer-books under their arms, and I saw my dear mother pick off sundry bits of “fluff,” ends of thread, &c., which her eye detected on the children’s clothes.

Then I heard a bustle of feet underneath, and some tongues, and I knew that the domestics were also off to church by the back door. Thereupon I set my trap, and sat down behind a barrel in the corner waiting to hear the rats come out, and to watch them snuff at, then bite the bait, and, snap—be caught.

Whilst I waited, and, waiting, learned my collect which had been set me as a task, I heard Cicely come into the back kitchen, and with a sharp motion pull the pan to her in which were the potatoes she had to peel.

Almost immediately after I heard the kitchen door open, and a male voice exclaim, “Well, Cicely, so here you are?”

“I s’pose I be,” was her answer.

Now the floor of the loft was of boards, and in these boards were knots, and the centre of some of these had fallen out. The back kitchen was not ceiled. One of these peep-holes was close to me, so very gently I lay down flat on the floor and applied my eye to the hole, and then saw that a young man had entered named Will Swan.

I knew him well. He had a boat, and was a fisherman; an honest, cheerful fellow, with whom I often went out on the sea. He was uncommonly civil, and would insist on carrying the fish I caught, or fancied I had caught, home for me.

Now only did it dawn on my infantile mind that his carrying the fish was due not so much to a wish to oblige me, as to have an excuse for coming into our kitchen to see Cicely Crowe.

“What’s brought you here?” asked Cicely.

“I wanted to see you and have a bit of a talk.”

“I’m busy,” was her curt answer.

“Ciss, I want a good-bye before I go.”

“Well, the door is open—Good-bye.”

He halted at the entrance, hesitated a while, and then said: “You will be pleased to hear, Ciss, that the good-bye I asked for is one for ever.”

She dropped the potato she was peeling, but did not look at him; she took up the potato again.

“I’m thinking of leaving—going to America.”

She did not answer for a while, but as he waited for an observation, she said, “Indeed. Hope you’ll enjoy yourself there.”

“I am not going there to enjoy myself, but because—well, Ciss—I can’t feel any joy here in the old country.”

“You seem merry enough.”

“I am not. I’ve always something in me, gnawing at my heart.”

“Swallowed a crab, I reckon, without having him b’iled first.”

“It’s not that, Ciss. You know well it is not that. If one can’t get now what will make a fellow happy, it’s best to go, sez I.”

“You’ll get lots, lots over there,” said she, and pointed with the knife towards the sea, America, the bed of the setting sun.

“I don’t want lots—only one.”

“May you find that one. I hope you will.”

“Do you?” with a flash of happiness.

“Yes—in America.”

He hung his head.

“I suppose,” said Will, “that I shall be forgotten when I am far away.”

“Those who go far away must reckon on that,” was her answer. “Psha!” she had cut her finger. She quickly put a bit of potato rind over the wound lest Will should observe it. But indeed, he was looking on the floor and saw nothing.

“And, Ciss, you have nothing more to say to me?”

“Of course I have—Good-bye!”

He looked up, took a step nearer to her, gazed steadily into her face: “Cicely, do you mean it—in this way to say good-bye to one you have known all these years? It is not a light matter to cross the ocean and go to the States. Who can tell what may happen there? Some find there good luck, others, wretchedness and ruin. To go there and do well a chap must take a good heart with him. I cannot do that. I shall bear but a heartache with me, and have no hope whatever I do. Come, Ciss—what do you say?”

“The parson don’t like any one coming in late for church. You’d best be off—smart.”

He raised himself to his full height. The angry blood flew to his face and darkened it, fire leaped from his eyes. I had never seen Will Swan like that before.

“No—Ciss—no,” he said, and he spoke hoarsely; “I will not cross the water. No, that would content you. Who can say—if things went contrary here—you might be willing to come across to me there?”

“If——”

“Yes—who can say? But I will go where there is no passage across. I will break down every bridge between us. This has been going on too long—from one year to another—and I can bear it no further. I will get married to some other wench, some one who will give a chap a good word; who, when one leaves only for a day will say a good-bye, and her eyes will fill with tears. She may never be to me all that you have been and are, but she will be to me what it is not in your nature to be—kind and gracious.”

“Oh, that—that is it!” exclaimed Cicely. I could see, through my peephole, how flames passed through her face and then that she became deadly white. I could see how her bosom heaved, how her hands trembled as she tried to continue with the potatoes, but was unable to do anything because of her wounded finger.

Suddenly she took up the pan, thrust past Will, and threw the contents into the pig-pail. “You have made me spoil all,” she said, and burst into tears.

“Crying! What for?”

“That is it. You have already lost your heart to some other girl, and now you come to say——”

“Yes, that I am going to the parson to have my banns called.”

“Who is it?” she asked, looking at him, her weeping arrested, and she as one of stone.

“If I say it shall be you, what will you say?”

She tried to speak, could not, turned, put up her hand against the wall, brushed it down once, twice, again, impatiently. She could not bring the word out that she wished to say.

Will remained waiting. No answer came.

“Ciss,” he said, “it shall _not_ be you. Any other rather. No—you, never!”

Then he turned and left the back kitchen.

She stood for a moment watching him as he departed. Then she leaned her face in her wet hands and burst into convulsive weeping.

Snap. Wee! wee! wee! A rat was caught.

II