Chapter 6

And she said she would. And in ten minutes I was dressed, and nicely dressed too, for I had on my white frock and the things I had had at a girl's wedding the summer before, and a pair of new gloves I had got out of my butter-money.

Then I went off up the hill to the church after Mattie, even then not making up my mind what I was going to do, but with an idea that all things somehow might work together for good to me if I only had the sense to see how, and turn things that way.

As I come up to the church I was just in time to see her old green gown going in at the porch, and when I come up the key was in the door, and she hadn't come out. Quick as thought, the idea come to me to have a joke with her and lock her in, so she shouldn't meet him, and next minute I had turned the key in the lock softly, and stole off through the church porch, and up to the ash copse, which I couldn't make a mistake about, for there's only one within a mile of the church.

Jack was there, though it was before the time. I could see his blue tie and white shirt-front shining through the trees.

When I locked her in I only meant to have a sort of joke--at least, I think so,--but when I come close up to him and saw how well off he looked, and the diamond ring on his fingers, and his pin and his gold chain, I thought to myself--

'Well, you go to Liverpool to-morrow, young man! And she ain't got your address, and, likely as not, if you go away vexed with her, you won't leave it with your aunt, and one wife is as good as another, if not better, and as for her caring for you, that's all affectation and silliness--so here goes.'

He stepped forward, with his hands held out to me, but when he saw it was me he stopped short.

'Why, Miss Jane,' he said, 'I beg your pardon. I was expecting quite a different person.'

'Yes, I know,' I says, 'you was expecting my cousin Mattie.'

'And isn't she coming?' he asks very quick, looking at me full, with his blue eyes.

'I hope you won't take it hard, Mr. Halibut,' says I, 'but she said she'd rather not come.'

'Confound it!' says he.

'You see,' I went on, 'it's a long time since you was at home, and you not writing or anything, and some girls are very flighty and changeable; and she told me to tell you she was sorry if you were mistaken in her feelings about you, and she's had time to think things over since three years ago; and now you're so well off, she says she's sure you'll find no difficulty in getting a girl suited to your mind.'

'Did she say that?' he said, looking at me very straight. 'It's not like her.'

'I don't mean she said so in those words, or that she told me to tell you so; but that's what I made out to be her mind from what she said between us two like.'

'But what message did she send to me? For I suppose she sent you to meet me to-day.'

Then I saw that I should have to be very careful. So to get a little time I says, 'I don't quite like to tell you, Mr. Halibut, what she said.'

'Out with it,' says he. 'Don't be a fool, girl!'

'Well, then,' I says, 'if it must be so, her words were these: "Tell Jack," she says, "that I shall ever wish him well for the sake of what's past, but all's over betwixt him and me, and--"'

'And what,' says he.

'There wasn't much besides,' says I.

'Good God, don't be such an idiot!' and he looked as if he could have shaken me.

'Well, then, if you must have it,' says I, 'she says, "Tell Jack there's at least one girl I know of as would make him a better wife than I should, and has been thinking of him steady and faithful these three years, while I've been giving my mind to far other things."'

'Confound her!' says he, 'little witch. And who is this other girl that she's so gracious to hand me over to?'

'I don't want to say no more,' says I. 'I'm going now, Mr. Halibut. Good-bye.'

For well I knew he wouldn't let me go at that.

'Tell me who it is,' says he. 'What! she's not content with giving me the mitten herself, but she must insult me and this poor girl too, who's got more sense than she has. Good Heavens, it would serve her right if I took her at her word, and took the other girl back with me.'

He was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, frowning like a July thunderstorm.

'Wicked, heartless little--but there, thank God! all women aren't like her. Who's this girl that she's tried to set me against?'

'I can't tell you,' says I.

'Oh! can't you, my girl? But you shall.'

And he catches hold of both my wrists in his hands.

'Leave me go!' I cried, 'you're hurting me.'

'Who is it?'

I was looking down my nose very straight, but when he said that, I just lifted my eyes up and looked at him, and dropped them.

I've always practised looking like what I meant, or what I wanted people to think I meant--sort of matching your looks and words, like you match ribbon and a bit of stuff.

'So you're the girl, are you?' he cries. 'And she thought to put you to shame before me with her messages? Look here, I'm well off. I'm going to Liverpool to-night, and back to America next week. I want to take a wife with me, and she says you have thought of me while I've been away. Will you marry me, Jane?'

I just looked at him again, and he put his arm round me and gave me a good kiss. I had to put up with it, though I never could see any sense in that sort of stuff. Then we walked home together, very slow, his arm round me.

I daresay some people will think I oughtn't to have acted so, taking away another girl's fellow. But I was quite sure she would get plenty that would play love in a cottage with her, and she did not seem to appreciate her blessings in getting a man that was well off, and I didn't see how it could be found out, as he was going away next day.

Now, it would all have gone as well as well if I had had the sense to offer to see him off at the station, and I ought to have had the sense to see him well out of the place. But we all make mistakes sometimes. Mine was in saying 'Good-bye' to him at the corner of the four-acre and going home by myself, leaving him with three-quarters of an hour for 'Satan to find some mischief still for idle hands to do' in.

I said 'Good-bye' to him, and he kissed me, and gave me the address where to write, and told me what to do.

'For I shan't have no truck with your uncle,' says he. 'I marries my wife, and I takes her right away.'

It wasn't till I was going up the stairs, untying my bonnet-strings as I went, and smoothing out the ribbons with my finger and thumb, for it was my best, that it come to me all in a minute that I had left Mattie locked up in that church. It was very tiresome, and how to get her out I didn't know. But I thought maybe she would be trying some of the other doors, and I might turn the key gently and away again before she could find out it was unlocked.

So up to the church I went, very hot, and a setting sun, and having had no tea or anything, and as I began to climb the hill my heart stood still in my veins, for I heard a sound from the church as I never expected to hear at that time of the day and week.

'O Lord!' I thought, 'she's tried every other way, and now she's ringing the bell, and she'll fetch up the whole village, and what will become of me?'

I made the best haste I could, but I could see more than one black dot moving up the hill before me that showed me folks on their way home had heard the bell and was going to see what it meant. And when I got up there they were trying the big door of the church, not knowing it was the little side one where the key was, and Jack, he come up almost the same moment I did, and I knew well enough he had come to get that note out of her prayer-book for fear some one else should see it.

'Here, I've got the key in my pocket,' says he, and with that he opened the door, the bell clang, clang, clanging from the tower all the time like as if the bellringer was drunk and had got a wager on to get more beats out of the bell in half an hour than the next man.

Whoever it was that was ringing the bell--and I could give a pretty good guess who it was--didn't seem to hear us coming, and they went up the aisle and pulled back the red baize curtain that hides the bottom of the tower where the ringers stand on Sundays, and there was Mattie with her old green gown on, and her hair all loose and down her back with the hard work of bellringing, I suppose, and her face as white as the bald-faced stag as is painted on the sign down at the inn in the village. And directly she saw Jack, I knew it was all over, for she let go the rope and it swung up like a live thing over our heads, and she made two steps to Jack and had him round the neck before them all.

'O Jack!' she cried, 'don't look like that.

I came to fetch your letter, and somebody locked me in.'

Jack, he turned to me, and his face was so that I should have been afraid to have been along of him in a lonely place.

'This is your doings,' says he, 'and all that pack of lies you told me was out of your own wicked head.'

He had got his arm round her, and was holding on as if she was something worth having, instead of a silly girl in a frock three year old.

'I don't know what you mean, I'm sure,' I said; 'it was only a joke.'

'A joke!' says he. 'Lies, I call it, and I know they're lies by the very touch of her in my arm here.'

'Oh, well!' I said, 'if you can't take joking better than this, it's the last time I'll ever try joking with you.'

And I walked out of the church, and the other folks who had run up to see what was the matter come out with me. And they two was left alone.

I suppose it was only human nature that, as I come round the church, I should get on the top of a tombstone and look in to see what they was doing. It was the little window where a pane was broken by a stone last summer, and so I heard what they was saying. He was trying to tell her what I had told him--quite as much for her own good as for mine, as you have seen; but she didn't seem to want to listen.

'Oh, never mind all that now, Jack,' she says, with arms round his neck. 'What does it matter about a silly joke now that I have got you, and it's all right betwixt us?'

I thought it my duty to go straight home and tell uncle she was up in the church, kissing and cuddling with Jack Halibut; and he took his stick and started off after her.

But he met them at the garden gate, and Jack, he came forward, and he says--

'Mr. Kenworthy, I have had hard thoughts of you this three year, but I see you was right, for if I had never gone away, I should never have been able to keep my little girl as she should be kept, and as I can now, thanks be! and I should never have known how dear she has loved me this three year.'

And uncle, like the soft-hearted old thing he is, he holds out his hands, and he says, 'God bless you, my boy, it was for your own good and hers.'

And they went in to supper.

As for me, I went to bed. I had had all the supper I wanted. And uncle has never been the same to me since, though I'm sure I tried to act for the best.

GUILTY

IT was my first place and my last, and I don't think we should have got on in business as we have if it hadn't been for me being for six or seven years with one of the first families in the county. Though only a housemaid, you can't help learning something of their ways. At any rate, you learn what gentlefolks like, and what they can't abide. But the worst of being housemaid where there's a lot of servants kept is, that one or other or all of the men-servants is sure to be wanting to keep company with you. They have nothing else to do in their spare time, and I suppose it's handy having your sweetheart living in the house. It doesn't give you so much trouble with going out in the evening, if not fine.

The coachman was promised to the cook, which, I believe, often takes place. Tim, the head groom, was a very nice, genteel fellow, and I daresay I might have taken up with him, if I hadn't met with my James, though never with John, who was the plague of my life. To begin with, he had a black whisker, that I couldn't bear to look at, let alone putting one's face against it, as I should have had to have done when married, no doubt. And he had a roving black eye, very yellowy in the white of it, and hair that looked all black and bear's-greasy, though he always said he never put anything on it except a little bay rum in moderation.

They tell me I was a pretty girl enough in those days, though looks is less important than you might think to a housemaid, if only she dresses neat and has a small waist. And I suppose I must think that John really did love me in his scowling, black whiskery way. He was a good footman, I will say that, and had been with the master three years, and the best of characters; but whatever he might have thought, I never would have had anything to do with him, even if James and me had had seas between us broad a-rolling for ever and ever Amen. He asked me once and he asked me twice, and it was 'no' and 'no' again. And I had even gone so far as to think that perhaps I should have to give up a good place to get out of his way, when master's uncle, old Mr. Oliver, and his good lady, came to stay at the Court, and with them came James, who was own man to Mr. Oliver.

Mr. Oliver was the funniest-looking old gent I ever see, if I may say so respectfully. He was as bald as an egg, with a sort of frill of brown hair going from ear to ear behind; and as if that wasn't enough, he was shaved as clean as a whistle, as though he had made up his mind that people shouldn't say that it had all gone to beard and whiskers, anyway. He wrote books, a great many of them, and you may often see his name in the papers, and he was for ever poking about into what didn't concern him, and my Lady, she said to me when she found me a little put out at him asking about how things went on in the servants' hall, she said to me--

'You mustn't mind him, Mary,' she said; 'you know he likes to find out all that he can about everything, so as to put it in his books.'

And he certainly talked to every one he came across--even the stable-boys--in a way that you could hardly think becoming from a gentleman to servants, if he wasn't an author, and so to have allowances made for him, poor man! He talked to the housemaids, and he talked to the groom, and he talked to the footman that waited on him at lunch when he had it late, as he did sometimes, owing to him having been kept past the proper time by his story-writing, for he wrote a good part of the day most days, and often went up to London while he was staying with us--to sell his goods, I suppose. He wore curious clothes, not like most gentlemen, but all wool things, even to his collars and his boots, which were soft and soppy like felt; and he took snuff to that degree I wouldn't have believed any human nose could have borne it, and he must have been a great trial to Mrs. Oliver until she got used to him and his pottering about all over the house in his soft-soled shoes; and the mess he made of his pocket-handkerchieves and his linen!

Mrs. Oliver was a round little fat bunch of a woman, if I may say so in speaking of master's own aunt by marriage, and him a baronet. She had the most lovely jewellery, and was very fond of wearing it of an evening, more than most people do when they are staying with relations and there's no company. She never spoke much except to say, 'Yes, Dick dear,' and 'No, Dick dear,' when they spoke to each other; but they were as fond of each other as pigeons on a roof, and always very pleasant-spoken and nice to wait on.

As for James, he was the jolliest man I ever met, and cook said the same. He was like Sam Weller in the book, or would have been if he had lived in those far-off times; but footmen are more genteel now than they were then.

Anyway, he hadn't been at the Court twenty-four hours before he was first favourite with every one, and cook made him a Welsh rabbit with her own hands, 'cause he hadn't been able to get his dinner comfortable with the rest of us--a thing she wouldn't have done for Sir William himself at that time of night. As for me, the first time he looked at me with his jolly blue eyes--it was when he met me carrying a tray the first morning after he came--my heart gave a jump inside my print gown, and I said to it as I went downstairs--

'You've met your master, I'm thinking'; and if I did go to church with him the very first Sunday, which was more than ever I had done with any of the others, it was after he had asked me plain and straight to go to church with him some day for good and all.

Now, the next morning, quite early, I was dusting the library, when John come in with his black face like a thundercloud.

'Look here, Mary,' he says; 'what do you mean by going to church with that stuck-up London trumpery?'

'Mind your own business,' says I, sharp as you please.

'I am,' he says. 'You are my business--the only business I care a damn about, or am ever likely to. You don't know how I love you, Mary,' he says. And I was sorry for him as he spoke. 'I would lie down in the dirt for you to walk on if it would do you any good, so long as you didn't walk over me to get to some other chap.'

'I am very sorry for you, John,' says I, 'but I've told you, not once or twice, but fifty times, that it can never be. And there are plenty of other girls that would be only too glad to walk out with a young man like you without your troubling yourself about me.'

He was walking up and down the room like a cat in a cage. Presently he began to laugh in a nasty, sly, disagreeable way.

'Oh! you think he'll marry you, do you?' says he. 'But he's just amusing himself with you till he gets back to London to his own girl. You let him see you was only amusing yourself with him, and you come out with me when you get your evening.'

And he took the dusting-brush out of my hand, and caught hold of my wrists.

'It's all a lie!' I cried; 'and I wonder you can look me in the face and tell it. Him and me are going to be married as soon as he has saved enough for a little public, and I never want to speak to you again; and if you don't let go of my hands, I'll scream till I fetch the house down, master and all, and then where will you be?'

He scowled at that, but he let my hands go directly.

'Have it your own way,' he said. 'But I tell you, you won't marry him, and you'll find he won't want to marry you, and you'll marry me, my girl. And when you have married me, you shall cry your eyes out for every word you have said now.'

'Oh, shall I, Mr. Liar?' says I, for my blood was up; 'before that happens, you'll have to change him into a liar and me into a fool and yourself into an honest man, and you'll find that the hardest of all.' And with that I threw the dusting-brush at him--which was a piece of wicked temper I oughtn't to have given way to--and ran out of the door, and I heard him cursing to himself something fearful as I went down the passage.

'Good thing the gentlefolks are abed still,' I said to myself; and I didn't tell a soul about it, even cook, the truth being I was ashamed to.

Well, everything went on pretty much the same as usual for two or three weeks, and I thought John was getting the better of his silliness, because he made a show of being friendly to James and was respectful to me, even when we was alone. Then came that dreadful day that I shall never forget if I live to be a hundred years old. Dinner was half an hour later than usual on account of Mr. Oliver having gone up to town on his business; but he didn't get home when expected, and they sat down without him after all. I was about my work, turning down beds and so forth, and I had done Mrs. Oliver's about ten minutes, and was in my lady's room, when Mrs. Oliver's own maid came running in with a face like paper.

'Oh, what ever shall I do?' she cried, wringing her hands, as they say in books, and I always thought it nonsense, but she certainly did, though I never saw any one do it before or since.

'What is it?' I asked her.

'It's my mistress's diamond necklace,' she said. 'She was going to wear it to-night. And then she said, No, she wouldn't; she'd have the emeralds, and I left it on the dressing-table instead of locking it up, and now it's gone!'

I went into Mrs. Oliver's room with her, and there was the jewel-box with the pretty shining things turned out on the dressing-table, for Mrs. Oliver had a heap of jewellery that had come to her from her own people, and she as fond of wearing it as if she was slim and twenty, instead of being fifty, and as round as an orange. We looked on the dressing-table and we looked on the floor, and we looked in the curtains to see if it had got in any of them. But look high, look low, no diamond necklace could we find. So at last Scott--that was Mrs. Oliver's maid--said there was nothing for it but to go and tell her mistress. The ladies were in the drawing-room by this time. So she went down all of a tremble, and in the hall there was Mrs. Oliver looking anxious out of the front door, which was open, it being summer and the house standing in its own park.

'Mr. Oliver is very late, Scott,' she says. 'I am getting anxious about him.'

And as she spoke, and before Scott could answer, there was his step on the gravel, and he came in at the front door with his little black bag in his hand that I suppose he carried his stories in to see if people would like to buy them.

'Hullo! Scott,' he says, 'have you seen a ghost?' And, indeed, she looked more dead than alive. She gulped in her throat, but she could not speak.

'Here, young woman,' says Mr. Oliver to me, 'you haven't lost your head altogether. What's it all about?'

So I told him as well as I could, and by this time master had come out and my Lady, and you never saw any one so upset as they were. All the house was turned out of window, hunting for the necklace; though, of course, not having legs, it couldn't have walked by itself out of Mrs. Oliver's room. All the servants was called up, even to the kitchen-maid; and those who were not angry, were frightened, and, what with fright and anger, there wasn't one of us, I do believe, as didn't look as they had got the necklace on under their clothes that very minute. John was very angry indeed. 'Do they think we'd take their dirty necklace?' he said, as we were going up. 'It's enough to ruin all of us, this kind of thing happening, and leaving the doors open so that any one could get in and walk clear off with it without a stain on their character, and us left with none to speak of.'

So when master had asked us all a lot of questions, and we were told we could go, John stepped out and said--

'I am sure I am only expressing the feelings of my fellow-servants when I say that we should wish our boxes searched and our rooms, so that there shall be no chance for any one to say afterwards that it lays at any of our doors.'

And Mrs. Oliver began to cry, and she said 'No, no, she wouldn't put that insult on any one.' But Mr. Oliver, who hadn't been saying much, though so talkative generally, but kept taking snuff at a rate that was dreadful to see, he said--

'The young man is quite right, my dear; and if you don't mind,' he says to master, 'I think it had better be done.'

And so it was done, and I don't know how to write about it now, though it was never true. They came to my room and they looked into all my drawers and boxes except my little hat-tin, and when they wanted the key of that, I said, silly-like, not having any idea that they could think that I could do such a thing, 'I'd rather you didn't look into that. It's only some things I don't want any one to see.'

And the reason was that I'd got some bits of things in it that I'd got the week before in the town towards getting my things for the wedding ready, and I felt somehow I didn't want any one to see them till James did. And they all looked very queer at me when I said that, and my Lady said--