Part 10

“Ah, I fancy that’s about my age.”

Tabitha cast a look of triumph towards Rebecca, who feigned unconsciousness.

“I can mind the time o’ the Crimee War,” she announced deliberately.

There was a chorus of derisive comment.

“The Crimean War! Why, that’s scarce any time ago,” said Mr. Joyce. “’Twas in the fifties, I think; ’ees, I can remember the time very well myself. That don’t go for to prove nothin’, Rebecca.”

“Well, there’s one comfort,” returned she, undaunted, “us’ll be judged by folks as don’t know us one from t’other, and they’ll be like to judge us fair. There be things for and against both on us. Bithey’s hard o’ hearin’ and wonderful stiff in her j’ints, and all that’ll be in her favour; but if they do go for to judge us wold women same way as they do judge harses, I reckon I’ve a-got the best chance.”

“How’s that?” cried Charl’.

“Why, if they go for to examine our teeth, to be sure; they’d see as I hadn’t got none.”

And further demonstrating the fact by a wide smile, Rebecca walked away, followed by a burst of mirthful applause.

On the eventful morning of the Show all the inhabitants of Thorncombe Farm assembled to see Rebecca start. Charl’ was to drive her to the town, for, as he explained, it would never do for her to let on she was hearty enough to walk such a distance.

“If I was you, Beck,” he added, “I’d make out to have a bit of a limp. ’Twould go far to make ye evener like wi’ Bithey.”

“Nay,” returned Rebecca stoutly, “I was never one for makin’ out what wasn’t true.”

“Smooth down your hair a bit under your bonnet,” advised Mrs. Meatyard anxiously. “It mid be any colour tucked away like that.”

As this injunction could be obeyed without detriment to her principles, the old woman pushed back her bonnet and pulled into greater prominence her scanty snowy side-locks. Then she climbed into the cart, with a palpitating heart, and sat clutching at her umbrella while they jogged out of the yard, and down the green lane, and out on the dusty high road.

Mr. and Mrs. Meatyard did not make their appearance at the Show till the afternoon, when most of the judging was over, and only that important part of the programme which related to various feats of horsemanship remained to be carried out.

“Let’s hunt up Becky afore we go to look at the jumpin’,” said the farmer to his wife, as they passed through the turnstile and threaded their way amid the various stalls and pens containing exhibits from all parts of the neighbourhood. Here a beautiful little red Devon cow thrust a moist protesting nose through the railings; there a sturdy black-faced ram made abortive butts with his curled horns at the passers-by; yonder a pen of cackling geese flapped distracted wings and extended yards of snowy neck with prodigious outcry; and now there was a stampede among the ever-increasing crowd, as a great cart-colt was led past floundering and kicking.

The Meatyards stared about them, and wondered and commented, and had almost forgotten Becky in their interest and excitement, when they suddenly came upon her, walking arm-in-arm with no other person than her rival Bithey.

“Why bless me, Rebecca, so here ye be!” cried the farmer. “And Bithey, too. What! Han’t ye been judged yet? An’ who’s the winner?”

“What does he say?” asked Tabitha plaintively of the other competitor, and the Meatyards noticed with surprise that her tone was meek, and indeed confiding.

“Master do want to know if we’ve a’ been judged yet, my dear,” returned Becky soothingly. “I reckon he’ll be surprised when he do hear how we’ve a-been used.”

“’Ees indeed,” sighed Bithey, and she wiped her eyes with a corner of her shawl.

“There, don’t take ’ee on, my dear,” said Rebecca, patting her hand affectionately. “The poor soul,” she explained, turning to the farmer and his wife, who were gazing at the pair open-mouthed, “the poor soul do seem to be quite undone. I d’ ’low ’twas a shame to go and disapp’int her so. ’Twill ha’ gied her quite a turn—at her age an’ all.”

“’Tis no worse for me nor ’tis for you, my dear,” put in Bithey with a groan of sympathy. “You had farther to come nor me, an’ you must be half shook to pieces a-ridin’ in that wold cart.”

“In the name o’ fortun’,” cried the exasperated Mr. Meatyard, “which on you did get the prize? There you do go chatterin’ an’ jabberin’ and neither of you will tell us which be the winner.”

“You’d never think—” began Bithey.

“’Tis the most unfairest thing you ever did hear on!” exclaimed Becky. “There was the two of us—the woldest women for miles round, I’ll go bail. I’m sure ye did only need to look at Bithey here to see it.”

“And I’m sure,” wailed Tabitha, “the very sight o’ your grey hair did ought to ha’ shamed them, Becky.”

Here the impatient farmer made a sudden lunge at them, almost after the fashion of the curly-horned prize ram, and the two old women simultaneously announced in an agitated whimper:—

“There, they didn’t give the prize to neither of us!”

“Dear heart alive! you don’t say so?” said Mrs. Meatyard, after a pause of blank amazement, while her husband uttered a shrill whistle. “Didn’t ’ee get no prize at all then?”

“Wasn’t ’ee so much as ‘’Ighly Commended,’ Beck?” cried her master, recovering from his stupor, and uttering a roar of laughter.

“No, sir,” returned Rebecca mournfully, “I didn’t get nothin’ at all—nor Bithey neither. They never took a bit of notice after they’d axed how long we’d been in our present sitooations. They went and give the butter-dish to quite a young ’ooman. I don’t think she can ha’ been more nor fifty-five. ’Ees, sir, if ye’ll believe me, a big strapping woman as stout as me and Bithey put together, and so firm on her legs as anything.”

“Whew!” whistled the farmer again, “you don’t say so! Well, I never did—there must ha’ been some reason as you didn’t know on.”

“Maybe she was blind,” suggested Mrs. Meatyard. “That ’ud be a p’int in her favour.”

“No more blind nor yourself, ma’am,” returned Becky almost triumphantly. “She’d a-been thirty year in the one place—that was all as I could hear as she could say for herself, and they went and give her the butter-dish wi’out no more talk than that. So, when I did see how upset poor Bithey was—an’ she so troubled with the rheumatiz, poor wold body—I jist says to her, says I, ‘You take my arm, my dear,’ says I; ‘you jist come along of I.’ And she were glad enough to do it.”

“I d’ ’low I was,” agreed her whilom rival. “I reckon I thought it oncommon kind. ’Ees,’ says I, ‘Becky love,’ says I, ‘I take it oncommon kind o’ you to help me same as you’re a-doin’ of, for ye bain’t so young yourself,’ says I.”

Mr. Meatyard slapped his thigh and shouted with laughter.

“You’ve changed your note, I see—both on you,” he exclaimed as soon as he could speak. “Well, and where are you bound for now?”

“Why, d’ye see, sir,” said Becky, “her an’ me is both tired o’ this—we are—jist about! And so she says to me, says she, ‘Let’s go over to one o’ them little booths over there and set down for a bit, and rest us.’ Didn’t ye, Bithey?”

“I did,” said Bithey, “and I says, ‘Becky,’ says I, ‘arter all this standin’, an’ all this talkin’, and all the dust and sawdust flyin’ about, I’m awful dry,’ I says; ‘what would you say,’ says I, ‘to a bottle of Pop?’”

The farmer laughed again, but his wife strongly advised the old couple to have recourse to that restorative, and they therefore toddled away together to drown the memory of their differences and, if possible, of their disappointment in a sparkling and innocuous glass.

THE LOVER’S WRAITH.

“WELL, I don’t believe in no such nonsense. Folks do get a-talkin’ and a-carryin’ tales fro’ one to the other, but I never met anybody yet as see a ghost, and I don’t believe nobody ever did!”

“You are wrong for once then,” cried Martha; and she pulled away her arm, the elbow of which had till then been linked in Sam Bundy’s—for the two were “walking” in orthodox fashion—and turned round to face him, an angry flush mounting in her cheeks.

Martha Dale was a very pretty girl, and never more so than in her working dress, which, being of pink cotton, intensified the glow on her cheeks and threw into yet stronger relief the darkness of eyes and hair. A little fitful evening breeze was now playing with the dusky tendrils about her brow, setting one tiny curl dancing, indeed, after a fashion which Sam would have found tantalising at any other time; but now he was too much in earnest.

“It do seem sich a pity for a sensible maid same as you to be took in by sich rubbish.”

“Thank ’ee,” rejoined Martha. “I s’pose my own grandma is a liar then, for ’twas she as told me the tale, and she did say as she saw it wi’ her own eyes.”

“What, a ghost?”

“No, it couldn’t ha’ been a ghost for ’twas the sperret of a man as was alive. ’Twas the custom, she says, for all the young folks to wait outside church-porch at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and if they was to get married during the year they’d see the sperrets of them they was to get married with go into the church and come out again. And they’d see the sperret, or the shape, or whatever ye mid call it, of them as was to die during the year too—only that kind didn’t never come out o’ the church again; they did jist walk in wi’ grave sorrowful faces, and did seem to bide there. But my grandma she telled me often how plain she saw granfer a-comin’ out of church—there, he did pass so close to her she could very nigh ha’ touched him, only she was afeared. And sure enough he axed her two months arter to the very day.”

Sam walked along in silence, chewing a blade of grass which he had plucked from beneath the hedge; his broad chip hat was set somewhat at the back of his head, and his open sunburnt face, thus fully exposed to view, wore an expression of incredulity and dissatisfaction.

“Ye don’t believe me, I see,” said Martha quickly.

“Oh, I don’t say that. I b’lieve ye think you are speakin’ the truth—’tis as true as you heared it—’tisn’t as if you was tryin’ to make me believe as you’d seen the thing yourself.”

“Well, then,” said Martha, with a flash in her black eyes, “I’ll be tellin’ you that, come next Midsummer Eve. I’ll go myself, and stand in church-porch, and maybe I’ll see Bob Ellery a-comin’ out.”

“Bob Ellery!” ejaculated Sam, stopping short again, and throwing away his blade of grass. “Is it _him_ ye’re thinkin’ of lookin’ for?”

“Why not?” said Martha, slightly raising her voice; “as well him as another.”

“Well,” said Sam, striking the nailed heel of his heavy boot into the ground, “he’s just the one to be up to sich foolishness—the biggest sammy between this and Dorchester.”

“I wouldn’t be makin’ free wi’ your own name,” retorted the girl sarcastically. “I know one sammy as ain’t so far off. But ye needn’t be turnin’ up your nose at Bob Ellery, Mr. Sam Bundy—him and me’s very thick, and I don’t like to hear my friends abused.”

“Now look ye here, Martha,” said Sam, controlling his rising anger. “This here be real foolish talk between you and I, as has been a-walkin’ ever since Christmas. If you was to look for anybody a-comin’ out o’ church, it should be me!”

“Oh, but you are much too grand to think o’ lettin’ your sperret do any sich thing. Bob bain’t so stuck up—he don’t set up for being no wiser than the rest of us. But as for you—if we was to spill the salt between us I don’t suppose you’d ever think o’ throwin’ a pinch over your shoulder.”

“I don’t suppose I should,” he replied, bluntly.

“You was brought up wi’ such notions!” she continued. “Your mother didn’t ever set ye on a donkey’s back wi’ your face to the tail, did she?”

“I can’t call to mind as she did,” returned he, staring.

“Then, ’tain’t her fault, nor yours neither, if ye didn’t die o’ the whooping cough,” cried Martha triumphantly. “’Twas the first thing as ever my mother did do wi’ the lot of us, except my little brother Walter, and he was the only one as ever took that complaint, and never looked up after—just withered away, one mid say, and died.”

“Because he didn’t sit with his face to the ass’s tail,” said Sam, relaxing into a broad grin.

“Ye did ought to be ashamed o’ yourself, Sam, to go a-sneerin’ like that—there be a cross on the donkey’s back.”

Sam thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his corduroys, and paced beside her without speaking for a moment or two; then he turned to her with a good-humoured laugh:—

“Believe what you like, my maid, only don’t ask me to say I do do it!”

“I’m not axin’ you nothin’ at all, I’m sure,” returned Martha indifferently, though again the tell-tale colour swept over cheek and brow. She stooped presently, and plucked an ox-eye daisy from beneath the hedge.

“This year; next year; some time; never! This year—next year—some time—never—This year—next year—some time—never! _This_ year!—I wonder if ’tis to be wi’ Bob Ellery. Come, I’ll try his fortune.”

She possessed herself of another daisy, and was about to resume her performance when Sam, laying his hand on hers, firmly imprisoned both the busy fingers and the blossom.

“Martha,” he said, “there be some things a man can stand, and there be some things he can’t. Now I can’t stand hearing you carry on this ’ere kind o’ nonsense about Bob Ellery. It’s got to be one way or t’other—him or me. If it’s me jist gi’e me your word as ye’ll drop this ’ere talk o’ tryin’ your fortun’ wi’ him. If it’s him in earnest—I’ll bid you good evenin’.”

Martha was proud as well as pretty, and resented the peremptory tone; she jerked away her hands, and tossed her head.

“P’r’aps I won’t wait for you to say it, Mr. Bundy—p’r’aps I can say ‘Good evenin’’ jist so plain as ye can yourself. _Good evenin’_, Mr. Samuel Bundy. I wish ye a pleasant walk home, and hope ye may soon find a sweetheart clever enough to suit ye. Ye’d best ax schoolmissus—she bain’t much more nor fifty-four, and I reckon she’s not one to go a-waitin’ in church-porch to look for sperrets—I’ll tell ye later on who _I_ see on Midsummer Eve; but—I—think—I—know.”

She had been dropping little ironical curtsies to him throughout this speech, and now walked away, plucking the leaves from her crushed daisy, and singing “I—think—I—know” until she had turned the corner of the lane.

Sam stood looking after her until she was out of sight, and then, drawing a deep breath, began to move slowly homewards.

“So that is the end!” he said to himself. “And I thought she was terrible fond of me. These maids—there bain’t no knowin’ where to have ’em!”

* * * * *

On the following Sunday the once tender lovers walked apart, and Sam invented no more pretexts for passing Martha’s home of a weekday evening as he had been wont to do, just for a glimpse of her in the doorway or at the window, or, as had not infrequently happened, standing accidentally by the gate. On these occasions he had been used to invite her to walk with him “just so far as the top of the lane;” it was, indeed, during the course of one of these little strolls that the quarrel had taken place. But now, though oddly enough just about that time of evening Martha was to be seen pretty often looking out of the window, or leaning against the doorpost, or even gazing absently up and down the lane from the garden gate, Sam Bundy passed that way no more.

When Sunday came again Bob Ellery chanced to overtake Martha as she was returning home from church, a fact which Sam Bundy, who had passed the girl a moment before with an immovable face, carefully noted; and when Bob, with an agreeable smile, inquired if Martha was likely to be walking out that afternoon, he was answered with such flattering civility that he took courage to propose to be her companion.

But Martha’s family noticed that she came in from the expedition in a very bad humour. Bob was a thick-headed young man, and he had not much to say for himself; and he had brought his pipe with him and puffed the smoke in Martha’s face and laughed at her for minding it; and, moreover, he had wanted to kiss her on parting, which she had thought very presumptuous on so short an acquaintance—Sam had walked with her for at least three Sundays before he had made any such attempt—altogether she was ruffled.

“I reckon ye did like Sam best,” remarked her sister, as Martha tossed her hat on to the bed.

The other started and answered angrily: “I may have liked him to begin wi’, but I fair hate him now.”

“Well, Bob Ellery bain’t so bad,” returned the sister soothingly. “His nose do seem to turn up a good bit, and he’ve got an awful big head, but I’ve seen many as was worse looking.”

“There’s other chaps besides Sam and Bob,” retorted Martha.

“Who?” enquired the other eagerly, thinking her sister had made a new conquest.

“Oh, I don’t know—there’s lots of ’em about. Do ye mind Granny’s silly old tale about goin’ to the church-porch on Midsummer Eve?”

“Of course I do. Are ye thinkin’ o’ tryin’ it?”

Martha nodded.

“I’d like to find out summat for certain,” she said.

“Lard, I should be frightened to death to try it. Ugh! Fancy standin’ there among the graves all alone in the dark a-waitin’ for a sperret! Maybe ye mightn’t like him when he did come.”

“That’s just what I be a-thinkin’,” said Martha, with a sigh. “But I’d like to find out—it ’ud be a kind o’ satisfaction to know for sure, and not to keep on wonderin’ if it’s to be this one or that one.”

“Well, I wouldn’t do it if I was you,” said the sister.

But Martha was obdurate.

Shortly after the clock struck eleven on the fateful night she crept softly out of the house, and sped noiselessly through the village, and up the lane until she came to the church.

It was a warm, still night, with a large, sultry moon swimming overhead, and outlining with silver the grey walls of the sacred building and the many tombstones which studded the green enclosure round it.

Martha stood still, catching her breath, then tremulously unlatched the gate and went up the flagged path. She paused midway, raising her hand to her head:—

“Did Grandma say ‘_In_ church-porch’ or ‘Nigh to church-porch’? I can’t mind which. The porch do seem to be awful dark—and ’twould be oncommon close inside. There do seem to be scarce room for the sperrets to get past if you was to stand there, without they went through you.”

She shivered: the porch did certainly look uninviting, swathed as it was in awful shadow, and festooned with ivy, tendrils of which stirred every now and then, uncannily as it seemed, for there was no breeze, and the motion was probably caused by some of the many birds that had made homes for themselves in its green fastnesses.

“I reckon it will do just as well if I stop here under tree,” said Martha decisively. “I can see everything what goes in or out, and ’twouldn’t be so far to run if—” she glanced apprehensively at the porch again, measured the distance between it and the gate, and finally, moving swiftly towards the latter, propped it carefully open with a large stone.

“The road do run all downhill too,” she said to herself, feeling somewhat reassured as she glanced down the lane; she possessed a light pair of heels—even if a spirit were to pursue her she fancied she could distance it.

Under the big cypress tree she now took up her stand, drawing her dark skirts closely about her, and only peering out occasionally behind the trunk. The moments passed very slowly, as it seemed to her; now and then the squeak of a bat broke the stillness, at other times a rustle in the long grass betokened the passage of some nocturnal wanderer—a stoat possibly, or a rat. On these occasions Martha would hitch up her skirts a little and look fearfully round—she was almost as much afraid of rats as of ghosts. Once she thought she heard a kind of stealthy movement in the grass just behind her, and almost uttered a shriek of terror as the possibility occurred to her that it might be a snake. After looking over her shoulder in the endeavour to ascertain the cause of this mysterious sound she turned round again suddenly.

Lo! advancing with swift and noiseless tread up the flagged path was a figure, the outlines of which were strangely familiar to her. As it approached nearer to her place of ambush the moonlight distinctly revealed a countenance which seemed to be that of Samuel Bundy. _Seemed_ to be I say, for it wore an expression strangely unlike that which Martha had been accustomed to see on the blunt and honest face of her former lover: an expression of stern gravity; the eyes were fixed, the mouth resolutely set, the face, moreover, was deadly pale in the moonlight, and what alarmed Martha more than anything else was the fact that the figure moved onward without making a sound. Into the church-porch it passed, and was there engulfed by the darkness.

Martha’s heart was thumping like a sledgehammer; it was Sam sure enough—or rather Sam’s wraith, for surely no living thing could look or move in that ghostly fashion.

[Picture: “So it’s to be him after all!”]

“So it’s to be him after all!” gasped Martha, with an odd little choked spasm of laughter. “Dear, to be sure! I wonder if he d’ know as his sperret have a-come here to-night. He must be dreamin’ o’ me—I reckon he’ll have to believe now when I d’ tell him. . . . Well, I’d liefer ’twas him nor Bob, anyhow. He’ll own he be wrong arter this, an’ then all ’ull be pleasant again between us.”

She leaned her head against the spice-scented cypress bark, and smiled to herself, though she still trembled, partly with awe, partly with pleasurable anticipation. When the church clock chimed midnight, then might she confidently expect the wraith of her future husband to come gliding forth from the church into which it had so silently passed, and might gaze with certainty on the likeness of the man decreed to be the partner of her lot. It was a solemn thought, but a joyful one; any contact with the supernatural must be awe-inspiring, but Martha was a bold girl, and eminently practical, and she passed the moments which must intervene before the reappearance of the vision in choosing the colour of her wedding gown.

Clang! boomed out the clock in the church tower presently, and as the reverberating strokes fell upon the air, Martha, philosophical though she was, was conscious of a recurrence of the choking sensation of a little while before. The last vibrating echo died away, and she craned forward her head, fearful and yet eager. All was silent as the graves in the midst of which she stood; she strained her eyes towards the porch, but no white impalpable shape came forth from its blackness.

All at once Martha’s heart ceased its violent beating, and appeared to stand still: a new and awful thought had come to her. Had not her grandmother told her the dread fate which awaited the originals of those whose semblance passed into the church without again reappearing? Her own words to Sam recurred to her: “Them as is to die within the year do seem to go into the church and _don’t never come out again_.” Could it be possible that the apparition which had filled her with so much satisfaction a few moments before was the portent of poor Sam’s early death?

Unnerved by this terrible idea she rent the stillness with a series of muffled shrieks and sobs:—

“Oh, Sam, Sam! Oh, dear Sam! Oh, Sam, come out, come out! Whatever shall I do? Sam, come out!”

Her tears were flowing so fast that she was obliged to have recourse to her apron, and, enveloped in its folds and overcome by increasing grief, failed to hear the series of heavy thuds which denoted the rapid approach of the figure which had suddenly emerged from the church-porch.

Could any spirit be endowed with such a pair of sturdy arms as those which were now thrown about her, or be capable of bestowing such resounding and fervent salutes as those which were presently rained on brow and cheeks? Martha uttered one blood-curdling yell, and then stood still.