Part 3

Mrs. Frizzell’s hawk eyes immediately fixed themselves upon the mental picture of Private Grigg’s maternal parent, and she presently remarked, in a somewhat muffled tone, that she fancied she had heard summat about old Mrs. Griggs bein’ a red-haired woman.

“And that makes another of ’em!” she groaned to herself, “I d’ ’low I’ll soon forget what ’tis to speak the truth.”

Returning, after the departure of the visitors, to replace the little flannel-wrapped bundle by its mother’s side, she observed tentatively—

“His hair do seem to be red, Susie.”

“’Ees,” returned poor Susie faintly, “his hair be red—like Jim’s.”

“Ye mid ha’ told me that, I think!” exclaimed Mrs. Frizzell, with irrepressible irritation. “I’ve been a-tellin’ everybody as your husband were a dark-haired man. I had to make out a story now about your mother-in-law having red hair. P’r’aps she has?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. She’s dead long ago, and so is his father. Oh, Mother, how can you make up sich tales?”

“Well, I had to say summat when they axed me. If I were to say as I didn’t know, they’d be sure to guess as things wasn’t all right.”

“But if—if Jim ever do come back?” faltered the girl.

“He’ll not come back—put that out o’ your head,” said Mrs. Frizzell shortly.

The tears rolled down Susie’s face, and her eyes followed her mother’s energetic figure as it moved about the room. Once or twice she opened her lips as though to speak, but her courage failed her. Then, suddenly, the words burst from her—

“Mother, don’t ’ee pray agen him! I can feel as you’re wishin’ and wantin’ him not to come back. P’r’aps ye be a-prayin’ as—as summat may happen. Oh, don’t, don’t! ’Tis wicked.”

Mrs. Frizzell turned quite pale. She came and stood at the foot of Susie’s bed, gazing at her so oddly that the girl, who was by this time shaking with hysterical sobs, became more and more unnerved and frightened.

“There, don’t take on so,” said her mother at last, and her voice sounded husky and strange. “I mid be better nor what I am, the Lard knows, though, p’r’aps, it bain’t my own darter’s place to tell I so; but I’ve not gone so far as to pray for evil to fall on anybody, if that be what ye mean. I be a Christian woman, however wicked I mid be.”

“But you wish it,” sobbed Susan. “You know you wish it, Mother—you do wish as Jim were dead.”

“You lay down,” said Mrs. Frizzell, coming round to the side of the bed, and forcing her patient back upon her pillows. “Lay down, and keep still, and don’t go upsettin’ yourself and this poor innocent child. Leave the Lard to judge of I, as I do leave Him to judge of _he_.”

Susan was slowly recovering strength when one day a letter arrived containing news so consoling and yet so tragic that her heart very nearly broke.

Jim—her Jim—her husband, for as such, in spite of her mother’s protests, she continued to regard him, had written to her on the eve of battle—a manly letter, full of remorseful tenderness. Solemn thoughts had come to him out there on the lonely veldt, face to face with death. The remembrance of the innocent creature who had trusted him, and whom he had loved and wronged, haunted him perpetually. The conduct which had once seemed to him excusable now appeared to him in its true light. Moreover, his actual rough life, the hardships, the horrors of war, threw into stronger relief the happy hours which he had passed by her side; his brief glimpses of home—home of which pretty, guileless Susie had been the presiding goddess.

So, when the great fight was imminent, he had bethought him of writing to her, telling her a little of what was in his mind, announcing that he loved her still, and if God spared him to return he would do the right thing by her and make her his wife in earnest.

[Picture: There, on the narrow stairs, stood the girl herself]

But alas! and alas! the letter was enclosed in one written by another hand, and the poor soldier’s own unfinished missive bore a postscript of a sinister kind—a deep red-brown stain.

The writer of the enclosure—an ambulance-nurse, no doubt—related how poor Jim had been so anxious for the letter to be sent that she had despatched it as it was. At his request the envelope bore Mrs. Frizzell’s name, and for her the enclosure was intended. Would she, the writer asked, break to her daughter that Gunner Barton’s wounds were of so serious a nature that it was impossible he could recover? He had been struck and fearfully shattered by some fragments of a shell—in fact, by the time his letter reached its destination he must be dead.

Martha was standing supporting herself by the table, and vainly trying to muster up courage to face Susan, when a cry from behind her made her start and look furtively round. There, on the narrow stairs, stood the girl herself, her figure unnaturally tall in its clinging white nightdress, her eyes dilated, her pale lips apart.

Not a word could the mother say. She stood clutching the papers which fluttered in her hand.

But Susie had already seen that terrible smear, and again a cry rang through the house.

“Oh, Mother! oh, Mother! you’ve done it! You’ve got your wish—he’s dead!”

And Mrs. Frizzell, darting forward, was just in time to catch her as she fell.

But a little later, after being carried back to bed with the aid of Mrs. Cross—whom Martha prudently banished on the first sign which Susie gave of “coming to”—the poor girl wept as much with gladness as with grief.

“He did love me, Mother; you see how he did love me, and he did mean to make amends. Thank God for that! Oh, thank God for that! If he hadn’t ha’ wrote you’d never ha’ believed me; but I knew—I knew! But now I shall never see his face no more.”

And then, pressing the letter to her heart, she turned and hid her face upon the pillows, refusing to be comforted.

Mrs. Frizzell went downstairs and sank into the elbow-chair.

“Lard forgive me!” she said to herself over and over again. “Good Lard, forgive me! I can scarce think I wished en dead, but I did wish for en not to come back, and I did tell so many lies that they’ve a-come true to punish I. There, my child be a-breakin’ her heart, and ’tis me as has done it.”

By-and-bye Mrs. Cross peered in again, anxious and curious.

“What did make Susan take that bad turn, I wonder?”

“Why,” returned Mrs. Frizzell, looking up with red eyes, but with an odd sense of returning self-respect—this time, at least, she was telling no untruth—“it be enough to upset her. She’ve a-had a letter from her husband, wrote afore he died: so lovin’. And it be all stained wi’ blood.”

“Dear heart alive!” groaned the other sympathetically. “Poor Mr. Griggs! They took it off en after he were dead, I suppose?”

Mrs. Frizzell’s face fell. It was hard, after all, to persevere in the path of rectitude.

“’Ees,” she said faintly. “Leastways, the nurse as sent it on said he were almost gone when she took it off en.”

“Ah-h-h!” groaned the neighbour again. “Well, we do know he be dead, Mrs. Frizzell, don’t we? seein’ as his name were in the paper, and all.”

“Oh, ’ees,” agreed Mrs. Frizzell, still more falteringly.

“And his blood was on the letter,” resumed Mrs. Cross, with a certain gruesome relish, though her eyes were full of tears. “Dear, now, I should like to see it. It ’ud be really summat to see, wouldn’t it?”

“Ah, but my poor Susan, she won’t let nobody look at it,” returned the mother in quick alarm. “She’ve a-got it under her pillow, and she’ve a-got fast hold on’t.”

“Poor young thing! Well, I can understand her feelings—p’r’aps some other day—”

“Nay, don’t think it, Mrs. Cross—don’t look for’t! Says she to I, ‘Mother, you won’t never let no stranger set eyes on this here. ’Twas meant for nobody but me,’ says she, and I do mean to keep it for myself.’ . . . And there’s another,” lamented the poor woman almost in despair.

“Oh, very well, mum; I’m sure I don’t want to put myself forrard where I bain’t wanted,” retorted Mrs. Cross in a tone of offended dignity. “But I thought I mid make so bold as to ax, seein’ as I’ve a-knowed your Susan since she were no bigger than her own blessed orphan child.”

“Nay, now, no offence. I don’t suppose, Mrs. Cross, as Susan ’ull so much as let Father see it. There now, talkin’ of the baby, would you like to look at en? I’ll fetch en in a minute; he be comin’ on finely.”

“Well, I haven’t seen en for two or three days—I couldn’t take much notice on en jist now when Susan seemed so bad,” returned Mrs. Cross, lingering in the hope of picking up a further crumb or two of information. “Ye don’t seem to take much notice on en yourself, my dear—I do scarcely ever see you nursin’ en.”

“I’ve a-been so taken up with Susan, d’ye see,” said Mrs. Frizzell, with a sudden pang of remorse.

She went upstairs for the child, and after he had been duly admired, and the visitor had withdrawn, she still sat looking down at the little placid face.

“Poor fellow!” she said to herself. “Poor fellow! Ah! I fancy he’d have been proud if he’d ha’ lived to come back an’ own ye, Baby. Dear, dear! they mid all ha’ been so happy—and all forgive an’ forgot. Ah! he were sorry enough, poor chap, and he did repent—the Lard ’ull ha’ mercy on him for that. . . . ’Ees, I can fancy he’d ha’ been proud if he could ha’ seen ye, Baby; but there, all of en as ’ull ever come back is them few lovin’ words and that dreadful spot o’ blood.”

And then Mrs. Frizzell fell to weeping again for pure pity, and kissed the little soft face of the dead soldier’s child and the tiny rings of ruddy gold which no father’s hand would ever stroke.

When John came in she conveyed the tidings to him in half-inarticulate shouts, between bursts of sobbing. The big dull man stood gazing at her for a moment in perturbed amazement, and then went, slowly and heavily, upstairs.

Susan still lay with her face hidden, and her slight frame heaving with convulsive sobs.

Her father paused in the doorway, and then came lumbering forward towards the bed, stooping when he reached it and patting the girl’s shoulder with his great horny, toil-worn hand.

“Don’t ’ee take on, Susie, my dear,” he murmured, blubbering too, poor fellow. “There, don’t ’ee cry, Maidie.”

“Nay, Father,” moaned Susan, “don’t ’ee call me that—don’t ’ee never call me that no more! I be a widow—I be a real widow now.”

“Ah, ’tis true,” murmured poor Frizzell indistinctly. “Ye be a widow, my poor maid—ye be a widow now, sure!”

* * * * *

But it was not so sure after all. As Mrs. Frizzell sometimes said, the most wonderfullest things did certainly happen in her family. Lo! no sooner was Private Griggs decently, and, as she imagined, finally interred than Gunner Barton took upon himself to return to life; and the complications which ensued were so bewildering that even Mrs. Frizzell was unable to cope with them. For, on the receipt of the letter which announced that Jim, though so seriously injured that he would be more or less of a cripple all his life, was indubitably recovering, and would in fact be shortly shipped home, Susan, hitherto so meek and broken, became utterly unmanageable.

She was about to set forth on some household errand when she met the postman, who informed her that he had a letter for her mother from abroad.

“Give it to me,” cried Susan quickly.

“’Tis for Mrs. Frizzell,” said the rural messenger in surprise; but the girl, with a flaming face, had already torn open the envelope.

In another moment she rent the air with strange cries and shrieks of joy.

All the inhabitants of the place came hastening forth to inquire the reason of the outcry, and there beheld the relict of Private Griggs, with her yellow hair streaming over her shoulders, and her face alight with a very passion of rapture, trampling on her widow’s bonnet, and brokenly telling her baby that Daddy was coming home.

Mrs. Frizzell rose to the emergency. Putting her arm round her daughter, she propelled her gently towards the house, without deigning to notice by word or look the importunate crowd.

Presently she went out, closing the door after her, and repossessed herself of the obnoxious bonnet, which a thoughtful neighbour had rescued from the dust and set upon a gatepost.

Before she could re-enter the house one or two anxious friends, who had been eagerly on the look-out for her from divers points of ambush, emerged from their respective doors.

“Summat very strange must have happened, Mrs. Frizzell, I’m sure, to make Susan behave as she did just now,” one said.

“Ah, I never did see nothing like it,” chimed in another.

“I’ve seen a man as was a bit drinky-like throw off his hat and tread on it, but never a respectable young ’ooman, same as Mrs. Griggs.”

“The poor thing didn’t know what she was a-doin’,” returned Mrs. Frizzell. “There, it be all so mixed up I do scarce know how to tell ye. We’ll know the right o’ things in a few days. It do seem now as if we’d ha’ made some mistake in thinkin’ Susie was a widow.”

“Lard, now, you don’t say so? Weren’t Private Griggs killed, then, after all? Why, we did see’s name in papers.”

“Them papers do make mistakes, though,” cried Mrs. Cross. “I did see oncet or twicet as they did say: ‘So-and-so, stated to be missin’, is now found to be dead,’ and t’other way round. This here be t’other way round, I suppose?”

“’Ees,” groaned Mrs. Frizzell, passing her band wearily over her brow. It was very much the other way round; the whole world, as it seemed to her, had turned completely topsy-turvy.

“Dear, I don’t wonder as poor Susan be half out of her mind. You don’t look so very well pleased yourself, my dear.”

“I scarce do know what I feel. I scarce can think it be true. If it _bain’t_ true, what’s to become o’ Susan? As you do say, Mrs. Cross, she’s very near out o’ her mind now. And if it _be_ true—there, them as wrote did say as he were so terrible bad he were bound to be crippled for life.”

“Crippled!” ejaculated both women together; and they looked at the mother aghast.

“Then,” cried Mrs. Cross, “Susan ’ull have en to keep!”

She exchanged a look of blank dismay with her companion; it was plain that in the eyes of both the calamity originally believed in—that of the honourable demise of Private Griggs—was regarded as a much less serious misfortune.

“And when do ye think ye’ll be likely to know for certain, my dear?” insinuated Mrs. Cross, with her head on one side.

“Well, they be a-sending _somebody_ home, they do tell me, but whether it be Susan’s husband or not I can’t say. I suppose we’ll know as soon as he gets to England.”

“Ah-h-h, dear, it do seem a strange story, to be sure. And very likely when you do see en ye’ll find as it bain’t Private Griggs at all.”

“Very likely indeed,” agreed Mrs. Frizzell, with extraordinary warmth of manner, but with a sinking heart.

* * * * *

How she contrived to keep Susan from divulging the whole story to her interested neighbours was a mystery known only to the indomitable little mother herself; for the girl, in her excited state, was for doing away at once with pretence and owning the truth to all comers. It was lucky for both that the suspense was not of long duration. A few weeks after receiving the astonishing tidings of Jim Barton’s resurrection came the news that he had arrived in England, and that he had been actually sent to the temporary hospital at the Artillery Barracks in Dorchester.

And so it came to pass that one day two women appeared in the doorway of the ward in which Gunner Barton lay, and paused for a moment as though in uncertainty. Then, with a stifled cry, the younger of the two rushed forward, past the long line of beds, where, propped on pillows, were to be seen many faces pale and drawn with pain. By the side of one—the palest of all, so pale indeed that had it not been for the red-brown eyes and auburn hair it might have been called utterly colourless—she paused and fell upon her knees. She forgot that many curious eyes were bent upon her; she forgot that she was an injured woman; and that Jim, who had wronged her, was so maimed and shattered as to be in truth a very wreck of a man; she forgot everything but that he was there, and that he loved her. And so, poor little soft foolish thing, she put her arm about his neck and laid her face upon the pillow beside his, and kissed him, and murmured incoherent words of tenderness and joy.

And Jim—poor Jim, his broken frame was so weak, and his heart so torn by gladness mingled with a piercing sorrow, that he hid his face upon her shoulder and wept like a little child.

By-and-bye Susie, throwing back her shawl, disclosed the sleeping face of the babe with a kind of shrinking pride; and Jim, with his great gaunt frame still shaking with sobs, raised himself on his one serviceable elbow and looked at him long and earnestly, though his eyes were still dim.

“I’d like,” he said, “I’d like to make all square for him and you, Susan; but ’tis puzzlin’ to know what’s right. I’m just fit for nothin’, my girl; I’ll never be fit to do a hand’s turn for myself.”

“And that’s true,” put in Mrs. Frizzell, who had been standing at the foot of the bed, wiping her eyes and sniffing violently. “’Ees, poor fellow, I can see from here where they’ve a-took off your leg. I can see quite plain that it bain’t aside of the other under the clothes.”

Susie did not hear her; her face was burning as she bent it close to Jim’s.

“I’ll not mind nothin’, Jim,” she said. “I’d be only too proud and glad to work for ’ee.”

“There’d be my pension of course,” said he. “But you’re so young, Susie; you might do better p’r’aps—if ’tweren’t for the little chap here.”

He thrust out his long, feeble hand and touched the child’s soft face, his own working with emotion the while. Wife, and child, and home—all there within the grasp of those weak hands. Could he give them up? And yet to be a burden all his days to the trusting creature, of whose ignorance he had already taken shameful advantage.

“Susie,” he whispered, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Nay,” she returned earnestly, “I do know it very well—I do ax but one thing, Jim.”

“And what’s that?”

“God’s blessin’,” said Susie; and stretching out her hand she pressed to his lips the finger which was encircled by the wedding-ring.

* * * * *

Mrs. Frizzell returned in the evening alone, it having been arranged that Susan was to remain in Dorchester until Jim was sufficiently recovered for the marriage to take place. She looked very worn and pale and tired as she turned in at her garden-gate, and was anything but gratified to find the alert Mrs. Cross on the watch for her.

“Well, my dear, so you’ve come back wi’out her! ’Twas the right man, then, after all?”

“’Ees,” returned Mrs. Frizzell faintly, “’twas the right man. And him and Susie be to set up house so soon as he gets a bit better.”

“Ah-h-h. Be he so bad, then, my dear?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Frizzell, putting down her basket and setting her arms akimbo, “he be that bad that he haven’t a-got but one leg, and not much use in that; and one of his arms be damaged. But Susan—dear! a body ’ud think there was nothin’ ever so j’yful in the world as the notion o’ keepin’ en.”

“Bless me! it do seem queer! She’ll find it ’ard work, won’t she, Mrs. Frizzell? I suppose he’ll want just so many victuals as if he were a sound man, and not be doin’ nothin’ to earn ’em.”

“Well, he’ve a-got a pension. There, don’t ’ee talk to me, Mrs. Cross, my dear. To tell ’ee the truth, I do scarce know what I be doin’. It bain’t what I did look for, d’ye see. The man himself—my daughter’s ’usband—he bain’t the man I did take en for.”

“Ye don’t tell me so!” ejaculated Mrs. Cross, with a dropping jaw. “In what way be he different, Martha?”

“Why,” returned Mrs. Frizzell slowly, “I d’ ’low I did tell ’ee as my daughter’s ’usband were a dark man. Well, that’s one thing as I did make a mistake about—his hair be red, Mrs. Cross.”

“Red!” repeated the other, with a gasp.

“’Ees, red,” reiterated Mrs. Frizzell, assuming a stolid expression. “That be the colour on it, Mrs. Cross.”

“Well, I am surprised. To be sure, the blessed baby’s hair’s red, too—it be easy accounted for now, bain’t it? seein’ as Private Griggs’s hair be red. I wonder how you did come to make sich a mistake, Mrs. Frizzell.”

“I wonder!” said the poor woman. “My mind were fair muddled up, I do think, and I did get a lot o’ queer notions in my head. There’s another thing now; his name bain’t Griggs.”

“Lard! you do give I quite a turn. However did you come to think it were? And what mid his name be, Mrs. Frizzell?”

Mrs. Frizzell opened her mouth, shut it again, and swallowed down what seemed to be a very unpleasant morsel; finally she said, fixing her impenetrable eyes upon her neighbour’s face—

“His name be Barton—Gunner James Barton. ’Ees, that be the name.”

“Barton!” ejaculated Mrs. Cross, in utter bewilderment; then, after a momentary pause, she continued—“It bain’t so very like Griggs, be it?”

For once Mrs. Frizzell’s lively imagination was at fault; she had no explanation to offer. “Nay,” she said feebly, “it bain’t.”

UP AT THE ’LOTMENTS.

OLD Joseph Frisby stood at his garden gate one fine bright evening in early spring. A dirty, disreputable-looking old vagabond was he, a frequenter of the “Pure Drop,” “The True Lovers’ Knot,” “The Three Choughs,” and every such place of entertainment within reach of his tottering old legs. This evening he was perforce sober, for he had not possessed a penny that he could call his own for several months, and the landlords of the above-named hostelries had unanimously declined to give him credit. As he stooped over the rickety gate, his lean bent old figure clad in a tattered linen coat that had once been white, and nether garments of inconceivably ancient and patched corduroy, he looked forlorn and miserable enough; there was even a certain pathos in his unwashed, unshaven face, and his small bleared eyes peered anxiously out of the network of furrows which surrounded them. Every now and then he placed his hand over his ear and turned his head as though listening, and by-and-by the long expected sound for which he had been waiting made itself heard.

The back door of the neighbouring cottage closed with a bang, and a man came quickly round the house and down the tiny flagged path through the little garden, which was already bright with primroses and double daisies, and opened a gate similar to that on which Joseph was leaning. He was a wiry elderly man, with a fresh-coloured face framed in iron-grey whiskers. His garments were very much like those worn by Frisby, except that they possessed the merit of being clean. He carried a basketful of potatoes, and a spade and fork rested on his shoulder.

“Good evenin’, neighbour,” said Joseph, straightening himself, and looking eagerly at him. “Ye be goin’ up to the ’lotments, I d’ ’low?”

“Aye,” said the other, glancing round, but without slackening his pace. “I’m off to the ’lotments—pretty late, too; I must hurry.”

“Nay now, bide a bit; I want to speak to ye a minute, Jim. Lard! I’ve waited here nigh upon an hour.”

“Oh, an’ did ye?” said the man called Jim, coming unwillingly back.

“Aye. Ye see ’tis this way. Neighbour Cross, I haven’t touched a drap this three months, very near.”

“Han’t ye? Well, I’m glad on’t. I’m teetottle myself, an’ ’tis the only way to get along, I do believe. I’m truly glad to hear ye han’t had no drunks lately, Joe. Now that ye say so I do call to mind noticin’ that ye’ve been a-walkin’ uncommon straight—aye, ’tis quite a while since you was found in a ditch, ’tis sure, and ye haven’t been run in not this year, I don’t think.”

“Aye,” agreed Joseph, with modest pride. “Ye’re quite right, Jim; I haven’t been run in this year.”

He paused, rubbing his hands slowly together, and eyeing the well-filled basket of “sets”.