Part 6

“It be wonderful, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Blanchard. “As I do tell Mrs. Stuckhey, it ought to comfort her, poor soul. Mrs. Stuckhey have just been a-layin’ out five-and-sixpence for something rather partic’lar—haven’t ’ee, my dear? I d’ ’low Mr. J’yce ’ud like to see what you’ve got in that there parcel.”

“He be welcome, I’m sure,” said Susan, wiping her eyes again and sniffing.

She drew from under her cloak a round object carefully enveloped in tissue paper.

“I’d like to show it to ’ee, sir, if I mid make so bold. There, I got me this wi’ a few shillin’ I’d been a-layin’ by for to make a kind o’ little feast for my son when he did come home. I wasn’t never expectin’ as he wouldn’t come home, ye know; there did seem to be so many of ’em a-fightin’.”

Poor mother! while her Joe had lived he had been for her the only soldier; now that he was dead her thoughts dwelt ceaselessly on the vast size of the army of which he had formed a part, and it seemed to her strange and hard that while thousands were spared her _one_ had been stricken down.

While she spoke she had removed the paper wrappers, and now held up to Mr. Joyce’s admiring, yet somewhat doubtful gaze, a large china wreath, such as may frequently be seen in village churchyards, composed of stiff white roses and conventional leaves.

“It be a beauty, Mrs. Stuckhey,” said the farmer hesitatingly. “There, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an ’andsomer one. But I’m wonderin’ how ye mean to manage about it, seein’ as, so to speak, there bain’t no grave—not handy, I mean. There be a grave, as I telled ’ee, and an honoured grave—the grave o’ the British soldier; but it wouldn’t be”—he coughed delicately—“convenient for ’ee to put wreaths on, I’m afeared; nay, I’m afeared it wouldn’t be easy.”

“Lard, no, sir, I wasn’t a-thinkin’ o’ usin’ it for the grave. Even if I was to send it to the War Office I couldn’t trust ’em to put it on for me. And it wouldn’t be no comfort anyhow wi’out I could see it there. Nay, I be a-going to hang this round my son’s likeness; ’twill be a kind of a memory of his grave as I can’t see it.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Joyce, deeply moved.

Poor Susan had begun to weep again, and Mrs. Blanchard was not slow to follow her example. They moved away together, and presently, entering Mrs. Stuckhey’s house, proceeded to hang the wreath over poor Joe’s picture. After much hammering of tacks and knotting of string the task was completed, and the dead soldier’s chubby boyish face greeted all beholders through its white garland.

“’Tis beautiful, I’m sure,” exclaimed Mrs. Blanchard, falling back a little and speaking in a tone of almost awestruck admiration. “The uniform, you know, and the goldy frame, and the white flowers—I never seed anything so handsome.”

“’Tis his due,” said Mrs. Stuckhey, and she was conscious of a return of the glow of pride with which she had, a little time before, listened to the farmer’s allegory, and with that pride came a faint vague sense of comfort: at least her hero was honoured.

The poor must be up and doing; not theirs is the luxury of nursing grief. Though Susan Stuckhey’s heart might be sore, and many hot tears might drop into the suds as she bent over her wash-tub, her clients’ clean clothes must be sent home. She could not manage, however, to be quite so prompt as usual this particular week, and it chanced that on the Thursday—contrary to all precedent—she was hanging up some of the finer garments on her line to dry, when she was startled by what seemed to be the sound of an explosion.

“They be blastin’ up yonder,” she said to herself, and went on with her task. But the sound was repeated several times, and the neighbours began to come to their doors and to look towards the town, whence the sound proceeded.

“It do seem like firin’,” said Mrs. Blanchard with placid interest.

By-and-bye, a lad came tearing down the lane, waving his hat and shouting.

“’Tis relieved!” he cried. “Ladysmith be relieved! ’Tis true this time. It be wrote up in the town ‘Official noos’. They be firin’ a cannon near the Royal George, and the flags is up, and there’s to be a procession this evenin’, and every one’s goin’ mad for joy!”

Mrs. Stuckhey’s knees shook under her; she dropped the handkerchief which she had been pinning up, and covered her face with her hands.

“There, don’t ’ee take on,” said Mrs. Blanchard, commiseratingly. “Ye’d be like to feel it, I know; dear, yes, ’tis to be expected.”

“Well, now, I should think Mrs. Stuckhey ought to be glad,” said Mrs. Woolridge, surveying the washerwoman critically from her doorstep. “There be mothers’ sons in Ladysmith so well as anywhere else; ah, sure there be. Many a woman’s heart has been a-breakin’ thinkin’ of ’em starvin’ and famishin’ there. ’Twouldn’t bring your son back a bit more if they was to perish o’ hunger. You ought to be glad like the rest of us.”

“I am glad,” gasped poor Susan; and with that she turned, leaving her basket, and went into her house.

Her gaze, blurred though it was with tears, instantly sought Joe’s portrait, and the honest goggle eyes of the picture looked back, as it seemed to her, with infinite sadness.

“Ladysmith is relieved,” they seemed to say; “the victory is won—and I was not there.”

When presently the door creaked slowly open and Mrs. Blanchard entered, moving unwieldily on tip-toe, she found Susan seated by her steaming wash-tub with her apron thrown over her head.

“Don’t ’ee fret, my dear,” she said soothingly. “There isn’t one in the village as don’t sympathise for ’ee; and we do all feel as our own j’y bain’t full, so to speak. There, we do say to ourselves: If our own soldier was wi’ the others how proud we mid be!”

Mrs. Stuckhey did not answer, but pressed her apron more closely to her face with her trembling hands. Poor hands—seamed and sodden and, as it were, pock-marked from perpetual immersion in the suds; knotted and distorted by hard and heavy work—what a tale they told of privation and of toil!

“I don’t agree wi’ Martha Woolridge,” went on the visitor after a pause. “’Tisn’t fair to say as you have no feelin’ for the poor folks as was shut up over yonder. ’Tis but nat’ral you should be sorry your Joe didn’t have no hand in it.”

Susan jerked down her apron, and her eyes flashed beneath their red and swollen lids.

“Who says he didn’t have no hand in it?” she cried. “He did have a hand in it! Didn’t ’ee hear what Farmer Joyce did say? My son Joe were one o’ the foundations o’ the army.” She rose as she spoke and crossed the kitchen, her small figure dignified, even majestic.

She fumbled in the old-fashioned chest of drawers and drew forth a paper packet. Returning, she laid it upon the table, casting, as she did so, a glance at once severe and resolute upon the astonished Mrs. Blanchard; then, taking her sweeping-brush from behind the door, she proceeded with much deliberation to knock off its head.

“In the name o’ fortun’, Susan Stuckhey,” ejaculated her friend, “what be you a-goin’ to do?”

“You’ll see for yourself in a minute,” returned Susan; and, armed with the broom-handle and the little parcel, she went upstairs.

Mrs. Blanchard went out, backing away from the house, and fixing her eyes wonderingly, almost incredulously, on Susan’s upper window. Following the direction of her glance, Mrs. Woolridge and a few other women who had meanwhile gathered together gazed also expectantly upwards. Presently the latticed casement was thrown open and a sudden gleam of blue and scarlet fluttered over their heads.

“Bless me, woman, whatever are you at?” cried Mrs. Woolridge in shocked and horrified tones. “Ye don’t mean to say as you can have the heart—”

Susan’s resolute face looked forth a moment above her waving banner.

“I be a-doin’ what my son Joe did tell I to do. I be a-hangin’ out a flag for the victory as he’ve a-helped to win!”

And when, later in the day, the town band paraded gaily through the village with a large following of enthusiastic patriots dancing, shouting, singing, the little mother strove valiantly to fulfil the second part of poor Joe’s behest—to give the three cheers for which he had called. But though she ran to her gate when the crowd first came in sight, and waved her arm above her head, only a strangled sob broke from her when she strove to raise her voice. But at sight of the small figure in its mourning dress, the little cotton Union Jack waving gallantly from the upper window of the dead soldier’s home, a sudden hush fell upon the musicians and their followers, and they passed the house in silence with bared heads and reverent tread.

And perhaps this tribute of respect was paid less to the emblem of their country’s greatness, less even to the memory of the poor young hero who had laid down his life for its sake, than to the brave little woman who stood unflinchingly at her post, and who felt her heart beat high with sacred triumph though the tears were raining down her face.

[Picture: “I be a-hangin’ out a flag for the victory as he’ve a-helped to win!”]

A RUSTIC ARGUS.

IT was evening; most of the inhabitants of the old-world village were standing about their doorways, and a few of the more energetic were at work in their tiny patches of garden. It was noticeable that those among the men who had not betaken themselves to the allotments leaned in lordly fashion against their door-posts or lolled over the garden hedge, deeming, no doubt, that they had already borne their share of the burden of the day, and that such trifling supplementary labour as watering cabbages or tying up carnations might well be left to the women-folk.

Mrs. Fripp seemed to accept this state of things without protest. She was a stout woman, and the weather was warm. She had been busy all day at her wash-tub, and she groaned as she bent her bulky person over the flowers that would keep slipping away from her large, moist fingers just as she had deemed they were secure.

“Drat it!” she murmured under her breath, as a beautiful bloom slid from its stick for the fourth time.

“They be ticklish things,” observed Mr. Fripp from his station in the doorway, without taking the trouble to remove his pipe, and speaking in consequence somewhat indistinctly. “Ah, they be ticklish things. They d’ take a dale o’ patience.”

“That they do!” agreed his spouse heartily, standing upright, and straightening her broad back. She looked half absently up and down the sloping village street, which lay deep in shadow, save at the uppermost end, where the gables of the thatched houses were bathed in the evening glow, the light falling full upon the whitewashed chimney-stack of the little hostelry known as the “Pure Drop,” and creeping downwards along the irregular line of roofs until it terminated abruptly just where Mrs. Fripp’s wash-house jutted out into the street. Seen thus at this mystic hour there was much beauty about the little hamlet, which, indeed, at any time had a quaint charm of its own. The eaves of many of the roofs sloped downwards at certain points almost to the ground, overhanging here a mullioned window, and bulging out there into a minute and fantastically shaped gable. Creepers clung close to the whitewashed walls, hollyhocks stood in many a homely garden with the stateliness they might better have assumed in the pleasaunce of a queen; pigeons bowed and cooed on the sunlit apex of russet roof or golden stack; children played about the doorsteps or made pies of the dust in the road.

But Mrs. Fripp gazed on these things indifferently, her glance having fixed itself on a tall, angular woman’s figure which was at that moment travelling slowly towards her.

“’Tis never Mrs. Adlam steppin’ this way—come to look after Susan, I d’ ’low. Them two girls hey been gossipin’ in there this hour an’ more.”

“It’ll be about Tom Locke, I’ll warrant, that they’re a-talkin’,” agreed her lord, the black pipe wagging with every word, and being sucked at the conclusion of the sentence with evident relish. “Aye, aye; maids will get talkin’ about sweethearts an’ that. ’Tis naitral at their age, an’ this accident o’ pore Tom’s is oncommon onfart’nate. Good-day, Mrs. Adlam, ’tis powerful warm, ’tis, surely.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Mrs. Adlam hurriedly and abstractedly. “Good-day to ye, Mr. Fripp. Is Susan within?”

“Aye,” said Mr. Fripp, without moving his form from the door-post, “she’s sittin’ a bit wi’ our Lizzie. Our maid’s jest foldin’ a few clothes for her mother to iron to-morrow, an’ Susan’s sittin’ wi’ her.”

“Ah, neighbour, your Lizzie’s wonderful handy, they say,” responded Mrs. Adlam—without enthusiasm, however. “Now, my maid’s that delicate an’ nervous like, she’s no use at all at home, I may say. I’ve had to have doctor to her times an’ times, but ’tis no manner o’ use. She can’t do many things for herself, pore maid; an’ she can scarce abear to see me a-doin’ of ’em. ’Tis a nesh flower, neighbours. Why, she d’ run out o’ the room when I put our bit o’ beef of a Sunday to the fire, an’ she d’ very near faint if I go for to skin a rabbit.”

“Well, to think on’t!” said Mr. and Mrs. Fripp together, commiseratingly, but admiringly, too. Such a constitution as Susan’s was felt to be a credit to any village.

“Ah, ’tis a nesh flower,” repeated the mother with a kind of fretful triumph. “Laist time Doctor Richmond come I explained to him as well as I could how she be took, an’ I says to him: ‘Could you tell me, sir,’ says I, ‘what ’tis as ails my daughter?’ An’ he looks at me so earnest as he could, an’ he said ’twas—oh, a terrible long name—it always slips my mind, but it’s awful long. Wait a bit; I’ll have it in a minute. Ye mind that climbin’ tree as runs round the corner o’ the ‘Pure Drop’? It do have blue blossoms in the spring-time, hangin’ down summat o’ the natur o’ laburnum. You know, Mrs. Fripp—so fond of flowers as you be.”

“Aye, we had wan at my father’s place—he was gardener, ye know—I d’ call it to mind, now. Westonia, that’s what it be called. Nay, now; westeria—that’s it.”

“Ah, that’s it,” agreed Mrs. Adlam; adding, with impressive solemnity, “Well, that’s what’s the matter wi’ my Susan.”

“Very like,” assented Mrs. Fripp, who was an imaginative woman. “’Tis but a pore nesh thing, that creeper—never has no leaves till ’tis well-nigh done flowerin’.”

“Such fancies as she d’ take even in the way o’ courtin’,” resumed Mrs. Adlam. “Says she to me once: ‘Mother,’ says she, ‘don’t you count on me ever gettin’ wed, for I assure ye I abhor mankind.’”

“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Mr. Fripp, much startled and infinitely scandalised. “’Twas an unnait’ral thing for a maid to say, sure. Never heard o’ such a thing. I be sorry for ye, Mrs. Adlam, that I be.”

“She takes them notions out o’ the books that she d’ read when she be porely,” returned the mother, apologetically. “Ah, that’s where she gets ’em; but I do assure you, neighbours, them was her very words. I don’t notice her no more than if she was a child. I did think a few months ago, in spite of all, that she’d be gettin’ settled so comfortable as she could be. Tom Locke ’s a good, studdy young chap, earnin’ a good bit, now. He’ll be havin’ the farm, too, when his father dies. But the maid is so upset about that accident, I don’t know whatever to do wi’ her. I thought she’d get over the feelin’ about his losin’ that eye; but it laisses so strong as ever. He came to our place this evenin’, an’ she did jump up an’ run straight away here. He’ve a-been waitin’ an’ waitin’, pore young man, but at laist he gets up, an’ says he: ‘I’ll go, Mrs. Adlam. Will ’ee tell Susan that if she wants to see me again, she can meet me up the lane at the wold place on Sunday?’”

“Well,” said Mrs. Fripp, gazing thoughtfully up the street again, and then suffering her glance to revert to Mrs. Adlam’s lean, anxious face, “’tis terrible hard for ’ee, ’tis indeed. I’m sorry for pore Tom, yet ’tis an awk’ard thing for a girl to wed wi’ a man as has but one eye. An’ Susan being so bashful an’ tewly seems to make it worse. Does he look terrible bad, Mrs. Adlam?”

Mrs. Adlam considered. “One side looks much the same as ever,” she said. “Aye, one eye’s jest like it always was, but t’other side”—She paused. “Well, there’s no eye at all t’other side.”

“Doctor took it out, did he?” inquired Fripp, deeply interested. “Well, Mrs. Adlam, ’tisn’t so bad but it mid have been worse—we must comfort ourselves so well as we can. If keeper hadn’t been by, an’ hadn’t out wi’s knife, same as he did, an’ took shots out o’ Tom’s eye at once, he’d very like have lost t’other one. As I say, it mid ha’ been worse.”

“Tom said jest now as doctor thought keeper’d ha’ done better to ha’ left his eye alone,” sighed Mrs. Adlam. “But there’s no tellin’—doctors is jealous folk; they can’t abear a body to do a thing for theirselves. Why, laist winter when I had the inflammation, an’ made mysel’ a drop o’ gruel wi’ rum in it to strengthen me a bit, Doctor Richmond was that vexed! Well, I must be goin’. Will ’ee call my maid, Mr. Fripp?”

The good man complied. Screwing his person a little sideways round the door-post, and turning his head over his shoulder, he bellowed forth, first the name of his own daughter and then that of Mrs. Adlam’s, at intervals of about a quarter of a minute, until there was a hasty banging of doors in the back premises, a patter of feet across the kitchen, and the two girls appeared simultaneously on the threshold. Susan Adlam, tall, fair, and blue-eyed, with the complexion of a rose-leaf, and hands so white that they told their own tale of selfishness and incapacity; Lizzie Fripp, dark, with a brown merry face, and a squat sturdy form. With a little more height and a little less breadth she might have been pretty.

“Oh, ’tis you, Mother,” said Susan, with a bashful wriggle. “Is Tom gone? I’m sure I hope he is. Don’t ask me to go home if he’s there, for I couldn’t abear to see en.”

Mrs. Adlam cast up her eyes to heaven, and then looked round with a certain melancholy pride.

“No, no! Come along, my dear, he’s gone; an’ I was to say if ye wanted to spaik to en again you was to meet en at the wold place o’ Sunday.”

“_I_ don’t want to see en again,” said Susan tossing her head.

“For shame!” cried little Lizzie. “I wonder at ye, Susan. The pore chap’ll break his ’eart. An’ what’s an eye, after all? ’Tisn’t real needful to a man—not like as if it was an arm now, so as he couldn’t work for ’ee, or a leg, so as he’d have to have a wooden un, an’ go _peggety-peg_ up church. Nay, now, there’d be raison if ’twas an arm or a leg—but a body can see as well wi’ one eye as wi’ two.”

“Hark to the maid!” cried Mr. Fripp, with a great roar of laughter. “She d’ spaik like print. Well done, little un!”

“Well, I’m not fond of one-eyed folks if you be,” cried Susan sarcastically. “I’d not have a man without two eyes, not if I was to bide single all my life. I’d as lief be single as not—I’ve no fancy for wedlock.”

“Dear, dear,” said Fripp, “’tis terrible to hear how onraisonable the pore maid d’ talk! Take her home, do, Mrs. Adlam, an’ make her lay down.”

“Come along then, Susan,” cried Mrs. Adlam with an air of chastened dignity; “come along, else you’ll be havin’ the westeria again.”

“Nay, now, Mother, ’tis _heasteria_ ye mean. Doctor said plain as the name of it was heasteria.”

“Lard, child, heast or west, ’tis all one. You come home wi’ me, do ’ee now, else you’ll be laid up.”

She drew one of the pretty white hands through her own bony arm and led her daughter gently away, supporting her with increasing solicitude, as the girl, conscious of attracting universal attention, began to limp and to stagger in the most interesting manner.

“Pore thing!” murmured Fripp commiseratingly. “She d’ seem to be falterin’. I d’ ’low ’tis a terrible visitation for Mrs. Adlam, ’tis surely. Well, Mother, let us give thanks where thanks be due. Lizzie, here, is a good set off to t’other one.”

“She’d better be,” retorted Mrs. Fripp, speaking loudly and decisively for Lizzie’s benefit. “I’d have no patience wi’ such goin’s on. I’d take a bit o’ broom-end to her instead o’ the doctor if I were Mrs. Adlam.”

“Well said!” chimed in a red-faced matron from the other side of the hedge. “It never does no good to spile childer. Says I to mine soon’s ever they grow up: ‘Now,’ I says, ‘I’ve gi’ed ye a good educassion, and now yer claaws must keep yer jaaws,’ I says.”

Though the education which the good lady in question had bestowed upon her progeny was known to be of a somewhat questionable order, and though the said progeny were by no means considered creditable to the community at large, the theory was so sound in itself that the Fripps agreed heartily; and the sentiment was endorsed by the village policeman, who for the last few minutes had been listening unobserved to the discussion.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s what I call straightfor’ard. ‘Yer claaws must keep yer jaaws,’ says you. If Susan Adlam had nothing to put into her mouth but what her ’ands got for her she’d starve, pore young craiture. But tis a very foolish business about Tom Locke. The young man’s a fine young man, doin’ well, an’ like to do better—an eye more nor less doesn’t alter his being a wonderful good match for the girl. But if she’s so set on his havin’ a pair, why doesn’t he get a mock un put in?”

“A mock eye!” exclaimed Mrs. Fripp in amazement. “My stars! I never heard tell o’ such a thing. You be jokin’ surely, policeman.”

“Nay, not I indeed. I knowed a man livin’ out Tipton way as lost his eye on account o’ a bit o’ blasted rock goin’ into it; an’ he went to Bristol an’ come back wi’ a beautiful new un—ye’d scarce know it from his own, only it were a deal handsomer.”

“D— my eyes!” murmured Mr. Fripp, not with any intentional profanity, but because the expletive seemed peculiarly adapted to the circumstances.

“Ah, I knowed him well. Many a time he’s took out the glass eye to let me see it. ’Twas a wonderful invention, an’ it cost I believe a sight o’ money. He didn’t wear it every day, but he allus put it in o’ market-days an’ Sundays. Ah, ’twas a curious thing to see en o’ Sundays, lookin’ at parson so wide-awake wi’ the glass eye, while t’other maybe was as drowsy as yours or mine mid be.”

“Well I never!” murmured Mrs. Fripp. “Somebody ought to tell young Locke about it,” she added, as an afterthought.

“’Tisn’t exactly the kind o’ subject a body ’ud think o’ namin’ to the pore man,” said the policeman, who was a person of refined feelings. “To say ‘Good-day to ye, an’ why don’t ye get a glass eye?’ ’ud seem a bit strange. Well, neighbours, I must be movin’ on. ’Tis a pity for the pore chap; but we must feel grateful for him as Providence didn’t see fit to try en no worse.”

On the next Sunday afternoon, after Lizzie had cleared away the dinner things, and fed the chickens, and scrubbed the faces of her little brothers and sisters previous to their departure for Sunday School, she donned her white straw hat, with its big red rose nodding triumphantly from a commanding position just over the centre of her forehead, pinned a posy of carnations and jasmine and southern-wood in the bosom of her blue dress, drew a new pair of cotton gloves over her plump hands, and sallied forth up the street to call on Susan.

She found Mrs. Adlam with her Sunday gown pinned back over a striped petticoat, her sleeves rolled up as high as Sunday sleeves would go, and a further protection against possible accidents in the shape of a large-bibbed apron shrouding the remainder of her Sabbath glories, hard at work washing up.

“Good-day, Mrs. Adlam. I jest called round to see how Susan mid be.”

“Good-day, Lizzie. Susan’s very bad, thank ye. She’s layin’ on her bed upstairs. Step up if you like.”