Women of the Country Part 9

"Now Joe, he had the young men's cla.s.s in the Sunday-school (all of 'em who weren't too high up in world to be taught by the sweep), and one day I was looking in at a foundry as I pa.s.sed, when a young man who was standing out at the door said to me, 'Have you heard about Joe?'

"'No!' I said, rather startled, for he's a frail old man at the best, 'What about him?'

"'Oh, it's nothing wrong with himself,' he said, 'but a week ago when he was going out in the early morning--last Sat.u.r.day was wet, wasn't it?--he found one of them poor street girls fallen down in a faint a few yards away from his house. He called the missis, and they got her into the kitchen and gave her a cup of tea and put her to bed, and she'll never get up again, it seems. She was in a consumption too bad for them to take her at the hospital, so Joe's keeping her till she wants it no more.'

"I said good-bye to the young man and set off straight to see Joe. It was afternoon, so he was in when I got there. He didn't say much, but we went in to see the girl (she'd got the bed, and the missis slept on the sofa and Joe in the armchair), a poor, breathless, young thing, very near to death. I began to talk to her of the love of our Saviour, but she stopped me. 'n.o.body's ever loved _me_!' she said, 'n.o.body'll care if I die or not. I never believed there was any kindness in the world till I met these two.' We left her gasping there and went into the kitchen.

"'Poor lost lamb,' said Joe, 'them's sad words to hear.'

"'Sadder to feel they're true about so many others as well,' I said.

'But, Joe, be open with me,' I said, 'have you spent your savings on this poor soul?'

"'Yes!' he said, 'all but a few s.h.i.+llings. She must have milk and nourishment, you know.'

"'Yes, I know that,' I said, 'and for the present I can't help you, but you mustn't be allowed to spend all you've saved.'

"'Nay,' he said, 'it was a bitter cross the Lord of Glory carried for my sins. I can at least do this for one of His lost ones.'

"I knew he'd say that, or something like it, but in my own mind I'd determined to get it back again from somewhere for him, but you'll hear how I was prevented. I noticed that he looked a bit tired and thin as I went out, and I said to him, 'You're not looking very grand! You must take care of yourself too."

"'No! I don't feel very well,' he said. 'I've been feeling my age a bit lately,' he said laughing.

"'I'll look in to-morrow again,' I said as I went away, and about the same time next day I went back to find him sitting still on one side of the fireplace and the wife on the other. The girl had died suddenly in the night. They'd got the photograph of the little grandchildren, and I could see the old woman had been crying.

"'We shan't see them in this world now,' said Joe.

"I thought he was considering the money and began to talk.

"'No!' he said, 'it isn't that. The money was a bit of a sacrifice at the time, but I can see now why He asked me for it, and how thankful I am, as things have turned out, that I didn't refuse to do that little thing for Him. After you'd gone yesterday,' he went on, 'I felt so poorly that when the doctor came to see that poor girl I told him what I felt like. He looked a bit queer at first, and then he said:

"'"Well, Joe," he said, "I know very well that you're not afraid of death, so I won't beat about the bush," he said.

"'Thank you, doctor,' I said.

"'"Of course," he said, "I can't be certain, but I'm afraid it's cancer, and I can only say that I'll make it as easy for you as I can." He's a kind man, Mr Charter, though he's reckoned rough. Well, you can imagine how my first feeling was of thankfulness that I'd been kept in the love of G.o.d, and not held back for my own pleasure the money he was needing.

_He_ knew, you see, that I shouldn't want it, and he sent that poor girl to be looked after by someone as had money to spare.

'"I'll bless the Hand that guided, I'll bless the Heart that planned, When throned where glory dwelleth, In Immanuel's Land."

So my summons is come, Mr Charter, though I'd no idea it was so near.'

"There's not a great deal you can say at such times, and my heart was very full as I listened to him, though I knew that it was well with him.

I'm not going to tell you about the way he went through the valley, beautiful though it was, but I'll tell you just this before I sit down.

Those young men of Joe's Sunday cla.s.s got together and talked, and though they were young working-men with not much of a wage, they each gave sixpence a week and the old man had ten s.h.i.+llings a week as long as he lived, and every time he got the ten s.h.i.+llings he'd cry, and say, that he didn't know anybody in the world who'd had so much kindness shown to them all their life long as _he_ had."

The evangelist glanced round the chapel as the minister gave out the hymn. The heads of the boys were bent over their hymn-books, searching, with whispering, among the pages which they turned with wet thumbs.

There was no apathy now. All the slow sun-burnt faces showed signs of having understood. One or two men sat with their eyes fixed on the evangelist as if waiting for more. A woman wiped her eyes and sighed.

There was no restlessness. He had succeeded in making all these people, so different from the driven, excited, underfed congregation he constantly saw, think from beginning to end of his poor people, and had succeeded in making them sorry. He was content.

With that inarticulate desire to come into close contact with those who have moved them, which one knows among the poor, many of the congregation crowded round the pulpit to shake hands with the evangelist who leaned over the side, gripping hand after hand.

"A very good meeting," said the steward, looking round with an air of satisfaction.

"You've made me feel very small, sir," said a young man to the evangelist. "I've a good deal further to go yet."

"It's true of us all," replied the evangelist, shaking his hand fervently.

Anne Hilton had returned from the farmer to whom she had sold one of her pigs, and fed the animals, but had not taken off the linen pocket which she tied round her waist under her petticoat, and which held her money.

She was trying to get at it now in the narrow pew. She knocked down a hymn-book and several pennies rolled under the feet of the out-going congregation. A young woman, with roses in her best hat, nudged another and laughed. A big boy stooped to pick up two, and restored them with a purple face. Anne replaced them in the linen pocket, shook her skirt down again, wrapped something in a piece of an old envelope, and beckoning the steward gave it to him, then followed the others through the blue square of the doorway. The steward approached the evangelist with a rather embarra.s.sed smile.

"Our good sister's a bit queer," he said. "I don't know why she couldn't put it in the collection box."

The evangelist unwrapped the envelope and disclosed a sovereign. He paused.

"It's a big gift for a poor woman," he said in a moment. "She needed to make up her mind a bit first. The collection box came too soon."

"I've no doubt you're right," said the minister. "She's a good woman if a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part of her week's takings."

"I don't think she ought to have given it," said the steward's wife, who was waiting for her husband to drive her home. "She'll need help herself if she gives away like that. She always _must_ be different from other people."

Anne Hilton was walking home in the cool night air. The stars were so clear that they seemed to rest on the fields and tree-tops, and the rustle of the sleepless corn pa.s.sed behind every hedge. She walked with a certain carefulness as of one who had unexpectedly escaped a physical danger; but the peril from which she was conscious of fleeing was spiritual. She had been threatened by avarice which had prompted her to give a small sum instead of the sovereign, and the evangelist had been right in his intuition. It had needed a good deal of "making up her mind" to give away the greater part of her earnings, even under the warmth of human appeal. She had conquered, but narrowly, and there was as much shame as satisfaction in her heart as she left the building, and more than all a great fear lest it should be talked about.

CHAPTER XVII

It was the first day of spring, the season of swift changes. For the first time the sky was lighter than the ground. Its brilliant clouds threw heavy shadows on the earth, fugitive shadows which ran with the warm wind, alert with colour. Nothing was quiet or hidden. There was not yet sufficient life to cover or screen. Everything that had budded had a world to itself and could be seen. Radiant, innocent, carolling, self-revealing, the movement and action of spring were in the earth. The running and glittering water, in winter so vivid a feature of the fields, had become insignificant in comparison with the splendid and vigorous sky. The noise of the wind, too, beat in one's ears louder than the water. One had no time for meditation. One was hurried as the wind, speeding as the suns.h.i.+ne. Yet the spring more than any other season is the time when one thinks of the generations that pa.s.s--perhaps from the very transitoriness of the visual images, their evanescence and momentary changes reminding one so of the dead. In autumn the pa.s.sage is grave and decorous, like the advance of old age. In spring the image is lovely and momentary, like the bright pa.s.sage of those dead young.

Anne Hilton looked out to see what kind of weather it was for the market, and with a sudden pang, she remembered her old father, and how, on such a day, he would totter to the open door, and there sit in the suns.h.i.+ne, grateful for the same warmth for which his old dog was grateful. When she came home from the market, she would make a wreath of white holly to put on the grave in which he rested. She thought of him vividly, of the pathos of his last illness from which she had vainly tried to drive the fear and soften the pain. She remembered his slow laugh, and the knocking of his stick on the floor. Memory is keener in bright suns.h.i.+ne than in the twilight, in vivid enjoyment more poignant than in melancholy. The churchyard, with its unvisited green mound and dwelling of the silent, became visible to Anne, and with it the dying out of joy which returns with that vision and memory. The house, too, was very quiet, as she drew in her head, with the stillness of a place once lived in and now empty. She had become accustomed to thinking of her father with tranquillity, satisfied to believe him at rest. Now the pain of loneliness returned with memory.

She harnessed the pony to the cart, and stowed her baskets safely under the seat. She was dressed in a purple merino skirt, kilted thickly, a black mantle, with a bead fringe, and an antiquated straw bonnet. Round her neck she had folded a man's linen handkerchief, and she had elastic-sided boots on her feet. She locked the door, and put the keys in her linen pocket tied round her waist under her skirt, and climbing up by means of the wheel, seated herself on the board which did duty as a seat, and took the reins. "Go on, Polly!" she said, and the pony, with a good deal of tossing of head and tail, set off obediently towards the high road. The clacking of its feet as it trotted on the hard road overwhelmed all other sounds. At the corner of the roads an old woman tending a cow nodded to her, and one or two field labourers raised themselves to see who was going past, remaining upright and staring longer than was necessary to satisfy their curiosity. At an open field-gate she had to wait until two heavy wagons, their wheels a ma.s.s of red, soft earth, had emerged, and turned in the direction of the town. She pa.s.sed them, and for some time met no one. An advancing cart soon came in sight, accompanied by a great jangling of cans--a milk-cart returning from the station, having sent off its supplies to the town, now bringing back its empty cans. It was driven by a man whom Anne knew, and, instead of drawing to one side to pa.s.s, he reined in his horse as if to speak. "Good morning, Miss Hilton," he said. Anne checked her horse which had gone a few paces past, and turning in her seat to look over her shoulder, answered his greeting. The farmer's horse, impatient of this check on the way home, made several attempts to start, and at last, being held in by his master and scolded loudly, fell to pawing the ground with one foot. Having quieted his horse, the farmer also turned in his seat, and looking back at Anne said:

"I've just been up to the Union with the milk, Miss Hilton. They've had a death this morning. I thought I'd tell you."

"Not Jane Evans?" said Anne, dropping the reins, but the next moment retaking them as the pony had started off.

"Yes, it's Jane," said the man. "The child's living. It's a boy. She's to be buried to-morrow seemingly. They soon put you where they want you when you go in there."

Anne, who had been living all morning with the dead whom she knew to be dead, stared helplessly as she heard that one whom she believed to be alive was dead also. She had meant to go to the Union to-morrow. She was speechless.

"She had a drouth on her it seems, and couldn't drag herself up again,"

said the farmer.

Anne remembered the room with its blue-covered beds, and the fire burning beneath the lithograph of Queen Victoria, and the girl sitting beside it whom she could not reach by speaking, and who was now indeed dead.

"You'll perhaps be going up?" said the farmer, as if to lay on someone else the responsibility of knowing about it also.