In Homespun Part 17

Bill Jarvis, 'e lay close in the bunk, and my Pretty, she wouldn't come out of 'er cabin; and at Chatham, my old man, 'e says, 'I'm goin' ash.o.r.e for a bit, old woman; you lay-to and wait for me.' And he went.

Then I went in to my Pretty and I told her all about it, for she knew nothin' but that Jarvis was aboard; and when I'd told 'er, she said, 'I couldn't 'a' done it, no, not for a kingdom.'

'No more couldn't I,' ses I. 'Father's a better chap nor you and me, my Pretty.'

Presently my old man come back from the town, and he goes down to the bunk where Bill Jarvis is lying, and 'e says, 'Look 'ere, Bill,'

says 'e, 'you didn't kill your man last night, and after all, it was in a fair rough-and-tumble. The man's doing well. You take my tip and go back and give yourself up; they won't be 'ard on you.'

And Bill 'e looked at 'im all of a tremble. 'By G.o.d,' says 'e, 'you're a good man!'

'It's more than you are, then, you devil,' says Tom. 'Get along, out of my sight,' says 'e, 'before I think better of it.'

And that soldier was off that barge before you could say 'knife,'

and we didn't see no more of 'im.

But we was up at Hamsted Lock the next summer. The baby was beginnin' to toddle about now; we'd called her Bessie for me. She and her mother was a-settin' in the meadow pickin' the daisies, when I see a soldier a-comin' along the meadow-path, and if it wasn't that Bill Jarvis again. He stopped short when he saw my Pretty.

'Well, Mary?' says 'e.

'Well, Bill?' says she.

'Is that my kid?' says 'e.

'Whose else's would it be?' says she, flas.h.i.+ng up at him; 'ain't it enough to deceive a girl, and desert her, without throwing mud in her face on the top of it all? Whose else's should the child be but yours?'

'Go easy,' says Bill, 'I didn't mean that, my girl. Look 'ere, says 'e, 'I got out of that sc.r.a.pe, thanks to your father, and I want to let bygones be bygones, and I'll marry you to-morrow, if you like, and be a father to the kid.'

Then Mary, she stood up on her feet, with the little one in 'er arms.

'Marry you!' says she, 'I wouldn't marry you if you was the only man in the world. Me marry a man as could serve a girl as you served me?

Not if it was to save me from hanging? Me give the kid a father like you? Thank G.o.d, the child's my own, and you can't touch it. I tell you,' says she, 'shame and all, I'd rather have things as they are, than have married you in church and 'ave found out afterwards what a cowardly beast you are.'

And with that she walks past 'im, looking like a queen, and down into her cabin; and 'e was left a-standin' there sucking the end of his stick and looking like a fool.

'I think, perhaps,' says I afterwards, 'you ought to 'ave let 'im make an honest woman of you.'

'I'm as honest as I want to be,' says she, 'and the child is all my own now.' So no more was said.

And things went on the same old sleepy way, like they always do on the river, and we forgot the shame almost, in the pleasure of having the little thing about us. And so the time went on, till one day at Maidstone a Sister of Charity with one of those white caps and a big cross round her neck, come down to the water's side inquiring for Tom Allb.u.t.t.

'That's me,' says my old man.

'There's a young man ill in hospital,' says she. 'He's dying, I'm afraid, and he wants to see you before he goes. It's typhoid fever, but that's over now; he's dying of weakness, they say.'

And when we asked the young man's name, of course it was Bill Jarvis. So we left my Pretty in charge of the barge, and my old man and me, we went up to the hospital.

Bill was so changed you wouldn't 'ardly 'ave known 'im. From being a fleshy, red-cheeked young fellow, he'd come to be as thin as a skeleton, and 'is eyes seemed to fill half 'is face.

'I want to marry Mary,' says 'e. 'I'm dying, I can't do her and the kid no 'arm now, and I should die easier if she'd marry me here; the chaplain would do it--he said so.'

My old man didn't say nothin', but says I, 'I would dearly like her to be made an honest woman of.'

'It's me that wants to be made an honest man of,' says Bill. And with that my old man, he took his hand and shook it. Then says Bill with the tears runnin' down his cheeks,--partly from weakness, I suppose, for 'e wasn't the crying sort--'So help me G.o.d, I never knew what a beast I was till that day I come to you in your barge and you showed me what a man was, Tom Allb.u.t.t; you did, so, and I've been trying to be a man ever since, and I've given up the drink, and I've lived steady, and I've never so much as looked at another girl since that night. Oh, get her to be my wife,' says 'e, 'and let me die easy.'

And I went and fetched 'er, and she came along with me with the child in her arms; and the chaplain married them then and there. I don't know how it was the banns didn't have to be put up, but it was managed somehow.

'And you'll stay with me till I die,' says 'e, 'won't you, Mary, you and the kid?'

But he didn't die, he got better, and there isn't a couple happier than him and Mary, for all they've gone through.

And the doctor says it was Mary saved his life, for it was after he had had a little talk with her that he took a turn for the better.

'Mary,' says 'e, 'I've been a bad lot, and you was in the right when you called me a coward and a beast; but your father showed me what a man was, and I've tried to be a man. You was fond of me once, Mary; you'll love me a little when I'm gone, and don't let the kid think unkind of her daddy.'

'Love you when you're gone?' says she, cryin' all over 'er face, and kissin' 'im as if it was for a wager; 'you ain't a-goin' to die, you're goin' to live along of me and baby. Love you when you're gone?' says she, 'why, I've loved you all the time!' she says.