In Homespun Part 9

'Then she's no right to anything?' said Harry.

'But what about the will?' says I. But no one harkened to me.

And then Harry says, 'If she poisoned him she will be off by now.

Parson, will you come with me to keep my hands from violence, and my tongue from evil-speaking and slandering? for I must go home and see if that woman is there yet.'

And parson said he would; and it ended in us, all five of us, going up together, the new parson walking by me and talking to me like somebody out of the Bible, as it might be one of the disciples.

I got to know him well afterwards, and he was the best man that ever trod shoe-leather.

We all went up together to Charleston Farm, and in through the back, without knocking, and so to the parlour door. We knew she was sitting in the parlour, because the red firelight fell out through the window, and made a bright patch that we see before we see the house itself properly; and we went, as I say, quietly in through the back; and in the kitchen I said, 'Oh, let me tell her, for what she said to me.'

And I was sorry the minute I'd said it, when I see the way that clergyman from London looked at me; and we all went up to the parlour door, and Harry opened it as was his right.

There was Mrs. Blake sitting in front of the fire. She had got on her widow's mourning, very smart and complete, with black c.r.a.pe, and her white cap; and she'd got the front of her dress folded back very neat on her lap, and was toasting her legs, in her black-and-red checked petticoat, and her feet in cashmere house-boots, very warm and cosy, on the bra.s.s fender; and she had got port wine and sherry wine in the two decanters that was never out of the gla.s.s-fronted chiffonier when master was alive; and there was something else in a black bottle; and opposite her, in the best arm-chair that old master had sat in to the last, was that lawyer, Sigglesfield from Lewes. And when we all came in, one after another, rather slow, and bringing the cold air with us, they sat in their chairs as if they had been struck, and looked at us.

Harry and John was in front, as was right; and in the dusk they could hardly see who was behind.

'And what do you want, young men?' says Mrs. Blake, standing up in her c.r.a.pe, and her white cap, and looking very handsome, Harry said afterwards, though, for my part, I never could see it; and, as she stood up, she caught sight of the clergyman from London, and she shrank back into her chair and covered her face with her hands; and the clergyman stepped into the room, none of us having the least idea of what he was going to say, and said he--

'That's the woman that I married on the 7th; and that's the man I married her to!' said he, pointing to Sigglesfield, who seemed to turn twice as small, and his ferret eyes no better than b.u.t.ton-hole slits.

'That!' said our parson; 'why, that's Mr. Sigglesfield, the solicitor from Lewes.'

'Then the lady opposite is Mrs. Sigglesfield, that's all,' said the parson from London.

'What I want to know,' says Harry, 'is--is this my house or hers?

It's plain she wasn't my father's wife. But yet he left it to her in the will.'

'Slowly, old boy!' said John; 'gently does it. How could he have left anything in a will to his wife when he hadn't got any wife?

Why, that fellow there---'

But here Mrs. Blake got on her feet, and I must say for the woman, if she hadn't got anything else she had got pluck.

'The game's up!' she says. 'It was well played, too, though I says it. And you, you old fool!' she says to the parson, 'you have often drunk tea with me, and gone away thinking how well-mannered I was, and what a nice woman Mrs. Blake was, and how well she knew her place, after you had chatted over half your parish with me. I know you are the curiousest man in it, and as you and me is old friends, I don't mind owning up just to please you. It'll save a lot of time and a lot of money.'

'It's my duty to warn you,' said John, 'that anything you say may be used against you.'

'Used against a fiddlestick end!' said Mrs. Blake. 'I married Robert Sigglesfield in the name of William Alderton, and he sitting trembling there, like a shrimp half boiled! He got ready the kind of will we wanted instead of the one the old man meant, and gave it to the old man to sign, and he signed it right enough.'

'And what about that a.r.s.enic,' says I,--'that a.r.s.enic I found in your corner cupboard?'

'Oh, it was you took it, was it? You little silly, my neck's too handsome for me to do anything to put a rope round it. Do you suppose I've kept my complexion to my age with nothing but cold water, you little cat?'

'And the other will,' says Harry, 'that my father meant to sign?'

'I'll get you that,' says Mrs. Blake. 'It's no use bearing malice now all's said and done.'

And she goes upstairs to get it, and, if you'll believe me, we were fools enough to let her go; and we waited like lambs for her to come back, which being a woman with her wits about her, and no fool, she naturally never did; and by the time we had woke up to our seven senses, she was far enough away, and we never saw her again. We didn't try too much. But we had the law of that Sigglesfield, and it was fourteen years' penal.

And the will was never found--I expect Mrs. Blake had burnt it,--so the farm came to John, and what else there was to Harry, according to the terms of the will the old man had made when his wife was alive, afore John had joined the force. And Harry and John was that pleased to be together again that they couldn't make up their minds to part; so they farm the place together to this day.

And if Harry has prospered, and John too, it's no more than they deserve, and a blessing on brotherly love, as mother says. And if my dear children are the finest anywhere on the South Downs, that's by the blessing of G.o.d too, I suppose, and it doesn't become me to say so.

ACTING FOR THE BEST

I HAVE no patience with people who talk that kind of nonsense about marrying for love and the like. For my part I don't know what they mean, and I don't believe they know it themselves. It's only a sort of fas.h.i.+on of talking. I never could see what there was to like in one young man more than another, only, of course, you might favour some more than others if they was better to do.

My cousin Mattie was different. She must set up to be in love, and walk home from church with Jack Halibut Sunday after Sunday, the long way round, if you please, through the meadows; and he used to buy her scent and ribbons at the fair, and send her a big valentine of lacepaper, and satin ribbons and things, though Lord knows where he got the money from--honest, I hope--for he hadn't a penny to bless himself with.

When my uncle found out all this nonsense, being a man of proper spirit, he put his foot down, and says he--

'Mattie, my girl, I would be the last to say anything against any young man you fancied, especially a decent chap like young Halibut, if his prospects was anything like as good as could be expected, but you can't pretend poor Jack's are, him being but a blacksmith's man, and not in regular work even. Now, let's have no waterworks,' he went on, for Mattie had got the corner of her ap.r.o.n up and her mouth screwed down at the corners. 'I've known what poverty is, my girl, and you shan't never have a taste of it with my consent.'

'I don't care how poor I be, father,' said Mattie, 'it's Jack I care about.'

'There's a girl all over,' says uncle, for he was a sensible man in those days. 'The bit I've put by for you, la.s.s, it's enough for one, but it's not enough for two. And when young Halibut can show as much, you shall be cried in church the very next Sunday. But, meantime, there must be no kisses, no more letters, and no more walking home from churches. Now, you give me your word--and keep it I know you will--like an honest girl.'

So Mattie she gave him her word, though much against her will; and as for Jack, I suppose, man-like, he didn't care much about staying in the village after there was a stop put to his philandering and kissing and scent and so on. So what does he do, but he ups and offs to America (a.s.sisted emigration) 'to make his fortune,' says he.

And never word nor sign did we hear of him for three blessed years.

Mattie was getting quite an old maid, nigh on two-and-twenty, and I was past nineteen, when one morning there come a letter from Jack.

My father and mother were dead this long time, so I lived with uncle and Mattie at the farm. What offers I had had is neither here nor there. At any rate, whatever they were, they weren't good enough.

But Mattie might have been married twice over if she had liked, and to folks that would have been quite a catch to a girl like her getting on in years. She might have had young Bath for one, the strawberry grower; and what if he did drink a bit of a Sat.u.r.day? He was taking his hundreds of pounds to the Bank every week in canvas bags, as all the world knew.

But no, she must needs hanker after Jack, and that's why I say it's such nonsense.

Well, when the letter come, I was up to my elbows in the jam-making--raspberry and currant it was,--and Mattie, she was down in the garden getting the last berries off the canes. My hands were stained up above the wrist with the currant juice, so I took the letter up by the corner of my ap.r.o.n and I went down the garden with it.

'Mattie,' I calls out, 'here's a letter from that good-for-nothing fellow of yours.'

She couldn't see me, and she thought I was chaffing her about him, which I often did, to keep things pleasant.

'Don't tease me, Jane,' she says, 'for I do feel this morning as if I could hardly bear myself as it is.'

And as she said it I came out through the canes close to her with the letter in my hand. But when she see the letter she dropped the basket with the raspberries in it (they rolled all about on the ground right under the peony bush, for that was a silly, old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, with the flowers and fruit about it anyhow), and I had a nice business picking them up, and she threw her arms round my neck and kissed me, and cried like the silly little thing she was, and thanked me for bringing the letter, just as if I had anything to do with it, or any wish or will one way or another; and then she opened the letter, and seemed to forget all about me while she read it.

I remember the sun was so bright on the white paper that I could scarce see to read it over her shoulder, she not noticing me, nor anything else, any more. It was like this--

'DEAR MATTIE,--This comes hoping to find you well, as it leaves me at present.

'I don't bear no malice over what your father said and done, but I'm not coming to his house.