Books: In Homespun
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E. Nesbit >> In Homespun
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I don't know how I got up them stairs, for they were beginning to
burn too. I opened her door--all red and glowing it was inside! like
an oven when you open it to rake out the ashes on a baking-day. And
I tried to get in, because all I wanted then was to save her--to get
her out safe and sound, if I had to roast myself for it, because we
had been brought up together from little things, and I loved her
like a sister. And while I was trying to get my jacket off and round
my head, something gave way right under my feet, and I seemed to
fall straight into hell!
I was badly burnt, and what handsomeness there was about my face was
pretty well scorched out of it by that night's work; and I didn't
know anything for a bit.
When I come to myself, they had got me into bed bound up with
cotton-wool and oil and things. And the first thing I did was to sit
up and try to tear them off.
'You'll kill yourself,' says the nurse.
'Thank you,' says I, 'that's the best thing I can do, now Lilian is
dead.'
And with that the nurse gives a laugh. 'Oh, that's what's on your
mind, is it?' says she. 'Doctor said there was something. Miss
Lilian had run away that night to her young man. Lucky for her!
She's luckier than you, poor thing! And they're married and living
in lodgings at Brighton, and she's been over to see you every day.'
That day she came again. I lay still and let her thank me for having
tried to save her; for the farm men had seen the fire, and had come
up in time to see me go up the staircase to her room, and they had
pulled me out. She believes to this day the fire was an accident,
and that I would have sacrificed my life for her. And so I would;
she's right there.
I wasn't going to make her unhappy by telling her the real truth,
because she was as fond of me as I was of her; and she has been as
happy as the day is long, all her life long, and so she deserves.
And as for me, I stayed on with uncle at the farm until he died of
that bronchitis I told you of, and the little wing was built up
again, and the lichen has grown on it, so that now you could hardly
tell it is only forty years old; and he left me all his money, and
when he died, and Whitecroft went to a distant relation, I came here
to do what bits of good I could.
And I have never told the truth about this to any one but you. I
couldn't have told it to any one as cared, but I know you don't. So
that makes it easy.
HER MARRIAGE LINES
I
I HAD never been out to service before, and I thought it a grand
thing when I got a place at Charleston Farm. Old Mr. Alderton was
close-fisted enough, and while he had the management of the farm it
was a place no girl need have wished to come to; but now Mr.
Alderton had given up farming this year or two, and young Master
Harry, he had the management of everything. Mr. Alderton, he stuck
in one room with his books, which he was always fond of above a bit,
and must needs be waited on hand and foot, only driving over to
Lewes every now and then.
Six pounds a year I was to have, and a little something extra at
Christmas, according as I behaved myself. It was Master Harry who
engaged me. He rode up to our cottage one fine May morning, looking
as grand on his big grey horse, and says he, through the stamping
clatter of his horse's hoofs on the paved causeway--
'Are you Deresby's Poll?' says he.
And I says, 'Yes; what might you be wanting?'
'We want a good maid up at the farm,' says he, patting his horse's
neck--'Steady, old boy--and they tell me you're a good girl that
wants a good place, and ours is a good place that wants a good girl.
So if our wages suit you, when can you come?'
And I said, 'Tuesday, if that would be convenient.'
And he took off his hat to me as if I was a queen, though I was
floury up to the elbows, being baking-day, and rode off down the
lane between the green trees, and no king could have looked
handsomer.
Charleston is a lonesome kind of house. It's bare and white, with
the farm buildings all round it, except on one side where the big
pond is; and lying as it does, in the cup of the hill, it seems to
shut loneliness in and good company out.
I was to be under Mrs. Blake, who had been housekeeper there since
the old mistress died. No one knew where she came from, or what had
become of Mr. Blake, if ever there had been one. For my part I never
thought she was a widow, and always expected some day to see Mr.
Blake walk in and ask for his wife. But as a widow she came, and as
a widow she passed.
She had just that kind of handsome, black, scowling looks that
always seem to need a lot of black jet and crape to set them
off--the kind of complexion that seems to be playing up for the
widow's weeds from the very cradle. I have heard it said she was
handsome, and so she may have been; and she took a deal of care of
her face, always wearing a veil when there was a wind, and her hands
to have gloves, if you please, for every bit of dirty work.
But she was a capable woman, and she soon put me in the way of my
work; and me and Betty, who was a little girl of fourteen from
Alfreston, had most of the housework to do, for Mrs. Blake would let
none of us do a hand's-turn for the old master. It was she must do
everything, and as he got more and more took up with his books there
come to be more and more waiting on him in his own room; and after a
bit Mrs. Blake used even to sit and write for him by the hour
together.
I have heard tell old Mr. Alderton wasn't brought up to be a farmer,
but was a scholar when he was young, and had to go into farming when
he married Hakes's daughter as brought the farm with her; and now he
had gone back to his books he was more than ever took up with the
idea of finding something out--making something new that no one had
ever made before--his invention, he called it, but I never
understood what it was all about--and indeed Mrs. Blake took very
good care I shouldn't.
She wanted no one to know anything about the master except
herself--at least that was my opinion--and if that was her wish she
certainly got it.
It was hard work, but I'm not one to grudge a hand's-turn here or a
hand's-turn there, and I was happy enough; and when the men came in
for their meals I always had everything smoking hot, and just as I
should wish to sit down to it myself: And when the men come in,
Master Harry always come in with them, and he'd say, 'Bacon and
greens again, Polly, and done to a turn, I'll wager. You're the girl
for my money!' and sit down laughing to a smoking plateful.
And so I was quite happy, and with my first six months' money I got
father a new pipe and a comforter agin the winter, and as pretty a
shepherd's plaid shawl as ever you see for mother, and a knitted
waistcoat for my brother Jim, as had wanted one this two year, and
had enough left to buy myself a bonnet and gown that I didn't feel
ashamed to sit in church in under Master Harry's own blue eye. Mrs.
Blake looked very sour when she saw my new things.
'You think to catch a young man with those,' says she. 'You gells is
all alike. But it isn't fine feathers as catches a husband, as they
say. Don't you believe it.'
And I said, 'No; a husband as was caught so easy might be as easy
got rid of, which was convenient sometimes.'
And we come nigh to having words about it.
That was the day before old master went off to London unexpected.
When Mrs. Blake heard he was going, she said she would take the
opportunity of his being away to make so bold as to ask him for a
day's holiday to go and visit her friends in Ashford. So she and
master went in the trap to the station together, and off by the same
train; and curious enough, it was by the same train in the evening
they come back, and I thought to myself, 'That's like your
artfulness, Mrs. Blake, getting a lift both ways.'
And I wondered to myself whether her friends in Ashford, supposing
she had any, was as glad to see her as we was glad to get rid of
her.
That's a day I shall always remember, for other things than her and
master going away.
That was the day Betty and I got done early, and she wanted to run
home to her mother to see about her clean changes for Sunday, which
hadn't come according to expectations.
So I said, 'Off you go, child, and mind you're back by tea,' and I
sat down in the clean kitchen to do up my old Sunday bonnet and make
it fit for everyday.
And as I was sitting there, with the bits of ribbons and things in
my lap, unpicking the lining of the bonnet, I heard the back door
open, and thinking it was one of the men bringing in wood, maybe, I
didn't turn my head, and next minute there was Master Harry had got
his hand under my chin and holding my head back, and was kissing me
as if he never meant to stop.
'Lor bless you, Master Harry,' says I, as soon as I could push him
away, dropping all the ribbons and scissors and things in my flurry,
'how could you fashion to behave so? And me alone in the house! I
thought you had better sense.'
'Don't be cross, Polly,' says he, smiling at me till I could have
forgiven him much more than that, and going down on his knees to
pick up my bits of rubbish. 'You know well enough who my choice is.
I haven't lived in the house with you six months without finding out
there's only one girl as I should like to keep my house to the end
of the chapter.'
He had that took me by surprise that I give you my word that for a
minute or two I couldn't say anything, but sat looking like a fool
and taking the ribbons and things from his hands as he picked them
up.
When I come to my senses I said, 'I don't know what maggot has bit
you, sir, to think of such nonsense. What would the master say, and
Mrs. Blake and all?'
Well, he got up off his knees and walked up and down the kitchen
twice in a pretty fume, and he said a bad word about what Mrs. Blake
might say that I'm not going to write down here.
'And as for my father,' says he, 'I know he's ideas above what's
fitting for farmer folk, but I know best what's the right choice for
me, and if you won't mind me not telling him, and will wait for me
patient, and will give me a kind word and a kiss on a Sunday, so to
say, you and me will be happy together, and you shall be mistress of
the farm when the poor old dad's time comes to go. Not that I wish
his time nearer by an hour, for all I love you so dear, Polly.'
And I hope I did what was right, though it was with a sore heart,
for I said--
'I couldn't stay on in your folks' house to have secret
understandings with you, Master Harry. That ain't to be thought of.
But I do say this--'tain't likely that I shall marry any other chap;
and if, when you come to be master of Charleston, you are in the
same mind, why you can speak your mind to me again, and I'll listen
to you then with a freer heart, maybe, than I can to-day.'
And with that I bundled all my odds and ends into the dresser
drawer, and took the kettle off, which was a-boiling over.
'And now,' I says, 'no more of this talk, if you and me is to keep
friends.'
'Shake hands on it,' says he; 'you're a good girl, Polly, and I see
more than ever what a lucky man I shall be the day I go to church
with you; and I'll not say another word till I can say it afore all
the world, with you to answer "Yes" for all the world to hear.'
So that was settled, and, of course, from that time I kept myself
more than ever to myself, not even passing the time of day with a
young man if I could help it, because I wanted to keep all my
thoughts and all my words for Master Harry, if he should ever want
me again.
II
Well, as I said, old Master and Mrs. Blake come back together from
the station, and from that day forward Mrs. Blake was unbearabler
than ever. And one day when Mr. Sigglesfield, the lawyer from Lewes,
was in the parlour, she a-talking to him after he'd been up to see
master (about his will, no doubt), she opened the parlour door sharp
and sudden just as I was bringing the tea for her to have it with
him like a lady--she opened the door sudden, as I say, and boxed my
ears as I stood, and I should have dropped the tea-tray but for me
being brought up a careful girl, and taught always to hold on to the
tea-tray with all my fingers.
I'm proud to say I didn't say a word, but I put down that tea-tray
and walked into the kitchen with my ear as hot as fire and my temper
to match, which was no wonder and no disgrace. Then she come into
the kitchen.
'You go this day month, Miss,' she says, 'a-listening at doors when
your betters is a-talking. I'll teach you!' says she, and back she
goes into the parlour.
But I took no notice of what she said, for Master Harry, he hired
me, and I would take no notice from any one but him.
Mr. Sigglesfield was a-coming pretty often just then, and Harry he
come to me one day, and he says--
'It's all right, Polly, and I must tell you because you're the same
as myself, though I don't like to talk as if we was waiting for dead
men's shoes. Long may he wear them! But father's told me he has left
everything to me, right and safe, though I am the second son. My
brother John never did get on with father, but when all's mine,
we'll see that John don't starve.'
And that day week old master was a corpse.
He was found dead in his bed, and the doctor said it was old age and
a sudden breaking up.
Mrs. Blake she cried and took on fearful, more than was right or
natural, and when the will was to be read in the parlour after the
funeral she come into the kitchen where I was sitting crying
too--not that I was fond of old master, but the kind of crying there
is at funerals is catching, I think, and besides, I was sorry for
Master Harry, who was a good son, and quite broken down.
'You can come and hear the will read,' she says, 'for all your
impudence, you hussy!'
And I don't know why I went in after her impudence, but I did. Mr.
Sigglesfield was there, and some of the relations, who had come a
long way to hear if they was to pull anything out of the fire; and
Master Harry was there, looking very pale through all his
sun-brownness. And says he, 'I suppose the will's got to be read,
but my father, he told me what I was to expect. It's all to me, and
one hundred to Mrs. Blake, and five pounds apiece to the servants.'
And Mr. Sigglesfield looks at him out of his ferret eyes, and says
very quietly, 'I think the will had better be read, Mr. Alderton.'
'So I think,' says Mrs. Blake, tossing her head and rubbing her red
eyes with her handkerchief at the same minute almost.
And read it was, and all us people sat still as mice, listening to
the wonderful tale of it. For wonderful it was, though folded up
very curious and careful in a pack of lawyer's talk. And when it was
finished, Master Harry stood up on his feet, and he said--
'I don't understand your cursed lawyer's lingo. Does this mean that
my father has left me fifty pounds, and has left the rest, stock,
lock and barrel, to his wife Martha. Who in hell,' he says, 'is his
wife Martha?'
And at that Mrs. Blake stood up and fetched a curtsy to the company.
'That's me,' she said, 'by your leave; married two months come
Tuesday, and here's my lines.'
And there they were. There was no getting over them. Married at St.
Mary Woolnoth, in London, by special licence.
'O you wicked old Jezebel!' says Master Harry, shaking his fist at
her; 'here's a fine end for a young man's hopes! Is it true?' says
he, turning to the lawyer. And Mr. Sigglesfield shakes his head and
says--
'I am afraid so, my poor fellow.'
'Jezebel, indeed!' cries Mrs. Blake. 'Out of my house, my young
gamecock! Get out and crow on your own dunghill, if you can find
one.'
And Harry turned and went without a word. Then I slipped out too,
and I snatched my old bonnet and shawl off their peg in the kitchen,
and I ran down the lane after him.
'Harry,' says I, and he turned and looked at me like something
that's hunted looks when it gets in a corner and turns on you. Then
I got up with him and caught hold of his arm with both my hands.
'Never mind the dirty money,' says I. 'What's a bit of money,' I
says--'what is it, my dear, compared with true love? I'll work my
fingers to the bone for you,' says I, 'and we're better off than her
when all's said and done.'
'So we are, my girl,' says he; and the savage look went out of his
face, and he kissed me for the second time.
Then we went home, arm-under-arm, to my mother's, and we told father
and mother all about it; and mother made Harry up a bit of a bed on
the settle, and he stayed with us till he could pull himself
together and see what was best to be done.
III
Of course, our first thought was, 'Was she really married?' And it
was settled betwixt us that Harry should go up to London to the
church named in her marriage lines and see if it was a real marriage
or a make-up, like what you read of in the weekly papers. And Harry
went up, I settling to go the same day to fetch my clothes from
Charleston.
So as soon as I had seen him off by the train, I walked up to
Charleston, and father with me, to fetch my things.
Mrs. Blake--for Mrs. Alderton I can't and won't call her--was out,
and I was able to get my bits of things together comfortable without
her fussing and interfering. But there was a pair of scissors of
mine I couldn't find, and I looked for them high and low till I
remembered that I had lent them to Mrs. Blake the week before. So I
went to her room to look for them, thinking no harm; and there,
looking in her corner cupboard for my scissors, as I had a right to
do, I found something else that I hadn't been looking for; and,
right or wrong, I put that in my pocket and said nothing to father,
and so we went home and sat down to wait for Harry.
He came in by the last train, looking tired and gloomy.
'They were married right enough,' he said. 'I've seen the register,
and I've seen the clerk, and he remembers them being married.'
'Then you'd better have a bit of supper, my boy,' says mother, and
takes it smoking hot out of the oven.
The next day when I had cleared away breakfast, I stood looking into
the street. It was a cold day, and a day when nobody would be out of
doors that could anyways be in. I shouldn't have had my nose out of
the door myself, except that I wanted to turn my back on other folks
now, and think of what I had found at Charleston, for I hadn't even
told Harry of it yet.
And as I sat there, who should come along but the postman, as is my
second cousin by the mother's side, and, 'Well, Polly,' says he,
'times do change. They tell me young Alderton is biding with your
folks now.'
'They tell you true for once,' says I.
'Then 'tain't worth my while to be trapesing that mile and a quarter
to leave a letter at the farm, I take it, especially as it's a
registered letter, and him not there to sign for it.'
So I calls Harry out, who was smoking a pipe in the chimney-corner,
as humped and gloomy as a fowl on a wet day, and he was as surprised
as me at getting a letter with a London postmark, and registered
too; and he was that surprised that he kept turning it over and
over, and wondering who it could have come from, till we thought it
would be the best way to open and see, and we did.
'Well, I'm blowed!' says Harry; and then he read it out to me. It
was--
'MY DEAR BROTHER,--I have seen in the papers the melancholy account
of our poor father's decease, and the disastrous circumstances of
his second marriage; and the more I have thought of it, the more it
seems to me that there was a screw loose somewhere. I had the
misfortune, as you know, to offend him by my choice of a profession;
but you will be glad to hear that I have risen from P.C. to
detective-sergeant, and am doing well.
'I have made a few inquiries about the movements of our lamented
father and Mrs. Blake on the day when they were united, and if the
same will be agreeable to you, I will come down Sunday morning and
talk matters over with you.--I remain, my dear brother, your
affectionate brother,
JOHN. '_P.S._ I shall register the letter to make sure. Telegraph if
you would like me to come.'
Well, we telegraphed, though mother doesn't hold with such things,
looking on it as flying in the face of Providence and what's
natural. But we got it all in, with the address, for sixpence, and
Harry was as pleased as Punch to think of seeing his brother again.
But mother said she doubted if it would bring a blessing. And on the
Sunday morning John came.
He was a very agreeable, gentlemanly man, with such manners as you
don't see in Littlington--no, nor in Polegate neither,--and very
changed from the boy with the red cheeks as used to come past our
house on his way to school when he was very little.
Harry met him at the station and brought him home, and when he come
in he kissed me like a brother, and mother too, and he said--
'The best good of trouble, ma'am, is to show you who your friends
really are.'
'Ah,' says mother, 'I doubt if all the detectives in London, asking
your pardon, Master John, can set Master Harry up in his own again.
But he's got a pair of hands, and so has my Polly, and he might have
chosen worse, though I says it.'
Now, after dinner, when I'd cleared away, nothing would serve but I
must go out with the two of them. So we went out, and walked up on
to the Downs for quietness' sake, and it was a warm day and soft,
though November, and we leaned against a grey gate and talked it all
over.
Then says Master John, 'Look here, Polly, we aren't to have any
secrets from you. There's no doubt they were married, but doesn't it
seem to you rather strange that my poor old father should have been
taken off so suddenly after the wedding?'
'Yes,' I said, 'but the doctors seemed to understand all about it.'
Then he said something about the doctors that it was just as well
they weren't there to hear, and he went on--
'Of course I thought at first they weren't married, so I set about
finding out what they did when they came to London; and I haven't
found out what my father did, but I did pounce on a bit of news, and
that's that she wasn't with him the whole day. They came to Charing
Cross by the same train, but he wasn't with her when she went to get
that arsenic from the chemist's.'
'What!' says I, 'arsenic?'
'Yes,' says John, 'don't you get excited, my dear. I found that out
by a piece of luck once as doesn't come to a man every day of the
week. A woman answering to her description went into a chemist's
shop, and the assistant gave the arsenic, a shilling's-worth it was,
to kill rats with.'
'And God above only knows why they put such bits of fools into a
shop to sell sixpenny-worths of death over the counter,' says Harry.
'Now the question is: Was this woman answering to her description
really Mrs. Blake or not?'
'It was Mrs. Blake,' says I, very short and sharp.
'How do you know?' says John, shorter and sharper.
Then I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out what I had found in
Mrs. Blake's corner cupboard, and John took it in his hand and
looked at it, and whistled long and low. It was a little white
packet, and had been opened and the label torn across, but you could
read what was on it plain enough--'Arsenic--Poison,' and the name of
the chemist in London.
John's face was red as fire, like some men's is when they're going
in fighting, and my Harry's as white as milk, as some other men's is
at such times. But as for me, I fell a-crying to think that any
woman could be so wicked, and him such a good master and so kind to
her, and she having the sole care of him, helpless in her hands as
the new-born babe.
And Harry, he patted me on the back, and told me to cheer up and not
to cry, and to be a good girl; and presently, my handkerchief being
wet through, I stopped, and then John, he said--
'We'll bring it home to her yet, Harry, my boy. I'll get an order to
have poor old father exhumed, and the doctors shall tell us how much
of the arsenic that cursed old hag gave him.'
IV I don't know what you have to do to get an order to open up a
grave and look at the poor dead person after it is once put away,
but, whatever it was, John knew and did it.
We didn't tell any one except our dear old parson who buried the old
man; and he listened to all we had to say, and shook his head and
said, 'I think you are wrong--I think you are wrong,' but that was
only natural, him not liking to see his good work disturbed. But he
said he would be there.
Now, no one was told of it, and yet it seemed as if every one for
miles round knew more than we did about it.
Afore the day come, old Mrs. Jezebel up at the farm, she met me one
day, and she says, 'You're a pretty puss, aren't you, howking up my
poor dear deceased husband's remains before they're hardly cold?
Much good you'll do yourself. You'll end in the workhouse, my fine
miss, and I shall come to see you as a lady visitor when you're
dying.'
I tried to get past her, but she wouldn't let me. 'I wish you joy o'
that Harry, cursed young brute!' says she. 'It serves him right, it
does, to marry a girl out of the gutter!'
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