In Homespun

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 Saturday? 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 apron 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-fashioned 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.

'Now Mattie, if you have forgot me, or think more of some other chap, don't let anything stand in the way of your letting me know it straight and plain. But if you do remember how we used to walk from church, and the valentine, and the piece of poetry about Cupid's dart that I copied for you out of the poetry-book, you will come and meet me in the little ash copse, you know where. I may be prevented coming, for I've a lot of things to see to, and I am going to Liverpool on Thursday, and if we are to be married you will have to come to me there, for my business won't bear being left, and I must get back to it. But if so I will put a note in your prayer-book in the church. So you had best look in there on your way up on Wednesday evening.

'I am taking this way of seeing you because I don't want there to be any unpleasantness for you if you are tired of me or like some other chap better.

'I mean to take a wife back with me, Mattie, for I have done well, and can afford to keep one in better style than ever your father kept his. Will you be her, dear? So no more at present from your affectionate friend and lover,

    JACK HALIBUT.'

I am quicker at reading writing than Mattie, and I had finished the letter and was picking up the raspberries before she come to the end, where his name was signed with all the little crosses round it.

'Well?' says I, as she folded it up and unbuttoned two buttons of her dress to push it inside. 'Well,' says I, 'what's the best news?'

'He's come home again,' she says. And I give you my word she did look like a rose as she said it. 'He's come home again, Jane, and it's all right, and he likes me just as much as ever he did, God bless him.'

Not a word, you see, about his having made his fortune, which I might never have known if I hadn't read the letter which I did, acting for the best. Not that I think it was deceitfulness in the girl, but a sort of fondness that always kept her from noticing really important things.

'And does he ask you to have him?' says I.

'Of course he does,' she says; 'I never thought any different. I never thought but what he would come back for me, just as he said he would—just as he has.'

By that I knew well enough that she had often had her doubts.

'Oh, well!' says I, 'all's well that ends well.

I hope he's made enough to satisfy uncle—that's all.'

'Oh yes, I think so,' says Mattie, hardly understanding what I was saying. 'I didn't notice particular. But I suppose that's all right.'

She didn't notice particular! Now, I put it to you, Was that the sort of girl to be the wife of a man who had got on like Jack had? I for one didn't think so. If she didn't care for money why should she have it, when there was plenty that did? And if love in a cottage was what she wanted, and kisses and foolishness out of poetry-books, I suppose one man's pretty much as good as another for that sort of thing.

So I said, 'Come along in, dear, and we will get along with the jam-making, and talk it all over nicely. I'm so glad he's come back. I always say he would, if you remember.'

Not that I ever had, but she didn't seem to know any different, anyhow.

The next few days Mattie was like a different girl. I will say for her that she always did her fair share of the work, but she did it with a face as long as a fiddle. Only now her face was all round and dimply, and like a child's that has got a prize at school.

On Wednesday afternoon she said to me, 'I'm going to meet Jack, and don't you say a word to the others about it, Jane. I'll tell father myself when I come back, if you'll get the tea like a good girl, and just tell them I've gone up to the village.'

'I don't tell lies as a rule, especially for other people,' I says; 'but I don't mind doing it for you this once.'

And she kissed me (she had got mighty fond of kissing these last few days), and ran upstairs to get ready. When she come down, if you'll believe me, she wasn't in her best dress as any other girl would have been, but she had gone and put on a dowdy old green and white delaine that had been her Sunday dress, trimmed with green satin piping, three years before, and the old hat she had with all the flowers faded and the ribbons crumpled up, that was three year old too, and the very one she used to walk home from church with him on Sundays in. And her with a really good blue poplin laid by and a new bonnet with red roses in it, only come home the week before from Maidstone.

She come through the kitchen where I was setting the tea, and she took the key of the church off the nail in the wall. Our farm was full a mile from the village, and half way between it and the church. So we kept one key, and Jack's uncle, who was the sexton, he had the other.

'What time was you to meet Jack?' I says.

'He didn't say,' said she; 'but it used to be half-past six.'

'You're full early,' says I.

'Yes,' she says, 'but I've got to take the butter down to Weller's, and to call in for something first.'

And, of course, I knew that she meant that she had to call in for that note at the church.

Minute she was out of the way, I runs into the kitchen, and says to our maid—

'Poor Mrs. Tibson's not so well, Polly. I'm going over to see her. Give the men their tea, will you? there's a good girl.'

And she said she would. And in ten minutes I was dressed, and nicely dressed too, for I had on my white frock and the things I had had at a girl's wedding the summer before, and a pair of new gloves I had got out of my butter-money.

Then I went off up the hill to the church after Mattie, even then not making up my mind what I was going to do, but with an idea that all things somehow might work together for good to me if I only had the sense to see how, and turn things that way.

As I come up to the church I was just in time to see her old green gown going in at the porch, and when I come up the key was in the door, and she hadn't come out. Quick as thought, the idea come to me to have a joke with her and lock her in, so she shouldn't meet him, and next minute I had turned the key in the lock softly, and stole off through the church porch, and up to the ash copse, which I couldn't make a mistake about, for there's only one within a mile of the church.

Jack was there, though it was before the time. I could see his blue tie and white shirt-front shining through the trees.

When I locked her in I only meant to have a sort of joke—at least, I think so,—but when I come close up to him and saw how well off he looked, and the diamond ring on his fingers, and his pin and his gold chain, I thought to myself—

'Well, you go to Liverpool to-morrow, young man! And she ain't got your address, and, likely as not, if you go away vexed with her, you won't leave it with your aunt, and one wife is as good as another, if not better, and as for her caring for you, that's all affectation and silliness—so here goes.'

He stepped forward, with his hands held out to me, but when he saw it was me he stopped short.

'Why, Miss Jane,' he said, 'I beg your pardon. I was expecting quite a different person.'

'Yes, I know,' I says, 'you was expecting my cousin Mattie.'