In Homespun

'And isn't she coming?' he asks very quick, looking at me full, with his blue eyes.

'I hope you won't take it hard, Mr. Halibut,' says I, 'but she said she'd rather not come.'

'Confound it!' says he.

'You see,' I went on, 'it's a long time since you was at home, and you not writing or anything, and some girls are very flighty and changeable; and she told me to tell you she was sorry if you were mistaken in her feelings about you, and she's had time to think things over since three years ago; and now you're so well off, she says she's sure you'll find no difficulty in getting a girl suited to your mind.'

'Did she say that?' he said, looking at me very straight. 'It's not like her.'

'I don't mean she said so in those words, or that she told me to tell you so; but that's what I made out to be her mind from what she said between us two like.'

'But what message did she send to me? For I suppose she sent you to meet me to-day.'

Then I saw that I should have to be very careful. So to get a little time I says, 'I don't quite like to tell you, Mr. Halibut, what she said.'

'Out with it,' says he. 'Don't be a fool, girl!'

'Well, then,' I says, 'if it must be so, her words were these: "Tell Jack," she says, "that I shall ever wish him well for the sake of what's past, but all's over betwixt him and me, and—"'

'And what,' says he.

'There wasn't much besides,' says I.

'Good God, don't be such an idiot!' and he looked as if he could have shaken me.

'Well, then, if you must have it,' says I, 'she says, "Tell Jack there's at least one girl I know of as would make him a better wife than I should, and has been thinking of him steady and faithful these three years, while I've been giving my mind to far other things."'

'Confound her!' says he, 'little witch. And who is this other girl that she's so gracious to hand me over to?'

'I don't want to say no more,' says I. 'I'm going now, Mr. Halibut. Good-bye.'

For well I knew he wouldn't let me go at that.

'Tell me who it is,' says he. 'What! she's not content with giving me the mitten herself, but she must insult me and this poor girl too, who's got more sense than she has. Good Heavens, it would serve her right if I took her at her word, and took the other girl back with me.'

He was walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, frowning like a July thunderstorm.

'Wicked, heartless little—but there, thank God! all women aren't like her. Who's this girl that she's tried to set me against?'

'I can't tell you,' says I.

'Oh! can't you, my girl? But you shall.'

And he catches hold of both my wrists in his hands.

'Leave me go!' I cried, 'you're hurting me.'

'Who is it?'

I was looking down my nose very straight, but when he said that, I just lifted my eyes up and looked at him, and dropped them.

I've always practised looking like what I meant, or what I wanted people to think I meant—sort of matching your looks and words, like you match ribbon and a bit of stuff.

'So you're the girl, are you?' he cries. 'And she thought to put you to shame before me with her messages? Look here, I'm well off. I'm going to Liverpool to-night, and back to America next week. I want to take a wife with me, and she says you have thought of me while I've been away. Will you marry me, Jane?'

I just looked at him again, and he put his arm round me and gave me a good kiss. I had to put up with it, though I never could see any sense in that sort of stuff. Then we walked home together, very slow, his arm round me.

I daresay some people will think I oughtn't to have acted so, taking away another girl's fellow. But I was quite sure she would get plenty that would play love in a cottage with her, and she did not seem to appreciate her blessings in getting a man that was well off, and I didn't see how it could be found out, as he was going away next day.

Now, it would all have gone as well as well if I had had the sense to offer to see him off at the station, and I ought to have had the sense to see him well out of the place. But we all make mistakes sometimes. Mine was in saying 'Good-bye' to him at the corner of the four-acre and going home by myself, leaving him with three-quarters of an hour for 'Satan to find some mischief still for idle hands to do' in.

I said 'Good-bye' to him, and he kissed me, and gave me the address where to write, and told me what to do.

'For I shan't have no truck with your uncle,' says he. 'I marries my wife, and I takes her right away.'

It wasn't till I was going up the stairs, untying my bonnet-strings as I went, and smoothing out the ribbons with my finger and thumb, for it was my best, that it come to me all in a minute that I had left Mattie locked up in that church. It was very tiresome, and how to get her out I didn't know. But I thought maybe she would be trying some of the other doors, and I might turn the key gently and away again before she could find out it was unlocked.

So up to the church I went, very hot, and a setting sun, and having had no tea or anything, and as I began to climb the hill my heart stood still in my veins, for I heard a sound from the church as I never expected to hear at that time of the day and week.

'O Lord!' I thought, 'she's tried every other way, and now she's ringing the bell, and she'll fetch up the whole village, and what will become of me?'

I made the best haste I could, but I could see more than one black dot moving up the hill before me that showed me folks on their way home had heard the bell and was going to see what it meant. And when I got up there they were trying the big door of the church, not knowing it was the little side one where the key was, and Jack, he come up almost the same moment I did, and I knew well enough he had come to get that note out of her prayer-book for fear some one else should see it.

'Here, I've got the key in my pocket,' says he, and with that he opened the door, the bell clang, clang, clanging from the tower all the time like as if the bellringer was drunk and had got a wager on to get more beats out of the bell in half an hour than the next man.

Whoever it was that was ringing the bell—and I could give a pretty good guess who it was—didn't seem to hear us coming, and they went up the aisle and pulled back the red baize curtain that hides the bottom of the tower where the ringers stand on Sundays, and there was Mattie with her old green gown on, and her hair all loose and down her back with the hard work of bellringing, I suppose, and her face as white as the bald-faced stag as is painted on the sign down at the inn in the village. And directly she saw Jack, I knew it was all over, for she let go the rope and it swung up like a live thing over our heads, and she made two steps to Jack and had him round the neck before them all.

'O Jack!' she cried, 'don't look like that.

I came to fetch your letter, and somebody locked me in.'

Jack, he turned to me, and his face was so that I should have been afraid to have been along of him in a lonely place.

'This is your doings,' says he, 'and all that pack of lies you told me was out of your own wicked head.'

He had got his arm round her, and was holding on as if she was something worth having, instead of a silly girl in a frock three year old.

'I don't know what you mean, I'm sure,' I said; 'it was only a joke.'

'A joke!' says he. 'Lies, I call it, and I know they're lies by the very touch of her in my arm here.'

'Oh, well!' I said, 'if you can't take joking better than this, it's the last time I'll ever try joking with you.'

And I walked out of the church, and the other folks who had run up to see what was the matter come out with me. And they two was left alone.

I suppose it was only human nature that, as I come round the church, I should get on the top of a tombstone and look in to see what they was doing. It was the little window where a pane was broken by a stone last summer, and so I heard what they was saying. He was trying to tell her what I had told him—quite as much for her own good as for mine, as you have seen; but she didn't seem to want to listen.

'Oh, never mind all that now, Jack,' she says, with arms round his neck. 'What does it matter about a silly joke now that I have got you, and it's all right betwixt us?'