by Ellen Wood
The work was in progress, when who should look in upon us but Duffham. He was passing by to visit some one ill in the cottages. “Rather late, shan’t you be?” cried he, seeing that there was hardly any green up yet. And we told him about the truck sticking in the snow.
“What possessed Leek to take it through the valley?” returned Duffham.
“Because he is fonder of having his own way than a mule,” called out Miss Susan from the aisle.
Duffham laughed. “Don’t forget the gala bunch over the parson’s head; it looked well last year,” said he, turning to go out. And we told him there was no danger of forgetting it: it was one of our improvements on old Bumford’s dressing.
Darkness overtook us before half the work was done. There was nothing for it but to get candles from the Copse Farm to finish by. No one volunteered to fetch them: a walk through the snow did not look lively in prospective to any one of us, and Leek had gone off somewhere. “I suppose it must be me,” said John Drench, coming out from the holly to start: when Miss Page suddenly bethought herself of what the rest of us were forgetting — that there might be candles in the church. On a winter’s afternoon, when it grew dark early and the parson could not see through his spectacles to finish his sermon, Clerk Bumford would go stumping into the place under the belfry, and re-appear with a lighted candle and hand it up to the pulpit. He ought to have a stock of candles in store.
John Drench struck some matches, and we went to explore Bumford’s den — a place dimly lighted by the open slits in the belfry above. The first thing seen was his black gown hanging up, next a horn lantern on the floor and the grave-digging tools, then an iron candlestick with a candle end in it, then a stick half-a-mile long that he menaced the boys with if they laughed in church; and next a round tin candlebox on a nail in the wall. It was a prize.
There were ten candles in it. Leaving one, in case it should be wanted on the morrow afternoon, the nine others were lighted. One was put into the iron candlestick, the rest we stuck upright in melted tallow, wherever one was wanted: how else could they be set up? It was a grand illumination: and we laughed over Clerk Bumford’s dismay when he should find his store of candles gone.
That took time: finding the candles, and dropping the tallow, and talking and laughing. In the midst of it the clock struck five. Upon that, Miss Abigail told us to hinder no more time, or the work would not be done by midnight. So we set to with a will. In a couple of hours all the dressing was finished, and the branches were ready to be hung over the pulpit. John Drench felt for the string. He seemed to take his time over it.
“Where on earth is it?” cried he, searching his pockets. “I’m sure I brought some.”
He might have brought it; but it was certain he had not got it then. Miss Abigail, who had no patience with carelessness, told him rather sharply that if he had put it in his pockets at all, there it would be now.
“Well, I did,” he answered, in his quiet way. “I put it in on purpose. I’m sure I don’t know where it can have got to.”
And there we were: at a standstill for a bit of string. Looking at one another like so many helpless noodles, and the flaring candles coming to an end! Tod said, tear a strip off the tail of Bumford’s gown; he’d never miss it: for which Miss Abigail gave it him as sharply as if he had proposed to tear it off the parson’s.
“I might get a bit of string at old Bumford’s,” I said. “In a few minutes I’ll be back with it.”
It was one of the lightest nights ever seen: the air clear, the moon bright, the ground white with snow. Rushing round the north and unfrequented side of the church, where the grass on the graves was long and no one ever walked, excepting old Bumford when he wanted to cut across the near way to his cottage, I saw something stirring against the church wall. Something dark: that seemed to have been looking in at the window, and now crouched down with a sudden movement behind the buttress, as if afraid of being seen.
“Is that you, Leek?” I called out.
There was no answer: no movement: nothing but a dark heap lying low. I thought it might be a fox; and crossed over to look.
Well — I had had surprises in my life, but never one that so struck upon me as this. Foxes don’t wear women’s clothes: this thing did. I pulled aside the dark cloak, and a face stood out white and cold in the moonlight — the face of Jessy Page.
You may fancy it is a slice of romance this; made up for effect out of my imagination: but it is the real truth, as every one about the place can testify to, and its strangeness is talked of still. Yet there are stranger coincidences in life than this. On Christmas-Eve, a year before, Jessy Page had been helping to dress the church, in her fine blue mantle, in her beauty, in her light-hearted happiness: on this Christmas-Eve when we were dressing it again, she re-appeared. But how changed! Wan, white, faint, wasted! I am not sure that I should have known her but for her voice. Shrinking, as it struck me, with shame and fear, she put up her trembling hands in supplication.
“Don’t betray me! — don’t call!” she implored in weak, feverish, anxious tones. “Go away and leave me. Let me lie here unsuspected until they have all gone away.”
What ought I to do? I was just as bewildered as it’s possible for a fellow to be. It’s no exaggeration to say that I thought her dying: and it would never do to leave her there to die.
The stillness was broken by a commotion. While she lay with her thin hands raised, and I was gazing down on her poor face, wondering what to say, and how to act, Miss Susan came flying round the corner after me.
“Johnny Ludlow! Master Johnny! Don’t go. We have found the string under the unused holly. Why! — what’s that?”
No chance of concealment for Jessy now. Susan Page made for the buttress, and saw the white face in the moonlight.
“It’s Jessy,” I whispered.
With a shriek that might have scared away all the ghosts in the churchyard, Susan Page called for Abigail. They heard it through the window, and came rushing out, thinking Susan must have fallen at least into the clutches of a winter wolf. Miss Susan’s voice trembled as she spoke in a whisper.
“Here’s Jessy — come back at last!”
Unbelieving Abigail Page went down on her knees in the snow to trace the features, and convince herself. Yes, it was Jessy. She had fainted now, and lay motionless. Leek came up then, and stood staring.
Where had she come from? — how had she got there? It was just as though she had dropped from the skies with the snow. And what was to be done with her?
“She must — come home,” said Abigail.
But she spoke hesitatingly, as though some impediment might lie in the way: and she looked round in a dreamy manner on the open country, all so white and dreary in the moonlight.
“Yes, there’s no other place — of course it must be the farm,” she added. “Perhaps you can bring her between you. But I’ll go on and speak to my father first.”
It was easy for one to carry her, she was so thin and light. John Drench lifted her and they all went off: leaving me and Leek to finish up in the church, and put out the candles.
William Page was sitting in his favourite place, the wide chimney-corner of the kitchen, quietly smoking his pipe, when his daughter broke in upon him with the strange news. Just in the same way that, a year before, she had broken in upon him with that other news — that a gentleman had arrived, uninvited, on a visit to the farm. This news was more startling than that.
“Are they bringing her home? — how long will they be?” cried the old man with feverish eagerness, as he let fall his long churchwarden pipe, and broke it. “Abigail, will they be long?”
“Father, I want to say something: I came on to say it,” returned Miss Page, and she was trembling too. “I don’t like her face: it is wan, and thin, and full of suffering: but there’s a look in it that — that seems to tell of shame.”
“To tell of what?” he asked, not catching the word.
“May Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her! T
he fear crossed me, as I saw her lying there, that her life may not have been innocent since she left us: why else should she come back in this most strange way? Must we take her in all the same, father?”
“Take her in!” he repeated in amazement. “Yes. What are you thinking of, child, to ask it?”
“It’s the home of myself and Susan, father: it has been always an honest one in the sight of the neighbours. Maybe, they’ll be hard upon us for receiving her into it.”
He stared as one who does not understand, and then made a movement with his hands, as if warding off her words and the neighbours’ hardness together.
“Let her come, Abigail! Let her come, poor stray lamb. Christ wouldn’t turn away a little one that had strayed from the fold: should her own father do it?”
And when they brought her in, and put her in an easy-chair by the sitting-room fire, stirring it into a blaze, and gave her hot tea and brandy in it, William Page sat down by her side, and shed fast tears over her, as he fondly stroked her hand.
Gay and green looked the church on Christmas morning, the sun shining in upon us as brightly as it shone a year before. The news of Jessy Page’s return and the curious manner of it, had spread; causing the congregation to turn their eyes instinctively on the Pages’ pew. Perhaps not one but recalled the last Christmas — and the gallant stranger who had sat in it, and found the places in the Prayer-book for Jessy. Only Mr. Page was there to-day. He came slowly in with his thick stick — for he walked badly since his illness, and dragged one leg behind the other. Before the thanksgiving prayer the parson opened a paper and read out a notice. Such things were uncommon in our church, and it caused a stir.
“William Page desires to return thanks to Almighty God for a great mercy vouchsafed to him.”
We walked to the Copse Farm with him after service. Considering that he had been returning thanks, he seemed dreadfully subdued. He didn’t know how it was yet; where she had been, or why she had come home in the manner she did, he told the Squire; but, anyway, she had come. Come to die, it might be; but come home, and that was enough.
Mrs. Todhetley went upstairs to see her. They had given her the best bed, the one they had given to Marcus Allen. She lay in it like a lily. It was what Mrs. Todhetley said when she came down: “like a lily, so white and delicate.” There was no talking. Jessy for the most part kept her eyes shut and her face turned away. Miss Page whispered that they had not questioned her yet; she seemed too weak to bear it. “But what do you think?” asked Mrs. Todhetley in return. “I am afraid to think,” was all the answer. In coming away, Mrs. Todhetley stooped over the bed to kiss her.
“Oh don’t, don’t!” said Jessy faintly: “you might not if you knew all. I am not worth it.”
“Perhaps I should kiss you all the more, my poor child,” answered Mrs. Todhetley. And she came downstairs with red eyes.
But Miss Susan Page was burning with impatience to know the ins and outs of the strange affair. Naturally so. It had brought more scandal and gossip on the Copse Farm than even the running away of the year before. That was bad enough: this was worse. Altogether Jessy was the home’s heartsore. Mr. Page spoke of her as a lamb, a wanderer returned to the fold, and Susan heard it with compressed lips: in her private opinion, she had more justly been called an ungrateful girl.
“Now, then, Jessy; you must let us know a little about yourself,” began Susan on this same afternoon when she was with her alone, and Jessy lay apparently stronger, refreshed with the dinner and the long rest. Abigail had gone to church with Mr. Page. Susan could not remember that any of them had gone to church before on Christmas-Day after the morning service: but there was no festive gathering to keep them at home to-day. Unconsciously, perhaps, Susan resented the fact. Even John Drench was dining at his father’s. “Where have you been all this while in London?”
Jessy suddenly lifted her arm to shade her eyes; and remained silent.
“It is in London, I conclude, that you have been? Come: answer me.”
“Yes,” said Jessy faintly.
“And where have you been? In what part of it? — who with?”
“Don’t ask me,” was the low reply, given with a suppressed sob.
“Not ask you! But we must ask you. And you must answer. Where have you been, and what have you been doing?”
“I — can’t tell,” sobbed Jessy. “The story is too long.”
“Story too long!” echoed Susan quickly, “you might say in half-a-dozen words — and leave explanations until to-morrow. Did you find a place in town?”
“Yes, I found a place.”
“A lady’s-maid’s place? — as you said.”
Jessy turned her face to the wall, and never spoke.
“Now, this won’t do,” cried Miss Susan, not choosing to be thwarted: and no doubt Jessy, hearing the determined tone, felt something like a reed in her hands. “Just you tell me a little.”
“I am very ill, Susan; I can’t talk much,” was the pleading excuse. “If you’d only let me be quiet.”
“It will no more hurt you to say in a few words where you have been than to make excuses,” persisted Miss Susan, giving a flick to the skirt of her new puce silk gown. “Your conduct altogether has been most extraordinary, quite baffling to us at home, and I must hear some explanation of it.”
“The place I went to was too hard for me,” said Jessy after a pause, speaking out of the pillow.
“Too hard!”
“Yes; too hard. My heart was breaking with its hardness, and I couldn’t stop in it. Oh, be merciful to me, Susan! don’t ask any more.”
Susan Page thought that when mysterious answers like these were creeping out, there was all the greater need that she should ask for more.
“Who found you the place at first, Jessy?”
Not a word. Susan asked again.
“I — got it through an advertisement,” said Jessy at length.
Advertisements in those days, down in our rural district, were looked upon as wonderful things, and Miss Susan opened her eyes in surprise. A faint idea was upon her that Jessy could not be telling the truth.
“In that letter that you wrote to us; the only one you did write; you asserted that you liked the place.”
“Yes. That was at first. But afterwards — oh, afterwards it got cruelly hard.”
“Why did you not change it for another?”
Jessy made no answer. Susan heard the sobs in her throat.
“Now, Jessy, don’t be silly. I ask why you did not get another place, if you were unable to stay in that one?”
“I couldn’t have got another, Susan. I would never have got another.”
“Why not?” persisted Susan.
“I — I — don’t you see how weak I am?” she asked with some energy, lifting her face for a moment to Susan.
And its wan pain, its depth of anguish, disarmed Susan. Jessy looked like a once fair blossom on which a blight had passed.
“Well, Jessy, we will leave these matters until later. But there’s one thing you must answer. What induced you to take this disreputable mode of coming back?”
A dead silence.
“Could you not have written to say you were coming, as any sensible girl would, that you might have been properly met and received? Instead of appearing like a vagabond, to be picked up by anybody.”
“I never meant to come home — to the house.”
“But why?” asked Susan.
“Oh, because — because of my ingratitude in running away — and never writing — and — and all that.”
“That is, you were ashamed to come and face us.”
“Yes, I was ashamed,” said Jessy, shivering.
“And no wonder. Why did you go?”
Jessy gave a despairing sigh. Leaving that question in abeyance, Susan returned to the former one.
“If you did not mean to come home, what brought you down here at all?”
“It didn’t matter where I went. And my heart was yearning for a
look at the old place — and so I came.”
“And if we had not found you under the church wall — and we never should but for Johnny Ludlow’s running out to get some string — where should you have gone, pray?”
“Crawled under some haystack, and let the cold and hunger kill me.”
“Don’t be a simpleton,” reproved Susan.
“I wish it had been so,” returned Jessy. “I’d rather be dying there in quiet. Oh, Susan, I am ill; I am indeed! Let me be at peace!”
The appeal shut up Susan Page. She did not want to be too hard upon her.
Mr. Duffham came in after church. Abigail had told him that she did not like Jessy’s looks; nor yet her cough. He went up alone, and was at the bedside before Jessy was aware. She put up her hand to hide her face, but not in time: Duffham had seen it. Doctors don’t get shocks in a general way: they are too familiar with appearances that frighten other people: but he started a little. If ever he saw coming death in a face, he thought he saw it in that of Jessy Page.
He drew away the shading hand, and looked at her. Duffham was pompous on the whole and thought a good deal of his gold-headed cane, but he was a tender man with the sad and sick. After that, he sat down and began asking her a few things — where she had been, and what she had done. Not out of curiosity, or quite with the same motive that Miss Susan had just asked; but because he wished to find out whether her illness was more on the body or the mind. She would not answer. Only cried softly.
“My dear,” said Duffham, “I must have you tell me a little of the past. Don’t be afraid: it shall go no further. If you only knew the strange confidences that are sometimes placed in me, Jessy, you would not hesitate.”
No, she would not speak of her own accord, so he began to pump her. Doing it very kindly and soothingly: had Jessy spent her year in London robbing all the banks, one might have thought she could only have yielded to his wish to come to the bottom of it. Duffham listened to her answers, and sat with a puzzled face. She told him what she had told Susan: that her post of lady’s-maid had been too hard for her and worn her to what she was; that she had shrunk from returning home on account of her ingratitude, and should not have returned ever of her own will. But she had yearned for a sight of the old place, and so came down by rail, and walked over after dark. In passing the church she saw it lighted up; and lingered, peeping in. She never meant to be seen; she should have gone away somewhere before morning. Nothing more.