by Edith Nesbit
And that night the place seemed very quiet and empty, as if there was more room in it for being unhappy in. When Lilian had taken her candle and gone up to bed, I walked through all the rooms below, as uncle’s habit was, to see that all was fast for the night. It was as I set the bolt on the door of the little lean-to shed, where the faggots were kept, that the devil entered into me all in a breath; and I thought of Lilian upstairs in her white bed, and of how the day must come, when he would see how pretty she looked and white, and I said to myself, ‘No, it never shall, not if I burn for it too.’
I hope you are understanding me. I sometimes think there is something done to folks when they are learning to be parsons as takes out of them a part of a natural person’s understandingness; and I would rather have told the doctor, but then he couldn’t have told me whether these are the kind of things Christ died to make His Father forgive, and I suppose you can.
What I did was this. I clean forgot all about uncle and how fond I was of Whitecroft, and how much I had always loved Lilian (and I loved her then, though I know you can’t understand me when I say so), and I took all them faggots, dragging them across the sanded floor of the kitchen, and I put them in the parlour in the little wing to the left, and just under Lilian’s bedroom, and I laid them under the wooden corner cupboard where the best china is, and then I poured oil and brandy all over, and set it alight.
Then I put on my hat and jacket, buttoning it all the way down, as quiet as if I was going down to the village for a pound of candles. And I made sure all was burning free, and out of the front door I went and up on to the Downs, and there I set me down under the wall where I could see Whitecroft.
And I watched to see the old place burn down; and at first there was no light to be seen.
But presently I see the parlour windows get redder and redder, and soon I knew the curtains had caught, and then there was a light in Lilian’s bedroom. I see the bars of the window as you do in the ruined mill when the sun is setting behind it; and the light got more and more, till I see the stone above the front door that tells how it was builded by one of our name this long time since; and at that, as sudden as he had come, the devil left me, and I knew all in a minute that I was crouched against a wall, very cold, and my hands hooked into my hair over my ears, and my knees drawn up under my chin; and there was the old house on fire, the dear old house, with Lilian inside it in her little white bed, being burnt to death, and me her murderer! And with that I got up, and I remember I was stiff, as if I had been screwing myself all close together to keep from knowing what it was I had been a-doing. I ran down the meadow to our house faster than I ever ran in my life, in at the door, and up the stairs, all blue and black, and hidden up with coppery-coloured smoke.
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 hou
r 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 funeral
s 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.