"Don"t "e ask me, Tom--don"t "e now, there"s a good fellow."
And, of course, I asked her all the more.
Then says she, "Jenny"ll never forgive me if I tell you."
"Jenny shan"t never know," says I; and I swore it, too.
Then says Amelia, "I can"t abear to tell you, Tom, for I know it will break your "eart. But Jenny, she don"t care for you no more; it"s Joe Wheeler as she fancies now, and she"s out with him this very minute, as here we stand.
"I"ll wring her neck for her," says I. Then when I had taken time to think a bit, "I can"t believe this, Amelia," says I, "not even from you. I must ask Jenny."
"But that"s just what you"ve swore not to do," says she. "She"ll never forgive me if you do, Tom; and what need of asking when for the trouble of walking the length of the road you can see them together? But if I tell you where to find them, you swear you won"t speak or make a fuss, because she"d know I"d told you?"
"I swear I won"t," says I.
"Well, then," says Amelia, "I don"t seem to be acting fair to her; but, take it the other way, I can"t abear to stand by and see you deceived, Tom. If you go by the churchyard an hour from now, you"ll see them in the porch; but don"t you say a word to them, and never say I told you. Now, be off, Tom," says she.
It was early summer by this time, and the evenings long. I don"t think any man need envy me what I felt as I walked about the lanes waiting till it was time to walk up to the church and find out for certain that I"d been made a fool of.
It was dusk when I opened the churchyard gate and walked up the path.
There she was, sure enough, in her Sunday muslin with the violet sprig, and her black silk jacket with the bugles, and her arm was round Joe Wheeler"s neck--confound him!--and his arms were round her waist, both of them. They didn"t see me, and I stood for a minute and looked at them, and but for what I"d swore to Amelia I believe I should have taken Wheeler by the throat and shaken the life out of him then and there. But I had swore, and I turned sharp and walked away, and I never went up to Teesdale"s nor to my father"s farm, but I went straight back to Pound"s, the man I was bound to, and I wrote a letter to Jenny and one to Amelia, and in Amelia"s I only said--
"DEAR AMELIA,--Thank you very much; you were quite right.
TOM."
And in the other I said--
Jenny, I"ve had pretty well enough of you; you can go to the devil your own way. So no more at present from your sincere well-wisher TOM.
"P.S.--I"m going for a soldier."
And I left everything: my master that I was bound to, and my trade and my father. And I went straight off to London. And I should have been a soldier right enough but that I fell in with a fireman, and he persuaded me to go in for that business, which is just as exciting as a soldier"s, and a great deal more dangerous, most times. And a fireman I was for six or eight years, but I never cared to walk out with another girl when I thought of Jenny. I didn"t tell my folks where I"d gone, and for years I heard nothing from them.
And one night there was a fire in a street off the Borough--a high house it was,--and I went up the ladder to a window where there was a woman screaming, and directly I see her face I see it was Jenny.
I fetched her down the ladder right enough, and she clung round my neck (she didn"t know me from Adam), and said: "Oh, go back and fetch my husband." And I knew it was Wheeler I"d got to go and find.
Then I went back and I looked for Wheeler.
There he was, lying on the bed, drunk.
Then the devil says to me, "What call have you to go and find him, the drunken swine? Leave him be, and you can marry Jenny, and let bygones be bygones"; and I stood there half a minute, quite still, with the smoke getting thick round me. Then, the next thing I knew, there was a cracking under my feet and the boards giving way, and I sprang across to Wheeler all in a minute, as anxious to save him as if he"d been my own twin brother. There was no waking him, it was lift him or leave him, and somehow or other I got him out; but that minute I"d given to listening to Satan had very nearly chucked us both to our death, and we only just come off by the skin of our teeth. The crowd cheered like mad when I dragged him out.
I was burned awfully bad, and such good looks as I"d had burnt off me, and I didn"t know nothing plainly for many a long day.
And when I come to myself I was in a hospital, and there was a sweet-faced charity sister sitting looking at me, and, by the Lord, if it wasn"t Amelia! And she fell on her knees beside me, and she says, "Tom, I must tell you.
Ever since I found religion I"ve known what a wicked girl I was. O Tom, to see you lying there, so ill! O Tom, forgive me, or I shall go mad, I know I shall!"
And, with that, she told me straight out, holding nothing back, that what she"d said to me that night eight years ago was a lie, no better; and that who I"d seen in the church porch with young Wheeler was not Jenny at all, but Amelia herself, dressed in Jenny"s things.
"Oh, forgive me, Tom!" says Amelia, the tears runnin" over her nun"s dress. "Forgive me, Tom, for I can never forgive myself! I knew Jenny didn"t rightly care about you, Tom, and I loved you so dear.
And Wheeler wanted Jenny, and so I was tempted to play off that trick on you; I thought you would come round to me after."
I was weak still with my illness, but I put my hand on hers, and I says, "I do forgive you, Amelia, for, after all, you done it for love of me. And are you a nun, my dear?" says I.
"No," says she, "I"m only on liking as it were; if I don"t like them or they don"t like me, I can leave any minute."
"Then leave, for G.o.d"s sake," says I, "if you"ve got a bit of love for me left. Let bygones be bygones, and marry me as soon as I come out of this, for it"s worth something to be loved as you"ve loved me, Amelia, and I was always fond of you."
"What?" says she. "Me marry you, and be happy after all the harm I"ve done? You run away from your articles and turned fireman, and Jenny married to a drunken brute--no, Tom, no! I don"t deserve to be happy; but, if you forgive me, I shan"t be as miserable as I was."
"Well," says I, "if ever you think better of it let me know."
And the curious thing is that, within two years, she did think better of it--for why? That fire had sobered Wheeler more than twenty thousand temperance tracts, and all the Sons of the Phoenix and Bands of Hope rolled into one. He never touched a drop of drink since that day, and Jenny"s as happy as her kind ever is. I hear she didn"t fret over me more than a month, though perhaps that"s only what I deserved, writing to her as I did. And then Amelia she said--"No such harm done then after all." So she married me.
Now, you see, if I"d listened to Satan and hadn"t pulled Wheeler out, I shouldn"t have got burned, and I shouldn"t have got into the hospital, and I shouldn"t have found Amelia again, and then where should I have been? Whereas now, we"re farming the same bit of land that my father farmed before us. And if this was a made-up story, Amelia would have had to drowned herself or something, and I should have gone a-weeping and a-wailing for Jenny all my born days; but as it"s true and really happened, Amelia and me have been punished enough, I think; for eight years of unhappiness is only a few words of print in a story-book, but when you"ve got to live them, every day of them, eight years is eight years, as Amelia and I shall remember till our dying day; and eight years unhappiness is enough punishment for most of the wrong things a man can do, or a woman either for that matter.
COALS OF FIRE
ALL my life I"ve lived on a barge. My father, he worked a barge from London to Tonbridge, and "twas on a barge I first see the light when my mother"s time come. I used to wish sometimes as I could "ave lived in a cottage with a few bits of flowers in the front, but I think if I"d been put to it I should have chose the barge rather than the finest cottage ever I see. When I come to be grown up and took a husband of my own it was a bargeman I took, of course. He was a good sort always, was my Tom, though not particular about Sundays and churchgoings and such like, as my father always was. It used to be a sorrow to me in my young married days to think as Tom was so far from the Lord, and I used to pray that "is eyes might be opened and that "e might be led to know the truth like me, which was vanity on my part, for I"ve come to see since that like as not "e was nearer the Lord nor ever I was.
We worked the William and Mary, did Tom and me, and I used to think no one could be "appier than we was them first two years. Tom was as kind as kind, and never said a hard word to me except when he was in liquor; and as to liftin" his "and to me, no, never in his life. But after two years we got a little baby of our own, and then I knew as I hadn"t known what "appiness was before. She was such a pretty little thing, with yellow hair, soft and fluffy all over her head, the colour of a new-hatched duck, and blue eyes and dear little hands that I used to kiss a thousand times a day.
My mother had married beneath her, they said, for she"d been to school and been in service in a good family, and she taught me to read and write and cipher in the old days, when I was a little kid along of "er in the barge. So we named our little kid Mary to be like our boat, and as soon as she was big enough, I taught "er all my mother had taught me, and when she was about eight year old my Tom"s great-uncle James, who was a tinsmith by trade, left us a bit of money--over L 200 it were.
"Not a penny of it shall I spend," says my Tom when he heard of it; "we"ll send our Mary to school with that, we will; and happen she"ll be a lady"s-maid and get on in the world."
So we put her to boarding-school in Maidstone, and it was like tearing the heart out of my body. And she"d been away from us a fortnight, and the barge was like h.e.l.l without her, Tom said, and I felt it too though I couldn"t say it, being a Christian woman; and one night we"d got the barge fast till morning in Stoneham Lock, and we were a-settin" talking about her.
"Don"t you fret, old woman," says Tom, with the tears standin" in his eyes, "she"s better off where she is, and she"ll thank us for it some day. She"s "appier where she is," says "e, "nor she would be in this dirty old barge along of us."
And just as he said it, I says, ""Ark! what"s that?" And we both listened, and if it wasn"t that precious child standing on the bank callin" "Daddy," and she"d run all the way from Maidstone in "er little nightgown, and a waterproof over it.
P"raps if we"d been sensible parents, we should "ave smacked "er and put "er back next day; but as it was we hugged "er, and we hugged each other till we was all out o" breath, and then she set up on "er daddy"s knee, and "ad a bit o" cold pork and a gla.s.s of ale for "er supper along of us, and there was no more talk of sendin" "er back to school. But we put by the bit of money to set "er up if she should marry or want to go into business some day.
And she lived with us on the barge, and though I ses it there wasn"t a sweeter girl nor a better girl atwixt London and Tonbridge.