"You may save your trouble," I said, "for she"ll never do it. She"s left her china to me in her will," I said.
Not that I was quite sure of it, but still I was sure enough to say so. The old gentleman put down his brown-paper parcel on the porch seat as careful as if it had been a sick child, and said--
"But your aunt won"t leave you anything if she knows you have broken the bowl, will she?"
"No," I said, "she won"t, that"s true, and you can tell her if you like." For I knew very well he wouldn"t.
"Well," says he, speaking very slowly, "if I lent you my bowl, you could pretend it"s hers and she"ll never know the difference, for they are as like as two peas. I can tell the difference, of course, but then I"m a collector. If I lend you the bowl, will you promise and vow in writing, and sign it with your name, to sell all that china to me directly it comes into your possession? Good gracious, girl, it will be hundreds of pounds in your pocket."
That was a sad moment for me. I might have taken the bowl and promised and vowed, and then when the china came to me I might have told him I hadn"t the power to sell it; but that wouldn"t have looked well if any one had come to know of it. So I just said straight out--
"The only condition of my having my aunt"s money is, that I never part with the china."
He was silent a minute, looking out of the porch at the green trees waving about in the sunshine over the gravestones, and then he says--
"Look here, you seem an honourable girl. I am a collector. I buy china and keep it in cases and look at it, and it"s more to me than meat, or drink, or wife, or child, or fire--do you understand? And I can no more bear to think of that china being lost to the world in a cottage instead of being in my collection than you can bear to think of your aunt"s finding out about the bowl, and leaving the money to your cousin Sarah."
Of course, I knew by that that he had been gossiping in the village.
"Well?" I said, for I saw that he had something more on his mind.
"I"m an old man," he went on, "but that need not stand in the way.
Rather the contrary, for I shall be less trouble to you than a young husband. Will you marry me out of hand? And then when your aunt dies the china will be mine, and you will be well provided for."
No one but a madman would have made such an offer, but that wasn"t a reason for me to refuse it. I pretended to think a bit, but my mind was made up.
"And the bowl?" I said.
"Of course I"ll lend you my bowl, and you shall give me the pieces of the old one. Lord Worsley"s specimen has twenty-five rivets in it."
"Well, sir," I said, "it seems to be a way out of it that might suit both of us. So, if you"ll speak to mother, and if your circ.u.mstances is as you represent, I"ll accept your offer, and I"ll be your good lady."
And then I went back to aunt and told her Wilkinses was out of sago, but they would have some in on Wednesday.
It was all right about the bowl. She never noticed the difference. I was married to the old gentleman, whose name was Fytche, the next week by special licence at St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, Queen Victoria Street, which is very near that beautiful gla.s.s and china shop where I had tried to match the bowl; and my aunt died three months later and left me everything. Sarah married in quite a poor way. That quinsy of hers cost her dear.
Mr. Fytche was very well off, and I should have liked living at his house well enough if it hadn"t been for the china. The house was cram full of it, and he could think of nothing else. No more going out to dinner; no amus.e.m.e.nts; nothing as a girl like me had a right to look for. So one day I told him straight out I thought he had better give up collecting and sell aunt"s things, and we would buy a nice little place in the country with the money.
"But, my dear," he said, "you can"t sell your aunt"s china. She left it stated expressly in her will."
And he rubbed his hands and chuckled, for he thought he had got me there.
"No, but you can," I said, "the china is yours now. I know enough about law to know that; and you can sell it, and you shall."
And so he did, whether it was law or not, for you can make a man do anything if you only give your mind to it and take your time and keep all on. It was called the great Fytche sale, and I made him pay the money he got for it into the bank; and when he died I bought a snug little farm with it, and married a young man that I had had in my eye long before I had heard of Mr. Fytche.
And we are very comfortably off, and not a bit of china in the house that"s more than twenty years old, so that whatever"s broke can be easy replaced.
As for his collection, which would have brought me in thousands of pounds, they say, I have to own he had the better of me there, for he left it by will to the South Kensington Museum.
BARRING THE WAY
I DON"T know how she could have done it. I couldn"t have done it myself. At least, I don"t think so. But being lame and small, and not noticeable anyhow, I had never any temptation, so I can"t judge those that have.
Ellen was tall and a slight figure, and as pretty as a picture in her Sunday clothes, and prettier than any picture on a working day, with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulder and the colour in her face like a rose, and her brown, hair all twisted up rough anyhow; and, of course, she was much sought after and flattered. But I couldn"t have done it myself, I think, even if I had been sought after twice as much and twice as handsome. No, I couldn"t, not after the doctor had said that father"s heart was weak, and any sudden shock might bring an end to him.
But, oh! poor dear, she was my sister--my own only sister--and it"s not the time now to be hard on her, and she where she is.
She was walking regular with a steady young man, who worked through the week at Hastings, and come home here on a Sunday, and she would have married him and been as happy as a queen, I know; and all her looking in the gla.s.s, and dressing herself pretty, would have come to being proud of her babies and spending what bits she could get together in making them look smart; but it was not to be.
Young Barber, the grocer"s son, who had a situation in London, he come down for his summer holiday, and then it was "No, thank you kindly," to poor Arthur Simmons, that had loved her faithful and true them two years, and she was all for walking with young Mr.
Barber, besides running into the shop twenty times a day when no occasion was, just for a word across the counter.
And father wasn"t the best pleased, but he was always a silent man, very pious, and not saying much as he sat at his bench, for he had been brought up to the shoemaking and was very respected among Pevensey folks. He would hum a hymn or two at his work sometimes, but he was never a man of words. When young Barber went back to London, Ellen, she began to lose her pretty looks. I had never thought much of young Barber. There was something common about him--not like the labouring men, but a kind of town commonness, which is twenty times worse to my thinking; and if I didn"t like him before, you may guess I didn"t waste much love on him when I see poor Ellen"s looks.
Now, if I am to tell you this story at all, I must tell it very steady and quiet, and not run on about what I thought or what I felt, or I shan"t never have the heart to go through it. The long and short of it was that a month hadn"t pa.s.sed over our heads after young Barber leaving, when one morning our Ellen wasn"t there. And she left a note, nailed to father"s bench, to say she had gone off with her true love, and father wasn"t to mind, for she was going to be married.
Father, he didn"t say a word, but he turned a dreadful white, and blue his lips were, and for one dreadful moment I thought that I had lost him too. But he come round presently. I ran across to the Three Swans to get a drop of brandy for him; and I looked at her letter again, and I looked at him, and we both see that neither of us believed that she was going to be married. There was something about the very way of the words as she had written them which showed they weren"t true.
Father, he said nothing, only when next Sunday had come, and I had laid out his Sunday things and his hat, all brushed as usual, he says--
"Put "em away, my girl. I don"t believe in Sunday. How can I believe in all that, and my Ellen gone to shame?"
And, after that, Sundays was the same to him as weekdays, and the folks looked shy at us, and I think they thought that, what with Ellen"s running away and father"s working on Sundays, we was on the high-road to the pit of destruction.
And so the time went on, and it was Christmas. The bells was ringing for Christmas Eve, and I says to father: "O father! come to church.
Happen it"s all true, and Ellen"s an honest woman, after all."
And he lifted his head and looked at me, and at that moment there come a soft little knock at the door. I knew who it was afore I had time to stir a foot to go across the kitchen and open the door to her. She blinked her eyes at the light as I opened the door to her.
Oh, pale and thin her face was that used to be so rosy-red, and--
"May I come in?" she said, as if it wasn"t her own home. And father, he looked at her like a man that sees nothing, and I was frightened what he might do, like the fool I was, that ought to have known better.
"I"m very tired," says Ellen, leaning against the door-post; "I have come from a very long way."
And the next minute father makes two long steps to the door, and his arms is round her, and she a-hanging on his neck, and they two holding each other as if they would never let go. And so she come home, and I shut the door.
And in all that time father and me, we couldn"t make too much of her, me being that thankful to the Lord that He had let our dear come back to us; and never a word did she say to me of him that had been her ruin. But one night when I asked her, silly-like, and hardly thinking what I was doing, some question about him, father down with his fist on the table, and says he--
"When you name that name, my girl, you light h.e.l.l in me, and if ever I see his d.a.m.ned face again, G.o.d help him and me too."
And so I held my stupid tongue, and sat sewing with Ellen long days, and it was a happy, sad time, if a time can be sad and happy both.
And it was about primrose-time that her time come, and we had kept it quiet, and n.o.body knew but us and Mrs. Jarvis, that lived in the cottage next to ours, and was Ellen"s G.o.dmother, and loved her like her own daughter; and when the baby come, Ellen says, "Is it a boy or a girl?" And we told her it was a boy.