The church stood on the right between Timberdale Court and the village.
A regular mob of children seemed to be pressing round the gate of the churchyard. I went to look, leaving Mrs. Coney standing.
Charles Ashton was coming out of the church in his surplice, and the clerk, old Sam Mullet, behind him, carrying a little coffin. The grave was in the corner of the burial-ground, and Mr. Ashton went straight to it, and continued the service begun in the church. If it had been a lord"s child, he could not have done it all in better order.
But there were no mourners, unless old Mullet could be called one. He put the coffin on the gra.s.s, and was in a frightful temper. I took off my hat and waited: it would have looked so to run away when there was no one else to stand there: and Mrs. Coney"s face, as cross as old Mullet"s, might be seen peering through the hedge.
"It"s come to a pretty pa.s.s, when tramps" brats have to be put in the ground like honest folks"s," grunted Sam, when Mr. Ashton had walked away, and he began to fling in the spadefuls of earth. "What must he needs go and baptize that there young atom for?--he ain"t our parson; he don"t belong to we in this parish. I dun-no what the world be a-coming to."
Mr. Ashton was talking to Mrs. Coney when I got up. I told him what a way Sam Mullet was in.
"Yes," said he. "I believe what I did has not given satisfaction in all quarters; so I waited to take the service myself, and save other people trouble."
"In what name is the dead child registered, Charles?" asked Mrs. Coney.
"Lucy Bird."
"Lucy Bird! _Bird?_"
"It was the name the mother gave me in one of her lucid intervals,"
answered the clergyman, shortly.
He hastened away, saying he must catch a train, for that his own parish was wanting him; but I fancied he did not care to be further questioned.
Mrs. Coney stood still to stare after him, and would have liked to ask him how much and how little he knew.
Lucy Bird! It did sound strange to hear the name--as if it were the real Lucy Bird we knew so well. I said so to Mrs. Coney.
"The impudence of the woman must pa.s.s all belief," she muttered to herself. "Let us get on, Johnny? I would rather run a mile any other way than go to see her."
Leaving me on the wooden bench outside Jael Batty"s door, she went in. It was remarkably lively: the farrier"s shop opposite to look at, five hay-ricks, and a heap of children who strolled after us from the churchyard, and stayed to stare at me. Mrs. Coney came out again soon.
"It"s of no use my remaining, Johnny. She can"t understand a word said to her, only lies there rambling, and asking people to bring her baby.
If she had any sense left in her, she might just go down on her knees in thankfulness that it"s gone. Jael Batty says she has done nothing else but wail for it all the blessed morning."
"Well, it is only natural she should."
"Natural! Natural to mourn for that baby! Don"t you say stupid things, Johnny. It"s a great mercy that it has been taken; and you must know that as well as any one."
"I don"t say it isn"t; babies must make no end of noise and work; but you see mothers care for them."
"Don"t be a simpleton, Johnny. If you take to upholding tramps and infants dying in sheds, goodness knows what you"ll come to in time."
At the end of a fortnight, Ashton of Timberdale and his wife came home.
It was a fine afternoon in the middle of January, but getting dusk, and a lot of us had gone over to the Court to see them arrive. Jane looked as happy as a queen.
"Johnny," she whispered, whilst we were standing to take some tea that Mother Broom (with a white c.o.c.kade in her cap) brought in upon a silver tray, "how about that poor woman? She is not dead, I hope?"
I told Jane that she was better. The fever had gone down, but she was so weak and reduced that the doctor had not allowed her to be questioned.
We knew no more of who she was than we had known before. Mrs. Coney overheard what I was saying, and took Jane aside.
There seemed to be a bit of a battle: Mrs. Coney remonstrating with a severe face, Jane holding out and flushing a little. She was telling Jane not to go to Jael Batty"s, and representing why she ought not to go. Jane said she must go--her heart was set upon it: and began to re-tie her bonnet-strings.
"Mother dear, don"t be angry with me in this the first hour of entering on my new home--it would seem like a bad omen for me. You don"t know how strongly I have grown to think that my duty lies in seeing this poor woman, in comforting her if I can. It cannot hurt me."
"What do you suppose Robert would say? It is to him you owe obedience now, Jane, not to me."
"To him first, and to you next, my mother; and I trust I shall ever yield it to you both. But Robert is quite willing that I should go: he knows all I think about it."
"Jane, I wouldn"t have said a word against it; indeed I had made up my mind that it was a good wish on your part; but now that we have discovered she is in some way connected with--with the Birds--why, I don"t think Robert will like you to meddle with it. I"m sure I shrink from telling him."
Jane Coney--Ashton I mean: one can"t get out of old names all at once--looked down in distress, thinking of the pain it would cause her husband for his sister"s sake. Then she took her mother"s hand.
"Tell Robert what you have told me, mamma. He will still let me go, I think; for he knows how much I wish it."
They had their conference away from us; Mrs. Coney, Robert Ashton, and Jane. Of course he was frightfully put out; but Jane was right--he said she should go all the same. Mrs. Coney shut her lips tight, and made no further comment.
"I promised her, you see, Mrs. Coney," he urged. "She has an idea in her head that--I"m sure I scarcely know what it is, except that her going is connected with Grat.i.tude and Duty, and--and Heaven"s blessing. Why, do you know we might have stayed away another week, but for this? I could have spared it; but she would come home."
"I never knew Jane take a thing up like this before," said Mrs. Coney.
"Any way, I suppose it is I who shall have to deal with it--for the sake of keeping it from Lucy," was Robert"s answer. "I wish with all my heart Bird had been at the bottom of the sea before his ill-omened steps brought him to Timberdale! There"s not, as I believe, another such scamp in the world."
Jane waited for nothing else. Shielded by the dusk of the evening, she went hastening to Jael Batty"s and back again.
"I"ll go down for her presently," said Robert. But she was back again before he started.
"I came back at once to set the misapprehension right," said Jane, her eyes bright with eagerness, her cheeks glowing. "Mother dear--Robert--Johnny--listen, all of you: that poor sick woman is George Bird"s sister."
"Jane!"
"Indeed she is. Captain Bird used to talk to Lucy of his little sister Clara--I have heard you say so, Robert--in the old days when he first came here. It is she who is lying at Jael Batty"s--Clara Bird."
The company sat down like so many lambs, Mrs. Coney"s mouth and eyes alike opening. It sounded wonderful.
"But--Jane, child--there was still the baby!"
"Well--yes--I"m afraid so," replied Jane, in an uncomfortable hurry. "I did not like to ask her about that, she cries so. But she is Clara Bird; Captain Bird"s sister, and Lucy"s too."
"Well, I never!" cried Mrs. Coney, rubbing her face. "Poor misguided young thing--left to the guardianship of such a man as that, he let her go her own way, no doubt. This accounts for what Broom heard her say in the fever--"George, you should have taken care of me.""
"Is she being taken care of now in her sickness, down at Jael Batty"s?"
spoke up Robert.
"Yes. For Jael, though three-parts deaf, is a kind and excellent nurse."
Robert Ashton wrote that night to Worcester; a sharp letter; bidding Captain Bird come over and see to his sister. The poor thing took to Jane wonderfully, and told her more than she"d have told any one else.
"I am twenty," she said, "and George is six-and-thirty; there is all that difference between us. Our father and mother were dead, and I lived with my aunt in Gloucestershire: where George lived, I did not know. He had been adopted by a wealthy relative in London, and went into the army. My mother had been a lady, but married beneath her, and it was her family who took to George and brought him up a gentleman. Mine was a hard, dull life. My aunt--she was my father"s sister--counted ever-so-many children, and I had to nurse and see to them. Her husband was a master plumber and glazier. One day--it is fifteen months ago now--I shall never forget it--my brother George arrived. I did not know him: I had not seen him since I was thirteen, and then he was a fine handsome gentleman in an officer"s regimentals. He was rather shabby now, and he had come to see if he could borrow money, but my aunt"s husband would not lend him any; he told him he had much ado to keep his own family. I cried a good deal, and George said he would take me to London to his wife. I think he did it to spite them, because of their not lending the money, as much as to please me--he saw that I should be a loss there. We went up--and oh how nice I thought his wife! She was a kind, gentle lady, formerly Miss Lucy Ashton; but nearly always ailing, and afraid of George. George had gay acquaintances, men and women, and he let me go to theatres and b.a.l.l.s with them. Lucy said it was wrong, that they were not nice friends for me; but I grew to like the gaiety, and she could do nothing. One night, upon going home from church, I found both George and Lucy gone from the lodgings. I had been spending the Sunday with some people they knew, the quietest of all their friends. There lay a note on the table from Lucy, saying they were obliged to leave London unexpectedly, and begging me to go at once--on the morrow--back to Gloucestershire, for which she enclosed a sovereign.