In Homespun

GUILTY

IT was my first place and my last, and I don't think we should have got on in business as we have if it hadn't been for me being for six or seven years with one of the first families in the county. Though only a housemaid, you can't help learning something of their ways. At any rate, you learn what gentlefolks like, and what they can't abide. But the worst of being housemaid where there's a lot of servants kept is, that one or other or all of the men-servants is sure to be wanting to keep company with you. They have nothing else to do in their spare time, and I suppose it's handy having your sweetheart living in the house. It doesn't give you so much trouble with going out in the evening, if not fine.

The coachman was promised to the cook, which, I believe, often takes place. Tim, the head groom, was a very nice, genteel fellow, and I daresay I might have taken up with him, if I hadn't met with my James, though never with John, who was the plague of my life. To begin with, he had a black whisker, that I couldn't bear to look at, let alone putting one's face against it, as I should have had to have done when married, no doubt. And he had a roving black eye, very yellowy in the white of it, and hair that looked all black and bear's-greasy, though he always said he never put anything on it except a little bay rum in moderation.

They tell me I was a pretty girl enough in those days, though looks is less important than you might think to a housemaid, if only she dresses neat and has a small waist. And I suppose I must think that John really did love me in his scowling, black whiskery way. He was a good footman, I will say that, and had been with the master three years, and the best of characters; but whatever he might have thought, I never would have had anything to do with him, even if James and me had had seas between us broad a-rolling for ever and ever Amen. He asked me once and he asked me twice, and it was 'no' and 'no' again. And I had even gone so far as to think that perhaps I should have to give up a good place to get out of his way, when master's uncle, old Mr. Oliver, and his good lady, came to stay at the Court, and with them came James, who was own man to Mr. Oliver.

Mr. Oliver was the funniest-looking old gent I ever see, if I may say so respectfully. He was as bald as an egg, with a sort of frill of brown hair going from ear to ear behind; and as if that wasn't enough, he was shaved as clean as a whistle, as though he had made up his mind that people shouldn't say that it had all gone to beard and whiskers, anyway. He wrote books, a great many of them, and you may often see his name in the papers, and he was for ever poking about into what didn't concern him, and my Lady, she said to me when she found me a little put out at him asking about how things went on in the servants' hall, she said to me—

'You mustn't mind him, Mary,' she said; 'you know he likes to find out all that he can about everything, so as to put it in his books.'

And he certainly talked to every one he came across—even the stable-boys—in a way that you could hardly think becoming from a gentleman to servants, if he wasn't an author, and so to have allowances made for him, poor man! He talked to the housemaids, and he talked to the groom, and he talked to the footman that waited on him at lunch when he had it late, as he did sometimes, owing to him having been kept past the proper time by his story-writing, for he wrote a good part of the day most days, and often went up to London while he was staying with us—to sell his goods, I suppose. He wore curious clothes, not like most gentlemen, but all wool things, even to his collars and his boots, which were soft and soppy like felt; and he took snuff to that degree I wouldn't have believed any human nose could have borne it, and he must have been a great trial to Mrs. Oliver until she got used to him and his pottering about all over the house in his soft-soled shoes; and the mess he made of his pocket-handkerchieves and his linen!

Mrs. Oliver was a round little fat bunch of a woman, if I may say so in speaking of master's own aunt by marriage, and him a baronet. She had the most lovely jewellery, and was very fond of wearing it of an evening, more than most people do when they are staying with relations and there's no company. She never spoke much except to say, 'Yes, Dick dear,' and 'No, Dick dear,' when they spoke to each other; but they were as fond of each other as pigeons on a roof, and always very pleasant-spoken and nice to wait on.

As for James, he was the jolliest man I ever met, and cook said the same. He was like Sam Weller in the book, or would have been if he had lived in those far-off times; but footmen are more genteel now than they were then.

Anyway, he hadn't been at the Court twenty-four hours before he was first favourite with every one, and cook made him a Welsh rabbit with her own hands, 'cause he hadn't been able to get his dinner comfortable with the rest of us—a thing she wouldn't have done for Sir William himself at that time of night. As for me, the first time he looked at me with his jolly blue eyes—it was when he met me carrying a tray the first morning after he came—my heart gave a jump inside my print gown, and I said to it as I went downstairs—

'You've met your master, I'm thinking'; and if I did go to church with him the very first Sunday, which was more than ever I had done with any of the others, it was after he had asked me plain and straight to go to church with him some day for good and all.

Now, the next morning, quite early, I was dusting the library, when John come in with his black face like a thundercloud.

'Look here, Mary,' he says; 'what do you mean by going to church with that stuck-up London trumpery?'

'Mind your own business,' says I, sharp as you please.

'I am,' he says. 'You are my business—the only business I care a damn about, or am ever likely to. You don't know how I love you, Mary,' he says. And I was sorry for him as he spoke. 'I would lie down in the dirt for you to walk on if it would do you any good, so long as you didn't walk over me to get to some other chap.'

'I am very sorry for you, John,' says I, 'but I've told you, not once or twice, but fifty times, that it can never be. And there are plenty of other girls that would be only too glad to walk out with a young man like you without your troubling yourself about me.'

He was walking up and down the room like a cat in a cage. Presently he began to laugh in a nasty, sly, disagreeable way.

'Oh! you think he'll marry you, do you?' says he. 'But he's just amusing himself with you till he gets back to London to his own girl. You let him see you was only amusing yourself with him, and you come out with me when you get your evening.'

And he took the dusting-brush out of my hand, and caught hold of my wrists.

'It's all a lie!' I cried; 'and I wonder you can look me in the face and tell it. Him and me are going to be married as soon as he has saved enough for a little public, and I never want to speak to you again; and if you don't let go of my hands, I'll scream till I fetch the house down, master and all, and then where will you be?'

He scowled at that, but he let my hands go directly.

'Have it your own way,' he said. 'But I tell you, you won't marry him, and you'll find he won't want to marry you, and you'll marry me, my girl. And when you have married me, you shall cry your eyes out for every word you have said now.'

'Oh, shall I, Mr. Liar?' says I, for my blood was up; 'before that happens, you'll have to change him into a liar and me into a fool and yourself into an honest man, and you'll find that the hardest of all.' And with that I threw the dusting-brush at him—which was a piece of wicked temper I oughtn't to have given way to—and ran out of the door, and I heard him cursing to himself something fearful as I went down the passage.

'Good thing the gentlefolks are abed still,' I said to myself; and I didn't tell a soul about it, even cook, the truth being I was ashamed to.

Well, everything went on pretty much the same as usual for two or three weeks, and I thought John was getting the better of his silliness, because he made a show of being friendly to James and was respectful to me, even when we was alone. Then came that dreadful day that I shall never forget if I live to be a hundred years old. Dinner was half an hour later than usual on account of Mr. Oliver having gone up to town on his business; but he didn't get home when expected, and they sat down without him after all. I was about my work, turning down beds and so forth, and I had done Mrs. Oliver's about ten minutes, and was in my lady's room, when Mrs. Oliver's own maid came running in with a face like paper.

'Oh, what ever shall I do?' she cried, wringing her hands, as they say in books, and I always thought it nonsense, but she certainly did, though I never saw any one do it before or since.

'What is it?' I asked her.

'It's my mistress's diamond necklace,' she said. 'She was going to wear it to-night. And then she said, No, she wouldn't; she'd have the emeralds, and I left it on the dressing-table instead of locking it up, and now it's gone!'

I went into Mrs. Oliver's room with her, and there was the jewel-box with the pretty shining things turned out on the dressing-table, for Mrs. Oliver had a heap of jewellery that had come to her from her own people, and she as fond of wearing it as if she was slim and twenty, instead of being fifty, and as round as an orange. We looked on the dressing-table and we looked on the floor, and we looked in the curtains to see if it had got in any of them. But look high, look low, no diamond necklace could we find. So at last Scott—that was Mrs. Oliver's maid—said there was nothing for it but to go and tell her mistress. The ladies were in the drawing-room by this time. So she went down all of a tremble, and in the hall there was Mrs. Oliver looking anxious out of the front door, which was open, it being summer and the house standing in its own park.

'Mr. Oliver is very late, Scott,' she says. 'I am getting anxious about him.'

And as she spoke, and before Scott could answer, there was his step on the gravel, and he came in at the front door with his little black bag in his hand that I suppose he carried his stories in to see if people would like to buy them.

'Hullo! Scott,' he says, 'have you seen a ghost?' And, indeed, she looked more dead than alive. She gulped in her throat, but she could not speak.

'Here, young woman,' says Mr. Oliver to me, 'you haven't lost your head altogether. What's it all about?'

So I told him as well as I could, and by this time master had come out and my Lady, and you never saw any one so upset as they were. All the house was turned out of window, hunting for the necklace; though, of course, not having legs, it couldn't have walked by itself out of Mrs. Oliver's room. All the servants was called up, even to the kitchen-maid; and those who were not angry, were frightened, and, what with fright and anger, there wasn't one of us, I do believe, as didn't look as they had got the necklace on under their clothes that very minute. John was very angry indeed. 'Do they think we'd take their dirty necklace?' he said, as we were going up. 'It's enough to ruin all of us, this kind of thing happening, and leaving the doors open so that any one could get in and walk clear off with it without a stain on their character, and us left with none to speak of.'

So when master had asked us all a lot of questions, and we were told we could go, John stepped out and said—

'I am sure I am only expressing the feelings of my fellow-servants when I say that we should wish our boxes searched and our rooms, so that there shall be no chance for any one to say afterwards that it lays at any of our doors.'

And Mrs. Oliver began to cry, and she said 'No, no, she wouldn't put that insult on any one.' But Mr. Oliver, who hadn't been saying much, though so talkative generally, but kept taking snuff at a rate that was dreadful to see, he said—

'The young man is quite right, my dear; and if you don't mind,' he says to master, 'I think it had better be done.'

And so it was done, and I don't know how to write about it now, though it was never true. They came to my room and they looked into all my drawers and boxes except my little hat-tin, and when they wanted the key of that, I said, silly-like, not having any idea that they could think that I could do such a thing, 'I'd rather you didn't look into that. It's only some things I don't want any one to see.'

And the reason was that I'd got some bits of things in it that I'd got the week before in the town towards getting my things for the wedding ready, and I felt somehow I didn't want any one to see them till James did. And they all looked very queer at me when I said that, and my Lady said—

'Mary, give me the key at once.'

So I did, and oh! I shall never forget it. They took out the flannel, and the longcloth and things, and the roll of embroidery that I was going to trim them with, and rolled inside that, if you'll believe me, there was the necklace like a shining snake coiled up. I never said a word, being struck silly. I didn't cry or even say anything as people do in books when these things happen to them; but Mrs. Oliver burst out crying, God bless her for it! and my Lady said, 'O Mary, I'd never have believed it of you any more than I would of myself!'

And Mr. Oliver he said to master, 'Have all the servants into the library, William. Perhaps some one else is in it too.'

But nobody said a word to say that it wasn't me, and indeed how could they?

I should think it's like being had up for murder, standing there in the library with all the servants holding off from me as if I had got something catching, and master and my Lady and Mr. and Mrs. Oliver in leather armchairs, all of a row, looking like a bench of magistrates. I could not think, though I tried hard—I could only feel as if I was drowning and fighting for breath.

'Now, Mary,' says Master, 'what have you got to say?'

'I never touched it, sir,' I said; 'I never put it there; I don't know who did; and may God forgive them, for I never could.'

Then my Lady said, 'Mary, I can hardly believe it of you even now, but why wouldn't you let us have the key of your box?'

Then I turned hot and cold all of a minute, and I looked round, and there wasn't a face that looked kind at me except Mr. Oliver's, and he nodded at me, taking snuff all over his fat white waistcoat.

'Speak up, girl,' he said, 'speak up.'

So then I said, 'I'm a-going to be married, my Lady, and it was bits of things I'd got towards my wedding clothes.'

I looked at James to see if he believed it, and his face was like lead, and his eyes wild that used to be so jolly, and to see him look like that made my heart stand still, and I cried out—

'O my God, strike me down dead, for live I can't after this!'

And at that, James spoke up, and he said, speaking very quick and steady, 'I wish to confess that I took it, and I put it in her box, thinking to take it away again after. We were to have been married, and I wanted the money to start in a little pub.'

And everybody stood still, and you could have heard a pin drop, and Mr. Oliver went on nodding his head and taking snuff till I could have killed him for it; and I looked at James, and I could have fallen at his feet and worshipped him, for I saw in a minute why he said it. He believed it was me, and he wanted to save me. So then I said to master—

'The thing was found in my box, sir, and I'll take the consequences if I have to be hanged for it. But don't you believe a word James says. He never touched it. It wasn't him.'

'How do you know it wasn't him,' says master very sharp. 'If you didn't take it, how do you know who did?'

'How do I know?' I cried, forgetting for a moment who I was speaking to. 'Why, if you'd half a grain of sense among the lot of you, you'd know why I know it's not him. If you felt to a young man like I feel to James, you'd know in your heart that he could not have done such a thing, not if there was fifty diamond necklaces found in fifty pockets on him at the same time.'

They said nothing, but Mr. Oliver chuckled in his collar till I'd have liked to strangle him with my two hands round his fat throat. And I went on—

'I'm as sure he didn't do it as I am that I didn't do it myself, and as he would have been that I didn't if he had really loved me, as he said, instead of believing that I could do such a thing, and trying to save me with a black lie—God bless him for it.'

And James he never looked at me, but he said again, 'Don't mind her—she's off her head with fright about me. You send me off to prison as soon as you like, sir.'

And still none of the others spoke, but Mr. Oliver leaned back in his chair, and he clapped his hands softly as though he was at a play. 'Bravo!' he says, 'bravo!'

And the others looked at him as if they thought he had gone out of his mind.

'It's a very pretty drama, very nicely played, but now it's time to put an end to it. Do you want to see the villain?' he says to master, and master never answering him, only staring, he turned quite sharp and sudden and pointed to John as he stood near the door with his black eyes burning like coals. 'You took it,' said Mr. Oliver, 'and you put it in Mary's box. Oh! you needn't start. I know it's true without that.'

John had started, but he pulled himself together in a minute. The man had pluck, I will say that. He spoke quite firm and respectful. 'And why should I have done that, sir, if you please, when all the house knows that I have been courting Mary fair and honest this two year?'

Mr. Oliver tapped his snuff-box and grinned all over his big smooth face. 'When you do your courting fair and honest, young man, you should be careful not to do it in the library with the window open. I was in the verandah, and I heard you threaten that she should never marry James, and that she should marry you; and that you would be revenged on her for her bad taste in preferring him to you.'

John drew a deep breath. 'That's nothing, sir, is it?' he says to master. 'Every one in the house knows I have been sorry for a hasty word, and have been the best friends with both of them for these three weeks.'

Mr. Oliver got up and put his snuff-box on the table, and his hands in his trouser pockets. 'You can send for the police, William,' he said to master, 'because as a matter of fact, I saw the black-whiskered gentleman with the necklace in his hand. I did get home late to-night, but not so late as you thought, and I came in through the open door and was up in my dressing-room when that scoundrel sneaked into my wife's room and took the necklace to ruin an innocent girl with. What a thorough scoundrel you are, though, aren't you?' he said to John.

Then John, he shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, 'It's all up now,' and he said to Mr. Oliver very politely, 'You are always fond of poking your nose into other people's business, sir, and I daresay you'd like to know why I did it. Oh yes. You know everything, you do,' says John, growing very white, and speaking angry and quick, 'with your writing, and your snuff, and your gossiping with the servants, which no gentleman would do, and your nasty, sneaking, Jaeger-felt boots, and your silly old tub of a wife. I knew that smooth-spoken man of yours would believe anything against her, and I knew he would never marry her after a set-out like this, and I knew I should get her when she found I stuck to her through it all, as I should have done, and as I would have done too, if she had taken fifty diamond necklaces.'

'Send for the police,' said master, but nobody moved. For Mrs. Oliver, who had been crying like a waterworks ever since we came down into the library, said quite sudden, 'O Dick dear! let him go. Don't prosecute him. See, he's lost everything, and he's lost her, and he must have been mad with love for her or he wouldn't have done such a thing.'

Now, wasn't that a true lady to speak up like that for him after what he'd said of her? Mr. Oliver looked surprised at her speaking up like that, her that hardly ever said a word except 'Yes, Dick dear,' and 'No, Dick dear,' and then he shrugs his shoulders and he says, 'You are right, my dear, he's punished enough.'

And John turned to go like a dog that has been whipped; but at the door he faced round, and he said to Mrs. Oliver, 'You're a good woman, and I'm sorry I said what I did about you. But for the other I'm not sorry, not if it was my last word.'

And with that he went out of the room, and out of the house through the front door. He had no relations and he had no friends, and I suppose he had nowhere to go with his character gone, and so it happened that was truly his last word as far as any one knows. For he was found next morning on the level-crossing after the down express had passed.

You never saw such a fuss as every one made of me and James afterwards. I might have been a queen and him a king. But when it was all over it stuck in my mind that he oughtn't to have doubted me, and so I wouldn't name the day for over a year, though Mrs. Oliver had bought him a nice little hotel and given it to him herself; but when the year was up, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver came down to stay again, and seeing them brought it all back, and his having tried to save me as he had seemed more than his having doubted me. And so I married him, and I don't think any one ever made a better match. James says he made a better match, and if I don't agree with him, it's only right and proper that he should think so, and I thank God that he does every hour of my life.

SON AND HEIR

SIR JASPER was always the best of masters to me and to all of us; and he had that kind of way with him, masterful and gentle at the same time, like as if he was kind to you for his own pleasure, and ordering you about for your own good, that I believe any of us would have cut our hand off at the wrist if he had told us to.

Lady Breynton had been dead this many a year. She hadn't come to her husband with her hands empty. They say that Sir Jasper had been very wild in his youth, and that my Lady's money had come in very handy to pull the old place together again. She worshipped the ground Sir Jasper walked on, as most women did that he ever said a kind word to. But it never seemed to me that he took to her as much as you might have expected a warm-hearted gentleman like him to do. But he took to her baby wonderful. I was nurse to that baby from the first, and a fine handsome little chap he was, and when my Lady died he was wholly given over to my care. And I loved the child; indeed, I did love him, and should have loved him to the end but for one thing, and that comes in its own place in my story. But even those who loved young Jasper best couldn't help seeing he hadn't his father's winning ways. And when he grew up to man's estate, he was as wild as his father had been before him. But his wild ways were the ways that make young men enemies, not friends, and out of all that came to the house, for the hunting, or the shooting, or what not, I used to think there wasn't one would have held out a hand to my young master if he had been in want of it. And yet I loved him because I had brought him up, and I never had a child of my own. I never wished to be married, but I used to wish that little Jasper had been my own child. I could have had an authority over him then that I hadn't as his nurse, and perhaps it might have all turned out differently.

There were many tales about Sir Jasper, but I didn't think it was my place to listen to them.

Only, when it's your own eyes, it's different, and I couldn't help seeing how like young Robert, the under-gamekeeper, was to the Family. He had their black, curly hair, and merry Irish eyes, and he, if you please, had just Sir Jasper's winning ways.

Why he was taken on as gamekeeper no one could make out, for when he first came up to the Hall to ask the master for a job, they tell me he knew no more of gamekeeping than I do of Latin. Young Robert was a steady chap, and used to read and write of an evening instead of spending a jolly hour or two at the Dove and Branch, as most young fellows do, and as, indeed, my young master did too often. And Sir Jasper, he gave him books without end and good advice, and would have him so often about him he set everybody's tongue wagging to a tune more merry than wise. And young Robert loved the master, of course. Who didn't?

Well, there came a day when the Lord above saw fit to put out the sunshine like as if it had been a bedroom candle; for Sir Jasper, he was brought back from the hunting-field with his back broke.

I always take a pleasure in remembering that I was with him to the last, and did everything that could be done for him with my own hands. He lingered two days, and then he died.

It was the hour before the dawn, when there is always a wind, no matter how still the night, a chilly wind that seems to find out the marrow of your bones, and if you are nursing sick folk, you bank up the fire high and watch them extra careful till the sun gets up.

Sir Jasper opened his eyes and looked at me—oh! so kindly. It brings tears into my eyes when I think of it. 'Nelly,' he says, 'I know I can trust you.'

And I said, 'Yes, sir.' And so he could, whatever it might have been. What happened afterwards wasn't my fault, and couldn't have been guarded against.

'Then go,' he said, 'to my old secretaire and open it.'

And I did. There was rows of pigeon-holes inside, and little drawers with brass knobs.

'You take hold of the third knob from the right, Nelly,' said he. 'Don't pull it; give it a twist round.' I did, and lo and behold! a little drawer jumped out at me from quite another part of the secretaire.

'You see what's in it, Nelly?' says he.

It was a green leather case tied round with a bit of faded ribbon.

'Now, what I want you to do,' he says, 'is to lay that beside me when it's all over. I have always had my doubts about the dead sleeping so quiet as some folks say. But I think I shall sleep if you lay that beside me, for I am very tired, Nelly,' he said, 'very tired.'

Then I went back to his bed, where he lay looking quite calm and comfortable.

'The end has come very suddenly,' says he; 'but it is best this way.'

Then we was both quiet a bit.

'I may be wrong,' he went on presently, his face quite straight, but a laugh in his blue eye. 'I may be wrong, Nelly, but I think you would like to kiss me before I die—I know well enough you'll do it after.'

And when he said that, I was glad I had never kissed another man. And soon after that, it being the coldest hour of all the night, he moved his head on his pillow and said—

'I'm off now, Nelly, but you needn't wake the doctors. It's very dark outside. Hand me out, my girl, hand me out.' So I gave him my hand, and he died holding it. Whether I grieved much or little over my old master is no one's business but my own. I went about the house, and I did my duty—ever since Master Jasper had been grown up I had been housekeeper. I did my duty, I say, and before the coffin lid was screwed down I laid that green leather case under the shroud by my master's side; and just as I had done it I turned round feeling that some one was in the room, and there stood young Master Jasper at the door looking at me.

'All's ready now,' I said to the undertaker's men, and called them in, and young Master Jasper, he followed me along the passage. 'What were you doing?'

'I was putting something in the master's coffin he told me to put there.'

'What was it?' he asked, very sharp and sudden.

'How should I know?' says I. 'It's in a case. It may be some old letter or a lock of hair as belonged to your mother.'

'Come into my room,' he said, and I followed him in. He looked very pale and anxious, and when he'd shut the door he spoke—

'Look here, Nelly, I'm going to trust you. My father was very angry with me about some little follies of mine, and he told me the other night he had left a good slice of the estate away from me. Do you think that packet you put in the coffin had anything to do with it?'

'Good Lord, bless your soul, sir, no,' I said. 'That was no will or lawyer's letters, it was but some little token of remembrance he set store by.'

'Thanks, Nelly, that was all I wanted to know.'

No one ever knows who tells these things, but it had leaked out somehow that that slice of the estate was to belong to young Robert the gamekeeper, and you may be sure the tongues went wagging above a bit. But it seemed to me, if it was so, my master was right to make a proper provision for Robert as well as for Jasper. However, nobody could be sure of anything until after the funeral.

The doctor was staying in the house, and master's younger brother, besides the lawyer and young Master Jasper; so I had many things to see to, and ought to have been tired enough to get to sleep easy the night before he was buried. But somehow I couldn't sleep. I couldn't help thinking of my master as I had known him all these years. Him being always so gentle and so kind, and so light-hearted, it didn't seem likely he could have had young Robert on his conscience all the time; and yet what was I to think? And then my poor Jasper—I say 'poor,' but I never loved and pitied him less than I did that night. He had lost such a father, and he could go troubling about whether he had got the whole estate or not. So I lay awake, and I thought of the coffin lying between its burning tapers in the great bedroom, and I wished they had not screwed him down, for then I could have gone, late as it was, and had another look at my master's face. And as I lay it seemed to me that I heard a door opened, and then a step, and then a key turned. Now, the master never locked his door, so the key of that room turned rusty in the lock, and before I had time to think more than that I was out of bed and in my dressing-gown, creeping along the passage. Sure enough, my master's door was open, as I saw by the streak of light across the corridor. I walked softly on my bare feet, and no one could have heard me go along the thick carpet. When I got to the door, I saw that what I had been trying not to think of was really true. Master Jasper was there taking the screws out of his father's coffin to see what was in that green leather case.

I stood there and looked. I could not have moved, not for the Queen's crown, if it had been offered me then and there. One after another he took the screws out and laid them on the little bedside table, where the master used to keep his pistols of a night. When all the screws was out he lifted the lid in both his arms and set it on the bed, where it lay looking like another coffin. Then he began to search for what I had put in beside his father.

Now, I may be a heartless woman, and I suppose I am, or how account for it? But when I saw my young master go to his father's coffin like that, and begin to serve his own interest and his own curiosity, every spark of love I had ever had for the boy died out, and I cared no more for him than if he had been the first comer.

If he had kissed his father, or so much as looked kindly at the dead face in the coffin, it would have been different. But he hadn't a look or a thought to spare for him as gave him life, and had humoured and spoiled and petted and made much of him all his twenty years. Not a thought for his father; all his thoughts was to find out what his father hadn't wished him to know.

Now I was feeling set that Master Jasper should never know what was in that green leather case, and I cared no more for what he thought or what he felt than I should have done if he had been a common thief as, God forgive me, he was in my eyes at that hour. So I crept behind him softly, softly, an inch at a time, till I got to where I could see the coffin; and if you'll believe a foolish old woman, I kept looking at that dead face till I nigh forgot what I was there for. And while I was standing mazed like and stupid, young Master Jasper had got out the green case, and was turning over what was in it in his hands.

I got him by the two elbows behind, and he started like a horse that has never felt even the whip will do at the spur's touch. Almost at the same time my heart came leaping into my mouth, and if ever a woman nearly died of fright, I was that woman, for some one behind me put a hand on my shoulder and said, 'What's all this?'

Young Sir Jasper and I both turned sharp. It was the doctor. His ears were as quick as mine, and he had heard the key too, I suppose. Anyhow, there he was, and he picked up the papers young Sir Jasper had let fall, and says he, 'I will deal with these, young gentleman. Go you to your room.' And Sir Jasper, like a kicked hound, went. Then I began to tell my share in that night's work. But the doctor stopped me, for he had seen me and watched me all along. Then he stood by the coffin, and went through what was in the little leather case.

'I must keep these now,' he said, 'but you shall keep your promise and put them beside him before he is buried.'

And the next day, before the funeral, I went alone and saw my master again, and gave him his little case back, and I thought I should have liked him to know that I had done my best for him, but he could not have known that without knowing of what young Sir Jasper had done, and that would have broken his heart; so when all's said and done, perhaps it's as well the dead know nothing.

And after the funeral we was all in the library to hear the will read, and the lawyer he read out that the personal property went to Robert the gamekeeper, and the entailed property would of course be young Sir Jasper's.

And young Sir Jasper, oh that ever I should have called him my boy!—he rose up in his place and said that his father was a doting old fool and out of his mind, and he would have the law of them, anyhow, and my late dear master not yet turned of fifty! And then the doctor got up and he said—

'Stop a bit, young man; I have a word or two to say here.'

And he up and told before all the folks there straight out what had passed last night, and how young Sir Jasper had willed to rob his father's coffin.

'Now, you'll want to know what was in the little green leather case,' he says at the end. 'And it was this,—a lock of hair and a wedding ring, and a marriage certificate, and a baptism certificate; and you, Jasper, are but the son by a second marriage; and Sir Robert, I congratulate you, for you are come to your own.'

'Do I get nothing, then?' shrieked young Sir Jasper, trembling like a woman, and with the devil looking out of his eyes.

'Your father intended you to have the entailed estates, right or wrong; that was his choice. But you chose to know what he wished to hide from you, and now you know that the entailed estates belong to your brother.'

'But the personalty?'

'You forget,' said the doctor, rubbing his hands, with a sour smile, 'that your father provided for that in the will to which you so much objected.'

'Then, curse his memory and curse you,' cried Jasper, and flung out of the house; nor have I ever seen him again, though he did set lawyer folk to work in London to drive Sir Robert out of his own place. But to no purpose.

And Sir Robert, he lives in the old house, and is loved as his father was before him by all he says a kind word to, and his kind words are many.

And to me he is all that I used to wish the boy Jasper might be, and he has a reason for loving me which Jasper never had.

For he said to me when he first spoke to me after his father's funeral—

'My mother was a farmer's girl,' he said, 'and your father was a farmer, so I feel we come, as it were, of one blood; and besides that, I know who my father's friends were. I never forget those things.'

I still live on as a housekeeper at the Hall. My master left me no money, but he bade his heir keep me on in my old place. I am glad to think that he did not choose to leave me money, but instead the great picture of himself that hung in the Hall. It hangs in my room now, and looks down on me as I write.

ONE WAY OF LOVE

YOU don't believe in coincidences, which is only another way of saying that all things work together for good to them that love God—or them that don't, for that matter, if they are honestly trying to do what they think right. Now I do.

I had as good a time as most young fellows when I was young. My father farmed a bit of land down Malling way, and I walked out with the prettiest girl in our parts. Jenny was her name, Jenny Teesdale; her people come from the North. Pretty as a pink Jenny was, and neat in her ways, and would make me a good wife, every one said, even my own mother; and when a man's mother owns that about a girl he may know he's got hold of a treasure. Now Jenny—her name was Jane, but we called her Jenny for short—she had a cousin Amelia, who was apprenticed to the millinery and dress-making in Maidstone; the two had been brought up together from little things, and they was that fond of each other it was a pleasure to see them together. I was fond of Amelia, too, like as a brother might be; and when Jenny and me walked out of a Sunday, as often as not Amelia would come with us, and all went on happy enough for a while. Then I began to notice Jenny didn't seem to care so much about walking out, and one Sunday afternoon she said she had a headache and would rather stay at home by the fire; for it was early spring, and the days chilly. Amelia and me took a turn by ourselves, and when we got back to Teesdale's farm, there was Jenny, wonderfully brisked up, talking and laughing away with young Wheeler, whose father keeps the post-office. I was not best pleased, I can tell you, but I kept a still tongue in my head; only, as time went on, I couldn't help seeing Jenny didn't seem to be at all the same to me, and Amelia seemed sad, too.

I was in the hairdressing then, and serving my time, so it was only on Sundays or an evening that I could get out. But at last I said to myself, 'This can't go on; us three that used to be so jolly, we're as flat as half a pint of four ale; and I'll know the reason why,' says I, 'before I'm twenty-four hours older.' So I went to Teesdale's with that clear fixed in my head.

Jenny was not in the house, but Amelia was. The old folks had gone to a Magic Lantern in the schoolroom, and Amelia was alone in the house.

'I'll have it out with her,' thinks I; so as soon as we had passed the time of day and asked after each other's relations, I says, 'Look here, Amelia, what is it that's making mischief between you and me and Jenny, as used to be so jolly along of each other?'

She went red, and she went white and red again.

'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 God'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.