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СКАЧАТЬ there was no one but me that touched her after she died, for all I am a cripple, and I laid her out, my pretty, with my own hands, and the baby in the hollow of her arm; and I put primroses all round them, and I took father to look at them when all was done, and we stood there, holding hands and looking at her lying there so sweet and peaceful, and looking so good too, whatever you may think, with all the trouble wiped off her face as if the Lord had washed it already in His heavenly light.

      Now, Ellen was buried in the churchyard, and Parson, who was always a hard man, he would have her laid away to the north side, where no sun gets to for the trees and the church, and where few folks like to be buried. But father, he said, 'No; lay her beside her mother, in the bit of ground I bought twenty years ago, where I mean to lie myself, and Lucy too, when her time comes, so that if the talk of rising again is true we shall be all together at the last, as kinsfolk should.'

      So they laid her there, and her name was cut under mother's on the headstone.

      Father didn't grieve and take on as some men do, but he was quieter than he used to be, and didn't seem to have that heart in his work that he always had even after she had left us. It seemed as if the spring of him was broken, somehow. Not but what he was goodness itself to me then and always. But I wasn't his favourite child, nor could I have looked to be, me being what I am and she so sweet and pretty, and such a way with her.

      And father went to church to the burying, but he wouldn't go to service. 'I think maybe there's a God, and if there is, I have that in my heart that's quite enough keeping in my own poor house, without my daring to take it into His.'

      And so I gave up going too. I wouldn't seem to be judging father, not though I might be judged myself by all the village. But when I heard the church-bells ringing, ringing, it was like as if some one that loved me was calling to me and me not answering; and sometimes when all the folk was in church, I used to hobble up on my crutches to the gate and stand there and sometimes hear a bit of the singing come through the open door.

      It was the end of August that Mr. Barber at the shop fell off a ladder leading to his wareroom, and was killed on the spot; and Mrs. Jarvis, she says to me, 'If that young Barber comes home, as I suppose he will, to take what's his by right in the eyes of the law, he might as well go and put his head into an oven on a baking-day, and get his worst friend to shove his legs in after him and shut the door to.'

      'He won't come back,' says I. 'How could he face it, when every one in the village knows it?'

      For when Ellen died it could not be kept secret any longer, and a heap of folks that would have drawn their skirts aside rather than brush against her if she had been there alive and well, with her baby at her breast, had a tear and a kind word for her now that she was gone where no tears and no words could get at her for good or evil.

      I see once a bit of poetry in a book, and it said when a woman had done what she had done, the only way to get forgiven is to die, and I believe that's true. But it isn't true of fathers and sisters.

      It was Sunday morning, and father, he was working away at his bench—not that it ever seemed to make him any happier to work, only he was more miserable if he didn't,—and I had crept up to the churchyard to lean against the wall and listen to the psalms being sung inside, when, looking down the village street, I saw Barber's shop open, and out came young Barber himself. Oh, if God forgets any one in His mercy, it will be him and his like!

      He come out all smart and neat in his new black, and he was whistling a hymn tune softly. Our house was betwixt Barber's shop and the church, not a stone's-throw off, anyway; and I prayed to God that Barber would turn the other way and not come by our house, where father he was sitting at his bench with the door open.

      But he did turn, and come walking towards me; and I had laid my crutches on the ground, and I stooped to pick them up to go home—to stop words; for what were words, and she in her grave?—when I heard young Barber's voice, and I looked over the wall, and see he had stopped, in his madness and folly and the wickedness of his heart, right opposite the house he had brought shame to, and he was speaking to father through the door.

      I couldn't hear what he said, but he seemed to expect an answer, and, when none came, he called out a little louder, 'Oh, well, you've no call to hold your head so high, anyhow!' And for the way he said it I could have killed him myself, but for having been brought up to know that two wrongs don't make a right, and 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.'

      They was at prayers in the church, and there was no sound in the street but the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs, and young Barber, he stood there looking in at our door with that little sneering smile on his face, and the next minute he was running for his life for the church, where all the folks were, and father after him like a madman, with his long knife in his hand that he used to cut the leather with. It all happened in a flash.

      Barber come running up the dusty road in his black, and passed me as I stood by the churchyard gate, and up towards the church; but sudden in the path he stopped short, his eyes seeming starting out of his head as he looked at Ellen's grave—not that he could see her name, the headstone being turned the other way,—and he put his hands before his eyes and stood still a-trembling, like a rabbit when the dogs are on it, and it can't find no way out. Then he cried out, 'No, no, cover her face, for God's sake!' and crouched down against the footstone, and father, coming swift behind him, passed me at the gate, and he ran his knife through Barber's back twice as he crouched, and they rolled on the path together.

      Then all the folks in church that had heard the scream, they come out like ants when you walk through an ant-heap. Young Barber was holding on to the headstone, the blood running out through his new broadcloth, and death written on his face in big letters.

      I ran to lift up father, who had fallen with his face on the grave, and as I stooped over him, young Barber he turned his head towards me, and he says in a voice I could hardly catch, such a whisper it was, 'Was there a child? I didn't know there was a child—a little child in her arm, and flowers all round.'

      'Your child,' says I; 'and may God forgive you!'

      And I knew that he had seen her as I see her when my hands had dressed her for her sleep through the long night.

      I never have believed in ghosts, but there is no knowing what the good Lord will allow.

      So vengeance overtook him, and they carried him away to die with the blood dropping on the gravel; and he never spoke a word again.

      And when they lifted father up with the red knife still fast in his hand, they found that he was dead, and his face was white and his lips were blue, like as I had seen them before. And they all said father must have been mad; and so he lies where he wished to lie, and there's a place there where I shall lie some day, where father lies, and mother, and my dear with her little baby in the hollow of her arm.

      GRANDSIRE TRIPLES

      I WAS promised to William, in a manner of speaking, close upon seven year. What I mean to say is, when he was nigh upon fourteen, and was to go away to his uncle in Somerset to learn farming, he gave me a kiss and half of a broken sixpence, and said—

      'Kate, I shall never think of any girl but you, and you must never think of any chap but me.'

      And the Lord in His goodness knows that I never did.

      Father and mother laughed a bit, and called it child's nonsense; but they was willing enough for all that, for William was a likely chap, and would be well-to-do when his good father died, which I am sure I never wished nor prayed for. All the trouble come from his going to Somerset to learn farming, for his uncle that was there was a Roman, and he taught William a good deal more СКАЧАТЬ