Part 8 (1/2)

'But that's no way to get rid o' man or woman,' Jabez said.

'No more 'tis. I told Jim so. ”What can I do?” Jim says. ”The law's _with_ the man. I walk about daytimes thinkin' o' it till I sweats my underclothes wringin', an' I lie abed nights thinkin' o' it till I sweats my sheets all of a sop. 'Tisn't as if I was a young man,” he says, ”nor yet as if I was a pore man. Maybe he'll drink hisself to death.” I e'en a'most told him outright what foolishness he was enterin'

into, but he knowed it--he knowed it--because he said next time the man come 'twould be fifteen s.h.i.+llin's. An' next time 'twas. Just fifteen s.h.i.+llin's!'

'An' _was_ the man her father?' asked Jabez.

'He had the proofs an' the papers. Jim showed me what that Lunnon Childern's Society had answered when Mary writ up to 'em an' taxed 'em with it. I lay she hadn't been proper polite in her letters to 'em, for they answered middlin' short. They said the matter was out o' their hands, but--let's see if I remember--oh, yes,--they ree-gretted there had been an oversight. I reckon they had sent Mary out in the candle-box as a orphan instead o' havin' a father. Terrible awkward! Then, when he'd drinked up the money, the man come again--in his usuals--an' he kept hammerin' on and hammerin' on about his duty to his pore dear wife, an' what he'd do for his dear daughter in Lunnon, till the tears runned down his two dirty cheeks an' he come away with more money. Jim used to slip it into his hand behind the door; but his mother she heard the c.h.i.n.k. She didn't hold with hush-money. She'd write out all her feelin's on the slate, an' Jim 'ud be settin' up half the night answerin' back an' showing that the man had the law with him.'

'Hadn't that man no trade nor business, then?'

'He told me he was a printer. I reckon, though, he lived on the rates like the rest of 'em up there in Lunnon.'

'An' how did Mary take it?'

'She said she'd sooner go into service than go with the man. I reckon a mistress 'ud be middlin' put to it for a maid 'fore she put Mary into cap an' gown. She was studyin' to be a schoo-ool-teacher. A beauty she'll make!... Well, that was how things went that fall. Mary's Lunnon father kep' comin' an' comin' 'carden as he'd drinked out the money Jim gave him; an' each time he'd put-up his price for not takin' Mary away.

Jim's mother, she didn't like partin' with no money, an' bein' obliged to write her feelin's on the slate instead o' givin' 'em vent by mouth, she was just about mad. Just about she _was_ mad!

'Come November, I lodged with Jim in the outside room over 'gainst his hen-house. I paid _her_ my rent. I was workin' for Dockett at Pounds--gettin' chestnut-bats out o' Perry Shaw. Just such weather as this be--rain atop o' rain after a wet October. (An' I remember it ended in dry frostes right away up to Christmas.) Dockett he'd sent up to Perry Shaw for me--no, he comes puffin' up to me himself--because a big corner-piece o' the bank had slipped into the brook where she makes that elber at the bottom o' the Seventeen Acre, an' all the rubbishy alders an' sallies which he ought to have cut out when he took the farm, they'd slipped with the slip, an' the brook was comin' roos.h.i.+n' down atop of 'em, an' they'd just about back an' spill the waters over his winter wheat. The water was lyin' in the flats already. ”Gor a-mighty, Jesse!” he bellers out at me, ”get that rubbish away all manners you can. Don't stop for no f.a.gottin', but give the brook play or my wheat's past salvation. I can't lend you no help,” he says, ”but work an'

I'll pay ye.”'

'You had him there,' Jabez chuckled.

'Yes. I reckon I had ought to have drove my bargain, but the brook was backin' up on good bread-corn. So 'cardenly, I laid into the mess of it, workin' off the bank where the trees was drownin' themselves head-down in the roosh--just such weather as this--an' the brook creepin' up on me all the time. 'Long toward noon, Jim comes mowchin' along with his toppin' axe over his shoulder.

'”Be you minded for an extra hand at your job?” he says.

'”Be you minded to turn to?” I ses, an'--no more talk to it--Jim laid in alongside o' me. He's no hunger with a toppin' axe.'

'Maybe, but I've seed him at a job o' throwin' in the woods, an' he didn't seem to make out no shape,' said Jabez. 'He haven't got the shoulders, nor yet the judgment--_my_ opinion--when he's dealin' with full-girt timber. He don't rightly make up his mind where he's goin' to throw her.'

'We wasn't throwin' nothin'. We was cuttin' out they soft alders, an'

haulin' 'em up the bank 'fore they could back the waters on the wheat.

Jim didn't say much, 'less it was that he'd had a postcard from Mary's Lunnon father, night before, sayin' he was comin' down that mornin'.

Jim, he'd sweated all night, an' he didn't reckon hisself equal to the talkin' an' the swearin' an' the cryin', an' his mother blamin' him afterwards on the slate. ”It spiled my day to think of it,” he ses, when we was eatin' our pieces. ”So I've fair cried dunghill an' run.

Mother'll have to tackle him by herself. I lay _she_ won't give him no hush-money,” he ses. ”I lay he'll be surprised by the time he's done with _her_,” he ses. An' that was e'en a'most all the talk we had concernin' it. But he's no hunger with the toppin' axe.

'The brook she'd crep' up an' up on us, an' she kep' creepin' upon us till we was workin' knee-deep in the shallers, cuttin' an' pookin' an'

pullin' what we could get to o' the rubbish. There was a middlin' lot comin' down-stream, too--cattle-bars, an' hop-poles and odds-ends bats, all poltin' down together; but they rooshed round the elber good shape by the time we'd backed out they drowned trees. Come four o'clock we reckoned we'd done a proper day's work, an' she'd take no harm if we left her. We couldn't puddle about there in the dark an' wet to no more advantage. Jim he was pourin' the water out of his boots--no, I was doin' that. Jim was kneelin' to unlace his'n. ”d.a.m.n it all, Jesse,” he ses, standin' up; ”the flood must be over my doorsteps at home, for here comes my old white-top bee-skep!”'

'Yes. I allus heard he paints his bee-skeps,' Jabez put in. 'I dunno paint don't tarrify bees more'n it keeps em' dry.'

'”I'll have a pook at it,” he ses, an' he pooks at it as it comes round the elber. The roosh nigh jerked the pooker out of his hand-grips, an'

he calls to me, an' I come runnin' barefoot. Then we pulled on the pooker, an' it reared up on eend in the roosh, an' we guessed what 'twas. 'Cardenly we pulled it in into a shaller, an' it rolled a piece, an' a great old stiff man's arm nigh hit me in the face. Then we was sure. ”'Tis a man,” ses Jim. But the face was all a mask. ”I reckon it's Mary's Lunnon father,” he ses presently. ”Lend me a match and I'll make sure.” He never used baccy. We lit three matches one by another, well's we could in the rain, an' he cleaned off some o' the slob with a tussick o' gra.s.s. ”Yes,” he ses. ”It's Mary's Lunnon father. He won't tarrify us no more. D'you want him, Jesse?” he ses.

'”No,” I ses. ”If this was Eastbourne beach like, he'd be half-a-crown apiece to us 'fore the coroner; but now we'd only lose a day havin' to 'tend the inquest. I lay he fell into the brook.”

'”I lay he did,” ses Jim. ”I wonder if he saw mother.” He turns him over, an' opens his coat and puts his fingers in the waistcoat pocket an' starts laughin'. ”He's seen mother, right enough,” he ses. ”An' he's got the best of her, too. _She_ won't be able to crow no more over _me_ 'bout givin' him money. _I_ never give him more than a sovereign. She's give him two!” an' he trousers 'em, laughin' all the time. ”An' now we'll pook him back again, for I've done with him,” he ses.