Part 17

She was subsequently forced to own to herself, however, that they did not get on very fast. Adam was incomprehensible to her, and frequently exasperating; and more than once he seemed puzzled and irritated by things that Alice said and did. Mrs. Cluett, for her part, blamed them both with equal impartiality. Now she would aver that Alice was a simpleton, now that Adam was a fool. Was the thing to be or was it not to be? she wanted to know; even if it was to be Mrs. Cluett was not sure that she cared so very much about it; but if it was not to be, there was no manner of use in Alice wasting her time.

Meanwhile the couple walked together frequently, talked little, and quarrelled more than once. On that warm June night, for instance, when Adam, rolling himself in his blanket, stretched himself in the orchard to sleep under the stars, Alice’s indignation was to the full as great as her mother’s; while the day the girl refused Adam’s offer of pine-cones for her fire, on the ground that they popped like pistols and smelt of turpentine, her lover’s resentment had flashed forth in words fierce and strong.

“You do never seem to care for the things what I like,” he summed up.

To each the other was an unknown quantity; the mutual attraction was almost counterbalanced by a shyness begotten of the knowledge of being misunderstood.

The crisis came one summer’s night--a night long remembered in the village, for there broke such a storm over the land as had not been known, the old folks said, since the days of their childhood. A brooding and oppressive stillness reigned at first, and then came lightning that seemed to split the heavens, and thunder that roared like a thousand menacing cannons. Alice sat crouched in a corner with a face as white as a sheet and her fingers in her ears; and Mrs. Cluett hurried round the house, closing doors and windows, and fastening shutters. As she was about to shut the door leading to the yard, a sudden flash revealed to her a motionless figure standing without, a few paces away.

“Dear heart alive! ’Tis never you, Adam.”

She had seen his face transfigured in the momentary gleam, the eyes exultant, the lips parted in rapture.

“Isn’t it grand?” came Adam’s voice, tremulous with excitement, as the darkness enfolded him once more, and the mystic artillery crashed over their heads.

“The chap’s daft!” exclaimed Mrs. Cluett. “Come in this minute. You’ll be struck dead afore me eyes. We don’t want no carpses in the house, do us, Alice?”

But Alice made no response.

“Lard save us!” ejaculated Mrs. Cluett, as a new flash lit up all the surrounding country, revealing the cattle huddled together in the adjacent fields, the hedges, the trees, Adam’s face, eager, enraptured, as before. She darted out and seized him by the arm.

“Come in, I tell ’ee,” she cried. “I’ll not have ye standing there no more.”

As he turned towards her half-dazed, she dragged him in, and had shut and bolted the door before he recovered his wits. The air was stifling inside the house; the paraffin lamp reeked; the gusts of storm-wind which arose every now and then puffed volumes of acrid wood smoke down the chimney.

“A man mid choke here,” growled Adam.

“To bed wi’ ye then!” cried Mrs. Cluett indignantly. “Us be a-goin’ too--’tis late enough.”

She took up the lamp as she spoke, and roused Alice by a jerk of the sleeve. Adam went creaking upstairs, and threw himself dressed upon his bed. The atmosphere of his little attic-room, sun-baked as it had been through all that breathless day, was like that of a furnace; he felt his brain reel and was oppressed almost to suffocation. The storm continued, flash after flash playing on his narrow window; he could see the tip of his one fir-tree, now motionless, transfixed as it were, now swaying in a puff of wind that died away as suddenly as it came.

The house was very silent now, and permeated by the odour of Mrs. Cluett’s recently extinguished lamp. Adam sat up gasping. He thought of the Warren--of the close-growing trees stretching away about the free and happy man who dwelt beneath them. Once he, too, had stood with the woods wrapping him round, and the stars of heaven over his head. Tewley must look grand to-night. As he thought of it the dark shadowy forms of the trees seemed to press upon him; he could hear their deep breathing, and share their expectancy.

Ha! there was a flash. How it would light up the beeches and play among the pines. Now the thunder! it would roar and reverberate among those billowing trees. The rain would come soon. First there would be a rush of wind, and ash and oak and beech would rustle and shiver, and the larches sway down all their slender length. And then, while the trees were bending and rocking, the rain would come--the cold, heavy, glorious rain. Adam caught his breath as he thought of it--how it would come down, hissing among the leaves, splashing on the hot ground! How good the wet earth would smell, every strand of moss and fibre of grass adding its own spicy fragrance.

He leaped from his bed and almost at the same moment the tree outside his window was caught by a whirling wind and snapped. Then something seemed to snap, too, in Adam’s brain and he laughed aloud. What was he doing there, in that suffocating room, when he was free to go that moment, if he chose, to Tewley Woods? What should hold him back--what should keep him? If he made haste he might yet reach the Warren in time for the rain.

In another moment he was out of the house, and when the next flash of lightning came it revealed a flying figure scudding along the whiteness of the road.

* * * * *

Alice cried bitterly over the defection of her wild man of the woods, but she consoled herself in time, and took a mate more to her mind, a practical person who sowed cabbages in the flower-border, and considered the view of the new brewery the finest in the neighbourhood.

But Adam Baverstock had passed for ever out of her life; as silently as he had come from the shadow of the trees into the spring sunshine, so had he vanished in the summer storm.

THE HOME-COMING OF DADA.

“I knew he was bound to be one of the first,” said Mrs. Bunce triumphantly. “Why, he’ve a-been out there ever since the war broke out. Two year and seven month he’ve a-been there--and the hardships he’s been through, and the fightin’ he’s done! There, I can’t think how ever the Government had the heart to keep en out so long.”

“There’s others what have been out jist same as he have,” returned her neighbour plaintively. “My Jan now--such a good boy as he be, too!--well, he’ve a-been out there months and months, and he’ve a-been in hospital!”

“As for fightin’,” put in the shrewd-faced little man who formed the third party to the discussion, and whose opinion carried weight in the neighbourhood, for his vocation of carrier enabled him to pick up many items of news during his daily round, “as for fightin’, Mrs. Bunce, I don’t mean to make little o’ your husband, but there bain’t nothin’ wonderful about him doin’ a lot o’ fightin’. They all done that--’twas what they were sent out for, and not a bit more credit to any of ’em nor for me to go joggin’ along behind the wold horse here.”

Both women reddened, and turned upon him angrily.

“If ye do think such things, ye did ought to be ashamed to say ’em,” cried Mrs. Andrews. “’Eroes--’tis what they be every man of ’em, Mr. Bright; and you did ought to know it, seein’ as ’twas wrote up plain over the very Corn Exchange the day as peace was declared. ‘All Honour to Our ’Eroes,’ it said, in them little coloured lamps so ’andsome as it could be; and bain’t there a song about ‘they’re ’eroes every one’?”

“And I’m sure ye can’t say,” chimed in little Mrs. Bunce, nodding her curly head emphatically, “as it be the same thing for a man to sit snug in his cart behind the quietest old harse in Darset as it is to leave your wife and your home and--and everything, and to go riskin’ your life among Boers and Blacks in them wild parts out abroad.”

“E-es,” agreed her neighbour, making common cause with her against the enemy, “e-es, indeed, Mrs. Bunce. And your little boy wasn’t so much as born when his dada was took away, was he? Many a time, I dare say, you did think to yourself as he’d never see the face of his child. I d’ ’low he thought the same hisself goin’ off, poor fellow! Ye’ll agree that was a bit hard on the man, Mr. Bright, so little credit as ye be willin’ to allow our soldiers. Ye’ll agree ’twas hard on the man to go off, leavin’ his missus to get through her trouble alone, and the child the first child, too, mind ye.”

“If it had been the tenth you wouldn’t pity him so much,” said the carrier, with a dry chuckle. “There’s some as don’t think so much o’ them things. Jim Marshall, now--says I to Jim t’other day, ‘Jim,’ I says, ‘I hear you’ve got an increase to your family’; and poor Jim, he looks at me and says, ‘E-es,’ he says, ‘more hardship’.”

Chuckling sardonically, he gathered up his reins and jogged on again, the women looking after him with indignant faces.

As the green “shed” of his van disappeared round the corner, their eyes by mutual accord reverted to each other, and Mrs. Andrews laughed disdainfully.

“’Tis a queer cranky sort of body,” she remarked; “a bachelor man. What can you expect?”

Mrs. Bunce’s face was still pink with wrath, but she smiled upon the other woman.

“I should think your Jan did ought to come home soon now,” she said handsomely; gratitude for Mrs. Andrews’ timely sympathy causing her to be for the moment almost willing to admit there might be another soldier of some merit in the British Army besides Private William Bunce.

“I’m sure I hope so,” responded her neighbour rather dismally. “You are safe to get your husband back next week, anyhow.”

“Next week,” echoed Nellie Bunce joyfully. “Yes, he says in his last letter they was to start in a week, and I’ve a-counted up the time, and he did ought to land at Southampton Saturday week.”

“I d’ ’low ye’ll be busy gettin’ all ready for him,” said the older woman, falling into an easy attitude with her hands on her hips, the better to contemplate her pretty neighbour.

“I d’ ’low I be,” responded Nellie, enthusiastically. “I be goin’ to give en the best welcome I can, ye mid be sure. I be cleanin’ up the house fro’ top to bottom, and I be goin’ to paper the kitchen. I’ve bought paper already; I reckon I could easy do it myself; the wall aint so very high and the room bain’t too big neither.”

“’Tis a stiffish job for a woman though,” returned Mrs. Andrews, dubiously. “If Andrews wasn’t so bad with the lumbagey, I’d get en to lend ye a hand; but he’s that stiff, poor man, he can scarcely so much as turn hisself in bed.”

“Oh, I’ll manage,” returned Mrs. Bunce, nodding brightly. “I’m a great one for contrivin’, and ’t’ull be summat to tell Bill as I’ve a-done it myself.”

“It’ll take you all your time,” protested Mrs. Andrews, and they parted.

During the ensuing days Nellie was indeed up to her eyes in work, carrying out vigorously her plan of cleaning and polishing the house from top to bottom. Baby Billy, who had hitherto considered himself a person of very great importance, found himself hustled hither and thither as he had never been in the whole of his existence, a period extending over about thirty months.

On one particular afternoon, when every washable article in the house was in Nellie’s tub, he was bidden to play out of doors, and finding the maternal eye less on the alert than usual, surreptitiously opened the garden gate and wandered to the forbidden precincts of the lane.

He trotted along for nearly a quarter of a mile, until he reached a particularly delectable corner graced by a large rubbish-heap, which he proceeded to investigate with huge satisfaction, carrying one treasure after another over the way, sitting down to examine it, and immediately rolling on to his legs again to procure some yet more coveted object.

At last, however, he secured two prizes, than which nothing more desirable could be imagined, and with a sigh of satisfaction toddled for the last time across the lane and sat down to enjoy them at his leisure. The broken jam-pot was immediately filled with sand, while the rusty knife, grasped by its fragmentary handle, could be used in a variety of ways--so Billy discovered--as a spade, as a saw, as a chopper.

He was engaged in mincing a dock leaf very small on a flat stone, his mouth opening and shutting in accompaniment to his labours, when he was suddenly hailed by somebody who had abruptly turned the corner of the lane, somebody who was probably on his way from the town.

“Hello!” cried this somebody.

“Hello!” responded Billy, pausing with his knife poised in mid-air and looking up with a pair of very big and very blue eyes. He had to tilt his head quite a long way back to do so, for the newcomer was tall. Billy was a little startled; to begin with the newcomer was a man, and he was not sure that he liked men--they cracked whips sometimes, and spoke loud and gruff, particularly when, as occasionally happened, Billy chanced to run across the road immediately in front of their horses; then he had funny brown clothes--nobody that Billy had ever seen wore clothes like that; and he had a brown face too, a face so very, very brown that it gave his blue eyes a strange look. Billy was secretly a good deal frightened, but being a soldier’s son he only clutched his knife the harder and said, “Hello!” again, as the stranger continued to look at him without speaking.

“I rather think I ought to know you, my lad,” said the man at last, in a queer quavering voice. “I’d swear by that little cocked nose. What’s your name, eh?”

“Billy,” responded the child promptly.

“Right you are!” cried the man, and he caught him up in his arms, knife and jam-pot and all. “Let’s hear the rest of it, though. Billy what?”

“I want to get down,” asserted the urchin, vigorously struggling. “I want to get down and make a pudden for my dada.”

The man grimaced, and instantly set the child upon his legs.

“Perhaps we’ve made a mistake after all,” he said; “perhaps you are some other chap’s Billy. Where does your dada live, young ’un?--tell us that.”

Billy had by this time squatted on the ground again, and was once more chopping at his dock leaf. He did not answer until the man had twice repeated his question, then he explained.

“My dada’s tummin’ home. He’s tummin’ in a ship--and a puff-puff,” he added, as an after-thought.

“Right you are,” cried the brown-faced man again, and he caught him up in his arms once more and kissed him. “I thought I’d know my little woman’s nose among a thousand, and yours is so like it as one pea is like another. Come, let’s go and look for mammy.”

Billy was at first disposed to protest, but something at once merry and tender in the man’s blue eyes disarmed suspicion; and when he presently found himself hoisted on a broad shoulder, and was thus carried at galloping speed down the lane and through the village; when, moreover, this self-constituted steed actually vaulted the garden gate, and covered the tiny path that intervened between it and the cottage door with two strides, he was not only reassured but jubilant.

They could see “mammy” bending over the wash-tub through the open kitchen door, very red in the face, very wet and draggled as to dress, and with one end of her hair straggling down; and the queer thing was that at sight of her the man suddenly came to a standstill and uttered a kind of choking cry. And then mammy turned round and dropped the shirt she had been wringing out, and fairly screamed as she came rushing across the kitchen. Then laughing and crying together she flung her arms round the brown man’s neck, heedless of the danger to which she was exposing herself from the broken jam-pot and the rusty knife which Billy was still brandishing; and kissed him, and rocked backwards and forwards with him, and seemed altogether to have taken leave of her senses.

After a moment’s breathless pause of astonishment, Billy thought it time to assert himself. He dropped his two treasures on the floor and burst into a loud wail. Then clutching hold of the newcomer’s close-cropped fair head, he endeavoured with all his might to pull it away from the curly one that was pressed so close to it. And then mammy looked up, and her eyes were all wet, but her mouth was laughing.

“You mustn’t do that, sonny,” she said. “This is dada! Dada’s come home.”

Billy was dumb with dismay and disappointment, partly at the discovery that the much-talked-of and hitherto unimagined dada was a man, partly because he was such a very brown man, but chiefly because he had arrived shorn of the glories of the ship and the puff-puff which he had understood were to accompany him. So he sat still and rather sulky on the khaki shoulder while Private Bunce explained how he had caught sight of the little chap, and how he at once “spotted” him by that little nose of his, and how disappointed he had been when for a moment he had thought it was not his Billy after all, but some other quite uninteresting Billy belonging to another fellow.

“But I found him all right,” he summed up triumphantly, “and I found you, little woman--lookin’ tip-top you are, just about! Lard, it do seem a mortal time since I left you, my girl.”

“Oh, Bill, I meant to have everything so nice for ’ee,” cried Nellie. “Dear, to think there’s nothin’ ready! I’m sure I’m not fit to be seen myself.”

She glanced regretfully towards the wash-tub. Her pink blouse was in there--the blouse Bill had always said he liked--and her lace collar and the little ruffles for her wrists. The old blue cotton gown which she wore was not only faded and patched, but soiled and almost wet through.

“You’re lookin’ just splendid though,” cried her husband. “Why, that there’s the very gown you used to wear when we went a-coortin’--I mind it well--that little wavy stripe. I used to think it the prettiest thing I ever did see. And here’s the little curl comin’ down what I used to kiss when we was a-walkin’ down by the river.”

“Oh, Bill, is it comin’ down? I wanted to be so tidy and nice. I reckoned ye was comin’ next week, ye know.”

“I come over wi’ the colonel. He come across a bit sooner nor we expected, bein’ knocked up wi’ one thing and another. ‘The sooner the better,’ thinks I.”

“Of course,” cried Nellie fervently; “the sooner the better indeed. But we be all in a caddle here. There, the window curtains and the best table-cloth and the very bed-quilt is in the tub, and I haven’t got any meat in the house! I thought Billy and me ud go a bit short this week, so’s to have a reg’lar feast when you did come home. And--and----”

“Now, don’t you fret, old girl; we hadn’t no table-cloth nor yet bed-quilts out on the veldt. And as for meat--blowed if I do care so very much for meat. But I tell ye what I would like.”

“What?” cried Nellie breathlessly.

“What I would like more nor any earthly thing,” said Bill emphatically, but with a twinkle in his eye, “is just ’taters--’taters done wi’ a bit o’ drippin’, hot and tasty, the way you did often do ’em.”

Nellie drew a long breath of relief.

“Them’s easy got,” she said jubilantly, but almost immediately her face fell again. “It do seem a poor kind o’ welcome,” she murmured, “and I----”

Private Bunce deposited his son and heir upon the floor, the better to bestow a really satisfactory embrace upon the little sunburnt woman. She was exceedingly damp and smelt very strongly of soap, but he did not seem to mind.

“Now, look here,” he said, “you couldn’t give I a better welcome nor what you’ve a-done. This here’s home--home as I did so often think of and long for; and here you be, my wold ’ooman, lookin’ just same as ever--just same as I so often seed ye in my mind, and I used to dream about ye many a time, and wake up and find mysel’ lyin’ on the sand. This here’s home and this here’s my little ’ooman--and I don’t want nothin’ else, wi’out it’s this young shaver,” he added as an after-thought.

And so, while the wash-tub steamed away unheeded in the back premises, a very merry party sat down to an impromptu meal. The ’taters were duly set forth, and Nellie, cleaned up and tidy, poured out tea, and Private Bunce cut huge slices from the crusty loaf, and declared he hadn’t had such a blow-out, no, not since he sailed from Southampton.

“To my mind, Nellie,” he cried presently, “the room do seem to look more cheerful-like wi’out the winder curtains. A body notices the paper more--the dear old paper what I did stick up for ’ee myself.”

Nellie opened her mouth as though to speak, but changed her mind and closed it again.

“I tell you what it is,” cried Private Bunce enthusiastically, “the place wouldn’t look itself wi’out that wall-paper. I wouldn’t have it changed for anything.”

Then Nellie burst out laughing and clapped her hands.

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW.