“Lawk-a-mercy!” cried Mrs. Cave. “And you scarce ’ere a few hours! Why, there ain’t no business to do on a Saturday night, man! And you’ll never get a train back in time for church in the morning. You’d never disappoint your mother of that?”
But the old woman had recovered her composure now, and answered him.
“Business be always first,” said she, “to them as wants to get on in the world; and it wouldn’t be a mother as’d want her son to miss it. Come, John, there’ll just be time to get your supper afore ye go.”
The two went up the street together, and Mrs. Cave stood staring after them. Then she went back to the “Look-out,” and gave the benefit of her investigations to the village.
“It be my belief as that message were from ’is wife,” cried she. “It be my belief she was cross at ’im coming ’ere, and wasn’t going to let him stay a minute longer. And, Lord, any one might know he’d never dare say a masterful woman nay—be it wife or be it mother! Well, it serves the old soul right. She brought ’im up above ’is station, and she druv ’im and druv ’im all the time ’e was young, and, ’pon my word, ’e be just like a poor sheep as don’t know which way to run if there ain’t some one behind ’im with a stick.”
“Yet there’s good in the lad, I do believe,” said the grocer, who had just honoured the terrace for a few moments with his presence on his way home from the shop; “and one can’t choose but be sorry for the woman, for she’s worked ’ard for ’im.”
“Lor’ bless ye, she don’t mind,” laughed Mrs. Cave. “She’d rather ’ave ’im druv—though it be away from ’er—than not see ’im keep the ’igh road. She knows well enough as some one ’ave got to drive ’im. But we sha’n’t see Mrs. Collins at chapel to-morrow mornin’.”
In the latter part of her surmise Mrs. Cave was not correct. Mrs. Collins appeared at chapel, sternly neat in her rusty black, and was more gracious than she had ever been known to be before. As the little congregation poured out into the mellow autumn sunshine, where the birches were silver and yellow against the blue sky, and against the purple downs, and where the creepers lay crimson upon the grey walls of the cottages, a burly old farmer came up to her when she was returning Mrs. Cave’s commiserating greeting. “Why, Mrs. Collins, that son o’ your’s ’ave grown a smart young man, and no mistake,” said he. “I seen ’im get out o’ the train last night at Seacombe. There was a lady come to meet ’im. A fine dressed-up lady she were too, as might ha’ held up ’er ’ead with the best. It was ’is wife, as I made out. Lucy he called her.”
Mrs. Cave, who had pressed up to hear, shot a hasty glance at Mr. Barfield, and nodded her head.
But the widow did not notice it. Her eyes were far away on the dancing sea that shone so blue beyond the mile of yellow marsh where the street opened at the turn down the hill; she dropped the heavy lids over the triumph that was in them, but a flush crept to her sunken cheek, and she pressed her thin lips together as though to crush the smile that she knew hovered around them.