A RETROSPECT
A RETROSPECT
A man and a woman stood in a country lane as the sun was setting. It was where the lane broke out into the open ground of the common, and above them on the hill a windmill was swinging gaunt, lazy arms against the sky. On one side it looked down and across the marsh to the incoming tide, and on the other it commanded miles of pasture-land and hop-fields, and saw the Sussex Downs roll away beyond: behind it, on a sky of opaque blue, the moon had just risen red, and looked at the setting sun opposite. The man stood ruefully, gazing up at the mill, his back half turned to the woman, who was talking fast and loud.
They were hop-pickers; not of those out of city slums, but of the tidier and better class who come from distant villages for the sake of the change and airing; there had been a gang of them, and they were all to be sent home on the morrow.
“But o’ course it’s enough for me to say I want a thing for you to gainsay me,” the woman was saying. She was a tall, dark, powerful young person, and the man, with his slouching gait and thin, sallow face, was evidently immeasurably her inferior in physical strength, and had a meek, deprecating manner that made her words seem somewhat of a mockery.
“I’m sure I don’t want for to gainsay ye, Martha,” he replied humbly. “But I don’t see why ye can’t go up to the mill and see Mrs. Moss without me coming too. Ole friends is ole friends, o’ course, and ’tis nat’ral comin’ back to th’ ole place—we should want to see ’em. But there’s reasons for things, and reasons agin ’em, so to speak. You and Milly Harkitt was none such friends when ye lived ’ere afore ye was wed—if the sayin’s true.”
Martha laughed harshly.
“Sayin’s ain’t never true,” she said bluntly. “Else there’s a sayin’ as you and she was friends if we wasn’t! Reasons for and reasons agin, indeed! Milly’s wed since I see ’er, and I want to ’ave a look and see if it’s altered ’er.”
The man blushed and smiled, but he neither retorted nor denied the charge.
“She were a pritty gentle crittur,” was all he said, thoughtfully looking beyond his wife. “I ’ope she bain’t altered.”