Men had gathered outside the inn above the old Church Square, or under the public shed that overlooked the marsh and—between the puffs of an evening pipe—had declared it to be their solemn opinion that the “pore old chap had ’eard somethin’ at last,” though who had been “so blackguardly as tell ’im and them two dead and buried,” they couldn’t think, and would dearly have liked to know.
The women whispering across the counter to the old post-mistress, who always knew everything, had their suspicions.
They had them, and they aired them, but they got no satisfaction. For Mrs. Goodenough herself was too frightened to be indiscreet, and Tom Wycombe—when he returned—kept his own counsel. For he did return, to the relief of all, but he returned alone—a changed and aged man—and he kept his own counsel in solitude.
To the kindly inquiries of timid neighbours, he answered civilly but very curtly that “Daisy was livin’ at the sea for the sake of ’er ’ealth.”
The reply eased the minds of those who had loved the little one, but it had not deceived them. For the child had always been perfectly strong, and if she had not been, Wycombe would have been less than ever likely to part from her.
Less than ever likely unless something had happened to change his blind devotion to her, and that that something had happened, no one had any doubt, but everybody pitifully respected his silence and left him alone in his wretchedness.
And thus the weeks wore away till the harvest had ripened and been gathered in.
“Oo’d ha’ thought he’d ha been so old,” said the neighbours, watching him totter back from the village well, with his two pails of water hanging on hooks from a bar of wood across his shoulders. “’E seemed a likely man too, when ’e married the girl, but folk didn’t ought to wed where there’s such a breach in years.”
“Ah, ’e feels that now,” said an old man wisely. “And yet it seems a pity ’e couldn’t ha’ kep’ the comfort o’ the little ’un. It wern’t ’er fault no ways, and it do seem rough on a child too.”
Was that what he was beginning to think himself also?