No. IX
THE PRICE OF MILLY BASSETT
Memory, as we old folk know, be the plaything of time, and when trouble comes and we wilt and reckon life's ended, the years roll unresting on, and the storm passes, and the dark breaks to grey again, and, may be, even the sun's self peeps forth once more. For our little wits ain't built to hold grief for ever, else the world would be a lunatic asylum and not the tolerable sane and patient place we mostly find it.
It was like that with my friend, Jonas Bird. When his wife died, and left him and three young childer, his light went out, and though no more than thirty-five years of age, he felt 'twas the end of the world. He comforted his cruel sufferings with the thought of a wonnerful tombstone to Sarah Bird, and there's no doubt that tombstones, though they can't make or mar the dead, have, time and again, softened the lot of the living. And you may say that poor Sarah's mark in the churchyard was the subject that first began to calm Jonas. But it did a lot more than that.
He was a sandy-headed man with old-fashioned whiskers, a long face like a horse, blue eyes and a wondering expression. In fact, life did astonish him a good bit, and being a simple soul, most things that happened were apt to puzzle him. A carpenter by trade, he did very well in that walk of life and had saved money. But he had long lived for one thing only, and that was Sarah, and when she dropped sudden and left him with two little boys and a girl babe, he was more puzzled than ever and went in a proper miz-maze of perplexity that such things could be.
Everybody liked Jonas, for he was a kindly and well-intending creature, and his wife had been such another, and a good few women rushed to the rescue when the blow fell. And his master, a childless man and very fond of Bird, offered to adopt one of his boys and take the lad off his hands. But Jonas clung to all three, because, as he truly said, they each had a good bit of their mother in 'em and he couldn't spare a pinch of Sarah. And his wife's first and dearest woman friend it was who came to the rescue at this season and stopped along with Jonas, for the children's sake and the dead woman's.
Milly Bassett, she was called, and she ministered to the orphaned children and talked sense to the widow man; and though an old maid here and there didn't think it a seemly thing for Milly to take up her life under Bird's roof, the understanding and intelligent sort thought no evil. For of such a creature as Milly Bassett no evil could be thought.
She was the finest-minded woman ever came out of Thorpe-Michael in my opinion, and she only had one idol and that was duty, and when Sarah, on her death-bed, prayed Milly to watch over Jonas and the family till the poor man recovered from his sorrows and wed again, then Milly promised to do so. And her promises were sacred in her eyes. And if any was mean enough to think ill of her for so doing, she'd have said such folk didn't know her and their opinions were no matter.
A flaxen woman—grey-eyed and generous built—was Milly. She lived with an old mother who was a laundress, and the old mother took it very ill when her daughter went to mind the dead woman's little ones; but, as Milly herself said, there was only one man who needed to be considered before she went to her holy task, and that was William White.
You see, Miss Bassett had long been tokened to William, and if he'd objected, it must have put her in a very awkward position with the promise to a dead woman pulling one way and her duty to a live lover pulling the other. But it happened that William White was a very good friend to Jonas, like everybody else, and he didn't see no good reason why for his sweetheart shouldn't lend a hand at such a sorrowful time.
Moreover, there was a bit of money in it, and Milly's William happened to be a man whose opinions and principles had never been known to stand between him and a shilling. So when Jonas insisted on paying Milly Bassett ten bob a week over and above her keep—all clear profit—William raised no objection whatever. He weren't a jealous man—quite the contrary—and his engagement to marry Milly weren't an affair of yesterday. In fact, at this time, they'd been contracted a good two years, and though the man felt quite willing to wed when ever Milly was minded to, she'd got her ideas and she'd made it clear from the very start that not until her intended could show her four pound a week would she take the step.