‘Do you want to break it off, Jane?’
‘Oh,’ she cried, with a moan, ‘break it off! Am I one to break it off? But he can’t abide the place, and he wants to go.—— If he has any true—respect—for me—he’ll feel it when he’s gone. That’s what I think. Oh! ma’am, speak a word to mother, and tell her to let him go.’
‘There is more in your mind,’ said the old lady: ‘but if it is as serious as this—I’ll go there straight, my dear. I’ll go straight and speak to your mother. I know you’ve got more in your mind.’
Jane did not make any reply, but quickened her steps to keep up with the active old woman as she hurried on. Poor Jane was past all make-believe. ‘Think!’ she said, almost under her breath, ‘what it is when he comes and pretends to be fond of me—— Oh, ma’am! pretends as if he loved me—after all I know!’ She wrung her hands, and there was a suppressed anguish in her voice, such as only a tender creature outraged could have been driven to. Then Mrs. Mowbray, who knew all the gossip of the place, remembered to have heard that Ellen Turner, who was a dressmaker, had been working at Mrs. Aikin’s—no doubt that was the cause. She went along quickly, almost dragging the girl with her. It was a beautiful evening, soft and cool after a hot day. The lights were beginning to twinkle about the Barley Mow. There were people sitting out on the bench, and people visible at the open windows with the lights behind them, and a murmur of cheerful voices. The scene was very homely, but the night was so soft, the shadows so grateful upon the refreshed earth, the dews so sweet, and nothing but rest and refreshment in the air. Overhead the sky was veiled, a few modest stars peeping from the edges of the clouds, nothing bright to jar upon the subdued quiet. All this went to Jane’s heart. She began to cry softly, as she looked with wistful eyes at her home. The sensation subdued her. So peaceful and quiet, with the vague, half-dim figures about, the cheerful lights in the windows, was it possible that there could be such trouble there?
But all at once there came a jarring note into this tranquillity—the sound of a woman’s voice raised in anger. They were going towards the garden door, but before they reached it somebody was pushed out violently, and, half falling forward, came stumbling against Jane, who was straight in the way. ‘Get out of my sight, you little baggage, you treacherous, wicked, lying creature, you bad girl!’ cried Mrs. Aikin in a furious voice. Jane clutched at Mrs. Mowbray’s arm, and shrank back, while the girl who had stumbled against her gave a sudden scream of dismay. It was Ellen Turner, her cheeks blazing red with anger, though the sight of Jane cowed her. ‘What have you been doing, you little flirt?’ cried old Mrs. Mowbray. ‘If a man speaks to me, ain’t I to give him a civil answer?’ cried the girl, standing still, and preparing to give battle. Jane did not say a word. She shook herself free of the old lady without knowing what she did, and went in to her mother, without as much as a look at the other. As soon as she had disappeared John showed himself out of the darkness like a spectre. ‘Run, Nell, run,’ he said. ‘She’s to-morrow. She’s in Jane’s hands, I’ll see you safe now. Run. Nell, run.’ And he darted back again among the guests, and threw himself into his work with devotion. Never before had John been seen so busy and so civil. Who could interfere with him in the middle of his work? He was as safe as if he had been at church.
What had happened was that Mrs. Aikin had found her nephew and the little dressmaker together, on very affectionate terms, and her outburst of sudden wrath was very hot and violent. But after the first moment it was entirely against Ellen that her anger was directed, and she was as little willing as before to listen to Mrs. Mowbray’s suggestion that he should be sent away. She was, like most women of her class, perhaps like most women of all classes, furious against the girl, half sorry for, half contemptuous of, the man. ‘Lord, what could Johnny do against one of them artful things?’ she said, when she had calmed down. ‘It’s Jane’s fault, as don’t talk to him enough, nor keep him going. That minx shall never set foot in my house again.’ Jane said very little while her mother talked thus. She was very pale, and her breath came quickly, but she betrayed no emotion either of grief or anger. She stood still by her mother’s side while Mrs. Aikin cried and sobbed. Jane was past all that. She said, ‘He don’t know his own mind, mother. Let him go as he wishes.’ They were both made incapable of work by this sudden incident. But John—John had turned into a model of industry and carefulness. While the two women retired into their little parlour with the door shut, he, safe from all interference, kept everything going. He ran about here and there, attending to everybody, civil and thoughtful. When he was asked what was the matter, he answered carelessly, ‘Some row among the women,’ as if that was too trifling and too everyday a matter for his notice. He had never shown so much cleverness in all his life before.
Even after this however the widow still temporized. Yes, she said in words, she would let him go, but after the bustle was over—after the summer work was done with. She gave a hundred excuses, and invented new reasons constantly for her delay. Jane said little, having said all she could. A new reserve crept over her, she talked to nobody—went no more to talk to Mrs. Peters, and never saw her old friend at the Thatched Cottage when she could help it. She was sick of her false position, as well as of those pangs which she told to nobody, which were all shut up in her own heart. No more in church or otherwise did the look of happiness come back to her face. When John sang she would stand with her eyes fixed on her book, or else would cover her face with her hand. The beautiful song was no longer hers to be offered up to God’s praise. But sometimes during the sermon her eyes would turn unconsciously to that foolish pretty face in the free seats—the pink and white countenance of Ellen Turner, inferior in beauty as in everything else to herself. ‘What is there in her that is better than me? Why should she be preferred to me?’ was what Jane was asking herself, with a wondering pain that was half self-abasement and half indignation. Just so good Mr. Peters, in the school pew, gazed from her to the loutish baritone in his surplice and back again. Why should fate be so contradictory and hearts so bitterly deceived?
This state of affairs however could not go on very long—and it came to a conclusion quite suddenly at last. There was an agricultural show in the neighbourhood some twenty miles off from Dinglefield, to which all the rural people of the neighbourhood, and John among them, went at the end of August. In other circumstances Jane would have gone with her cousin; but she had no heart for shows of any kind. In the evening most of the Dinglefield people came home, but not John. Mrs. Aikin was evidently frightened by his non-appearance, but she made the best of it. ‘He had gone off with some of his friends,’ she said, ‘and of course he had missed his train. He was always missing trains. He was the carelessest lad!’ But when next day came, and the next, with no news of John, the mother and daughter could no longer disguise their alarm. The widow ‘was in such a way’ that her friends gathered round her full of condolence and encouragements; and Mrs. Mowbray herself put on her bonnet, and went to tell her not to be a fool, and to bid her remember that young men cannot be held in like girls. ‘I know that, ma’am, I know that,’ said Mrs. Aikin, soothed. The rest of her consolers had encouraged her by telling her they had always foreseen it, and that this was what over-indulgence always came to at last. The widow turned her back upon these Job’s comforters, and clutched at Mrs. Mowbray’s shawl. ‘I’ve held him too tight, ma’am, and I should have taken your advice,’ she said. They had sent expresses in all directions in search of him, and that very evening they had information that he had enlisted in the regiment to which his father had formerly belonged, and which was at the time quartered in the town where the show had been held. This is always, though it is hard to say why, terrible news for a decent family. ‘’Listed!’ do not all the vagabonds, the good-for-nothings, ’list? It was Mr. Peters who brought this news to the two anxious women. He had been in Castleville ‘by accident,’ he said; the truth being that he had given the children a holiday on purpose to offer this humble service to the woman who had his heart. It was good news, though it was such bad news, for the widow’s imagination had begun to jump at all sorts of fatal accidents, and he was made kindly welcome, and allowed to remain with them until Mrs. Aikin’s first fit of distress and relief, and shame and vexation, and content was over. ‘It’s his father, it’s all his father,’ she said. ‘Such a thought would never, never have come into our Johnny’s head.’ Mr. Peters, with trembling anxiety, observed that Jane did not say a word. She was moving about with her usual quickness, preparing tea, that the kind visitor who had taken so much trouble should have some refreshment after his long walk. She was full of suppressed excitement, her cheek less pale than usual, her eyes shining. But she said nothing till her mother’s outburst was over. Mrs. Aikin was a foolish, softhearted, sanguine woman. As soon as she knew the worst her mind leapt at a universal mending and making up. She had no sooner dried her eyes and swallowed a cup of tea, after protesting that she ‘could not touch it,’ than she began with a certain timidity in another tone.
‘It’s well known what most families do when such a thing happens,’ she said with a sigh, ‘folks as has more money than we have. And I’ve heard say as it was a foolish thing; but when you consider all things—— lads is so silly, they never see what they’re doing till after it’s done, and past changing—past their changing I mean.’
Jane did not say anything, but she stood still suddenly in the middle of the room to listen, with a startled look.