A 
 
 VILLAGE 
 TRAGEDY 
 
 MARGARET L.WOODS 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
MACMILLAN'S TWO-SHILLING LIBRARY. 
 
 Crown Sv0. Bound in Cloth. 
 
 BY MRS. ALEXANDER. 
 
 The Wooing o't. 
 
 Her Deaxest Foe. 
 
 The Admiral's Ward. [March \6th. 
 
 The Executor. [April yd. 
 
 The Freres. [April 2Oth. 
 
 Look Before You Leap. [May 1st. 
 
 Which Shall it Be ? [May iStA. 
 
 BY RHODA BROUGHTON. 
 
 Cometh Up as a Flower. 
 
 Good-Bye, Sweetheart. 
 
 Joan. 
 
 Not Wisely but Too Well. 
 
 Red as a Rose is She. 
 
 Scylla or Charybdis. 
 
 Belinda. 
 
 Doctor Cupid. 
 
 Second Thoughts. 
 
 A Beginner. 
 
 Alas! 
 
 Mrs. Bligh. 
 
 ' Dear Faustina.' 
 
 Nancy. 
 
 BY MARY CHOLMONDELEY. 
 Diana Tempest. {June ist. 
 
 BY MRS. EDWARDES. 
 
 Leah : A Woman of Fashion. 
 A Ball-Room Repentance. [May i8t/i. 
 Ought We to Visit Her ? [ June 1st. 
 Susan Fielding. [June i$th. 
 
 BY J. S. LE FANU. 
 
 Uncle Silas. 
 
 The House by the Churchyard. 
 
 BY JESSIE FOTHERGILL. 
 
 Kith and Kin. 
 
 Probation. 
 
 Borderland. 
 
 Aldyth. 
 
 Healey. 
 
 The Wellfields. 
 
 From Moor Isles. [March i6tA. 
 
 BY OLINE KEESE. 
 The Broad Arrow. [August yd. 
 
 BY MARY LINSKILL. 
 
 Between the Heather and the 
 
 Northern Sea. 
 
 The Haven under the Hill. [July yd. 
 Clevedon. \.Jty i?^- 
 
 In Exchange for a Soul. [ Aug. yd. 
 
 BY MRS. OLIPHANT. 
 Kirsteen. 
 
 BY MRS. RIDDELL. 
 
 Berna Boyle. [April yd. 
 
 George Geith of Fen Court. 
 
 [April 20th. 
 Susan Drummond. [May 1st. 
 
 BY W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 Marooned. 
 
 BY THE BARONESS TAUT- 
 
 PHCEUS. 
 Quits ! 
 
 The Initials. 
 At Odds. [June \yh. 
 
 BY MONTAGU WILLIAMS. 
 Leaves of a Life. 
 
 BY MARGARET L. WOODS. 
 A Village Tragedy. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. 
 
A 
 
 VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET L. WOODS 
 
 ILonlicftt 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 I9OO 
 
 A II rights reserved 
 
Appeared in the ' Temple Bar' Magazine in 1887 
 First Edition, i vol. Post 8vo. 3.?. 6d. August 1887 
 
 Reprinted March 1889 
 
 Transferred to Macmillan <5r> Co., Limited, Aiigust i, i8c 
 Reprinted (zs.} March 1900 
 
APOLOGIA 
 
 A JEWELLED tale, an antique historic 
 Plucked out of darkness and the dust of kings, 
 Or windy song the Northern sea-maid flings 
 Among the mountains from the brooding sea ; 
 Such gifts my venturous Fancy promised thee 
 When to the sun he stretched his gauzy wings. 
 He promised thee, but other far he brings 
 As wingless now he wanders home to me. 
 
 Poor creeping Elf! He gathers what he can 
 Herbs that each rash disdainful foot may reach, 
 Yet once who wore them understood the speech 
 Of bird and beast and all the song of Pan. 
 One hidden tongue they still have power to teach- 
 The obscure cry of toiling, suffering Man. 
 
 860345 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 ' DROP it, yer white-faced monkey, or I'll give 
 yer something to snivel for.' 
 
 Some one was saying it in a fierce screech- 
 ing voice, as James Pontin's heavy foot creaked 
 on the last step of the staircase ; the crazy 
 staircase of a London lodging-house, fetid- 
 smelling and pitch dark, except where a streak 
 of gray light fell across it through an open 
 doorway. In the room beyond half-a-dozen 
 dingy-coloured children were crawling like 
 vermin, distinguishable only by their move- 
 ment from the dingy floor, and a broken-nosed 
 woman sat at a table rocking herself over an 
 empty glass. James was a solid bumpkin, 
 but a curious sensation of moral and physical 
 sickness came over him as he glanced in at 
 the party, and then creaked on up, up the 
 black well of the staircase. To think that a 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 brother of his, a respectable Pontin, had 
 crept into such a hole to die ! ' This is what 
 comes of stiffhecked ways and wanting to live 
 different from your father and grandfather 
 before you, that were better men than you by 
 a long chalk.' Pride of race is not so exclu- 
 sively confined to the gentry as is sometimes 
 believed, and there was a dull sense of out- 
 raged family dignity about the scion of all 
 the respectable Pontins as he knocked at his 
 dead brother's door. For a moment he 
 heard, or seemed to hear, the harsh voice 
 yelling fierce words, and to see through the 
 gaping chinks of the door-hinges a woman in 
 black threateningly waving a toasting-fork ; 
 but the rustic mind is not a plate prepared 
 for instantaneous photography, and before 
 the impression had time to fix itself it was 
 effaced, for he stood in the room. It was a 
 dark room with a large dirty bed in one 
 corner and a table in the middle, covered 
 with a greasy remnant of linen and some 
 odds and ends of unwashed crockery. It 
 also contained a broken-down chest of drawers 
 and three chairs ; nothing besides, except the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 trestles the coffin had rested upon. The 
 woman in black still stood by the table, but 
 the toasting-fork was on the floor ; and she 
 held herself up stiff and straight, very con- 
 scious of her weeds, whose depth would not 
 have disgraced a duchess, if their colour sug- 
 gested the slop-shop round the corner. She 
 was a tall handsome woman, but she had 
 broken teeth, which made her smile look 
 ugly to the most superficial observer. Indeed 
 she was not much accustomed to disguising 
 her real character ; and if the lachrymose 
 whine in which she offered her brother-in-law 
 a seat was different from the shrill scream he 
 had heard outside, it was not a whit pleasanter. 
 However, this was of no consequence, for had 
 she been the most consummate actress in the 
 world her art would have been thrown away 
 on brother James. He had known for years 
 that George's Selina was a bad 'un, and when 
 he once knew a thing he knew it ; he was 
 not one to go chopping and changing his 
 opinion about folks just according as they 
 might choose to behave. But when there is 
 a death in the family an unusual mutual 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 politeness is expected of its members, and 
 under any circumstances Mr. Pontin had a 
 sort of dignity of his own, not traceable either 
 to intelligence or refinement So having 
 seated himself, he exchanged the due salu- 
 tations. 
 
 ' I hope you find yourself pretty tolerable, 
 Mrs. George.' 
 
 'As tolerable as can be expected, thank 
 you kindly, Mr. Pontin. And how are you ?' 
 
 Then followed Brother James's regrets at 
 having missed the funeral ; which were no 
 polite half-truths, but the expression of genuine 
 feelings, not to say reproaches. 
 
 'If I'd ha' known a day sooner I'd ha' 
 come, cost what cost might. Why, I got up 
 at three o'clock in the morning last Tuesday 
 w r as a year to 'ttend Cousin Gale's burying at 
 Watlington. I'd never ha' believed one of 
 my own brothers would be buried and me 
 not there.' 
 
 ' It was the medical orficer as did it,' said 
 Mrs. George, sulkily apologetic. ' He said as 
 the corpse didn't ought to stay in the room 
 along with us.' Then after a pause of con- 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 temptuous mental contemplation, she con- 
 tinued: 'He made a poor corpse, did George; 
 but I buried him handsome all the same, with 
 his insurance money. Nobody can't say as 
 I've not done things respectable, though he 
 wasn't the husband he might have been, Mr. 
 Pontin ; Lord forgive him, he wasn't which 
 it's gospel truth, miss ; so don't you give me 
 none of your impudence.' 
 
 The last words were addressed energeti- 
 cally to the ragged bed-curtain, from whose 
 folds Selina's disparaging remarks upon her 
 late spouse had momentarily evoked a small 
 white face, looking flat contradiction. 
 
 ' Is that Annie ? ' asked James, with a 
 touch of interest. 
 
 Annie had always been one of those 
 children who have an instinctive dislike to 
 offering even sympathetic witnesses the 
 spectacle of their tears. Having had time to 
 wipe her eyes and compose her features behind 
 the bed -curtains, she now stood up very 
 straight, and answered, ' Yes, uncle,' in a 
 quiet, civil voice. She was really fifteen, but 
 she looked very small and childish in the 
 
8 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 second-hand black frock she filled so in- 
 adequately, and she had kept those large 
 liquid eyes, blue even to the whites, which 
 are so common and usually so fleeting a 
 beauty among the children of the Southern 
 Midlands. Her hair, too, was bright and soft 
 like a child's. James Pontin looked at her 
 a few seconds in silence. Then he said 
 
 ' Her father told me as she favoured our 
 family. You've got a look of your Aunt 
 Susan, my dear her as went off in a decline 
 twelve year last Michaelmas.' 
 
 ' I shouldn't wonder if Annie was to go 
 into a decline one o' these days,' remarked 
 Selina, impartially surveying her offspring ; 
 ' she do favour her father. Now there was 
 Ethel, she took after me a fine big girl she 
 was. If it hadn't been along of the scarlatina 
 I could ha' reared Ethel ; but the others, they 
 were born for the churchyard, as you may 
 say.' 
 
 Meantime her brother-in-law was slowly 
 working a bundle of soiled letters and several 
 worn flat leather cases out of his breast- 
 pocket 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' You know as poor George wrote to me 
 to come and fetch Annie ? ' he asked. 
 
 Selina did not know it Like many a 
 man who has something more valuable to 
 dispose of than a little daughter, he had 
 waited till he himself was safe inside the 
 fortress of the grave before giving the signal 
 for that battle which too often rages round 
 testamentary dispositions. 
 
 But Selina was not altogether inclined to 
 fight. She stood silent for a few minutes, 
 with her eyes on the floor, rapidly reviewing 
 the position. For all she knew her brother- 
 in-law might have a legal claim upon Annie, 
 in which case it was best to make a virtue of 
 necessity. At any rate, was it worth her 
 while to keep the girl ? No. If she had 
 favoured Selina it would have been different ; 
 but there was an innate respectability about 
 Annie which made her an irksome companion 
 to her mother, and likely to be more plague 
 than profit in the career which the latter had 
 sketched out for herself. Yet it would be 
 foolish to display too much alacrity in getting 
 rid of her daughter, and so lose the chance 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 of a little money down as the price of that 
 maternal sacrifice. 
 
 ' Well, to be sure,' she whimpered, making 
 a pad of a dirty handkerchief, to receive the 
 expected tears ; ' if it ain't hard on a poor 
 widow to have her only girl taken away from 
 her, just as she's getting of an age to be 
 useful.' 
 
 ' It's for her good, Mrs. George ; you know 
 as it is.' 
 
 ' My only child to be taken away from me, 
 and me left without a soul to speak to, and 
 she such a one for her needle ! Why times 
 and times she've earned eighteenpence a 
 day mending socks and gentlemen's under- 
 linen.' 
 
 This statement was inaccurate, and there 
 was a short thrust and parry of looks between 
 child and mother. 
 
 James Pontin had carefully opened two 
 dog-eared letters and laid them on the table 
 before his sister-in-law ; but her eyes ran over 
 them to fix on the smaller crisper bit of paper 
 he was slowly flattening out on the table. 
 His fingers lingered regretfully upon it ; it 
 
A VILLAGE 7JRAGEDY 
 
 was a serious business in these hard times to 
 part with five pounds ; but the Pontins had 
 always done the handsome thing by each 
 other, and having once paid a sum down, he 
 meant to have done with Selina. 
 
 ' It's all for her good,' he repeated slowly. 
 ' And look'ee, Mrs. George, you're welcome 
 to this here fi'-pun note I'll be bound it'll 
 cover twice over any loss there'll be to you 
 in the matter. But mind you, you won't 
 get no more, not till kingdom come.' The 
 words were scarcely out of his mouth before 
 the note was in Selina's hand and her hand- 
 kerchief in her pocket. 
 
 ' I dessay it will be all for her good, as 
 you was saying, Mr. Pontin,' she said briskly. 
 ' You'll call for her pretty early to-morrow, I 
 expect.' 
 
 ' You don't suppose as I'm a-going to sleep 
 the night in Lon'on,' he rejoined, with an 
 emphasis that was almost indignation. ' Why, 
 I'm pretty nigh choked with the place already 
 besides, Lord knows what live creatures I 
 might be taking back into aunt's feather beds. 
 No since parting's to be, you may as welJ 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 part with her to-day as to-morrow. I reckon 
 it won't take Annie long to put her bits of 
 things together ; and if so be the train's 
 running, we'll get back home afore dark.' 
 
 1 You hear that, Annie ? You look sharp, 
 now,' said the bereaved mother, tightening 
 the loose elastic of an old purse over the 
 five-pound note. ' 
 
 Annie, who had all this while been silent, 
 leaning against the bed, rose with a dazed 
 look, and opening a drawer, began to turn 
 over a small shabby heap of clothes. Her 
 mother put a sheet of brown paper on the 
 ground, by way of a travelling trunk, and 
 bustled round. 
 
 'What in the name o' wonder's that rub- 
 bish you're taking?' she asked contemptu- 
 ously, after a bit ' Things as belonged to 
 father,' Annie answered shortly. There was 
 a dogged set about the corners of her soft 
 child mouth which Selina knew. Generally 
 speaking it would not have deterred her from 
 a quarrel to know that nothing was to be 
 gained by it, but just now the money in her 
 pocket gave her a comfortable feeling that 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 13 
 
 was almost good-nature, and she allowed the 
 matter to pass. 
 
 It certainly did not take Annie long to 
 put up her bits of things. The large bulging 
 brown-paper parcel, whose outline is painfully 
 familiar to the frequenter of third-class com- 
 partments, was in her uncle's hand, and she 
 stood there in her black hat trimmed with 
 rusty crape and her thin pseudo-fashionable 
 cape, ready for the parting embrace. 
 
 ' Good-bye, Annie,' said Selina, pecking 
 her on the cheek. ' And mind you be a 
 better girl to your uncle than you've been 
 to me.' 
 
 ' I'm sorry if I've been a bad girl to you, 
 mother, and I hope as you'll forgive me,' 
 answered the child in a set mechanical tone, 
 and followed her uncle, still with the dazed 
 look in her eyes. But suddenly, when they 
 had reached the door, she turned as though 
 some one had called her, and stood still, with 
 an intent stare fixed upon the bed. James 
 Pontin also stood still, surprised, his hand on 
 the lock. He was just going to touch her 
 on the shoulder, when with a rush and a 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 bound she was at the other side of the room, 
 lying face downwards on the bed, and sobbing 
 with deep convulsive sobs. 
 
 'O father, father!' she moaned, 'father!' . 
 
 Her uncle turned back and stood by the 
 bedside. 
 
 ' Come, come, my girl,' he said kindly, 
 ' don't ye take on so. It's all for the best.' 
 
 ' Of course it's all for the best/ echoed 
 the mother impatiently, feeling in her pocket. 
 ' Visitor come and told her and her father 
 times out of mind as it's right down silly to 
 be allays striving against the Lord's will. 
 But there it ain't no use. Annie's a rum 
 W 
 
 The sobs ceased as suddenly as they had 
 begun, and the girl got up. 
 
 ' It was only o' Sunday,' she said to the 
 opposite wall. 
 
 She meant it was only on Sunday that 
 her father's wasted figure had been propped 
 on those pillows, 
 
 ' I'm sorry to leave you, Annie dear,' he 
 had whispered painfully, with his poor ghost 
 of a voice. It seemed years ago, yet every 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 15 
 
 now and then she expected to see the familiar 
 haggard face lying there, with the only eyes 
 in the world that spoke of love to her. 
 
 ' Why, there, silly ! It wasn't o' Sunday, 
 it was o' Monday,' sniffed Selina, fancying 
 the child spoke of her father's death. 
 
 ' Good-bye, mother,' said Annie again, and 
 the door closed on her and her uncle. The 
 farmer's heavy step went blundering down 
 the dark staircase, and Selina, taking a black 
 bottle from under the bed, sat down to the 
 ecstatic contemplation of her small capital. 
 
 On the borders of Oxfordshire there is 
 a long straight ridge of hill, running north 
 and south. At one end it lifts itself higher, 
 like a breaking wave, before it drops down 
 into the wide valley beneath. Here perches 
 the village of High Cross, suggesting some- 
 how, in the midst of utter unlikeness, remi- 
 niscences of a fortress town, crowning with 
 battlement and tower some rocky height in 
 Italy. For, as round the hoary walls of the 
 mediaeval stronghold, so too round the cottages 
 and stackyards of the peaceful village, there 
 
i6 
 
 runs the glory of a great view. An irregular 
 row of tiled roofs, a corner of grass-grown 
 churchyard, with its low stone boundary and 
 immemorial yew, a slope of field, golden with 
 buttercups or ripening corn all the pictur- 
 esque commonplaces of rural England, thrown 
 against the intense blues, the dim waving 
 lines of that shadow-swept distance, take an 
 unwonted decision of outline and a poetry 
 not their own. There have been episodes 
 too in the history of the hill village which 
 recall the stormy past of the hill town. On 
 the steep edge of the southern slope stands 
 an Elizabethan hall, now a farmhouse ; but 
 its high terrace, and the moat-like fish-ponds 
 below, its entrance with the yew hedges and 
 stately gateway, remain unchanged. On the 
 north, where the road dips down to the long 
 straight back of the ridge, run walls of mellow 
 stone which once enclosed another old manor; 
 but some profane or stupid inheritor of ancient 
 grandeur has levelled it to the ground, and 
 there remains little beside the piers of the 
 gate and a high octagonal summer-house, 
 placed like a watch-tower at the northern 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 17 
 
 corner. These sturdy walled places flanking 
 the village marked it out as a retreat for the 
 broken remnant of a Royalist army in the 
 Parliamentary wars ; and the steep fields of 
 grass and corn, and the narrow gray bridge 
 over the stream below, have felt the iron thud 
 of cannon-balls, and drunk their share of 
 human blood. At the end of the village 
 street, a little before you reach the Manor, 
 as the site of the demolished house is still 
 called, stands Pontin's farm ; a low gabled 
 building some two hundred and odd years 
 old. A Pontin built it, and Pontins have 
 lived in it ever since ; but they have shared 
 the fate of other yeomen farmers, and pay 
 rent now to the remote and graceless de- 
 stroyer of the old Manor. A strip of garden 
 separates it from the road, and just opposite 
 stand three or four great elm-trees, shading 
 a broken stone cross. On the farther, side 
 the ground drops suddenly ; beyond the 
 battered shaft of the cross, high on its uneven 
 steps, stretches the wide distance, with, on 
 sunny days, the far-off city's cluster of turrets, 
 rising pale gray from the dim blue waves of 
 2 
 
1 8 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 wooded country. It was in the shadow of 
 these elms that Annie Pontin alighted, after 
 a long slow drive through lanes and fields, 
 whose utter silence startled and almost be- 
 wildered the cockney child. In honour of 
 the occasion her uncle drew up at the garden 
 wicket instead of driving into the farmyard, 
 from which an overgrown boy, plain and 
 dull of countenance, came out to take the 
 cart. Mr. Pontin addressed a few questions 
 to the lad in his grave severe voice, discon- 
 tented beforehand with the slow and stammer- 
 ing answers. Meantime an idiot child with a 
 large head came slowly down the steps of the 
 cross, moping and mowing at the newcomer. 
 
 ' He's the stoopidest lad as ever I kept, is 
 Jess,' muttered the farmer to himself as he 
 threw the reins to the boy, and led the way 
 up the flagged path to the door. It stood 
 open, and they went on through some low 
 stone passages. ' Aunt ! aunt ! Where are 
 you got to?' he shouted. 
 
 ' Lor, uncle,' returned an invisible some one, 
 evidently more surprised than pleased, 'you 
 don't mean to say as that's you come back 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 19 
 
 a'ready ? And me only jest washed up the 
 tea-things, and not expecting you till supper!' 
 
 ' There ain't no accounting for them trains,' 
 Mr. Pontin apologised. ' This 'un come back 
 such a deal quicker nor it went.' 
 
 They had reached the threshold of a low 
 square room, with a brick floor and a window 
 overgrown with greenery. A shelf ran round 
 three sides of it, on which stood pans full of 
 milk ajid cream, dishes of butter and little 
 piles of eggs, shading through all tones, from 
 a pearly transparent white to a warm reddish 
 brown. Mrs. Pontin was counting the eggs 
 into a market basket, for it was Friday even- 
 ing. She was a rather short and very broad 
 woman, with long arms and a round red face. 
 She wore a purplish print dress and an old 
 black straw hat with a purple ribbon round 
 it. 
 
 ' This is Annie,' said James, with his hand 
 on the girl's shoulder. 
 
 Mrs. Pontin came forward, wiping her thick 
 wet fingers on her apron, and looking hard at 
 Annie. 
 
 ' You're kindly welcome, my dear,' she said, 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' and I hope you'll be a good girl to them as 
 is good to you. Plenty of work and plenty 
 of victuals that's what you'll find here. We 
 must all on us work for our living. I'm 
 sure I works hard enough for mine I do' 
 know whatever uncle would do without me.' 
 
 Then she looked hard at Annie again. 
 She had seen Selina once, and had expected 
 her daughter to be different from that ; worse 
 in some ways, and better in others. The 
 Annie of her imagination had worn a locket 
 and some feathers, had a fine colour, a facile 
 smile, and a rolling black eye ; in short, every 
 outward sign of tendencies which Mrs. James 
 understood so little she imagined herself equal 
 to suppressing them. A tall robust frame 
 and long arms, with immense latent capacities 
 for scouring and bucket -carrying, were the 
 compensating qualities of the imaginary 
 Annie. The real one was small and pale, 
 with a grave shy look ; plainly the daughter 
 of that George whose corpse had reflected 
 so little credit on his family. 
 
 ' I suppose as you've got Ben's room 
 ready ?' asked Mr. Pontin. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 21 
 
 ' I suppose as I ain't done nothing of the 
 sort,' retorted his wife sharply ; and, leaning 
 over the market basket, she went on counting 
 the eggs for a few minutes. Then she turned 
 round and resumed the subject. ' Ben's room ! 
 a likely thing, indeed ! Why, what 'ud we 
 do if Benny was to come back, and him so 
 partic'lar about his ornaments ? You come 
 along o' me, Annie, my girl, and never mind 
 uncle.' 
 
 There was something startling in hearing 
 her dignified uncle thus summarily disposed 
 of, but Annie followed Mrs. Pontin up two 
 short steep flights of stairs, till they reached 
 a small attic room with sloping walls. 
 . ' You'll find it uncommon comfortable after 
 Lon'on, I dessay,' said aunt kindly. ' It was 
 the girl's room when we kep' one but lor ! 
 them girls I arlways say is a deal more plague 
 than profit I'd a sight sooner do a thing 
 straight off myself than have to be undoin' 
 it and doin' it again after them.' 
 
 It was true that aunt ' arlways said ' this 
 when the subject of ' girls ' came up ; it was 
 one of the limited stock of remarks that 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 formed her conversational repertoire. But 
 this did not prevent its being discouraging to 
 the new ' girl,' who said timidly, turning very 
 pink : 
 
 ' I'm afraid you'll find me a lot of trouble, 
 aunt.' 
 
 ' Never you mind me, my dear,' replied 
 Mrs. Pontin cheerfully. ' I'm that used to 
 trouble I don't know what I should do with- 
 out it. Work, work, work, from morning till 
 night that's my motto. Uncle says he 
 never see such a woman.' 
 
 She hung a towel over the solitary chair, 
 and lumbered off to fetch a bit of soap. 
 
 The linen on the bed was old but fine, and 
 marked J. P. in the corner with elaborate 
 flourishes in red cotton. When Annie, 
 wearied out with the experiences of the day, 
 crept between the cool sheets, she noticed 
 how sweet they smelt. Truth to tell, Mrs. 
 Pontin's own capacious nostrils recked little 
 of savours, good or evil ; but it was one 01 
 the traditional observances of the house to 
 cut the lavender every year from the bushes 
 on each side of the door and lay it in the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 23 
 
 linen-presses, between the sheets. The odour 
 lingered among them like a vain silent prayer 
 to be remembered, breathing from those whose 
 hands had long ago stored up and tended the 
 delicate linen, whose bodies had lain warm in 
 it, and now were mouldering under the long 
 grass in the neglected churchyard. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A PERSON of great natural respectability who 
 has once been guilty of an indiscretion will 
 never allow the fact to be forgotten. Crudely 
 or by implication, according to their social 
 and intellectual status, will they be eternally 
 justifying their particular motives and general 
 character, before a world which scarcely re- 
 members to impugn them. Mrs. Pontin had 
 once committed a breach of certain conven- 
 tionalities which are at least as punctually 
 observed in her class as in a higher one. 
 She had married James Pontin within a few 
 months of her first husband's death. Annie, 
 like the rest of aunt's acquaintances, was 
 destined to hear often and in much detail the 
 history of the circumstances which had led to 
 this breach of etiquette; indeed it was difficult 
 to imagine how Mrs. Pontin's conversation 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 25 
 
 got on before it had found this central point 
 upon which to revolve. 
 
 It was on the first morning after Annie's 
 arrival that she was initiated. She was 
 ' going over ' the stone floor of the back 
 kitchen with a wet cloth and weak little 
 hands, while her aunt's stumpy but agile 
 fingers were peeling potatoes. 
 
 'Did you ever see your Aunt Susan ? : 
 asked Mrs. Pontin. 
 
 ' No/ answered Annie, ' but I've heard tell 
 of her. Father used to say I was like her. 
 She went off in a decline, didn't she?' 
 
 ' Yes ; she was Benny's mother, and I 
 always was that fond of Benny. If it hadn't 
 been along of him and my hundred pounds, 
 as I couldn't get back, I don't know as I 
 should ever ha' married Pontin.' 
 
 Aunt, if a severe, was not an ill-natured wife, 
 but she was always anxious to clear herself 
 from the imputation of having been moved 
 to her second marriage by any personal 
 partiality for the bridegroom. It must be 
 recognised that she had acted throughout 
 under the pressure of stern necessity. 
 
26 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 'Your Aunt Susan, she kep' house for 
 uncle ; and however he did for all the live 
 creatures and Benny and hisself them months 
 after she was buried, Lord only knows. I 
 believe he've gone so far as to say it was a 
 real blessin' my poor Kite died Easter followin' 
 which it ain't right nor kind of him.' 
 
 Aunt's free comments on her husband did 
 not shock Annie so greatly as they might 
 one of us, who are accustomed to insinuate 
 more delicately than Mrs. Pontin the numer- 
 ous failings and general inferiority of our 
 spouses. Yet she felt vaguely chilled as she 
 put in the proper monosyllables at the differ- 
 ent points in her aunt's discourse. 
 
 ' Kite, he was gardener down at the Hall 
 that was afore it was let to Mr. Shepherd 
 and I was dairywoman there more nor twenty 
 year. We'd saved atween us a matter of a 
 hunderd pounds, and then what must he be 
 after but lending it to James Pontin, and 
 never a bit of paper passed. Lor, poor man, 
 it was on his mind when he come to die ! 
 Did your father die hard, Annie?' 
 
 'I don't know,' answered Annie, getting 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 27 
 
 white ; ' I was asleep, and mother didn't have 
 me woke.' 
 
 ' Kite, he died very hard. He took a chill 
 and went off sudden a strong hearty man, too, 
 Re was. He'd been in a kind o' agony most 
 o' the day, moaning and crying out badly ; 
 then when it began to get dark he lay still a 
 bit, and I thought I heard him rattle. " He's 
 gone, poor soul," thinks I, and I goes to open 
 the window, when all on a sudden "Jane !" 
 he says, in a voice fit to startle you. I 
 jumped round in a flurry, as you may think, 
 and there were his eyes wide open. "Jane," 
 he says again, but weaker, and still staring at 
 me, till his eyes were a'most coming out of 
 his head. " Thomas," says I, solemn-like 
 for I mostly called him Tom "if there's any- 
 thing on your mind, don't you go to the 
 grave with it." Then he kind o' pulled me, 
 to get my head down to his mouth ; and he 
 says slowly, in a rattling sort of whisper, 
 "Pontin Pontin,you get my hunderd pounds, 
 get my hunderd pounds my hunderd " 
 and with that he stopped sudden, stretched 
 hisself out, and died, with the words, as you 
 
28 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 may say, between his lips. Ay, he was a 
 careful man, was Kite, that he was!' 
 
 And Mrs. Pontin heaved a sigh over the 
 husband of her youth, as she began mixing 
 the potato-peelings with meal, for a lady pig 
 in a delicate state of health. 
 
 ' There, now whatever was I to do ? ' she 
 began again, argumentatively, 'havingno paper, 
 and me a lone woman, and all on us turned 
 out at the Hall, on account of Mr. Shepherd 
 taking it I don't want to say as uncle 
 would ha' robbed me, but he swore and 
 declared as he couldn't pay me then and 
 me a lone woman. " You'd a deal better 
 marry me right off, Mrs. Kite," says Pontin. 
 "There's all the things waiting and spoiling, 
 for the matter of that. And whatever to do 
 with Benny since his mammer died, I don't 
 know." So what with one thing and another, 
 and my husband having died with uncle's 
 name, as you may say, on his lips, why I 
 married him twelve year come the fifth of 
 July. And he've been a kind husband to 
 me, have Pontin ; but there ! he ain't like 
 Kite.' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 29 
 
 Then followed the whole sad story of 
 naughty Benny. The boy had shared Mrs. 
 Pontin's affections with the young pigs and 
 turkeys and ducklings, whom having nourished 
 with maternal devotion during their infancy 
 she despatched to the Oxford poulterers with- 
 out a pang, when they had come to the period 
 of succulence, if not of discretion. She loved 
 the human creature in proportion as it ap- 
 proached the animal. With grown persons 
 her patience was remarkably limited ; but 
 children might chase her pigs, frighten her 
 brood-hens and make mud-pies on her kitchen 
 floor, and get no further remonstrance than 
 ' Pretty dears ! They be always at some- 
 thing ; ' or ' There now, what a heat you be 
 getting in ! ' Had Benny been a girl, it is 
 likely that aunt's indulgence for him would 
 have come to an earlier and more absolute 
 end than it did. As it was, her affection for 
 him really remained, though as he grew up 
 she became angry and sharp-tongued over 
 the spoilt idle ways she had encouraged in 
 their beginning. There had been stormy 
 scenes between the boy and his adopted 
 
30 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 parents ; and at last, about a year before 
 Annie's arrival, he had run away from home 
 and had never sent them a line since. 
 
 ' And him as could write so beautiful ! 
 Oh, it was right down cruel of him ! ' 
 
 Benny was gone, but his story was not with- 
 out its influence on Annie's position. It had 
 embittered James Pontin, hardened his heart, 
 and given him a vague sense of antagonism 
 to young folks and their ways. In aunt's 
 eyes Annie must always have had great dis- 
 advantages, not being a boy, and having 
 passed the age of legitimate helplessness, 
 without being stalwart and helpful. Still she 
 too might have been more interested in the 
 child, had it not been for the haunting shade 
 of the absent Benny. If Annie herself had 
 been fearless and demonstrative, with the 
 ready smiles and innocent impertinences that 
 are learned in a happy home, she might have 
 stormed the gates of these two narrow and 
 preoccupied hearts. But, like many people 
 with an almost morbid craving for affection, 
 she was slow to express and slower to claim 
 it, This was partly the fault of her Saxon 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 31 
 
 blood, and partly of the fifteen years spent 
 under the violent tyranny of Selina. Her 
 father too had been an undemonstrative man, 
 but she had quite understood how much he 
 loved her. She had been to him not only a 
 daughter, but a living reminder of his favourite 
 sister, and a proof which he seemed to want 
 that all his life had not been spent in city 
 streets and workshops ; that he had really 
 once been a healthy country boy, playing 
 about the steep fields and crouching in the 
 wide chimney corner of the farm at High 
 Cross, with the other well-washed and well- 
 whipped Pontin children. His affection had 
 perhaps encouraged the sensitiveness of her 
 character too much for her future happiness ; 
 but some children are born with a conscious 
 delight in love which comes to others either 
 with years or not at all. So all the material 
 advantages of High Cross did not make up 
 to her for the tenderness and sympathy she 
 had known and knew no more. 
 
 She found herself as much despised by 
 her aunt as she had been by her mother, if 
 from a different point of view ; for she had 
 
32 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 learnt little in London that was of service to 
 her in the country, and in short was not the 
 stuff out of which a good farm help is made. 
 She was intelligent, certainly, and grew 
 physically stronger in that fine bracing air ; 
 but if there was any improvement in her, 
 it was not Mrs. Pontin who would acknow- 
 ledge it She had early proclaimed that 
 Annie had ' no more strength nor a mouse/ 
 and was ' that arkward ' at her work she 
 ' couldn't abear to see her ' ; and her opinion 
 once given, she was not one to go back upon 
 it It is true that the girl had accomplish- 
 ments of her own. Selina had once been a 
 cook, and in her flashes of domesticity she 
 had found Annie a ready learner. But the 
 Pontins' Sunday dinner a lump of half-raw 
 meat, some partially boiled potatoes, and a 
 greasy suet pudding seemed to them already 
 an ideal repast not admitting of improvement 
 She was also a first-rate needlewoman, and 
 had considerable taste. But aunt appreciated 
 nothing in needlework beyond strong stitches, 
 and was not half sure that she liked the air 
 of smartness Annie's little fingers contrived 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 33 
 
 to give even to a black lace cap with purple 
 ribbons. She had all her life been providen- 
 tially sustained in the most severe principles 
 about ribbons and other personal adornments, 
 by her uncompromising ugliness. Probably 
 causes of the same kind, besides her continual 
 occupiedness, strengthened her in the belief 
 of the old-fashioned poor, that respectable 
 persons keep ' themselves to themselves.' She 
 had a few old cousins and other cronies of her 
 own standing in the village, but she numbered 
 no family of young people among her inti- 
 mates. The hill folk are a rough lot, far from 
 Arcadian in their words or ways, and full of 
 a suspicious wonder at strangers ; and Annie 
 felt the want of companions, when she had 
 time to think about it. Presently she begun 
 to make herself companions of inanimate 
 things, that suggested fancies about the dead 
 people who had been young in the house 
 before her. On the panelled walls of the 
 parlour hung two samplers, beautifully worked 
 in silks. One had a red geometrical house 
 and two equally geometrical ladies under it, 
 and was signed, in blue Anne Turrill, 1810. 
 3 
 
34 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 The other had some moral verses, three sprays 
 of flowers, and the signature Stisan Pontin, 
 1832, in red. All over the house there was 
 patchwork and embroidery that had been 
 worked by these two, her grandmother and 
 her aunt. There was a black profile of the 
 one and a daguerrotype of the other over the 
 parlour chimney-piece, and Annie used to 
 fancy they were like her father ; though in 
 fact they had never had the faintest resem- 
 blance to anybody. It was of no use to ask 
 either Mr. or Mrs. Pontin about poor Susan ; 
 it led to little except a comparison of her 
 management of the pigs and poultry with 
 aunt's, very much to the advantage of the 
 latter. James had been fond of his sister, 
 but he had forgotten it, and was never tired 
 of congratulating himself on his acuteness in 
 having secured the services of the ex-Mrs. 
 Kite. 
 
 ' There's a smart deal of the rent comes 
 out of the poultry-yard nowadays,' he would 
 say to her in moments of unusual confidence 
 ' I don't know whatever I should do if you 
 was took.' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 35 
 
 ' I do hope as the Lord will spare me,' 
 Mrs. Pontin would respond fervently. ' It's 
 a sin to think of the money you'd be spending 
 on girls and things as don't know a hen's 
 egg from a galeeny's. It ain't Annie as 
 would be a help to her uncle,' she would add, 
 by way of applying a wholesome stimulus to 
 her niece, if she happened to be in the room. 
 
 One evening when aunt was tenderly 
 soothing the death-bed of a young chicken, 
 and Annie and Mr. Pontin were consequently 
 alone in the kitchen, she began timidly : 
 
 ' It's a long time, isn't it, uncle, since 
 grandmother died ?' 
 
 Mr. Pontin put down the Oxford Guardian 
 and rubbed his forehead. 
 
 'Nigh upon eight -and -thirty year,' he 
 answered slowly. 
 
 'Was she like that black thing in the 
 parlour?' asked Annie. 
 
 Mr. Pontin deliberated. ' I do' know as 
 she was,' he said. Then, after a pause : 
 * She was a furinner in these parts, my mother 
 was ; come from Millwater ' a village some 
 five miles away. 
 
36 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' Was she like Aunt Susan?' Annie persisted. 
 
 Mr. Pontin deliberated again. ' I do' know 
 as she was. Leastways, I don't seem to 
 recollect rightly.' 
 
 ' She must have been a rare good worker,' 
 said the girl. ' It's pretty, that quilt she 
 done in the best bedroom.' 
 
 ' She was a very respectable woman was 
 my mother, uncommon respectable,' uncle 
 affirmed impressively ; ' and a nice-looking 
 woman too, I believe.' He paused once 
 more. ' I've heard the gentlemen in Oxford 
 thought a deal of her cream-cheeses.' 
 
 This was all the family history or senti- 
 ment that was to be extracted from James, 
 and after a while Annie left off thinking 
 much about the deceased Pontins ; partly 
 because it was unsatisfactory, and partly 
 because she found a living person, not far 
 from her own age, to think about. 
 
 It was towards the end of June, when the 
 hay was mostly carried, but Mr. Pontin had 
 got behind with the upper meadow, and the 
 hand of the weather-glass was going round 
 to Change. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 37 
 
 ' No one won't be back from the hay- 
 making this long while,' said Mrs. Pontin, as 
 the shadows of the great walnut trees stretched 
 themselves across the orchard. ' You must 
 go and bring the cows back from the Manor 
 field, Annie.' 
 
 Poor Annie ! She had only been some 
 few months at the farm, and horned beasts 
 were still very terrible to her. But to state 
 her objections to them would have been both 
 humiliating and useless, so she put on her 
 sun-bonnet and went out through the orchard. 
 Mr. Pontin rented the ground on which the 
 Manor had stood, and which was only separ- 
 ated by a lane from the farm land. The 
 gateway opening on the lane had once been 
 filled with fine ironwork, but now a common 
 wooden field gate leaned between the square 
 stone piers. This broken-down gate and the 
 dirty cattle-track it crossed seemed like a 
 coarse satire on the two battered but dignified 
 stone monsters which flanked it, each on 
 his secular perch ; each looking out over 
 the country below with an air of haughty 
 dominion, unconscious that the shield he 
 
38 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 superintended had been removed, and that 
 he had absolutely nothing behind him. 
 Ridiculous yet venerable creatures ! They 
 had much in common with the small country 
 aristocracy to whom they owed their existence. 
 The kitchen -garden of the Manor still 
 remained, in the corner of the field next the 
 summer-house. This summer-house was a 
 picturesque building, with its eight sides, its 
 high tiled roof gilded over with lichen, its 
 carved doorway, and little mullioned windows. 
 A tall Scotch fir with a red stem overleaned 
 it, splashing its mellow walls and roof with 
 shadows. The landlord's agent let it as a 
 cottage, but at present only the upper room 
 was occupied the tenant being Jesse Will- 
 iams, the Pontins' ex-ploughboy, now work- 
 ing at the Hall farm. All Mr. Shepherd's 
 hay was up, and Jesse, who had come home 
 soon after five, was comfortably consuming 
 some brownish hot water and a piece of 
 alumy bread, when he saw Annie come into 
 the field a small black figure in a white 
 sun-bonnet The cows were feeding together, 
 and she skirted them cautiously. ' Co' up, 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 39 
 
 Violet ! Co' up, Diamond ! ' But the cool 
 of the evening had given them an appetite, 
 and the crunching sound continued unabated. 
 It seems a simple matter to drive three cows 
 and a heifer out of a field ; but if they choose 
 to turn a deaf ear to your most pointed 
 remarks and you are a small and unarmed 
 person, with a somewhat exaggerated respect 
 for their horns, how are you to do it ? It 
 would be difficult to think of a better plan 
 than Annie's, although it had not the merit 
 of success. She stood behind them, shaking 
 her skirts with immense energy, and ejacu- 
 lating ' Shuh ! Shuh ! ' It was enough to 
 terrify the boldest duckling that ever floundered 
 in a meal-pan ; but cows are of a more phleg- 
 matic disposition, and it was some minutes 
 before they even looked round. Then first 
 the heifer turned right-about-face to stare at 
 this minute animated whirlwind, and one by 
 one the three cows followed her example. 
 There seemed a world of unpleasant meaning 
 in their large eyes under their large horns, 
 and in the long breaths they puffed out of 
 their great pink nostrils, as they advanced 
 
slowly upon her, step by step. For some 
 minutes she kept retreating gradually back- 
 wards, while her courage, being of about the 
 same consistency as Bob Acres', went on 
 oozing out at the ends of her fingers. At 
 last she fairly turned tail, and ran as fast as 
 her legs could carry her to a thick clump of 
 alder-bushes, higher up the field. Just as 
 she reached it the lank figure of Jesse appeared 
 from the other side. She stopped running 
 abruptly, and walked up to the alders, with 
 a rather exaggerated air of dignified de- 
 liberation. 
 
 ' Good evening, Jess. I was coming to 
 get a stick,' she said ; ' the cows won't do as 
 I bid 'em without.' 
 
 Jess grinned. 
 
 ' J-jest you wait a bit and let m-me cut it,' 
 he said in his stammering way. Then, as 
 he was hacking at the juicy stem of the alder 
 with a blunt horn-handled knife 'There 
 ain't no sense in being afeard of cows,' he 
 remarked, in a tone whose kindliness effaced 
 any roughness there might appear to be in 
 the words. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 41 
 
 ' I've never been used to animals,' Annie 
 admitted, ' and it makes me timid-like, being 
 left alone with 'em. They do stare so 
 seems as though they ought to speak/ 
 
 ' You'd best let me drive 'em back for 
 you,' he said, making a switch of the green 
 branch. ' They knows me, poor beasts.' 
 
 Annie jumped at the offer. The cows, 
 being conservative animals, no sooner heard 
 the familiar voice of the ploughboy than they 
 resignedly turned their faces to the gate and 
 begun to plod homewards ; not after the 
 ill -regulated manner of horses, who whisk 
 their tails and hurry the pace, or stop and 
 snatch a wanton mouthful by the way, but 
 slowly and steadily, with unturned heads and 
 an entire acceptance of the inevitable. 
 
 ' Folks talks a deal of nonsense about 
 cows,' Jess observed, as he and Annie followed 
 them through the gate. 'And about bulls 
 too, for the matter o' that.' 
 
 'Oh, I couldn't abide a bull! They're 
 dreadful dangerous,' she cried. 
 
 Jess smiled down on her with some 
 superiority. 
 
42 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' Why there's our old bull at the Hall, you 
 might pull his tail off pretty nigh and you 
 wouldn't get no harm, he've got such a 
 beautiful temper' and the switch came 
 down smartly on the heifer's back. 
 
 ' I ain't going to try, though ; and I don't 
 suppose as you will either, Master Jess,' 
 returned she, with a touch of town flippancy 
 and a giggle. 
 
 Jess giggled too and walked on in silence, 
 musing a repartee. None, however, occurring 
 to him, he laughed again. This was all the 
 conversation that took place between them 
 till they reached the cow -shed, yet their 
 acquaintance with each other seemed to have 
 progressed further in the few minutes' walk 
 behind the cows than in all the mornings 
 they had breakfasted together in the farm 
 kitchen. There had always been a certain 
 silent sympathy between them. They were 
 both ' furinners in High Cross ' an import- 
 ant factor in life there and while Jess was 
 being grumbled at in the yard, Annie was 
 being upbraided among the poultry-coops or 
 in the dairy. Moreover, if Mr. or Mrs. Pontin 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 43 
 
 wished to give an example of the degeneracy 
 of the young men or maidens of to-day, Jess 
 and Annie served as such alternately. Like 
 many of the best workers, intellectual as well 
 as practical, Mrs. Pontin wanted either the 
 patience or the power to train others, and Uncle 
 James was also an impatient teacher ; so that 
 the boy and girl had often smarted together 
 under a sense of injustice, as well as harshness. 
 
 Not being used to consideration, Annie 
 perhaps exaggerated the amount of gratitude 
 due to Jess for his timely assistance with the 
 cows. She stood at the door of the stable, 
 and did not find any words in which to 
 thank him. 
 
 ' I wish as you'd let me do something for 
 you,' she said at last, timidly touching his 
 sleeve as he went out. ' There's such a hole 
 in your coat here, just at the elber ; it's all 
 scraped up, ever so far. It would make a 
 beautiful darn.' 
 
 ' Oh, never you mind,' responded Jess, 
 brusque and awkward. ' There's Betsy Todd 
 mends me o' Saturdays, when I spares the 
 money.' 
 
44 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 But Annie was not to be denied. 
 
 ' You'd best let me do it,' she said decisively. 
 ' She'd boggle it dreadful, old Betsy would. 
 You just hang it up here, and to-morrow 
 when I come to the garden I'll put it inside 
 your window.' 
 
 And as Annie really wished and intended 
 to do it, and Jesse had no cause for denying 
 her except violent bashfulness, he ended by 
 divesting himself of his coat, with that hang- 
 dog and sullen expression of countenance 
 which indicates pleasing embarrassment in 
 the breast of the British swain. 
 
 This was the beginning of a friendship 
 between the young people which, without 
 having in it much of sentiment, soon filled a 
 considerable space in both their lives, for the 
 simple reason that each was to the other the 
 only friend. In the long summer evenings, 
 when Annie was picking the fruit for market, 
 or tending the few flowers that still straggled 
 about among the vegetables in the old Manor 
 garden, Jess was never far off. Sometimes 
 they would pick raspberries or currants 
 silently together, side by side, till the chill 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 45 
 
 dew rose and their faces looked white in the 
 gathering darkness. Sometimes they would 
 sit on the walled edge of the garden, where 
 it dropped into the meadow, while Annie did 
 a bit of mending for Jess by the last red 
 light of the evening. Aunt had no objection 
 to Jesse's lending a hand in the garden ; 
 whether she would equally have approved of 
 the half-hours spent by Annie in putting him 
 straight is doubtful. Yet they were but the 
 just recompense of his labours. Had Jesse 
 had the sole direction of these interviews, 
 they would have more exactly resembled 
 those which may be witnessed Sunday after 
 Sunday in any country lane ; where the 
 square couples, with shining red faces, pass 
 one after the other, arm-in-arm, or even 
 locked in more tender embrace, but always 
 absolutely silent, and as a rule stolidly star- 
 ing in opposite directions. The peasant is 
 inarticulate in his loves, like the trees and 
 plants and the many scarcely more conscious 
 things with which he shares alas ! so un- 
 equally the bounty and the beauty of the 
 great Mother. Not only in his loves, but 
 
46 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 also in his intimacies ; for Jess was not yet 
 Annie's lover ; his attachment to her was 
 chiefly the clinging of one lonely human 
 creature to another, though there was in it a 
 grain of romance, arising from the conscious- 
 ness that he was not her equal. Though 
 treated as a farm servant, Mr. Pontin's niece 
 was socially above the former workhouse boy 
 and actual carter, besides being really his 
 superior in manners and intelligence. 
 
 Annie herself had enough of the rustic in 
 her blood to be silent enough at times. At 
 the farm she was ' uncommon quiet,' as uncle 
 said ; but she had the finer, more excitable 
 nervous organisation of a woman, and a town- 
 bred one, and felt every now and then the 
 imperious need to express herself, to ask and 
 receive definite spoken sympathy. Among 
 the currant-bushes, or sitting on the edge of 
 the wall, she told Jess all about her old life 
 in London the busy streets, her friends at 
 the Board schools and the Sunday outings 
 to Battersea, or even as far as Putney ; about 
 the little brothers and sisters she had been. 
 ' that fond of/ and who had all died ; and 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 47 
 
 most about her father. The home over 
 which Selina presided had not been a happy 
 one ; but while poor George had been able 
 to work it had not been poverty-stricken, and 
 life there had had its bright moments. After 
 all, it was a home. Jesse had nothing to 
 look back to but ten gray years in the work- 
 house school ; and before that, dim memories of 
 a barge cabin, in which he had sometimes been 
 locked up all day, and of a drunken bargee 
 father, who had not loved him at all, but, 
 on the contrary, considerably maltreated him. 
 He had often felt lonely, without knowing 
 exactly what it was that he felt. Annie's 
 talk, her little cares for him, and the bright 
 smile she gave him when they met, made 
 him conscious that there had been a blank 
 in his life before he had known her. He 
 was plain and coarse-looking enough, follow- 
 ing the plough in his dirty corduroys ; worse 
 still on Sundays and holidays, with red neck 
 glowing above his turn-down collar and 
 shiny coat, and low pot-hat surmounting his 
 cropped colourless poll. Yet his great 
 capacity for affection and need of it gave 
 
48 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 him a certain refinement of feeling, and made 
 him a more entirely innocent companion for 
 her than most of the eligible youths of High 
 Cross would have been, since the phlegm of 
 the rustic does not, unfortunately, preserve 
 him from an early acquaintance with the 
 grosser vices. 
 
 While the summer lasted they met nearly 
 every day, but when winter came it was dif- 
 ferent. Jesse had to hang about in the dusk, 
 on the chance of seeing her at the shop, or 
 coming home from Horseley, the neighbour- 
 ing village, where there was a railway station 
 and a chemist. He became a regular attend- 
 ant at church ; for if Annie was not there in 
 the morning, he went in the afternoon too. 
 Mrs. Pontin was not much of a church-goer ; 
 she ' hadn't the time for them kind o' things,' 
 she said, without the least intention of mak- 
 ing light of religion in general, or forms and 
 ceremonies in particular. But it would ap- 
 pear from her account of the matter that on 
 a certain momentous occasion, some ten years 
 before, when a sow and a whole litter of 
 young ones had come to grief while she was 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 49 
 
 at morning service, she had had a formal ex- 
 planation with the Almighty, on the subject 
 of her conflicting duties to Him and to the 
 live creatures. He seems to have recognised 
 at once the difficulties of her position ; at 
 least she always affirmed, with a calm confid- 
 ence for which she must have had grounds, 
 that the Lord knew very well there wasn't a 
 soul except herself as could be trusted to look 
 after them poor dumb things, and that she 
 couldn't be in two places at a time, no more 
 than any one else. The result of this ex- 
 planation had apparently been a plenary dis- 
 pensation from the duty of attendance at 
 church, except at such times and seasons as 
 seemed to her good ; for instance, when the 
 turkeys had all gone to market, and before 
 the hens had begun sitting. For her part, 
 she undertook to send Pontin regularly, win- 
 ter and summer. Mr. Hayes-, the somnolent 
 old Vicar, had never interfered with this ar- 
 rangement, though on one occasion Mrs. 
 Hayes, who had clear notions of her duties, 
 had remonstrated with her independent par- 
 ishioner. But the plainest of those plain 
 4 
 
50 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 words which the Vicar's wife prided herself 
 on using could not persuade Mrs. Pontin that 
 her conduct was not as defensible in this as 
 in every other particular, or that there could 
 be any misunderstanding between herself and 
 the powers above. She was respectful but 
 exasperatingly firm with her clergywoman, 
 and the two parted in mutual indignation. 
 In the summer, when there was more work 
 to be done, she did not send Annie very 
 regularly ; but in winter the girl was to be 
 seen nearly every Sunday morning sitting by 
 her uncle in the long shiny deal pew. The 
 church was a fine old building, with a broken 
 Norman arch opening into the chancel ; and 
 beyond it a Jacobean altar-tomb, whereon 
 reposed a lady in coif and ruff, with rings on 
 her folded hands, the fingers of which were 
 still pink in places. Religion at the farm 
 was a matter of decorum, and in London it 
 had never been mentioned except in mockery, 
 so that it was not one of the realities of life 
 to Annie. Her uncle was a little scandalised 
 at first at her difficulty in finding her place, 
 especially if he had to find it for her before 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 51 
 
 the congregation ; but when once she knew 
 her way about the prayer-book, her spiritual 
 equipment seemed to him complete. The 
 squawking of Mrs. Hayes' harmonium, the 
 droning of the school-children, and Mr. Hayes' 
 bored recitations of his old sermons, were not 
 calculated to rouse any interest ; and her mind 
 worked more on the carven intricacies of lace 
 and ribbon and brocade in the Jacobean 
 lady's costume, and the chances of a talk 
 with Jesse after service, than on the words 
 she listened to or repeated. 
 
 Though always slight and fragile, Annie 
 had grown taller and plumper since she came 
 to the farm ; her blue eyes were still large 
 and childlike, but they no longer devoured 
 her face, and she had a faint pink colour in 
 her cheeks. The uneducated have a greater 
 appreciation of delicate prettiness than is con- 
 ventionally supposed, and ' Pontin's niece ' 
 was not unfavourably observed by the youth 
 of High* Cross when, in the full glare of Sun- 
 day cleanliness, they lurched along the village 
 street, or dangled their lumpish extremities 
 from the tombstones by the church door. It 
 
52 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 was not Annie who knew or guessed the 
 notice she began to excite, but Jesse felt a 
 glow of pride when he heard her described 
 as ' not a bad-looking girl/ though a Lon- 
 doner, and probably ' stuck up.' The Pontins 
 had always been somewhat unsociable, as be- 
 came their respectability ; and Mrs. Pontin 
 was unpopular, so that no young man except 
 Jesse ever offered to walk from church with 
 them. As he had been several years on the 
 farm, his doing so seemed only natural. 
 
 What with the difficulty of seeing Annie, 
 the long ruminations in church, and the oft- 
 repeated if limited admiration of the other 
 young men, Jesse's attachment to her had be- 
 come distinctly sentimental by the end of the 
 winter. Besides, he was past eighteen, which 
 is quite a mature age in his class, where life 
 begins early. 
 
 So when it was summer again, and they 
 sat on the garden wall together, just where 
 the rose-bush bends and breaks in a wave of 
 pink and white and gold, over the elder below, 
 he was more silent than before sheepish, 
 and even sometimes capable of attempting a 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 53 
 
 little clumsy sentimentalism, at the sound 
 of which he blushed a great deal more 
 than Annie, who but dimly perceived his 
 intention. 
 
 One afternoon, when the rose-time was 
 nearly over, she was standing on a gate to 
 reach a few faint buds from the top of the 
 hedge, when Jess came by with an empty 
 cart and gathered them for her ; whereon she 
 pinned them under her chin with her little 
 steel brooch. 
 
 ' They be just about the same colour as 
 your face, Annie,' he said, and grinned a 
 dreary grin of embarrassment. 
 
 Annie had no appropriate reply, and walked 
 back to the clothes line, which was indeed 
 her proper destination. She had taken down 
 two sheets, and turned to put them in the 
 basket, when she saw Jesse still standing at 
 the gate. 
 
 'Annie!' he called urgently, 'Annie!' 
 
 'Well, Jess, what is it?' 
 
 ' I want to speak to you.' 
 
 She came up to the gate. 
 
 'You won't forget it was me as got them 
 
54 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 roses for you?' he said. 'Just keep 'em a 
 bit do, Annie.' 
 
 Then he nodded, climbed on the shaft of 
 the cart, clacked his tongue, and jolted off 
 without waiting for an answer. 
 
 ' Now you take off them fallals, Annie,' 
 said Mrs. Pontin, who met her niece coming 
 in with the linen-basket. ' I ain't no patience 
 with your brooches and flowers and stuff. 
 Just look at me, working so hard as I don't 
 know whatever uncle 'ud do without me ; 
 you won't catch me dressing of myself that 
 fashion.' 
 
 Annie took off the objectionable adorn- 
 ments, putting the roses in a little broken jug 
 in her room. Aunt's ill-humour continued 
 none the less. She was not a bad-hearted 
 woman, but she would have liked Annie 
 better if she had made her frocks worse, and 
 had a coarser complexion and hair. Taste 
 and refinement may be as repulsive to one 
 nature as their opposites are to another. 
 Selina was continually held up as a warning 
 to her daughter, and an illustration of what 
 might be expected of the latter. This was 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 55 
 
 especially the case since James's cousin Pether, 
 the Oxford draper, had offered him some pink 
 zephyr cotton at a bargain, instead of the 
 purple print he had been commissioned to 
 buy for Annie, and he had brought it home 
 for her to make up. Aunt was not the only 
 person who was affected by the frivolous and 
 becoming colour of Annie's new frocks. 
 Albert, the idiot child, who had been the first 
 to greet her arrival in High Cross, noticed it. 
 He was a boy of thirteen or fourteen, but no 
 bigger than a child of ten. His unwieldy 
 head rolled loosely on his shoulders, he had 
 a blind eye a white, viscous-looking eye 
 and a great shapeless mouth, that was always 
 wet, and generally munching some unclean 
 food. From babyhood he had been accus- 
 tomed to climb about the steps of the stone 
 cross opposite the front gate, or come through 
 the lane into the orchard, to share with Mr. 
 Pontin's pigs the untimely fallen fruit The 
 pigs seemed quite to have adopted him into 
 their family ; and as he crouched among them 
 on hot summer days, under the great" walnut 
 tree, with their dirty snouts exploring the 
 
56 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 recesses of his jacket or resting on his bare 
 legs, it was difficult to tell which of the 
 occasional snorts and squeals which expressed 
 the emotions of the party were human and 
 which porcine. 
 
 ' Lor, Annie ! However did you tear your 
 apron that fashion?' asked Mrs. Ponton in 
 surprise one morning, when the girl came in 
 with the eggs of a certain speckled Hamboro', 
 which always declined to lay in a less rural 
 spot than the orchard hedge. Annie was a 
 little pale, and winked back a petulant tear 
 as she answered : 
 
 ' It's that bothering Albert I don't know 
 what's come to him as he can't leave me alone. 
 He came this morning, smelling of the pigs 
 enough to knock you down, and smearing his 
 dirty ringers all over my clean frock. I said 
 to him half a dozen times, " Go away, Albert !" 
 and it wasn't no use : so I gave him a push, 
 and he began to scream and halloa dreadful^ 
 more like a beast than a child ; and then he 
 just took my apron in his teeth and tore it 
 right up.' 
 
 ' Did he, poor innocent !' cried Mrs. Pontin 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 57 
 
 compassionately. ' Now don't you go telling 
 nobody, Annie, or the man will be round and 
 sending him off to Littlemore 'Sylum, like 
 poor Tommy Buswell. I ain't no patience 
 with their new-fangled notions, shutting up 
 folks as is a bit silly, and folks as has scar- 
 latina and such like. We must trust in Pro- 
 vidence, that's what we must do.' 
 
 ' I wish they would shut him up/ said 
 Annie pettishly. ' I know I'm right down 
 frightened of him.' 
 
 ' It's cru'l of you to talk that way,' replied 
 aunt with severity. ' Poor little fellow ! I'm 
 glad enough to have him about with the live 
 creatures, as happy as any of 'em.' 
 
 ' I dare say they treat them very kind at 
 the 'Sylum,' Annie apologised. 
 
 ' Kind !' exclaimed aunt disdainfully. 
 ' And who's to know if they does or doesn't ? 
 only them as can see through stone walls. 
 No, I'll be bound it's cold comfort any of 
 us 'ud find if we got inside of it stale 
 bread and straw, and chains too, very like. 
 So just you mind, my girl, and don't go 
 saying you're frightened of Albert, poor little 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 innocent, and getting him shut up in the 
 'Sylum.' 
 
 And as Annie did not want to do any one 
 an ill turn, she mentioned the continual 
 annoyance she suffered from the idiot to no 
 one except Jesse ; who indeed came in for 
 his share of it, seeing that Albert did not 
 scruple to intrude upon the Manor garden of 
 an evening, whence he was sometimes ejected 
 with a violence that would have shocked 
 Mrs. Pontin. 
 
 It came to pass that in September Jesse's 
 work at Mr. Shepherd's was altered, and he 
 was unable as a rule to get home till it was 
 nearly dark ; for at that time of year the 
 evenings draw in. This brought him face to 
 face with the dreaded winter season, when 
 almost daily chats with Annie must be ex- 
 changed for looks and chance words at long 
 intervals, or what seemed long intervals. 
 The only bright spot was that his wages 
 were increased. This may have had some- 
 thing to do with an imprudent proposition 
 which he made to Annie ; but it was mainly 
 the intolerable impatience of a youthful lover 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 59 
 
 which inspired him with the unlucky notion. 
 This was that Annie should ask to be allowed 
 to walk with him on Sunday afternoons. 
 
 ' Next Sunday afternoon,' suggested Annie, 
 with feminine prudence or clearer perception 
 of other people's probable sentiments. 
 
 To 'walk' with a young man is not of 
 course to be engaged to him, but it is to 
 admit him among possible fiances. Jesse 
 and Annie knew this, and they also knew 
 that the Pontins would be very likely to 
 think a labourer, lately a workhouse lad, 
 beneath their niece, even as a mere pretender 
 to her hand. They knew it, as young people 
 know most of the rocky irresistible facts of 
 life which they have not yet experienced, and 
 against which, for all their knowledge, they 
 are dashed by its equally irresistible currents. 
 
 Annie did not love Jesse as he did her, 
 but she was fonder of him than of any living 
 person, and the prospect of the long winter 
 without his companionship seemed drearier 
 than last year. So on Sunday morning, when 
 she was washing up the breakfast-things in 
 the kitchen, and Mrs. Pontin was not there, 
 
60 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 and Mr. Pontin was smoking a pipe, she 
 began boldly : 
 
 ' Uncle, have you any objection to my 
 taking a walk with Jesse Williams this after- 
 noon ?' 
 
 ' With Jesse Williams ?' repeated uncle 
 surprised, and trying to rub the idea into 
 his iron-gray head with the horny hand of 
 labour. 
 
 When it was in it did not find much favour 
 in his sight. He had never been given to 
 courting himself, and the experience of his 
 brothers and sisters, and latterly of the pec- 
 cant Benny, had not recommended the practice 
 to him. He was a decided man, except when 
 he bowed to the manifest superiority of Mrs. 
 Pontin. 
 
 ' Look here, aunt/ he said, as she bustled 
 in, most inopportunely to Annie's thinking ; 
 ' here's Annie wants to go courting with Jess 
 Williams, our work'us boy.' 
 
 'There, now!' exclaimed she triumphantly; 
 ' didn't I say as there was something up when 
 I see her with her flowers and her brooches 
 and things, quite ondecent' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 61 
 
 Annie was blushing hotly, and the ready 
 tears .were in her eyes. 
 
 ' Jesse's not courting me,' she said, uncon- 
 sciously mendacious. 
 
 Uncle laughed grimly. 
 
 ' What does he want to walk with you for, 
 then ?' he asked. 
 
 Annie twisted her apron-string. 
 
 ' He haven't got any one belonging to him, 
 and he feels lonely-like. He used to come 
 and help in the garden a bit of an evening ; 
 but now he has to stay down at the Hall, so 
 as he can't come, and he just wants company 
 and wants to see me that's all.' 
 
 ' Oh, that's all, is it ? And quite enough 
 too.' Then he turned testily to his wife : 
 ' What's this about Jess in the garden, aunt ? 
 You ought to ha' told me about it' 
 
 ' I'd got plenty o' things to think of with- 
 out that,' retorted Mrs. Pontin, promptly 
 on the defensive. ' He was making hisself 
 useful ; and who'd ha' thought as Annie 
 would take up with a work'us boy ? I've 
 no patience with them girls and their ways, 
 sweethearting about here, there, and every- 
 
62 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 where. That ain't the way I got Kite, nor 
 you neither.' 
 
 Aunt, proudly conscious of having attracted 
 two husbands by purely practical qualities, 
 felt at liberty to disparage the lighter matters 
 of courtship. To her had never been offered 
 roses or even apples ; and the plate-like 
 expanse of silver locket which sometimes, 
 but very rarely, shone upon her ample bosom 
 had not been the gift of the frugal Kite, but 
 of the admiring Pontin, after an unusually 
 good sale of pigs. 
 
 ' Now you'll just understand, my girl,' said 
 uncle sternly, ' I won't have you courting 
 about with Jess or any one else so there's 
 an end on't' 
 
 And he left the room. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE next morning Uncle James drove off 
 to Watlington ; he had business in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and was to stay the night there 
 with his cousins. This was an unusual event, 
 and there had been much washing and brush- 
 ing of clothes in preparation for it. Annie 
 had tied his tie for him before he went ; no 
 one else could do it so neatly. 
 
 Now it unfortunately happened that one 
 of the cows was taken ill that day. It had 
 been out of sorts for some little while, but 
 nothing very serious seemed the matter till 
 about dinner-time, when Abel the farm 
 labourer saw it lying on its side in the Manor 
 field, heaving and quivering convulsively, and 
 brought it into the stable as well as he could. 
 Mrs. Pontin had not usually the charge of 
 the cows, and this attack of Diamond's made 
 
64 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 her very nervous. The plain course would 
 have been to send Abel to Oxford for a 
 veterinary, but she said that was impossible, 
 because he was the only man on the premises, 
 and uncle had taken the cart to Watlington. 
 In her heart she considered doctors of all 
 kinds as quacks, who very excusably made 
 a living out of the credulity of the gentry, 
 but whom no practical person should call in 
 except with the clergyman, to give respect- 
 ability to a death-bed. Yet she felt very 
 nervous, and as in the course of the afternoon 
 different neighbours dropped into the cowshed 
 to stare and say what they would do if they were 
 she, she did not know if she was annoyed or 
 relieved by their coming. At first she eagerly 
 tried each of the various remedies they sug- 
 gested, all of which tormented the dumb 
 sufferer to no purpose. She even let old 
 Betsy Todd, who could write nothing else, 
 write /. H. S. on a bit of paper and tie it 
 round the poor beast's neck. Now it was 
 evening, and no one else came to the stable. 
 Mrs. Pontin sat alone on an overturned bucket, 
 staring gloomily at the sick cow, as it lay on 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 65 
 
 its side quite still, with a film over its eyes 
 and its tongue lolling out on the straw. 
 Sometimes it shivered a little, moaned and 
 lifted its muzzle, showing its gums and great 
 yellow teeth. She could not have felt worse 
 if she had been watching a sick child, but 
 fortunately for her she had the fatalism of 
 her class, which if it exposes them to accid- 
 ent and disease, saves them from many vain 
 hopes and weak wrestlings with resistless 
 death. Suddenly there was a loud flapping 
 and screaming in the poultry-yard ; anima- 
 tion returned to her, and she was out across 
 the heaps of straw and dirt, among which the 
 pigs were wallowing, hurrying along with her 
 ungainly roll, and in at the rough timber 
 gate of the yard. 
 
 'If I didn't think the fox had got in!' 
 she exclaimed. ' Whatever has happened?' 
 Annie was waving a long stick, much longer 
 than herself, in front of a very small and very 
 angry young turkey-cock. His wattles were 
 positively microscopic, and his feathers short 
 and scanty ; but every one that he possessed 
 stood bolt upright, as stiffly as though it had 
 5 
 
66 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 belonged to the grandfather of all the turkeys. 
 Shaking his thin bare neck, and uttering a 
 shrill and sketchy imitation of the paternal 
 gobble, he kept making threatening rushes 
 at a cowering brood of other young turkeys, 
 smaller than himself in body, and infinitely 
 inferior in spirit 
 
 ' They've been that quarrelsome over their 
 food this evening !' said Annie. 'And this 
 young cock would have pretty near killed one 
 of the last brood if I hadn't caught him over 
 the head with the stick.' 
 
 ' Well, of all the uppish young 'uns I ever 
 saw!' cried Mrs. Pontin, with the ill-concealed 
 exultation of a mamma over the naughtiness 
 of her spirited offspring. ' He'll turn out a 
 fine cock, he will ! Still I can't afford to 
 have any of the young turkeys hurt it's 
 been a rare bad season for 'em. The new 
 brood shall go in the orchard to-morroWj 
 but I durstn't leave them out to-night. 
 Master Godfrey tells me the fox got a 
 lot of his chickens besides them turkeys 
 of ours, last week. You just take 'em 
 across the orchard and shut 'em away in 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 67 
 
 the old pig-sty and mind you make the 
 door fast, Annie,' she added, coming back 
 and putting her head through the gate 
 again. 
 
 To drive a brood of young and foolish 
 turkeys, under the headship of a nervous old 
 hen, from one given point to another, is a 
 matter requiring time and consideration ; but 
 with the aid of a basket of food and a long 
 stick, Annie got them three-quarters of the 
 way across the orchard without much diffi- 
 culty. Just there stood a walnut-tree with 
 a cart under it ; her whole mind was given 
 to the gray long-necked brood, which was 
 running along all together, but chirping 
 ominously, shrill and discontented ; she 
 noticed nothing else. The turkeys had 
 leisurely surmounted the first shaft, one 
 after another, and were gathered in a group 
 pecking aimlessly at some scattered chaff 
 before proceeding on their journey, when 
 suddenly a dark body started up inside 
 the cart, swayed itself for a moment on 
 the front edge, and then, with a maniac 
 yell of triumph, hurled itself headlong down 
 
68 A VILLAGE TKAGEDY 
 
 on the very top of the scratching, chirping 
 family. 
 
 Then ensued a scene of horror and con- 
 fusion unequalled in the annals of turkeydom. 
 The gray hen herself, hardly escaping de- 
 struction, crept screaming from under the 
 idiot's stomach, and fled with insensate activ- 
 ity, flapping up on one side of the cart only 
 to tumble helplessly over on the other, while 
 her nestlings scrambling forth under his arms 
 and over his head, and stretching themselves 
 in their terror to the merest combination of 
 necks and legs, tore deliriously to every re- 
 motest corner of the orchard. 
 
 ' Naughty Albert ! Bad, wicked boy ! * 
 cried Annie angrily ; ' how dare you jump 
 on the turkeys !' 
 
 The idiot boy lay on the ground, striking 
 out with arms and legs in a paroxysm of 
 delight, chuckling convulsively. With a 
 movement as sudden as that of a mechanical 
 toy he jerked himself into a crouching pos- 
 ture, and seized her dress with his dirty, 
 long-nailed, claw-like hands, his great mouth 
 seeming to divide his head in half as it 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 69 
 
 yawned up at her in an insane grin. She 
 tried to pull it from him, but gibbering in- 
 articulately he thrust the pink cotton flounce 
 between his teeth, and began gradually suck- 
 ing and chewing inch after inch into his 
 mouth, like a brown bloated reptile slowly 
 absorbing its prey. The great mouth, the 
 wide vibrating nostrils, the low brow abnor- 
 mally overgrown with hair, the one small eye, 
 rolling with a kind of rage, and seeming to 
 glare unnaturally in comparison to its blank 
 dead fellow the whole monstrous indescrib- 
 able aspect of the creature, exercised a kind 
 of fascination over Annie, and for a few 
 moments she stood trembling and paralysed, 
 as though he were indeed an obscene reptile 
 and she an animal destined to disappear be- 
 tween his distended jaws. Then starting 
 away in a passion of terror, she struck at 
 him again and again with the stick she carried 
 in her hand. The long elastic stick stung 
 him sharply on the back, and head, and legs ; 
 and arms ; and, with a yell of rage and pain, 
 he let her go, and rolled under the cart for 
 shelter, cursing her with ugly articulate curses, 
 
70 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 for the only words he had learned besides 
 words for food were filthy or profane. Re- 
 leased from Albert her anxiety about the 
 turkeys returned at once. They were running 
 in twos and threes by the hedge, still dis- 
 coursing in agitated and important tones on 
 the late catastrophe, but beginning to let their 
 thoughts wander to the pleasures of the chase. 
 It required much tact and patience on her 
 part to lead them back into the path of duty 
 and finally marshal them into the disused 
 pig-sty. Just as she was looking for a peg 
 to fasten the door, she caught a glimpse 
 through a gap in the hedge and over the low 
 stone wall of the farmyard of some one pass- 
 ing in the lane leading a cart-horse. It was 
 the merest glimpse, such as might not have 
 sufficed her to recognise another person, but 
 it put a feverish anxiety into her search for 
 the peg. She had promised Jess to run out 
 on Sunday morning and tell him whether she 
 might walk with him, but this she had not 
 been allowed to do. It seemed centuries 
 before a suitable stick presented itself ; at 
 last it was found, and pushing it into the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY Jl 
 
 fastening of the door, she tore along the 
 orchard. Whisking over the gate, skimming 
 along the track through the bean-field, and 
 over another gate in a twinkling, she flew 
 rather than ran down the hill, over the sharp, 
 loose stones of the lane, calling out 'Jess! 
 Jess !' 
 
 He turned and waited, his face unusually 
 bright and flushed with pleasure and surprise, 
 till she stood before him, panting. 
 
 ' Good evenin', Annie. I was wondering 
 when I should see you.' 
 
 ' Oh, Jess !' she cried. ' They wouldn't let 
 me come !' 
 
 ' I thought as how they wouldn't,' he said, 
 the light going out of his face. 
 
 ' I oughtn't to have come now, but I 
 couldn't help it,' she went on hurriedly. 
 
 ' What did they say ?' he asked. 
 
 ' They said all kinds o' silly things,' she 
 answered, crumpling her apron with her 
 fingers. 'Jess, I'm not to work in the garden 
 with you again, and I'm afraid uncle won't 
 like it if you walk back from church with me/ 
 
 ' I knowed they'd say that,' he said, quite 
 
72 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 pale ; and he leaned his forehead against the 
 old brown horse, which was engaged in pull- 
 ing mouthfuls of the yellow wayside grass. 
 
 ' Of course I'm only a work'us lad,' he 
 went on after a few moments, pausing be- 
 tween each phrase. ' I don't suppose as my 
 wages '11 ever be much better nor they are 
 now. I ain't one of the sharp chaps as can 
 get on. I know'd what they'd say.' 
 
 Annie had been sorry for herself as well 
 as for Jesse before ; she had felt, too, a kind 
 of shyness at the new relation in which her 
 uncle and aunt's words had placed her to 
 him. Now she was nothing but sorry for 
 him. She too went quite pale. 
 
 ' Please don't talk so, Jess,' she cried, 
 clasping her hands tight ' I don't care a 
 bit about the work'us or anything I like 
 you best of any one.' 
 
 'Do you really?' he asked eagerly, lifting 
 his forehead from the side of the brown horse. 
 ' Really, Annie ? And you won't forget me 
 when you ain't allowed to talk to me ?' 
 
 ' No, I won't,' she answered earnestly. 
 ' But I haven't promised never to talk to 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 73 
 
 you ; only I mustn't stop now, indeed I 
 mustn't' 
 
 ' I wonder when I shall see you again ?' 
 he asked, holding her, with eyes reluctant to 
 let go the sight of her. ' Not for a long 
 time, most likely. Will you promise to give 
 me something I want?' 
 
 ' I promise,' said Annie. ' What is it ?' 
 
 ' Just one kiss, Annie only one,' in a low 
 voice. 
 
 ' Oh, Jess, I don't know whether it's right' 
 
 ' Where's the harm ? Anyhow, you've 
 promised. Just one kiss, Annie I'll stand 
 quite still.' 
 
 He stooped, and she, with downcast eyes 
 and lifted mouth, gave him a shy quick kiss ; 
 a ghost of a kiss, to be enjoyed in recollec- 
 tion rather than in actuality. 
 
 Just at that moment a hoarse scream of 
 'Annie! Annie!' rung down the lane. It 
 was aunt's voice, uplifted in wrath. 
 
 ' Come back direckly, direckly, I say, you 
 good-for-nothing girl ! Get along with you, 
 Jesse Williams, get along with you, you 
 work'us varmint Only just let me catch 
 
74 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 you hanging about my premises again I'll 
 teach you!' and so on and so on, while 
 Annie was running up the hill towards the 
 enraged speaker. Mrs. Pontin seized her by 
 the fragile shoulders and shook her as she 
 might have shaken a child of two. 
 
 ' You slut ! you drab ! ' she shrieked. 
 4 Such conduct I never see ! Kissing and 
 palavering about the high roads with the 
 very work'us ploughboys. You come wi* 
 me, I say, you nasty baggage, you little sly 
 hussy !' and she dragged her along towards 
 the gate of the farmyard. 'Them's your 
 dratted mother's ways,' she went on, ' not 
 mine nor any honest woman's. A disrepit- 
 able baggage, that's what she is, and that's 
 what you are not fit to be in a respectable 
 family. Can't ye answer, ye brat?' and 
 she shook her again. But Annie did not 
 answer. She met her aunt's violence as she 
 had been accustomed to meet her mother's, 
 by passive resistance, like a small animal 
 retreating into its shell. To do Mrs. Pontin 
 justice, though she was always irritable, the 
 girl had never seen her in such a temper 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 75 
 
 before. But not only had she a mortal 
 aversion to youthful indiscretions o'f this 
 nature, but the long afternoon spent with the 
 sick cow, during which she had refused all 
 refreshment, had been a great strain upon 
 her system, and it was a relief to find some 
 one on whom to vent her nervous excitement. 
 Across the farmyard, where even the ancestral 
 swine, lying on their sides among the manure, 
 large and livid and baggy, winked in astonish- 
 ment as the shrill human hurricane swept by, 
 up the steep stairs to the attic, aunt went 
 hurrying her victim, pouring forth all the 
 time, as well as her short breath would allow 
 her, a flood of Billingsgate as choice as may 
 be learned in the rural seclusion of High 
 Cross ; which is, however, richer in such 
 language than the proud denizen of cities 
 might suppose. 'You stay there till uncle 
 comes back!' she cried at last, flinging her 
 on the bed ; ' he shall hear all about it, every 
 bit, he shall. Lor, to think a niece of his 
 should be such a shameless thing, with her 
 kissing and goings on ! I don't know how- 
 ever he'll bear to have you in the house.' 
 
76 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Annie was stung into reply. 
 
 ' He needn't if he don't wish,' she answered 
 proudly. ' I can go to service, the same as 
 other girls.' 
 
 ' You can, can you ? ' snorted aunt. 
 'Who'd have ye, ye arkward disrepitable 
 brat ? / ain't going to give ye a character, 
 so don't think it ' and there followed a long 
 list of Annie's imperfections, real and supposed, 
 ending with ' So here you stays till uncle 
 comes home ; and you needn't expect your 
 supper, for it won't come.' 
 
 She flounced out of the room, turned the 
 key in the lock, and thumped heavily down 
 the stairs. 
 
 Annie lay for a long time on her face on 
 the bed, till the pillow was damp with her 
 tears, and till it was dry again. When she 
 sat up the little room was dark, and the 
 house perfectly quiet. She could hear 
 nothing except the sound of the breeze and 
 the small rain in the elm-trees opposite. She 
 bathed her face, and shut the window, where 
 the chill drops came trickling in ; then she 
 began to undress, shivering, and feeling either 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 77 
 
 sick or hungry, she was not sure which. When 
 she had got off her boots and stockings there 
 was a great noise on the steep attic stairs 
 a noise as though some heavy person were 
 trying to run up them, stumbling blindly and 
 falling about with maledictory groans and 
 ejaculations and quick stertorous breathings. 
 Annie's heart stood still ; she remembered a 
 woman in London who had made a noise 
 like that on the stairs, had burst the door 
 open and rolled down into the middle of 
 their room, with clenched hands and swollen 
 face, and foam on her convulsed mouth. 
 Her aunt, she thought, must have a fit 
 coming on and be trying to get to her, 
 as the only other person in the house. 
 What should she do ? She felt about for 
 matches, but there were none ; and she could 
 only wait till the trembling hand outside 
 touched the door, fumbled at the key and 
 the handle, and at last turned them. It was 
 a positive relief when Mrs. Pontin fell rather 
 than walked into the room, and flumped 
 down on a low wooden box by the door. 
 She was carrying a lantern, which she de- 
 
78 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 posited on the floor, so that the concentrated 
 light slanted up on to her face. On any 
 countenance the effect of a light immediately 
 below, throwing the shadows of the features 
 up into unnatural places, is curious ; on Mrs. 
 Pontin's at that moment it was frightful. 
 Her face was dark red and puffy, the swollen 
 veins were standing out on her neck and 
 forehead, her double chin and large purple 
 lips quivered as she gasped and slobbered 
 inarticulate. Quick as thought Annie dipped 
 a sponge in cold water and stepped up to put 
 it on her aunt's forehead ; but as quickly it 
 was wrenched from her, her slender wrists 
 were caught in Mrs. Pontin's powerful grip, 
 and with a roar like that of a wild beast she 
 sent the girl staggering back to the opposite 
 wall, against which in another second the 
 w r et sponge came slapping close to her head, 
 and fell down in a little pool of its own 
 making. The woman's small eyes were 
 rolling and glittering, red like the eyes of 
 some infuriated animal ; her flesh quivered 
 and her very hair seemed to bristle with 
 rage. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 79 
 
 'Oh, aunt, what is the matter?' cried 
 Annie. 
 
 Mrs. Pontin made one or two spasmodic 
 attempts to speak, but no definite word passed 
 her lips. Then, with an effort, she heaved 
 her massive body up from the low seat, and 
 came and stood quite close, face to face with 
 Annie, who was leaning against the wall ; and 
 bringing her heavy hand down on the child's 
 shrinking shoulder 
 
 ' You devil ! ' she said, in a hoarse whisper. 
 
 Terrified as Annie was, she noticed that 
 her aunt's breath smelt of whisky, and was 
 surprised at it, for Mrs. Pontin was a temperate 
 woman, content with her two glasses of beer a 
 day. A silence followed the hoarse ejaculation, 
 during which Annie's thoughts showed her 
 the utter emptiness of the house except for 
 them two, the desertedness even of the 
 neighbouring roads at this hour. She was 
 very much frightened. 
 
 ' Whatever is the matter ? ' she managed 
 to ask again, whispering herself. 
 
 Mrs. Pontin began to regain her powers of 
 utterance. 
 
80 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 1 Where are my turkeys ? ' she said, still 
 hoarse, but in a less muffled voice. 
 
 ' What turkeys ?' asked Annie bewildered. 
 
 ' What turkeys ? What turkeys ? ' broke 
 out Mrs. Pontin, loud and harsh. ' You hussy ! 
 How dare ye pretend not to know what 
 turkeys you was to shut up in the pig-sty.' 
 
 ' I shut up the new brood,' said Annie, 
 trying to understand. 
 
 ' You shut up 'em up, did ye ? Shut 'em 
 up ! Ho, ho ! Ha, ha ! That's a good 'un ! * 
 And Mrs. Pontin laughed a laugh of hys- 
 terical frenzy. Then, relapsing again into 
 more sullen fury, she took the soft flesh of 
 the girl's arm in her short strong-nailed hand 
 and pinched it with all her might. 
 
 ' Ye're a bloody liar ! ' she roared, still 
 further irritated, if possible, because her victim 
 did not cry out with the pain. 
 
 Then snatching up the lantern, she dragged 
 Annie towards the door. 
 
 'Just let me put my boots on, aunt,' said 
 Annie, with the exterior calmness which often 
 belied her terrors ; ' my feet are all bare.' 
 
 ' I wouldn't let ye stop a minute, not if 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 81 
 
 you was naked ! ' retorted aunt fiercely ; and 
 they went out down the two steep flights of 
 stairs, the elder woman partly pushing the 
 girl, partly leaning with heavy staggering 
 weight upon her. 
 
 They had to cross the poultry-yard to 
 reach the orchard, and Annie's bare feet were 
 cut by the gravel and then plunged into the 
 cold wet grass. The sky was cloudy, but not 
 yet dark ; it still reflected the gray diffused 
 light of a summer night an English summer 
 night, which if it is not divine, is infinitely 
 dreary. When they got to the pig-sty they 
 could see without the help of the lantern that 
 it was wide open. Aunt let go of Annie 
 and pointed to it in silence, with a tragic 
 gesture ; then, with something between a 
 moan and a cry, she laid her head upon the 
 open gate and burst into a paroxysm of sobs 
 that heaved and shook every inch of her big 
 body. 
 
 ' The largest brood as ever I had/ she 
 wailed, 'and the last as I shall get this year 
 and now the fox '11 have 'em, every one.' 
 
 ' Oh no, aunt,' said Annie, ' I don't know 
 6 
 
82 A VILLAGE TXAGEDY 
 
 how they've got out, but he can't have caught 
 'em all yet ; they must be somewhere in the 
 orchard.' 
 
 Mrs. Pontin leapt from lamentation to 
 wrath once more. 
 
 ' Why should they stop in the orchard,' 
 she screamed, ' when they could march into 
 the bean-field, the lot of them at once ? If 
 you was in such a hurry to get to your feller, 
 you needn't have opened the gate as wide as 
 it 'ud go.' 
 
 ' I didn't open it,' answered Annie ; ' I 
 climbed over and fastened this door first.' 
 
 ' How dare you lie so !' cried Mrs. Pontin ; 
 and seizing the long stick which Annie had 
 left leaning against the pig-sty, she brought 
 it whistling down upon her. 
 
 'Aunt, aunt!' pleaded the girl, writhing 
 and biting her lips ; ' don't, please don't ^1 
 did shut the turkeys up I didn't open the 
 gate ; I really didn't. I don't know who can 
 have let them out, unless it was Albert. He 
 was here this evening, and then he was 
 naughty with the turkeys, and then I hit 
 him.' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 83 
 
 ' You did, did you, miss ?' And the stick 
 bent once more across her back. ' Poor little 
 innocent ! I'll teach you to be cruel to him, 
 and then put off your naughtiness on him, 
 poor little feller ! I could beat the skin off 
 you, I could.' 
 
 Down came the stinging stick, again and 
 yet again, until she had the satisfaction of 
 wringing a cry from the child's set white 
 lips. Then she threw it down, and dragged 
 her through the gate, which undoubtedly 
 stood wide open, and up and down the broad 
 sloping bean-field, in frantic search for the 
 errant brood. 
 
 ' What with the cow dying, and the turkeys 
 and all, I'm just dead beat,' moaned aunt. 
 She pulled a fresh candle out of her pocket, 
 lit it, and stuck it in the lantern with trem- 
 bling fingers. ' It's you as have lost the 
 turkeys, miss ; and you must find 'em. If 
 you can't, you must just stay out all night, 
 the same as they do. So don't you come 
 back without 'em, unless you want your 
 bones broken.' 
 
 She crammed the lantern into Annie's 
 
84 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 hand, gave her a farewell push, and disap- 
 peared into the gathering darkness. For the 
 gray distinctness of things was vanishing ; a 
 cloud, heavier and lower than those which 
 had before veiled the sky, was rising and 
 spreading from the far horizon, which itself 
 had dropped into a gulf of blackness. The 
 ponderous elms, darker than night itself, 
 alone retained their outline, whispering and 
 tossing above the hedgerows in the rainy 
 gusts. There was something ghostly in the 
 stream of light that moved at Annie's side, 
 sometimes throwing her own tremulous gro- 
 tesque shadow over the dry bents and deep 
 ruts of the cart-track, but mostly striking 
 across the field, where the beans that in June 
 had stood up in ranks of blossom and sweet- 
 ness now leaned heavily against each other, 
 gaunt and naked and black, like an army of 
 charred skeletons. 
 
 At first it was a relief to be free from Mrs. 
 Pontin, and she looked eagerly for the turkeys, 
 but gradually her search became mechanical ; 
 she began to be invaded by a childish terror 
 of the wide black midnight, in which nc 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 85 
 
 human creature except herself was abroad, 
 the faint mysterious sounds that came sighing 
 up from the invisible country below, the sharp 
 strange rustlings and snappings in the foliage 
 and grass around her, and above all the white 
 patch of light, with its edge of black wavering 
 shadow, that followed her wherever she went. 
 Her naked feet were very sore, and her whole 
 body ached. A fine rain had been falling at 
 intervals, and at last when a heavier shower 
 came blowing up the hill she crouched down 
 under a bramble bush in the hedge and made 
 an attempt to shut away the haunting light; 
 but the lantern was out of order and would 
 not close. So she hid her face in her lap 
 and tried to think of something else. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IT was terribly lonesome in the bean-field, 
 terribly lonesome in the world. Everything 
 that had happened since she spoke to her 
 uncle about Jess the morning before came 
 back with great distinctness to her mind ; 
 it seemed all to happen over again. The 
 shameful unjust words, the cruel blows, stung 
 more in the recollection than when she had 
 actually suffered them ; body and soul she 
 was chilled and sore and bleeding, and there 
 was no one to succour her. She knew the 
 politics of the farm too well to hope for 
 much support from her uncle in opposition 
 to his wife, and was too young to gauge the 
 amount of permanent meaning that lay behind 
 her aunt's violent expressions. Life seemed 
 endlessly stern and barren. There was no 
 one to love, no one to love her, except poor 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 87 
 
 Jess, and him she would never be allowed to- 
 be friends with any more. Why, oh why 
 had her father died ? He was dead, hidden 
 deep in the ground a long way off, and could 
 not hear her, however loud she might call ;. 
 yet she could not help crying out, ' Father ! 
 father !' The sound of her own voice startled 
 her, and with a sudden revulsion of feeling 
 she cowered down, hiding her eyes up still 
 closer with her hands. She had a distinct 
 and horrible impression that if she looked 
 round she would see her father, in his grave- 
 clothes, sitting by her in the stream of white 
 light. To stay there or to move seemed 
 equally impossible ; but this torture could 
 not be endured. She must fly somewhere ; 
 and there was only one place, one person, her 
 bewildered mind turned to. With a great 
 effort she jumped up, seized the lantern and 
 fled up the field, feeling imaginary pursuers 
 clutching close behind, and her own heart 
 beating big and hot in her throat. Quickly 
 she scrambled over the gate, across the lane 
 and into the Manor field. There was some- 
 thing homely and comforting about the very 
 
88 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 air there, and the noise the old white pony 
 made blowing a loud breath through his 
 nostrils. Her initial impulse had been to 
 rush straight to Jesse's door and call him 
 out ; but when she got close to the octagonal 
 house she paused, the realities of life came 
 back to her, and she thought of the interpre- 
 tation which would certainly be put upon her 
 conduct, not by Jesse, but by any one else, 
 if they knew. In her class a girl cannot 
 remain ignorant of evil. However, in that 
 black solitary night there seemed little danger 
 of any one else knowing. Besides, every 
 now and then a curious vein of recklessness 
 appeared in her, seemingly out of all relation 
 to the main stuff of her character ; a bit of 
 the hard defiantness of Selina, embedded in 
 the sober and sensitive paternal nature. If 
 she was to be called bad names, anyhow, she 
 thought, what did it matter whether she 
 behaved respectably or not? She threw a 
 handful of small stones at the window, and 
 beat with a larger one at the door. It may 
 be that love makes even a ploughboy's sleep 
 lighter than usual ; it is certain that Jesse 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 heard the noise, opened the window, and put 
 his head out to know who was there. 
 
 ' It's me Annie,' in a voice low, but 
 audible to him. 
 
 There was an exclamation, the spurt of a 
 match, a pause while he scrambled on the 
 necessary garments, and then he came down 
 with his candle in his hand and opened the 
 door. Surprise, untempered as yet even by 
 pleasure at the sight of Annie, was staring 
 from his every feature. 
 
 ' Is the house a-fire ? ' he asked, that being 
 the only exciting possibility that occurred to 
 him. 
 
 ' No no but Oh, Jess, she've turned 
 
 me out, she've turned me out !' She leaned 
 her head against the stone jamb of the door 
 and began to sob violently. He put the 
 candle down on the brick floor and drew her 
 into the room, which was empty except for 
 some sacking and old harness. Presently 
 she found herself sobbing with her head on 
 Jesse's shoulder, and iri broken words she 
 had made him understand how things were. 
 It was not in his nature to break out into 
 
90 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 violent expletives, but he went so far as to 
 say that Mrs. Pontin was ' worse nor a brute 
 beast.' 
 
 ' Why, you're reg'lar wet through, and as 
 cold as a stone,' he said, feeling her dress and 
 hands. 
 
 It was true ; and now that the strain on her 
 nerves was relieved, she begun to be keenly 
 conscious of physical pain and discomfort. 
 
 ' There ain't no grate nor anything here,' 
 he went on. ' And I've got a nice fire laid 
 upstairs, and the breakfast things as I put 
 ready for the morning. Do come up, Annie, 
 and dry yourself a bit, and I'll make you a 
 cup of tea.' 
 
 She hesitated a minute. 
 
 ' Do come,' he urged ; and then reproach- 
 fully, ' Can't you trust me to behave right by 
 you?' 
 
 ' Oh yes,' she answered ; ' it was other 
 folks I thought of. But it don't make any 
 difference if I'm here or upstairs.' 
 
 ' No one '11 know,' he said. ' You can go 
 back to the orchard afore they're stirring. 
 You'll just catch your death like this.' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 9* 
 
 They went upstairs, and Annie sat down 
 with her feet in the broken brass fender. 
 The flame sprung crackling from the dry 
 wood and gave an impression of warmth and 
 cheerfulness, though as yet there was little 
 heat in it Jesse moved about getting out 
 the breakfast things, the little black tea-pot 
 and battered kettle. He was full of pity and 
 mild indignation, but he could not help- 
 feeling it very sweet to wait upon her, to- 
 have her sitting in his room and using his 
 things. He would have liked to chafe her 
 cold hands and feet back to life, but his. 
 kindness and tenderness did for him what 
 the fine traditions of chivalry do for gentle- 
 men, and made him avoid anything that 
 might seem like taking advantage of her 
 temporary dependence on him. Annie laid 
 her head on the table and closed her eyes ; 
 she said nothing, and Jess also sat silently 
 on the fender, feeding and poking the fire 
 under the kettle, which was as slow to boil 
 as the proverbial watched pot Gradually 
 she dropped off to sleep. She did not know 
 whether she had slept minutes or hours when , 
 
92 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 she was woke by voices downstairs. One 
 was a well-known angry voice, that sent the 
 hot blood to her heart and made her jump up 
 from her chair. The room was dark except 
 for the firelight, Jesse was no longer there ; 
 she could hear his low stammer through her 
 aunt's high-pitched objurgations. A shower 
 of coarse epithets was falling thick and fast 
 upon herself and her ' feller,' her ' work'us 
 varmint' She had heard most of them 
 already that evening, but somehow they 
 seemed worse this time. They had given 
 her pain before, but at bottom she had felt 
 more indignation than shame at them ; now 
 each word fell heavily on her heart, like a 
 stroke of doom. She stood transfixed, unable 
 to move or cry out. The door below shut, 
 there was silence, and then Jesse creaked up 
 the stairs with the candle. She made a 
 staggering step towards him, wide-eyed and 
 deadly pale, her hands clasped tightly to- 
 gether. 
 
 ' Tell me tell me ' she gasped. 
 
 'Oh, Annie, Annie dear, don't take on! 1 
 was all he answered. 
 
A VILLAGE TKAGEDY 93 
 
 She allowed herself to be put back in the 
 chair, and leaned against the table with her 
 forehead on her hand. 
 
 ' It was my fault,' he said penitently, after 
 a pause ; ' I ought to ha' explained it more. 
 But she talked that fast I couldn't get my 
 words out you know, Annie, I always am 
 stupid like.' 
 
 ' What did she say ?' asked Annie. 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 ' She said as you wasn't to go back to the 
 farm nohow. But never you mind what she 
 says ; there's your uncle will be back to- 
 morrow, and he'll think different.' 
 
 Annie shook her head. 
 
 'No, he won't why should he?' she 
 asked, with a calm dull scepticism, as though 
 they were discussing some one else's case. 
 
 ' He won't believe as there's anything wrong 
 between us,' cried Jess eagerly, ' because it's 
 not the truth.' 
 
 ' It's not the truth for us, but it's the truth 
 for other folks. I can't say as I wasn't here,' 
 Annie returned stubbornly, with the preco- 
 cious worldly wisdom of the town-bred girl ; 
 
94 A VILLAGE TRACED} 
 
 a worldly wisdom that had availed her so 
 little in the stress of action. 
 
 'How did aunt find out?' she asked 
 presently. 
 
 ' I don't know, 1 answered Jess, putting the 
 kettle back on the fire. ' It was summat to 
 do with the dratted lantern.' 
 
 They were silent again, Annie staring at 
 the table, dipping her finger in a little pool 
 of milk that had been spilt upon it, and 
 drawing lines on the shiny cloth cover. This 
 calm, the calm of an exhausted body and 
 nerves dulled by a succession of shocks, 
 puzzled and alarmed the simple Jess. It 
 was natural for girls to cry, and he would 
 have known more or less what to say if 
 Annie had cried ; but it was difficult to 
 address vague, comforting, petting words to 
 this stony creature. He made a cup of tea 
 and pushed it towards her, but she did not 
 touch it ; then he kneeled down by her and 
 held it to her lips. 
 
 ' Do'ee drink it now, my dear,' he said 
 coaxingly, like a mother talking to a sick 
 child ; ' it'll make you feel a lot better. 1 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 95 
 
 She drank it and laid her head on his 
 shoulder with a long moaning sigh. She 
 sighed once or twice again, perhaps she may 
 have shed a few tears ; then quite suddenly 
 she fell asleep. He went on kneeling up 
 with her head on his shoulder. At first it 
 was sweet to hold her there, to feel her 
 breathing and her soft hair against his cheek, 
 but soon he began to feel sleepy and cramped 
 and tired. To persons of highly imaginative 
 temperament there is an actual pleasure in 
 physical or other pain endured for the sake 
 of those they love, but such persons are not 
 usually agriculturally employed. Jess loved 
 Annie with a love that for tenderness and 
 a kind of chivalry could not have been 
 matched in High Cross ; but by the time 
 she had been leaning upon him for half an 
 hour he would have been thankful to lay her 
 down. He feared to do so, lest he should 
 wake her from this deep sleep, which he 
 instinctively felt to be very necessary to 
 her, body and mind. He had been carting 
 manure all the day before and had another 
 hard day's work awaiting him. His left arm 
 
96 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 and shoulder got very stiff, his knees ached, 
 and he had pins and needles in his feet 
 and legs ; moreover, his candle was burning 
 down, and it was the only one that he had. 
 He managed to reach the candle and put it 
 out with his ringer ; after that he held on 
 quite still for what seemed to him hours 
 and hours, till the position became almost 
 intolerable. 
 
 ' I don't know as I can stand it much 
 longer,' he whispered to himself. 
 
 A little while after she moved, cried out 
 and threw herself back. For a moment he 
 could think of nothing but the relief; he 
 jumped up and stretched himself, with sighs 
 of comfort. Then he thought of Annie 
 again, and struck a match under the table 
 She had fallen back in the old beehive chair, 
 uncomfortably enough, but still she was 
 asleep. He dared not lay himself on the bed 
 and go off as sound as she, lest he should 
 not wake in another hour, when the world's 
 work and his share in it began again. He 
 crouched down before the dying embers and 
 fell into weary uneasy dreams, between sleep- 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 97 
 
 ing and waking, while coldly the September 
 dawn arose and the long undulations of the 
 distant hills began to outline themselves, dim 
 and unsubstantial, against the gray still sky. 
 
 When Mrs. Pontin left Annie in the bean- 
 field she was really tired out She had 
 eaten nothing since the twelve o'clock dinner. 
 After she had shut the girl up in her room 
 she had gone out to the cow, and found it so 
 much worse that she had rushed for a bottle 
 of whisky, thinking that if it did no good it 
 could do no harm. It did not do any good, 
 for the cow died ; and then she took a sip 
 of it herself, a little sip that would not have 
 affected her under ordinary conditions, but 
 acting on an empty stomach, served to 
 further excite her already irritated nerves, 
 and in fact almost to intoxicate her. When 
 she had turned Annie out she had some 
 supper and went to bed, but she could not 
 sleep comfortably ; she could not lose the 
 feeling that something was wrong. She 
 woke up, and thought of the girl spending 
 the night out-of-doors ; and it worried hen 
 7 
 
98 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Not that she relented towards Annie ; on 
 the contrary, the uneasy sense that her own 
 conduct in the matter was open to criticism 
 made her all the more determined to take 
 such a view of her niece's behaviour as most 
 justified that conduct. She got up and 
 stood at her window, which looked over the 
 orchard. At that moment a light appeared, 
 coming quickly up the field ; she saw it go 
 across the lane and through the gate of the 
 Manor. She could hardly believe her eyes. 
 Was it Annie ? If not, who was it ? She 
 dressed hastily and went into the bean-field, 
 hunting and calling high and low ; but there 
 was no Annie. Then she went into the 
 Manor field ; she saw a light in Jesse's 
 window, and her own lantern, the candle 
 flaring and flickering low in the socket, but 
 still burning, close against his door. Annie 
 had put it down there and forgotten it. Mrs. 
 Pontin did not hesitate for a moment ; she 
 knocked and shouted, and the reluctant Jesse 
 appeared. He was not capable of furnishing 
 an answer to a question on the spur of the 
 moment, of denying or evading the truth ; 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 99 
 
 all he could do was to receive her volley of 
 abuse into his own bosom, and prevent her 
 penetrating upstairs to Annie. She returned 
 to the farm in a glow of triumphant infalli- 
 bility, which she mistook for indignation ; 
 but next morning she again felt a most 
 uncomfortable necessity to defend her own 
 conduct So she dwelt on what Annie had 
 done, and implied from that other things 
 which it seemed to her probable that the 
 girl had done, till actualities and probabilities 
 were hopelessly conglomerated in her mind. 
 At last she was prepared to swear that Annie 
 had constantly spent her evenings in Jesse's 
 room, and was in the habit of neglecting her 
 work to philander with passers-by in the lane. 
 Considering what Selina was, it might be 
 inferred that her daughter was already cor- 
 rupted when she came to the farm, and that 
 Mrs. Pontin had shown some forbearance in 
 treating her so well up till now. That 
 exemplary matron was too well occupied to 
 be much of a gossip as a rule, but it was 
 intolerably unsatisfactory to justify herself 
 only to herself, and she managed to get 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 round to Cousin Robinson's soon after break- 
 fast, there to rehearse in full the tale she had 
 to tell James Pontin on his return. How 
 much of it was truth and how much inven- 
 tion she herself knew at last as little as any 
 one. There are three roads up to High 
 Cross from the Oxford highway roads 
 which obligingly furnish the inhabitants of 
 the place with matter for discussion from one 
 generation to another; as, though no one 
 denies they are all bad, there is room for wide 
 divergences of opinion as to their relative 
 badness. 
 
 Mr. Pontin was a partisan of the way round 
 by the Hall, where for the most part you 
 come up gently ; but unluckily to-day he had 
 a friend to drop in the direction of Oxford, 
 so he came the short cut between the high 
 banks, where the hill is so steep the road is 
 actually unable to hang on to it, and is always 
 moving down like a glacier, only in a quicker 
 and more disjointed fashion. High over it 
 a gray dilapidated gable-end peers down 
 through some gnarled apple-branches. This 
 is Cousin Robinson's farm. From the orchard 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Mrs. Robinson saw Cousin Pontin driving up 
 the lane, and she could not help calling out 
 to him and letting him know what sad doings 
 there had been at home in his absence. There 
 was no point on which James Pontin was so 
 sensitive as the old-established respectability 
 of his family. It was bad enough to have 
 relations far away in great cities who fell 
 from its traditional standard ; but to have it 
 disgraced by this London girl in his own 
 house, in his own village, was bitter indeed. 
 By the time he alighted at the door of the 
 farm he was very angry, in the sullen, silent, 
 not undignified way which characterised him. 
 It made him all the more outraged and sore 
 that he had begun to feel a kind of passive 
 attachment to Annie. 
 
 Meanwhile she sat waiting for him in the 
 hedge by the road he usually selected, look- 
 ing out with a beating heart whenever she 
 heard the noise of wheels, and half-relieved, 
 half-disappointed, when they turned out not 
 to be those of his cart. She had taken the 
 desperate resolution of meeting him and 
 pleading her cause before aunt had prejudiced 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 him against her. If she missed him, Jesse 
 was to come at the dinner -hour and they 
 were to proceed together to the farm. When 
 the church clock struck twelve, Jesse came 
 and told her her uncle had been seen driving 
 home an hour ago. Then she began to 
 tremble at the thought of the impending 
 interview. 
 
 ' Oh, Jess, I can't go,' she said. 
 
 Jess pushed his hat back and rubbed his 
 head. 
 
 ' What'll you do then, Annie ?' he asked. 
 
 ' Oh, it's only talk,' she answered. ' Of 
 course I must go really.' 
 
 Arid they slunk up the fields at the back 
 of the village, lest any one should notice her 
 bare feet. As they came through the bean- 
 field to the orchard the air was still and heavy. 
 There was no one about among the stacks or 
 in the poultry-yard, and the back-door of the 
 house was, as usual, wide open. They went 
 and stood in the wide stone passage that ran 
 through to the front ; no one had noticed 
 them come, for the sound of their footsteps 
 was covered by the rattling of plates in the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 103 
 
 kitchen and the roll of the approaching 
 thunder. 
 
 Annie was just trying to summon courage 
 to announce her presence, when her uncle 
 opened the kitchen door and stood face to 
 face with her. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' he said. There was a world of 
 hardness and anger in the exclamation. 
 
 Annie stepped forward quickly and caught 
 him by the sleeve ; she was trembling very 
 much. 
 
 ' Uncle/ she cried, ' please, please do listen 
 to me. I'll tell you the truth indeed I will.' 
 
 He paused, and then said sternly : 
 
 ' There's only one question as I want an 
 answer to. Was you or was you not with 
 Jesse Williams last night?' 
 
 ' Yes yes, I was,' she answered, with eager 
 quickness. ' But I'll tell you how it hap- 
 pened, and all about it.' 
 
 ' I don't want to hear anything about it,' 
 he said brutally, flinging her from him against 
 the wall. ' What's the good ? you're a slut.' 
 
 ' O, Mr. Pontin, sir,' Jesse broke in, stammer- 
 ing and rubbing his hat hard against his knee, 
 
104 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' there ain't been nothing wrong between us, 
 I do assure you. It was all on account of 
 the rain she come to me.' 
 
 ' Pho ! There were plenty she might ha' 
 gone to. 1 
 
 ' Who was there, uncle ?' asked Annie, 
 with a great effort preventing her voice from 
 breaking down. ' I don't know no one here 
 except aunt's friends, and I didn't like to go 
 to them and say as she'd turned me out.' 
 
 ' I suppose you're tellin' how cru'l I've been 
 to you, miss,' cried aunt defiantly, coming 
 out of the kitchen ' a hussy I've been that 
 kind and forbearin' with ! And you as beat 
 poor little Albert a'most to death !' 
 
 ' Hold your tongue, Jane,' said the farmer 
 peremptorily. ' Leave me to settle this here 
 matter.' Then turning to Annie ' Can you 
 swear as mat was the first time you was ever 
 inside Williams's house?' 
 
 She blushed and hung her head. In fact 
 she had been in the habit of leaving socks 
 and other small articles she had mended for 
 Jesse in the lower room, and had once or 
 twice taken shelter there from the rain. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 105 
 
 ' I was never upstairs before,' she answered 
 huskily. 
 
 ' Upstairs or down, have you often been 
 there before?' 
 
 ' Yes yes but,' with repressed strangling 
 sobs, ' I can tell you how it was. There 
 wasn't any harm in it ; there wasn't indeed/ 
 
 ' But I say there was harm in it ; I say 
 there was.' 
 
 And drowning her broken explanations in 
 the clatter of his nailed boots, he strode to 
 the front door and set it wide open, then he 
 came back, and pointing at it said : 
 
 'That's your way. March, now you've 
 brought nothing into this house but shame, 
 and you shall take nothing out of it but 
 shame.' 
 
 And holding her by the arms, he forced 
 her backwards towards the door, not with 
 any violence, but firmly and strongly. 
 
 ' Uncle ! uncle ! ' she gasped desperately ; 
 then, as they reached the threshold, clinging 
 with both hands to the loose front of his 
 coat in passionate entreaty, the tears running 
 down her cheeks, she cried : 
 
io6 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' I'm an honest girl ; I swear I am ! Listen, 
 only just listen to what I've got to say. Don't 
 send me away without giving me a chance 
 to speak ! ' 
 
 'You mustn't talk as if I'd done that,' 
 he retorted sternly. ' I've asked you plain 
 questions and you've given me plain answers. 
 That being so, you couldn't tell me anything 
 as would alter my 'pinion of you.' 
 
 Jesse had been stammering for some time, 
 trying to get out something. At last he 
 said : 
 
 ' Mr. Pontin, sir, I'm ready and willing to 
 marry Annie to-morrow, if that would cause 
 you to think different of her.' 
 
 The farmer turned to him with a short 
 bitter laugh. 
 
 ' It 'ud be a mighty fine thing for me to 
 get a work'us boy for my newy, wouldn't it ? 
 You may do as you please, Williams, it won't 
 make no difference to me. Her conduct 
 in my house have been shameful, and it's the 
 last time as she'll darken this door ! ' 
 
 Then pushing them both over the thres- 
 hold, he raised his voice in final sentence : 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 107 
 
 ' So you understand, Annie Pontin, from this 
 day forrard you're no kin of mine.' 
 
 He banged the heavy oak door violently 
 to ; at the same moment Annie started for- 
 ward and it caught her a dazing blow on the 
 forehead. She give one exceeding bitter cry 
 and sank down against it, with her forehead 
 on the iron scraper, which she grasped tightly 
 with both hands and almost shook in the 
 frenzy of her despair. It seemed impossible, 
 quite impossible, that she could be thrown 
 put of life, as it were, into mere desolate 
 nothingness, like that so suddenly, so un- 
 prepared. It could only be a hideous dream 
 that would be over in a few minutes. But it 
 was her own fault why hadn't she answered 
 her uncle's questions differently ? Why hadn't 
 she made him see the truth ? Then, again, 
 as Jesse lifted her up, she shrieked aloud, 
 ' Uncle ! uncle ! only do listen ! ' and beat 
 and pushed against the door with her hands 
 and elbows. Jesse walked to the gate and 
 looked round, revolving things in his mind 
 slowly as was his wont. When he turned 
 again she was standing on the narrow paved 
 
log A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 path, crying and talking to herself, and 
 mechanically wiping the blood from her hands 
 and arms ; for the loose rough iron studs of 
 the old door had scratched them severely. 
 
 It was high time to take shelter. A heavy 
 thunder-cloud, black, with a reddish glare at 
 its edges, was hanging low over the hill ; the 
 weight of it seemed almost to rest on the 
 great elm-trees, towering in absolute stillness 
 above them. There was twilight everywhere, 
 around and below, but not the transparent 
 twilight of dawn or evening ; the air seemed 
 thick when they looked at each other it was 
 as though a crape veil hung between their 
 faces, and the wide valley below was sub- 
 merged in a quivering lurid murkiness. The 
 labourers had left the fields and the straggling 
 village street was quite deserted ; one felt that 
 in every darkening cottage the ordinary occu- 
 pations of the day were suspended, and there 
 was a little group awaiting with a kind of 
 excitement, perhaps terror, the first crash of 
 the storm. 
 
 Annie let Jesse lead her out of the garden, 
 and then she stood still under the elms. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 109 
 
 They were so high and at such a short dis- 
 tance from the house, that it seemed as though 
 some day, in a great gale or a thunder-storm, 
 one of them must inevitably come crashing 
 down upon the roof. They had been there 
 two hundred years and nothing had happened, 
 but Annie had often felt nervous about them 
 when she looked out of her little bedroom 
 window into their great boughs, tossing and 
 creaking in the winter wind or swaying under 
 the burden of their summer foliage. Now 
 she stood waiting just under them. 
 
 'You didn't ought to stop here, Annie/ 
 said Jess. ' Where will you go ? ' 
 
 ' Where shall I go ? ' she repeated. Then, 
 after a pause ' Why to the work'us, I suppose/ 
 
 There was a deafening crash immediately 
 overhead ; a noise as though some Titan had 
 blasted the whole heaven to fragments, 
 followed by a long reverberating roar. A 
 sheet of violet flame broke simultaneously 
 from the centre of the sky and the long line 
 of the distant hills over Oxford. Magdalen 
 tower, the dome of the Radcliffe, the tall 
 spire of St. Mary's, every pinnacle and turret 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 of the far-off city flashed out pale and distinct 
 for several seconds in the livid purple glare 
 of the lightning, and disappeared again into 
 darkness. Involuntarily the two young people 
 had started together as the thunder burst over 
 them ; when it was over, Annie let go of Jess 
 and began to run fast in the direction of a 
 steep track that led to the lower part of the 
 village. It was rough and she stumbled at 
 the top, recovered herself, but paused long 
 enough for Jess to come up with her. 
 
 ' Where are you going, Annie ? ' he asked 
 again, white and frowning. He had caught 
 her by the wrists, and they stood face to face 
 for a minute or so, while the thunder, leaving 
 the hill, seemed to be rolling round their feet. 
 
 ' To the work'us,' she answered again, 
 sombrely. 
 
 ' I can't let ye go there,' he cried, ' I can't.' 
 
 There was a great rushing sound rapidly 
 nearing them ; a cloud of chaff, blown from 
 some neighbouring stack-yard, came tossing 
 and whirling along the road and on down the 
 village street. The giant elm-trees shivered 
 a moment, and then with a groan bent their 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 heads to the tempest, struggling in its grasp 
 till their mighty arms clashed heavily against 
 each other, beat upon the shaft of the cross 
 and sometimes almost swept the ground, 
 where twigs and leaves and chaff were lying 
 and flying confusedly. Immediately on the 
 first rush of the wind followed a blinding 
 downpour of rain and hail, lashing the road 
 and rattling on the roofs of the village, as 
 though an aerial regiment were galloping 'over 
 them. 
 
 Jesse was talking to Annie quickly, unlike 
 himself, but at first the noise of the storm 
 prevented her from distinguishing what he 
 said ; she could only perceive that he was 
 trembling all over, and that his heavy healthy 
 face, transformed in an agony of passion and 
 entreaty, was haggard and ashy pale. Then 
 her ears became accustomed to the noise, and 
 she heard him saying : 
 
 'You'll never put up with it you don't 
 know what it's like, as I do.' 
 
 * I shan't stay there ; I shall go to service,' 
 she returned. 
 
 ' No one '11 have you,' he argued ' no one 
 
112 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 as is good for anything. You're as like as 
 not to get into dreadful trouble. Oh, Annie, 
 Annie darling!' he broke out, 'what's the 
 good ? When I love you so, why should you 
 go away and leave me ? ' 
 
 ' Because I must be an honest girl,' she 
 answered desperately, looking away and 
 trying to free herself. 
 
 'What's the use?' he urged. 'Your uncle's 
 turned agen you, and no one '11 believe what 
 you say. What's the use, when I'm ready 
 and willing to marry you the first day as ever 
 I can ? Why, Annie dear, it's all I want, to 
 have you to myself and show how I love you. 
 How can you think I won't behave right by 
 you, when if I was as rich as a lord I'd give 
 it all just to marry you ?' 
 
 The violent wind blew his hat away, but 
 he did not leave go of her to catch it ; only 
 looking up for a moment, he seemed to realise 
 for the first time that the rain was coming 
 down in bucketsful and that they were both 
 wet to the skin. He began dragging her 
 along towards the Manor. 
 
 'Any way, you can't be out in this,' he 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 113 
 
 said. ' You must take shelter till the storm's 
 over.' 
 
 There was a little carved doorway in the 
 Manor wall, close to the summer-house. They 
 reached it quickly, and Annie stopped. 
 
 ' Look, I'm wet through already,' she said. 
 ' You might as well let me go.' 
 
 He caught her in his arms and clasped her 
 strongly, almost violently. ' No !' he cried, 
 'no!' 
 
 They stood in the doorway, sheltered by 
 the thickness of the wall. Below them the 
 foliage rustled, the orchard trees, the walnuts 
 and elms all bowed one way like corn, beneath 
 the white rush of the rain. Behind that 
 stormy veil, a mile or two away, stood a 
 square building in a wide, gray field. Within 
 it all was rough and cold and cheerless, beyond 
 it lay what ? The arms that held her were 
 strong and warm, the eyes that looked into 
 hers were full of love and anguish and entreaty. 
 Her lips moved, he opened the door and 
 they passed through. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE shock and exposure to which Annie 
 had been subjected naturally brought on an 
 illness. It was not so severe as might have 
 been expected, but the very afternoon of her 
 arrival at the Manor she became heavy, 
 feverish, and finally light-headed. Jesse was 
 frightened, and next day called in Mr. Evans, 
 the parish doctor, and Betsy Todd, to see to 
 her while he was at work. When she got 
 better she said no more about the workhouse, 
 but she waited for Jesse to tell her he had 
 made arrangements for their marriage. 
 
 One evening, when he was sitting with his 
 arm round her, he said : 
 
 ' Annie darling, I ask Mr. Shepherd about 
 our being married, and he says me being only 
 nineteen we can't be married without father 
 gives his consent, so I thought I'd walk into 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 115 
 
 Oxford o' Sunday and leave a message at 
 the Crown against he comes there.' 
 
 Mr. Shepherd had made a mistake, but a 
 common one, and particularly to be excused 
 in his case, because he himself had been 
 married under age by license, and remembered 
 having to swear that he had his guardian's 
 consent. Most youths in Jesse's position 
 would have gone to their clergyman for 
 advice, but no one ever thought of going to 
 Mr. Hayes. He was an old man, one of those 
 unliterary authors and unlearned students who 
 are among the curious by-products of theology, 
 and had written some family prayers and 
 works on Unfulfilled Prophesy which had had 
 a certain sale. He would have found it diffi- 
 cult to say what he did now, all day long in 
 his musty little study, but he had acquired a 
 habit of being annoyed at interruptions, and 
 consequently he was seldom interrupted. 
 
 It seems strange to the educated that 
 people should be content to sit down with 
 hearsay information on some point of vital 
 importance to themselves, but it is the com- 
 mon practice of the poor. It did not occur 
 
Ii6 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 to Jesse, or even to Annie, that that excellent 
 farmer and man of business, kindly well-to-do 
 Mr. Shepherd, was not intimately acquainted 
 with the details of his country's laws. They 
 and the entire village would have accepted 
 his decision upon any of them with respect. 
 
 It happened that Jesse Williams senior 
 had changed his barge that summer, so he 
 never came to Oxford. It took some little 
 time to ascertain that he was not coming, 
 and why. Then Annie for Jesse was no 
 scholar wrote letters from time to time to 
 different places on the Leamington and Rugby 
 Canal, where it was supposed they would find 
 him. Early in January they got this answer : 
 
 ' Jesse Williams sez young Jess and his 
 gurl are 2 fools. If they doont like it they 
 may lump it. He doont see wy he shoud 
 consent to there gettin marrid. Signed 
 Jesse Williams, His Mark.' 
 
 This had been an agreeable and unexpected 
 opportunity for the exercise of power to the 
 drunken bargee, who had years before been 
 deprived of the custody of his son. Annie 
 wrote again, but received no further reply. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 117 
 
 This postponement of their marriage was 
 a great blow to her ; truth to tell, it did not 
 much affect' Jess. Of course he should marry 
 her next year, as soon as he was twenty-one ; 
 and as long as they were married some time, 
 the exact period seemed to him a detail. 
 There were several couples in the village who 
 had had children before they were man and 
 wife, but once married no one troubled to 
 rake that up against them, unless it was in 
 the heat of a quarrel about something else. 
 He was far too happy in the possession of 
 Annie and a home of his own to worry him- 
 self over trifles. But Annie came from a 
 higher social stratum, where morals are less 
 careless. As the shock and excitement of 
 her first leaving the farm wore off, the instinct 
 of respectability in her asserted itself more 
 and more. The irregularity of her position 
 branded her, in her own eyes, with a shame 
 that marriage itself could not wholly obliter- 
 ate ; yet she intensely desired to be married. 
 At first it seemed a matter of days ; then 
 it went further and further away, till at last 
 it was too far off to form part of the tangible 
 
ii8 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 future. At any rate her child must be born 
 before, and the thought was bitter to her. 
 Mr. Pontin himself could scarcely feel more 
 keenly than she the disgrace she had brought 
 upon her family. 
 
 Meantime, as the winter wore on, the faces 
 of James Pontin and his wife got to look 
 harder, older, and more withered. They 
 could not forget the scandal about Annie, 
 for she was at their door ; and, what affected 
 them even more, they heard that Benny had 
 enlisted at the Cowley barracks, and then 
 that he was going to Egypt. They waited 
 and waited for him to write or come, but 
 nothing happened ; then uncle went to the 
 barracks and found he had sailed from Ports- 
 mouth two days before. This was all the 
 news of Benny. 
 
 It must not be supposed because Annie 
 was not happy that she did not love Jesse. 
 She had not been carried into his arms by 
 one of those deep tides of passion which sweep 
 smooth over all obstacles, submerging the 
 ordinary features of life and character as a 
 great flood submerges those of a landscape. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 119 
 
 But she loved him in spite of, partly because 
 of, an acute sensitiveness to the roughness of 
 her lot. She attached herself to him with 
 the affection of the civilised being, and with 
 the clinging dependence of the savage woman 
 on the man who holds her fate in his hands. 
 Jesse's great love for her could not transmute 
 his natural stupidity, and he did not perceive 
 that she was unhappy. Indeed she was not 
 so when he came home and they sat close 
 together by the fire, he smoking or mending 
 harness, and she with her needle. His wages 
 were low, but they kept them in the neces- 
 saries of life. The improvidence of the very 
 poor has its bright side. Life would indeed 
 be intolerable were they always contemplating 
 the gulf of destitution on whose brink they 
 hang. But Annie belonged to a provident 
 family, and could not as yet acquire their 
 happy thoughtlessness. Her father's savings 
 and club-money had lasted them nearly to 
 the end of his illness, and he had fretted a 
 great deal when they were gone. She, as 
 the weekly wage went in rent and food and 
 fuel, wondered how she would be able to 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 prepare for the baby's advent and replace 
 their own clothes, which even the neatest 
 mending would not make everlasting. Aunt 
 had sent her her own few possessions by the 
 hands of Abel. She could not bear to be 
 idle so much of the day while Jesse was 
 working hard, but she was wholly unfit for 
 field-labour, and she could get no needle-work 
 in High Cross, because there were no gentry 
 there, and she was not intimate enough with 
 the villagers to get those odd jobs which 
 are given away among friends. There was, 
 however, one person who from time to time 
 asked her in to do a bit of mangling. This 
 was Mrs. Baker, the Vicarage washerwoman. 
 Mrs. Baker was a plump, pink-complexioned 
 woman, as good-natured as is possible for a 
 very talkative person who would rather say 
 anything than nothing. A few out of her 
 innumerable words had lately given offence 
 to the lady who owned the village mangle, 
 who had retorted by mentioning episodes in 
 Mrs. Baker's early career which she herself 
 commonly forgot. The village had allowed 
 her to forget them, for as regards women the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 social code of the poor is usually both more 
 reasonable and more Christian than ours. 
 Having routed the lady of the mangle from 
 a business point of view by getting a machine 
 of her own, Mrs. Baker was not sorry when 
 she required help to employ a person of no 
 obtrusive respectability. Nor, to do her 
 justice, was she sorry to hold out a hand to 
 the girl a hand rough but friendly, and as 
 helpful as was allowed by the pressure of her 
 own necessities and the severe supervision of 
 her eldest daughter, who was laundry-maid 
 in a ' good ' house in the neighbourhood, and 
 particular about her company. Mrs. Barker's 
 interest in Annie's affairs was, if possible, 
 livelier than in that of her neighbours in 
 general. She was never tired of her own 
 remarks about them, which, though always 
 well meant, were often exasperating. 
 
 ' Have Williams said anything more about 
 marrying you, my dear?' she would ask, 
 while Annie was turning the mangle. 
 
 ' No,' answered Annie, with determined 
 indifference. ' It's no good his talking about 
 it till he can do it.' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Mrs. Baker shook her head. 
 
 ' Well, well ! if I was you I should feel a 
 deal more comfortable if he talked about it a 
 bit, over his glass, or o' Sundays, as it might 
 be. I likes to know what's in folk's minds, 
 and whose to tell you if they don't their- 
 selves? It ain't as if you could put any 
 dependence on men they're a shifty lot, 
 that they are, my dear ; and so you'll say 
 when you knows 'em. Why, my darter was 
 telling me only yesterday what doings there've 
 been down at her place. The footman, as 
 has been engaged to the housekeeper ever 
 since he was in buttons, give warning, and is 
 going to marry the kitching-maid. Lor! 
 ain't they false ! ' 
 
 Annie seemed strangely unmoved by this 
 instance of male perfidy, which sent such a 
 thrill of exhilarating horror through Mrs. 
 Baker's susceptible bosom. She only said 
 stubbornly, 'Jesse isn't one to talk, and he 
 isn't one to change his mind neither.' And 
 pausing and blushing a little 'Then he's that 
 fond of me he'd do whatever I asked him.' 
 
 The washerwoman folded Mr. Hayes' broad 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 123 
 
 white choker and drew her iron slowly and 
 steadily along it As she got near the end 
 of it she said : 
 
 ' Bless you, that's what girls always think o' 
 the first You gets to know 'em after a bit.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Baker !' cried Annie, ' don't you nor 
 any one else go talking as though Jesse didn't 
 want to marry me. It's shameful untrue, 
 and I won't hear a word more about it' 
 
 Mrs. Baker looked up half amused and 
 wholly surprised. 
 
 ' Deary me, Annie Pontin, what a sperrit 
 you've got! You're just for all the world 
 like me when I was a girl such a sperrit as 
 I had ! I'm sure I hope Williams do mean 
 honest by you ; he seems a steady young 
 chap, and one as would act right. As to his 
 being so fond, don't you reckon on that. It's 
 their natur to begin fond, and it's their natur 
 to wear it off; but you needn't fret about it, 
 for most like by that time he'll be used to 
 your ways and won't trouble to change that 
 is, if you don't give him words. He's but a 
 lad yet, and he's bound to be like the rest of 
 'em. There'll be times when he'll take his 
 
124 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 drop too much, and times when there's no 
 pleasing his stomach, and lucky if it's no 
 worse. But just you take my advice don't 
 you give him no words, and you'll get him 
 to church yet.' 
 
 Thus did Mrs. Baker, no wiser than her 
 fellow-mortals, pronounce judgment on half 
 the human race from the poor premisses of 
 her own span-wide experience. 
 
 Happily for Annie she trusted to her own 
 knowledge of Jesse rather than to the washer- 
 woman's knowledge of the world. Yet 
 though she had no doubt as to his intentions, 
 it was galling to find that other people had ; 
 especially to a Pontin, who liked to hold her 
 head high. 
 
 ' Jesse,' she said one Sunday evening, ' I 
 don't mean to talk to any one again, not till 
 we're married.' 
 
 Jesse removed his pipe from his mouth, 
 which gradually expanded into a broad 
 smile. He still took a lover's pleasure in 
 everything she said and looked, and there 
 was something amusingly childish about the 
 air of haughty decision with which she lifted 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 125 
 
 her chin and deposited a tea-cup on the 
 dresser as she made this announcement. 
 
 'Lor, Annie!' he ejaculated. 
 
 ' I don't mean exactly as I shan't speak/ 
 she went on, putting the things on the shelf 
 with quick deft motions ; ' of course I must 
 buy what we want and that. But I shan't 
 go talking to them women over at Mrs. 
 Baker's any more, Mrs. Pike and Mrs. Clinker 
 and such like ; nor Mrs. Baker more than I 
 can help.' 
 
 ' I should ha' thought you'd ha' liked a 
 bit of a chat,' returned Jess ; ' the women- 
 folk they mostly does. But if you likes to 
 keep yourself to yourself, all the better, says 
 I, all the better.' 
 
 Annie put her arms round his neck, and 
 he looked up at her with his bright face. 
 
 ' I shouldn't mind if I never set eyes on 
 any one but you,' she said, and kissed him 
 once or twice. And then 'You are good 
 and kind to me, Jess, and I don't believe 
 you'll get different. The others they know 
 nothing about you, and they're always pre- 
 tending they know a lot more than I do.' 
 
126 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' Why, what can they know about me more 
 nor every one knows ? ' asked Jesse bewildered. 
 ' Let alone the work'us, I've kep' myself as 
 respectable as other folks, and respectabler 
 nor some.' As he thought it over he became 
 as nearly as possible indignant. ' What ha' 
 they been telling you about me, I'd like to 
 know ?' he reiterated. 
 
 ' They say,' Annie answered, ' I'm not to 
 fancy you'll keep on being fond of me. Men 
 are always like that for a bit, they say ; and 
 they want me to think maybe you won't 
 marry me after all, not unless I take a deal 
 of trouble to make you.' 
 
 Jesse ruminated silently for a minute or 
 two, chuckled, and gradually broke into a loud 
 laugh. He drew Annie's head down and 
 gave her a smacking kiss on the ear. 
 
 ' By Jinger, my dear,' he said, ' you did give 
 me a start ! I was afeard there was some one 
 casting about to get me into trouble with the 
 master. Lor, Annie ! whatever made you 
 listen to their nonsense ? I never thought 
 you was such a silly.' 
 
 Annie smiled and blushed, and wondered 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 127 
 
 why she had. Then she kneeled down on 
 the floor in front of the fire and put her hand 
 in Jesse's. He kept on looking at her silently, 
 while the red firelight brightened the gold in 
 her hair and the soft roses in her cheeks ; then 
 he laughed again. 
 
 So they sat by the fire and could well 
 afford to make merry at the expense of their 
 neighbours, who had gone so much further 
 along the dull road of life and found nothing 
 as sweet by the way had gathered nothing 
 more valuable on their journey than the sterile 
 dust miscalled ' knowledge of the world.' 
 
 The sixpences Annie earned at Mrs. Baker's 
 were too occasional to make a sensible differ- 
 ence in their income, and one day she thought 
 of a plan for getting work in Oxford. When 
 the dirty February snow had melted from 
 under the hedges, and small and foolish prim- 
 roses were sunning themselves in the open 
 places of the coppice, she set off to Horsley 
 with a little money in her pocket, which she 
 had saved out of the fuel since the weather 
 had been warmer. She brought back with 
 her a bit of Turkey red and some white thread, 
 
128 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 and by the next evening had fashioned a tiny 
 embroidered pinafore, such as had been a 
 speciality of the school in which she had been 
 taught. She put her best work into it, and felt 
 very happy as she stitched away, remembering 
 how popular these little garments had been 
 with the ladies who visited the school from 
 time to time. When it was done she spent 
 some ill-spared pence in a ride to Oxford. If 
 on arriving there she had taken it to the villas 
 of the suburbs she would have found more 
 than one customer for her work ; but going 
 from door to door was too like begging. So 
 she went to the shopkeepers ; and shopkeepers, 
 especially provincial ones, are slow to believe 
 that their customers can affect any fashion 
 which does not purport to come from Paris. 
 The girl worked well, but she could give no 
 references as to character ; and as to the pina- 
 fore, they could not picture any ladylike 
 woman of their acquaintance shrouding the 
 charms of her light -ringleted plaid-sashed 
 infant in such an unusual garment. They all 
 gave Annie very plainly to understand that 
 they did not admire her pinafore or wish to 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 129 
 
 see her again. So she jogged drearily home 
 in the market cart, with the little parcel in 
 her lap. It was summer before she again 
 tried for work, and this time a greater mis- 
 fortune befell. She heard that a farmer's 
 daughter some miles away was going to be 
 married, and that if she went off at once she 
 might get some of the trousseau to make. 
 She started off after tea one day, and returned 
 unsuccessful, late in the evening. 
 
 Jesse had been helping to stack hay in the 
 hot sun all the afternoon, and after that had 
 watered the horses in one of the deep fish- 
 ponds at the Hall. A young horse, pleased 
 to disport himself in the cool water after 
 straining and sweating so many hours in the 
 heavy hay-waggon, left the decorous ranks 
 of his elders, where they stood soberly drink- 
 ing and stirring up the mud at the edge, and 
 plunged into the pond breast-high, sucking 
 down great delicious draughts of dark water 
 from under the broad leaves and silver cups 
 of the trembling water-lilies. Not only so, 
 but when the others shuffled dripping up to 
 the farm-yard, slow and contented, this inso- 
 9 
 
130 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 lent and ill-regulated young horse continued 
 to stand in the middle of the pond, deaf to 
 the exhortations of Jesse and out of reach of 
 his long whip ; whereupon Jesse plunged into 
 the water and drove him out, splashing and 
 snorting, to receive the due chastisement of his 
 sins. However, in the long run it was the 
 man who suffered most. When his work was 
 finished he went home, and finding Annie not 
 yet returned, lay down to rest thinking she 
 would be back presently to get supper ; but 
 before she got back, his clothes, all wet from 
 the pond, had dried upon him. Next morn- 
 ing his limbs ached and his head was heavy, 
 but he worked in the hayfield till the even- 
 ing, when Mr. Shepherd was giving a supper 
 to all the farm hands. He sat down to sup- 
 per with the rest, but everything swam round 
 him, and he felt as though his arms and legs 
 had red-hot iron bars in them instead of bones. 
 He could not eat, and presently he slunk off 
 and home to Annie. Next day he was in 
 bed ; a whole fortnight passed, and he was 
 still in bed. They were getting into debt at 
 the village shop, and the doctor held out no 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 131 
 
 hopes of his being able to return to his work 
 for another six weeks. He was no longer in 
 violent pain, but lay quiet most of the time, 
 while Annie sat by him thinking about the 
 bill at the shop, and the baby coming into 
 a world where it would find nothing to clothe 
 it but a scarlet cotton pinafore. 
 
 Mrs. Baker looked in sometimes, but she 
 had a child down with the measles, and there 
 also happened to be some particularly interest- 
 ing bits of gossip afloat in the village just then, 
 which tended to put the Williamses and their 
 affairs out of her head. Mr. Shepherd came 
 once to inquire, and sent every few days ; 
 otherwise they saw no one except Mr. Evans, 
 the parish doctor. Mr. Evans was a dapper 
 little man with a pleasant young face, a fair 
 moustache and an unprofessional manner, 
 which he spasmodically attempted to tone 
 down when sent by his partner to the more 
 important patients. He Tode a sprightly 
 little mare, as well-groomed as himself, and 
 spent some of the most anxious moments of 
 his day in giving instructions concerning her 
 welfare to the odd boys in whose care he 
 
132 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 was obliged to leave her while he was with 
 his patients. He was a clever, kind-hearted 
 young fellow, and Annie was always glad 
 when she heard his horse stop at the door, 
 and his quick' step come springing up the 
 crazy stairs of the summer-house. He called 
 her Mrs. Williams, and did not seem to notice 
 she was not married. 
 
 ' Come, Williams, you're getting on fam- 
 ously,' he said one morning. ' And now let's 
 have a look at the missus. We can't afford 
 to have her laid up alongside of you ; the 
 district nurse has got plenty to do without 
 having you on her hands, and you'd find her 
 precious disagreeable.' 
 
 A great poet used to call pudding 'a 
 prejudice'; there are some who would go 
 further, and declare eating in general to be 
 a habit. It was one of which Annie, like 
 many another poor woman, had almost cured 
 herself. 
 
 'This won't do, Mrs. Williams,' said the 
 doctor, shaking his head over her pulse. 
 ' You haven't felt inclined for any dinner 
 to-day, I suppose?' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 133 
 
 1 No,' answered Annie bravely, ignoring 
 the shade of irony in his tone. ' I never was 
 very hearty, and now I don't seem to want 
 much but my cup of tea.' 
 
 ' Oh, confound your cups of tea !' exclaimed 
 the doctor. ' You're all alike, you women. 
 Penny wise, pound foolish.' 
 
 Annie was not beaten. 
 
 ' It's no good my eating what I can't pay 
 for, Mr. Evans ; it just sticks in my throat. 
 If I can't be better without better food, I 
 must be as I am.' 
 
 ' Why don't you go to What's-her-name 
 the long-nosed old lady your parson's wife?' 
 he asked. ' I suppose she'd give you some 
 of her soup ; it's not such bad stuff as you 
 might think.' 
 
 Annie blushed and looked down. 
 
 ' I couldn't, sir,' she answered ; and added, 
 after a pause, ' she's not one to like people 
 coming to her that weren't respectable.' 
 
 Mr. Evans fidgeted. 
 
 'Oh, bother that!' he exclaimed hastily, 
 turning red and cross, as though the allusion 
 had been to something unpleasant in his own 
 
134 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 circumstances instead of in Annie's. And 
 the conversation having reached an embar- 
 rassing point, he cut it short by taking out 
 his stylograph and scribbling an official note 
 to Mrs. Hayes recommending the case. This 
 he entrusted to Annie, with earnest if slangy 
 exhortations to deliver it at the Parsonage, 
 for the sake of Jesse and the little one that 
 was coming. 
 
 As he trotted out of the village he said to 
 himself: 'That little thing's not fit for the 
 traces ; some day she'll get too big a load 
 behind her and break her heart. And if she 
 does, what's the odds ? Lord knows there 
 are women enough in the world, and it's 
 purely professional prejudice that makes a 
 fellow bother about keeping one more or less 
 above ground.' 
 
 The mare moved impatiently under him ; 
 he pulled up, glanced round to see that no 
 one was looking, and disappeared over a gate 
 into a neighbouring grass-field. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 JESSE never troubled himself much about the 
 future, but the wolf was now actually at the 
 door, and he was grateful for the doctor's 
 recommendation to Mrs. Hayes ; only won- 
 dered at his own stupidity in not having 
 thought of applying to her before. It must 
 be acknowledged that he did not in the least 
 shrink from becoming an object of charity. 
 But he encouraged Annie to take her pinafore 
 to the Vicarage to show how good a needle- 
 woman she was, and how anxious to work. 
 They had neither of them ever exchanged a 
 word with the vicar or his wife, and being 
 still . very young they could not help indulg- 
 ing in unreasonable hopes. So on the next 
 Saturday morning Annie, tremulous but de- 
 termined, pulled at the stiff bell of the Vicar- 
 age and asked for Mrs. Hayes. She was 
 
136 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 shown into the bare dining-room, with its 
 worn green carpet and table-cloth. Mrs. 
 Hayes had already been putting down names 
 and receiving subscriptions for next winter's 
 clothing club. All her part of the parish 
 business was irreproachably performed, after a 
 steely mechanical fashion. If she took rather 
 more than her rightful share of it, it was 
 because she intensely respected the vicar's 
 literary leisure, and seemed to herself and 
 him better fitted to deal with the coarse and 
 commonplace needs of the villagers. When 
 Annie came in she was seated at the end of 
 the long table with a desk in front of her, 
 and several little account books. 
 
 ' Fifteen pence, one and threepence Oh, 
 it's you, Annie Pontin,' she said. ' Sit down 
 and wait a minute.' And she went on 
 bending over her accounts. 
 
 She was an elderly lady with a long bony 
 nose and curls on whose unchanging hue she 
 prided herself, very mistakenly, for their brown- 
 ness made her gray old face look unneces- 
 sarily hard and ashen. Another lady sat at 
 the window, fidgeting with a sewing-machine ; 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 137 
 
 as far, that is, as the word ' fidget ' could be 
 applied to anything that she did, for she was 
 a large blonde person, who moved quietly. 
 She was on the last border-land of youth, 
 and the least bit inclined to be stout ; her 
 hands and firm full mouth and chin gave a 
 pleasing impression of moral as well as 
 physical power, as different as possible from 
 that swaggering assumption of masculine 
 vigour which is the latest of our feminine 
 affectations. Annie would have said before- 
 hand that the presence of a third person at 
 this interview was calculated to increase her 
 nervousness, but on the contrary, there was 
 something comforting in being looked at by 
 those clear, cheerful, blue eyes. 
 
 ' Well, now, what have you come about, 
 Annie Pontin ?' asked Mrs. Hayes, closing 
 her book and putting her spectacles into their 
 case with a snap. ' Your marriage, I hope. 
 Mr. Hayes has been expecting for a long 
 time to see you or Williams up here about 
 it.' 
 
 Her use of the vicar's name in such cases 
 was the merest form, for as a matter of fact 
 
138 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 he never expected, hoped, or feared anything 
 whatever in connection with his parishioners. 
 
 Annie held up her head and made answer : 
 
 ' Yes, ma'am, and so we should have been 
 here long ago, if Jesse had been able to 
 marry me.' 
 
 ' And why isn't he able ? It's a great 
 shame for you two to be disgracing a respect- 
 able family for I will say the Pontins are 
 respectable, and Mr. Pontin a good church- 
 going kind of man.' 
 
 ' Jesse's ready and willing to marry me 
 to-morrow, Mrs. Hayes,' returned Annie, 'if 
 his father would allow him but his father 
 won't give consent, and so it's not in his 
 power to do so.' 
 
 ' Stuff!' said Mrs. Hayes. Then, after a 
 pause, ' Well, what do you want ?' 
 
 Necessity is a hard master. Annie battled 
 down her pride, and producing Mr. Evans's 
 note, answered, ' The doctor told me to give 
 you this, ma'am. I shouldn't have come 
 only that Jesse is so bad. He's been ill 
 more than a fortnight, and Mr. Evans says 
 it will be weeks before he's about again. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 139 
 
 Mr. Shepherd's very kind, but of course it 
 can't be expected as he can pay Jesse full 
 wages and another man to do his work 
 besides. So so that's how it is,' she ended, 
 rather vaguely. 
 
 Mrs. Hayes had put on her spectacles and 
 was reading the doctor's note. 
 
 ' There's some soup nearly ready now,' 
 she said ; ' you'd better wait for it.' 
 
 Annie with trembling fingers undid the 
 parcel which contained her pinafore. 
 
 ' I've took the liberty of bringing you this 
 I've made,' she said, 'just to show as I can 
 do needlework. Teacher at our Board school 
 she reckoned me the best worker there, and 
 it do seem a pity I can't earn anything by it.' 
 
 ' So you're a Board school girl, are you ? ' 
 asked Mrs. Hayes drily. ' Well, I'm not 
 surprised. You hear that, Mary,' she added, 
 turning to the blonde lady, 'this is one of 
 your educated young women.' 
 
 ' If it hadn't been for Jesse's illness,' Annie 
 went on, too anxious to notice the sarcasm, 
 ' I shouldn't have ventured to trouble you, 
 Mrs. Hayes ; but I thought considering that 
 
140 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 you mightn't object to recommending me for 
 any little job you heard of.' 
 
 Mrs. Hayes turned the pinafore over and 
 sniffed. ' The work's very fair, certainly. I 
 don't pretend to understand what young 
 ladies like nowadays, but I dare say it would 
 please them it's queer enough. However, 
 that's neither here nor there. I'm an old- 
 fashioned person, and never put out my own 
 needlework ; and as to recommending you, 
 Annie Pontin, how can I till you and Williams 
 get married ? It's nonsense to talk of it, 
 when you know there are plenty of respect- 
 able women in the village who would be glad 
 enough to earn a shilling. Now just wait a 
 minute, while I see if there's any soup for 
 Williams ; no one in our parish need go 
 without soup when they are ill.' 
 
 She went out by a side door, leaving Annie 
 tingling. Perhaps even the thought of 
 Jesse lying weak and suffering at home would 
 not have induced her to wait till Mrs. Hayes 
 and her soup came back, if the dock had not 
 fortunately been growing near the nettle. 
 
 'May I look at your pinafore?' asked the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 141 
 
 lady Mrs. Hayes had addressed as Mary, in 
 a clear pleasant voice. 
 
 Annie handed it to her. 
 
 ' It's very pretty,' she said. ' May I buy it ?' 
 
 ' It would be very kind of you, miss,' 
 Annie returned, flushing more with pleasure 
 than she had done with pride and shame. 
 
 ' Not at all,' said Mary. ' It will just suit 
 a little niece of mine. I never saw one like 
 it before.' 
 
 Then she asked if Annie understood a 
 sewing-machine as well as sewing. Her 
 London schoolmistress had made much of 
 the girl, and taught her this extra accom- 
 plishment ; so when Mrs. Hayes returned to 
 announce that the soup would not be ready 
 for an hour or two, she found her niece and 
 Annie Pontin stooping together over the no 
 longer recalcitrant machine. 
 
 ' That girl interests me, Aunt Agnes,' Mary 
 observed, when Annie had gone. 
 
 ' Of course,' returned Mrs. Hayes ; ' she is 
 disreputable. Personally I prefer them 
 respectable but I am old-fashioned, which 
 must excuse my want of taste.' 
 
142 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' You shouldn't be always telling us that', 
 said Mary, with her hearty laugh. ' It's un- 
 fair on a past generation.' 
 
 In the course of much hospital experience 
 Mary had acquired a certain knack of deal- 
 ing with men and women of various charac- 
 ter. She knew it is sometimes well to be 
 rude to rude people ; like animals, they are 
 apt to be cowed by their own reflections. 
 Mrs. Hayes reddened, was silent a minute, 
 and then said her niece was an odd girl, and 
 that she owned she did not understand the 
 young people nowadays. After which she 
 answered all Mary's inquiries about Annie, 
 with unusual fulness and courtesy. She gave 
 her the version of the Pontin scandal which 
 was current in the village ; but Mrs. Hayes's 
 dislike of Mrs. Pontin, coupled with her 
 natural shrewdness, made her add the expres- 
 sion of her conviction that the girl's aunt had 
 been at the bottom of the affair a convic- 
 tion which somehow in no wise modified her 
 condemnation of Annie. Like James Pontin, 
 she attached importance to facts rather than 
 to their explanation. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 143 
 
 That afternoon the sun threw the shadow 
 of Mary's tall substantial figure on the small 
 door in the Manor wall, under the crooked 
 date and twisted monogram of its Elizabethan 
 lord. When the door opened, her own bright 
 look seemed reflected in Annie's face. 
 
 ' I brought you the soup myself/ she said, 
 ' because I wanted to pay you for the pina- 
 fore ; and besides I am a hospital nurse, you 
 know, and I thought I might be able to help 
 you with your patient' 
 
 It was wonderful how Mary's mere pre- 
 sence gave people weighed down with work 
 and responsibility, a sense as of a burden 
 being lifted off their shoulders. Even the 
 shy Jess did not mind being moved about 
 and having his toilette made by her strong, 
 gentle, skilful hands. He soon looked for- 
 ward to her coming, and greeted her with 
 his very best smile ; a smile that brightened 
 up his heavy face wonderfully. This kind 
 of help it was in her character and training 
 to give, and circumstances enabled her to 
 add some of a different nature. In a month 
 she was to sail for India, to take the head of 
 
144 A VILLAGE TKAGED* 
 
 a large hospital there, and she had been so 
 occupied that she had had little time to pre- 
 pare an outfit. She had meant to spend her 
 time at High Cross in making herself a 
 supply of under-linen ; but it was long since 
 she had done any needlework, and she found 
 it more difficult and irksome than she had 
 anticipated. She was really delighted to put 
 her materials into Annie's more experienced 
 hands. Then for Annie there were no more 
 dismal thoughts about the debt at the shop, 
 and even the baby-clothes began to come 
 under the head of possibilities. 
 
 ' Would you like me to stay with Jesse 
 this evening, while you go to church?' asked 
 Mary one Sunday afternoon, putting her head 
 into the lower room of the summer-house. 
 
 ' Thank you, Nurse Mary, I don't think I 
 shall be going,' Annie answered. 
 
 Mary was not a preacher, but she had her 
 views. 
 
 ' Oh, I wish you would !' she said. 
 
 ' You see, nurse,' Annie explained, hanging 
 her head, ' I don't like to go not till Jesse 
 and me are married.' 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 145 
 
 Mary hesitated a moment, then : 
 
 ' Why don't you get married ?' she asked. 
 
 ' Because Jesse's father's against it,' re- 
 plied Annie. 'We've written times and 
 times, but he's a hard - hearted man as 
 likes to make other folks miserable ; and 
 Mr. Shepherd says that being under age, 
 we can't be married without our parents' 
 consent.' 
 
 ' If that's the case, it is certainly very un- 
 fortunate,' said Mary meditatively. ' I don't 
 know what the law is, but perhaps Mr. 
 Shepherd is mistaken about it' 
 
 To Annie this supposition appeared highly 
 improbable, and she did not even mention it 
 to Jess. 
 
 On the Tuesday morning Nurse Mary, 
 having sent Annie down to the sewing- 
 machine, and got Jesse into his chair by the 
 window, seated herself at his side. 
 
 'Jesse Williams,' she said gravely, 'will 
 you answer me truthfully if I ask you a very 
 important question ?' 
 
 Jesse was a little startled by the solemnity 
 of this address, but after a bit he replied : 
 
 JO 
 
146 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 'You ask away, miss, and I'll answer you 
 as well as I know how.' 
 
 'Well, is there really nothing to prevent 
 your marrying Annie, except your father's 
 refusal of his consent ?' 
 
 'To be sure there's not,' he returned, 
 ' nothing at all. Why, miss, you don't mean 
 to say as you've got round father?' And 
 he looked at her with admiring awe. 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 ' I haven't tried, for it's not worth while. 
 Yesterday I went to a lawyer in Oxford, and 
 he told me it's all a mistake to fancy you 
 want your father's consent Any boy over 
 sixteen can legally marry without asking any 
 one's leave.' 
 
 Some minutes of gaping incredulity on 
 Jesse's part followed Mary's exposition of 
 the law ; at last he began to allow there 
 might be something in it, and eventually : 
 
 ' Maybe the lawyer's right,' he said. ' But 
 it is a queer start. To think as Mr. Shepherd 
 told me wrong ! But how do you know as 
 the lawyer's right?' 
 
 Then he ran as well as he was able to the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 147 
 
 top of the stairs, shouting, ' Annie ! Annie ! 
 make haste here.' 
 
 She came up quite frightened, to see what 
 was the matter. Mary and Jesse both told 
 her at once. For a minute or two she 
 could hardly take it in, but stood staring 
 from one to the other. Then her blue child- 
 like eyes filled with tears ; she went up to 
 Mary, and taking her hands, looked in her 
 face. 
 
 ' I don't believe you're a lady,' she said ; 
 * I believe you're an angel.' 
 
 Mary kissed her and put her arms round 
 her ; Annie laid her head on the nurse's soft 
 shoulder, and Mary thought she was crying 
 quietly. A few tears ran down her own 
 cheeks, and fell on the young creature's 
 bright hair. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE successes of benevolence are as intoxi- 
 cating as other successes. Even Mary, who, 
 whatever the Williamses might think about 
 it, was a mortal, could not escape their effects. 
 Not content with having been able to do 
 them one real service, she wanted to be alto- 
 gether the Good Fairy to smooth away 
 every difficulty from their path, till at the 
 end of the story it should be written, not 
 only ' So they were married,' but also ' and 
 they lived happily ever after.' 
 
 Providing herself with a commission from 
 the Vicarage to purchase a couple of fowls, 
 she set out one afternoon for Pontin's farm. 
 She had only knocked twice at the iron- 
 studded door when aunt appeared. 
 
 'And lucky you was too, miss,' she ob- 
 served, while she was superfluously dusting 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 149 
 
 a chair in the parlour. ' For our Benny 
 he always said you might as well rap at 
 a tombstone as at this here door. He 
 was one of your funny ones was Benny, 
 poor fellow him as is gone among the 
 blacks.' 
 
 Mrs. Pontin knew the vicar's niece by 
 sight, but Mary did not know her. She had 
 expected to find her a much more formidable 
 person, especially as she gathered that words 
 had passed between Mrs. Hayes and Mrs. 
 Pontin, and was not aware that the latter 
 had a short memory for quarrels, and was 
 always respectful, if independent, with the 
 gentry. She was neither a democrat nor a 
 dissenter, and quite recognised the right of 
 the Vicarage to interfere with her in matters 
 of indifference. But it was ill talking in the 
 best parlour, bolt upright on a horsehair 
 chair, and fixed by the glassy stare of the 
 stuffed animals. The dog, mangy and white, 
 that had been aunt's ; the overgrown rabbit, 
 the squirrel, the guinea-pigs and ferrets once 
 beloved of Ben ; the fox that had been killed 
 by the cross, and whose head grinned venge- 
 
ISO A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 fully down from between two tails of uncertain 
 origin. 
 
 From Mrs. Hayes' order, Mary found it a 
 little difficult to pass to the subject of Annie. 
 She began to talk about the setting of eggs 
 and the rearing of poultry in general, and at 
 last invented some business in connection 
 with these to bring her there another day. 
 On this occasion Mrs. Pontin took her out 
 into the stackyard, where some fowls were 
 scratching which were supposed to reflect 
 particular credit on the establishment The 
 door of the big barn stood open, and in a 
 corner among swathes of hay was dimly 
 visible the solemn profile of the old turkey 
 hen ; the very same who had been the cause 
 of so much agitation in the family. 
 
 ' Have you many turkeys this year ?' asked 
 Mary. 
 
 It was a harmless question, yet she felt 
 excited as she put it, for it was the first move 
 in her game. 
 
 ' Well, to be sure, there's a good few,' 
 replied Mrs. Pontin, admitting as much as 
 could reasonably be expected. 'The old 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 151 
 
 hen there, she don't lay many eggs herself, 
 but she do hatch 'em like clockwork. I was 
 in a taking last year when I thought she was 
 lost' 
 
 ' Did she stray ?' asked Mary. 
 
 ' Stray you may call it,' returned Mrs. 
 Pontin. ' She was let loose. She came 
 back as pitiful a figure as ever you see, poor 
 thing half of her tail-feathers gone and two 
 of her chicks.' 
 
 ' Then it wasn't so bad as you thought, 1 
 said Mary ; and continued at a venture 
 'Altogether I hope things were not as bad 
 as you thought, Mrs. Pontin. Do you know 
 the vicar is going to put up Annie's banns 
 next Sunday ?' 
 
 ' And time too, according to what I hear,' 
 answered aunt. She spoke without bitterness 
 with indifference. Events had in her own 
 eyes and in those of her acquaintance justified 
 her opinion of Annie, and even her behaviour 
 to the girl ; and, freed from the irritation of 
 her daily companionship, aunt had forgotten 
 her wrath, if not her dislike. It was not 
 Annie's misconduct which had puckered Mrs. 
 
152 A VILLAGE TKAGEDY 
 
 Pontin's forehead and brought the lines round 
 her mouth. 
 
 * I have seen a good deal of Jesse Williams 
 and your niece,' Mary went on, ' and I feel 
 sure when they are once married you need 
 not be afraid of their disgracing you again 
 in any way. Other people will forget the 
 past and oh, Mrs. Pontin, I do hope you 
 and her uncle will too !' 
 
 */ shouldn't be against seeing her after 
 she's married,' returned aunt condescendingly ; 
 ' not if she come humble-like and asking our 
 pardon and saying as how we'd acted right 
 towards her, her uncle and me. But she 
 won't, miss not she ! They're all of a 
 brood, them Pontins, and it ain't in 'em ; 
 they're as obstinate as they can stick. I 
 know Pontin he is ; and if she did come I 
 can't undertake what he'd do.' 
 
 * I expect he would do whatever you thought 
 right,' said Mary, hopeful and flattering. 
 
 Mrs. Pontin's mouth tightened. 
 
 ' Don't you go for to say that, miss, when 
 Benny he's out among the blacks. It ain't 
 me as has druv' him there. And uncle, as 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 153 
 
 kep' putting off and putting off going to the 
 Barricks, when I says to him again and again 
 " He's there, as sure as the nose is on your 
 face.'" 
 
 Mary had now touched the really sensitive 
 
 point It was true that Mrs. Pontin had 
 
 % 
 urged her husband to go to the Barracks 
 
 several times before he had gone, and that 
 by this delay he had missed seeing Benny. 
 Aunt had not been sparing of her reproaches. 
 It was then that an illusion which had long 
 been incubating in her mind broke the shell. 
 She convinced herself that there had never 
 been a serious difference between herself and 
 Ben ; uncle's harshness had been the sole 
 cause of his leaving home. The amicable 
 business-partnership under the form of mar- 
 riage which the Pontins had been carrying 
 on for fourteen years was now seriously dis- 
 turbed, though not on its practical side. She 
 became more irritable and he less enduring. 
 James Pontin was not given to tracing things 
 to their source, and he did not definitely tell 
 himself that his troubles were due to his 
 having done his duty by his relations. He 
 
1 54 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 only said folks were all alike ; there was no 
 good to be got by being kind to them, and 
 a man did best to mind his own business. 
 The labourers in his fields noticed he grew 
 closer-fisted and rougher-tongued. 
 
 Once on the subject of Ben, Mrs. Pontin 
 went on. In vain did Mary make cunning 
 little attempts to draw her back to the 
 Williamses and their affairs. Benny's history, 
 as seen from the newest point of view, must 
 all be told, and the old story of Kite and her 
 marriage with Pontin ; but now the commen- 
 tary ran somewhat differently. 
 
 ' I'm sure I never should ha' married him 
 if I'd thought he'd ha' been so cruel to Benny, 
 poor boy.' 
 
 At last she paused. James Pontin was 
 opening the gate leading from the orchard 
 to the stackyard. 
 
 Mary had often seen him in church ; a 
 tallish man, better built than most of his class, 
 and with a way of carrying his head and a 
 direct look that made him almost imposing. 
 He lifted his straw hat and stopped by the 
 two women. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 155. 
 
 'The lady was a-telling me as Jesse Williams 
 and our Annie are to be asked in church next 
 Sunday,' aunt observed. 
 
 He looked at her sternly for a moment, 
 and then, with a studied indifference, very 
 unlike her own real indifference, replied : 
 
 ' Maybe it ain't no concern o' yours, or- 
 mine either ! ' And turning to Mary : ' Will 
 you please to tell Mr. Hayes, miss, as I can- 
 send my man to mow the churchyard to- 
 morrow ? He sent and ask me about it.' 
 
 ' Miss was a-saying,' Mrs. Pontin went on< 
 calmly, ' as she hoped we'd see 'em again 
 when they was got respectable.' 
 
 There was a pause, while Mr. Pontin slowly 
 turned a lowering brow from Mary to his 
 wife and back again. 
 
 ' Did she want you to come here ? ' he asked. 
 
 'Who? Annie?' returned Mary, some- 
 what confused. ' No, she said nothing about 
 it ; she doesn't know. It was only that I 
 I was just talking to Mrs. Pontin.' 
 
 ' Well, I can excuse your mentioning it,' 
 he answered, with a kind of haughty respect- 
 fulness, ' considerin' you're a stranger in these 
 
156 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 parts, young lady. But the girl, she knows 
 my mind, and so do the neighbours too. 
 She's no kin of mine, and it's my partickler 
 request that no one shall talk of her as though 
 she was.' 
 
 He lifted his hat again and went indoors. 
 * There, miss, you see it ain't no use talking 
 to him,' said Mrs. Pontin philosophically, 
 clearing the last remains of the meal out of 
 her pan with a stick ; ' and I don't know as 
 he's so fur wrong. Selina that's Annie's 
 mother she always was a bad 'un, and black 
 cats mostly has black kits. Folks talk a deal 
 about " turning over a new leaf," and maybe 
 they does it now and again ; but lor ! if you've 
 got a dog as has worried a sheep, or a hen as 
 has tasted an egg, you can't be comfortable 
 in your mind about 'em just because they're 
 lying quiet for a bit. You must excuse my 
 talking of the dumb animals, miss, but they 
 ain't so different from Christians, that they 
 ain't leastways from them as ain't gentry.' 
 
 The word Christian suggested to Mary a 
 reference to the Prodigal Son. Mrs. Pontin 
 might have answered that we have no infor- 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 157 
 
 mation as to the subsequent career of that 
 individual, but the mention of him only took 
 her back to the subject of Benny, from which 
 she was not again to be distracted. 
 
 Mary was discouraged and rather humi- 
 liated by the failure of her little attempt to 
 patch up a peace, and said nothing about it 
 to Jesse or Annie. It was not many days 
 after this that she left High Cross. The 
 Horsley fly came crawling up the hill to fetch 
 her ; and as she passed the Manor on her way 
 to the station she stopped it to say a last 
 good-bye to Jesse and Annie, who were 
 waiting at the door in the wall. She jumped 
 out, laden with her parting presents ; a bundle 
 of calico and flannel for Annie, and for him 
 a sealed packet with the superscription To 
 buy the ring. The farewells were warm but 
 hurried. They called out more thanks, more 
 good wishes as she drove away, and putting 
 her head out of the rattling window, she saw 
 them for the last time as they stood by the 
 old stone doorway in the sunshine Annie's 
 bright head, and Jesse, long and still lean from 
 his illness, waving a red cotton handkerchief. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE young couple for whom she had done so 
 much were sad at parting with her, yet that 
 sadness could not take away the happiness she 
 had brought to them. There was a peaceful 
 look on Annie's face and a girlish gaiety 
 about her such as Jesse had not seen since 
 they sat on the garden wall together. For 
 his part he enjoyed the holyday of his con- 
 valescence. It was summer weather, rich in 
 sun, and perhaps unconsciously their mood was 
 influenced by the general beauty and joyous- 
 ness of the world about them. That, however, 
 would hardly have consoled them if their 
 material affairs had not been progressing ; 
 but Annie had earned enough to cover their 
 expenses, and by the time they had been 
 ' asked ' three Sundays in church Jesse was 
 to all appearance well, and doing his work at 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 159 
 
 Mr. Shepherd's again. But the day before 
 they were to be married, he was able to get 
 away by train, to buy the ring in Oxford. 
 Annie had promised to meet him on the 
 field path that leads from the station to High 
 Cross. As she was walking on the Horsley 
 road, along the back of the ridge, Abel, Mr. 
 Pontin's labourer, passed her, jogging along 
 in an empty cart Abel had his own reasons 
 for taking sides against Mrs. Pontin, and 
 would always have been friendly with Annie, 
 if she had given him the chance. 
 
 ' D'ye want a lift to Horsley ? ' he shouted. 
 
 Annie shook her head. 
 
 ' Thank you, I shan't go no further than 
 the windmill,' she answered ; and he jolted on. 
 
 The field path went off from the road over 
 a kind of buttress of hill, where the gorse 
 grew and a windmill was slowly turning in 
 the breeze. Annie sat down at the edge of 
 the slope. The corn-fields below looked 
 very golden, and the distant hills very blue 
 beyond the great dark sails of the mill and its 
 tumbledown substructure, patched here and 
 there with scarlet tiles. Far and wide the 
 
1 60 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 red wheat and the yellow and the feathery 
 barley were ripening in the August sun. A 
 fleeting glory rested even on the great dreary 
 field with the great dreary workhouse in the 
 middle. Annie almost smiled as her eyes 
 fell on it, to think how Jess would not even 
 look that way, and how often he used to say 
 she ought not to fret if her child was born 
 out of wedlock, so long as it hadn't got to 
 go to the workhouse. The thought of that 
 possibility she knew would be enough to keep 
 him steady and industrious, if ever he were 
 tempted to be otherwise. She could also see 
 the Horsley station, which stood a little out 
 of the village. A short train was coming 
 slowly along the line from Oxford ; Jesse 
 must be in that. Just then the gate into the 
 road creaked, she turned round and saw the 
 idiot coming through. A course of cuffs and 
 kicks from Jesse had cured Albert of coming 
 to the Manor, and she had not seen him for 
 some time. He was dirtier and even more 
 nauseous in appearance than he had been a 
 year before ; Annie could not bear to look at 
 him, and fixed her eyes on the station, behind 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 161 
 
 which the train was disappearing. He, how- 
 ever, had no intention of being ignored. He 
 crawled up on his stomach, and putting his 
 chin on her knee, peered into her face with 
 his one eye. Then he opened his mouth 
 wide, to show her a whole green apple inside 
 before he began crunching it noisily. There 
 was nothing dangerous or unfriendly about 
 him, nor would the average inhabitant of 
 High Cross have found him disgusting ; 
 but Annie, unfortunately, was of a nervous 
 temperament. 
 
 ' Get away, Albert,' she cried, ' or Jess will 
 be after you.' 
 
 He looked up with a cunning leer. 
 
 ' Not here Jess,' he said, in a thick slow 
 voice. 
 
 She did not know he had made an advance 
 in his talking of late, and it startled her as 
 much as though one of the pigs had answered 
 her. Just then a heavy express came dash- 
 ing along the line from London, its white 
 pennon streaming behind it, and tore through 
 the station with a scream. Albert started 
 up, and pointing at it waved his ragged cap, 
 1 1 
 
1 62 A VILLAGE TKAGEDY 
 
 dancing, shouting, and laughing all together. 
 When it had passed through it slackened 
 speed suddenly, and then stopped. The 
 idiot ran off down the path to get a nearer 
 view of the train, while Annie, thankful to 
 be rid of him, sat idly watching several dark 
 figures pass to and fro between the express 
 and the station, which was half masked by a 
 grove of trees. After some delay the express 
 went on. Albert, however, did not return, 
 for he had found a dead and torn rabbit 
 among the gorse, and was busy completing 
 its dissection. The country was very quiet ; 
 the shadows of the hedgerow elms were steal- 
 ing out across the corn-fields, the far-off hills 
 were growing more mistily purple, the sails 
 of the mill had stopped turning. She got 
 up and looked down the path, but saw no 
 one coming ; only half-way down the hill the 
 figure of Albert, stooping over something. 
 Presently she heard the noise of a cart 
 rattling along the Horsley road. It was 
 coming so fast and wild she would have 
 thought it was a runaway, had she not dis- 
 tinguished a long way off the screaming of 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 163 
 
 the driver to the horse and the lashing 
 and cracking of his whip. She turned and 
 sauntered to the gate, with the faint yet 
 alert curiosity of one who is idly waiting. 
 When the cart reached the gate, the driver 
 pulled up the horse so savagely it almost fell 
 on its haunches. It was a farm-bred beast, 
 not built for fast going, and it stood there 
 with its neck stretched out, panting, and 
 covered with dust and sweat She saw to 
 her surprise that it was her uncle's cart, with 
 Abel in it. The young fellow's hat was 
 pushed to the back of his head, and he looked 
 strange and excited. 
 
 'Annie! Annie Pontin !' he called out at 
 the top of his voice, though she was only a 
 few yards away from him. 
 
 She came through the gate. 
 
 ' Get up, quick ! quick !' he cried. 
 
 'What's the matter, Abel?' she asked, 
 frightened at his look and manner. 
 
 ' Don't you stop to ask that, my dear,' he 
 answered, holding up his hand in a wild kind 
 of way. ' Scramble in sharp, I say, and I'll 
 have you down at the station in a jiffy.' 
 
1 64 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 She got up by the wheel as fast as she 
 could, he pulling her in by the shoulders. 
 Then turning the horse, he lashed it on again, 
 and away they went, racing and rattling along 
 the straight road to Horsley. 
 
 ' Do tell me what's the matter, Abel ?' she 
 entreated. 
 
 ' I said as I wouldn't,' he answered, looking 
 away. 
 
 ' Has anything happened to uncle ?' she 
 asked. 
 
 He shook his head. She was conscious at 
 the same moment of feeling that it would have 
 been a relief to her if the answer had been 
 ' Yes,' and of blaming herself for feeling so. 
 
 'Is it Jess?' she asked. 'Has he been 
 taken ill ?' 
 
 ' He've not been taken ill,' answered Abel 
 shortly. 
 
 They had begun to go down the long 
 hill into Horsley, and Abel, though he was 
 usually pretty cautious, kept on lashing the 
 horse, standing upright in the front of the 
 cart, momentarily in danger of being pitched 
 out on his head among the rolling flints. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 165 
 
 There was something in the tone of his reply 
 which made the words unsatisfactory. Annie 
 wrung her hands nervously. 
 
 ' Has he had an accident?' she asked. 
 
 Abel frowned straight in front of him, and 
 went on driving the horse. 
 
 'Abel!' she cried once or twice, 'Abel!' 
 but he took no notice. 
 
 At last she seized him by the coat. 
 
 ' Tell me what's the matter, Abel, tell me 
 directly.' 
 
 He turned round and began to swear. He 
 was a temperance man not given to the use 
 of bad language, but never had Jesse Williams 
 senior himself rapped out a bigger volley of 
 oaths. It startled Annie, especially because 
 he did not look as though he were angry, 
 only very pale and queer, with a twitch about 
 his mouth. 
 
 ' If you must know, you must,' he said, 
 when he had done swearing ' Williams have 
 been run over by the train. He went to cross 
 the line and the express knocked him down. 
 Now don't take on, Annie Pontin, don't take 
 on!' 
 
1 66 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 But she was not taking on. She had been 
 full of poignant anxiety up till then ; now 
 the blow had fallen it was as though a bullet 
 had hit her in a vital part and she felt no pain. 
 Only everything had suddenly become very 
 unreal, and when she fancied she was asking 
 ' Is he dead ?' she was only moving her 
 lips. 
 
 ' It was a lucky thing as I happened 
 to come to the station,' Abel went on, re- 
 lieved to find she was not making a scene, 
 'else no one would have known where you 
 was.' 
 
 ' Is he dead?' she asked again, this time 
 in a real voice. 
 
 ' No,' answered Abel, ' but he's badly hurt' 
 
 He either could not or would not tell her 
 anything more, and she felt in suspense again 
 by the time they reached the station. The 
 station-master, a stalwart, bearded man of the 
 railway type, stood outside talking to the 
 young porter who was his sole subordinate. 
 They both turned very grave faces to the cart 
 as it drove up. 
 
 ' This is the young woman, sir,' said Abel. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 167 
 
 ' Ah !' returned the station-master, helping 
 her down carefully, 'you've not come much 
 too soon.' 
 
 He put his hand on Annie's shoulder 
 and took her through a small gate onto the 
 railway, beyond the station. A man was 
 scattering cinders between the platforms ; on 
 each side she saw the stretch of steel lines, 
 flashing in the evening sun. 
 
 ' It's a sad business, a terrible business 
 but you must be a brave girl, my dear,' said 
 the station-master. He stopped, with a lump 
 in his throat. It had been bad enough when 
 he was expecting some stout coarse country 
 wench to arrive, but to have this delicate- 
 looking young girl, evidently just about to 
 become a mother, appearing on such a scene 
 was horrible. ' You see,' the station-master 
 went on, as they walked up the slope to the 
 opposite platform, ' the slow train was just 
 starting when he stepped behind it to get 
 across the line, so he didn't notice the express 
 coming. Now you must expect to see him 
 look terrible bad ; I'm afraid he won't know 
 you,' he added, with his hand on the v/aiting- 
 
1 68 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 room door. ' Have a drink out of my flask 
 before you go in.' 
 
 She shook her head and followed him into 
 the room. Two men, doctors apparently, 
 started up from the ground and hastily threw 
 a large black tarpaulin over some instruments 
 and bandages, and the body of a person who 
 was lying there. They had tucked up their 
 shirt-sleeves, but not so high as to protect 
 them from splashes of blood, and their hands 
 and wrists were stained a brownish red colour 
 It looked the worse because their white shirt 
 fronts and black ties and coats retained the 
 usual professional neatness and cleanliness. 
 One of them looked at Annie and the other 
 at the man under the tarpaulin, who was 
 moaning with long faint regular moans ; yet, 
 judging from his face, he was not conscious. 
 The ashen face showed above the black 
 tarpaulin, thrown back on a heap of leather 
 cushions and distorted with pain and horror, 
 the drawn lips showed the clenched teeth, and 
 the eyelids drooped half over the fading eyes. 
 Was this deathly mask, ghastly and strange 
 even in the eyes of Annie, indeed the healthy 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 169 
 
 sanguine young face of her lover ? She made 
 a step or two towards him, as pale almost as 
 he, with her arms hanging straight down by 
 her sides and her large eyes unnaturally 
 dilated. 
 
 'Jesse!' she said, in a loud whisper; but 
 he showed no consciousness of her presence. 
 Then she threw herself down by him on the 
 ground, with one hand in his hair and the 
 other on his breast, and gathering up all her 
 strength, cried again, 'Jesse!' in a harsh 
 shriek that did not seem to belong to her. 
 There was a faint, almost imperceptible 
 movement in his face, as though the sound 
 had reached him ; but again her voice failed 
 her, and with her head lying close to his on 
 the leather cushions, she said, in an agonised 
 whisper 
 
 * Look, darling, look Annie's come.' 
 Just then one of the doctors, moving away 
 a sick-looking curate who had been sitting 
 near with a book on his knee, put a spoon 
 between the dying man's teeth and succeeded 
 in getting some brandy down his throat In 
 a minute or two he lifted his eyelids a little 
 
170 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 and slowly recognised Annie, who was leaning 
 over him. She broke into incoherent tender- 
 nesses, kissing him all over his face and hair 
 betw.een her words. He kept on looking at 
 her with a painful kind of frown, as though 
 trying to collect his thoughts. At last he 
 said, in a slow, faint voice : 
 
 'Ain't it hard, Annie oh, ain't it hard!' 
 Then he moaned again and shut his eyes. 
 The doctor poured some more brandy down 
 him, and the next time he opened them he 
 seemed clearer in his mind. He tried to get 
 his hand up to his breast, but it fell back 
 heavily on the floor. Annie was still leaning 
 close over him, to catch his words. 
 
 ' Feel in my waistcoat pocket, quick 
 quick,' he said to her. 
 
 She put the tarpaulin down from his 
 shoulders, felt where he directed her, and 
 brought out a small silver paper packet. 
 
 ' It's the ring,' he gasped. ' Put it on 
 quick.' 
 
 She obeyed with trembling fingers, hardly 
 knowing what she did, and the tears begin- 
 ning to rain down on his breast. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 171 
 
 ' No one can't say now as I didn't mean 
 to make an honest woman of you,' he went 
 on, more distinctly ; and then ' Annie, 
 Annie darling, what will you do when I'm 
 gone ?' 
 
 'Don't trouble about me, my dear,' she 
 sobbed. ' But oh, Jesse, I can't let you go 
 I can't part with you. There's no one in the 
 world I love but you I don't seem to have 
 told you that enough. You've been such a 
 deal to me since father died, and now you're 
 going too. Oh, do try and stay with me 
 do try!' 
 
 He groaned, and then with an effort, 
 speaking quite loud, said : 
 
 'You mustn't let my child go to the 
 work'us, whatever you do. I'd rather a thou- 
 sand times we was all dead together. Starye 
 it, I say, sooner than send it to the work'us.' 
 Then his voice dropped into a murmur, ' I 
 should ha' liked to ' and died away in- 
 articulate in a long sigh. 
 
 The doctor hurriedly put some more brandy 
 into his mouth, but it trickled out again. 
 Presently the doctor got up and went away. 
 
172 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Annie remained crouching on the ground, 
 sometimes wiping the burning mist of tears 
 from her eyes, and holding Jesse's hand, 
 which was cold when she first took it, and 
 kept growing colder. The station-master 
 stood with his back to her, looking out of 
 the window ; there was no one else in the 
 room, but from the adjoining lavatory, where 
 the doctors were washing their hands, came 
 a subdued sound of conversation and the 
 noise of a tap running. She sat on, waiting 
 for Jesse to open his eyes and speak to 
 her again. At last the elder of the two 
 doctors came up and touched her on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 ' Come, my poor girl,' he said kindly 
 ' you'd better not stay here any longer.' 
 
 4 Are you going to move him ?' she asked, 
 getting up ; and then, suspiciously : ' You're 
 not going to take him to the Union ?' 
 
 ' He shall be taken home, if you like/ the 
 doctor answered ; ' but you must go on first' 
 
 ' Yes to get things ready/ she said. ' But 
 what if he comes to himself while I'm gone ?' 
 
 The doctor paused a minute, and then re- 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 173 
 
 plied significantly, ' He won't do that, my 
 child.' 
 
 She turned great horror-stricken eyes, first 
 on his face, then on Jesse's, and back again. 
 He answered almost involuntarily aloud the 
 dumb interrogation. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said, nodding gravely, ' the poor 
 fellow's been dead this quarter of an hour.' 
 
 Dead ! Before she had had time to realise 
 half what that meant, a horrible sensation of 
 nausea overwhelmed her, and the room 
 seemed to fill with a thick darkness. Yet 
 she stood upright and could hear the conver- 
 sation round her. 
 
 ' She's fainting catch her,' said the elder 
 to the younger doctor. 
 
 ' No wonder,' said the younger, putting 
 her down on a bench ; ' it's enough to kill 
 her.' 
 
 There was an opening of windows and a 
 bringing out of flasks. 
 
 When the darkness and sickness had 
 passed away, the poignant anguish of mind 
 had gone too ; everything seemed unreal 
 again, as it had done when Abel first told 
 
174 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 her of the accident. She allowed herself to 
 be led outside, when they had promised that 
 Jesse should soon follow. There was a 
 group of people in the dusty space behind 
 the station, attracted by the news of the catas- 
 trophe. The curate, who if he had weak 
 nerves had a kind heart, had ordered the one 
 fly Horsley could supply, and drove up in 
 it just as Annie came out. It was an act of 
 heroism on the part of the shy young man 
 to shut himself in alone with her and start 
 off on the uphill road to High Cross, but he 
 felt it was his duty, for his rector was away, 
 and the doctors, who had left the express, 
 were anxious to get on by the next train. 
 His intentions were indeed better than his 
 performance. He was but a lad fresh from 
 Oxford, without experience of a deeper sor- 
 row than a plough in the Schools, and with- 
 out that power of imaginative sympathy 
 which is as much an intellectual as a moral 
 gift. What could he say or do, brought face 
 to face with the workings of a remorseless 
 Fate ? Nothing, except proffer common- 
 places about the Lord's will, like a novice in 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 175 
 
 necromancy repeating spells from the book 
 of some great magician, whose secret he has 
 not yet mastered, and surprised to find them 
 of none effect. Annie did not cry ; he began 
 to wish she would. When they reached the 
 Manor half the village was waiting in the 
 road, for Abel had brought the news of the 
 accident. The curate could not help being 
 greatly relieved when he had handed her 
 over to a woman who stood at the door. 
 This was Mrs. Baker. Not only had Mrs. 
 Baker's early life been somewhat disreputable, 
 but she had had a son killed by falling out 
 of a cart ; a combination of circumstances 
 which pointed her out in her own eyes and 
 in the eyes of the village as the proper person 
 to receive and comfort Annie. It certainly 
 was less dreary to come into the house with 
 a stout motherly arm round her, than in 
 entire loneliness. Not that there was much 
 chance of her being lonely, for the sympathy 
 of the neighbours outside, while demonstra- 
 tive and sincere, was combined with a good 
 deal of curiosity and ' the joy of eventful 
 living.' In justice to those who one by one 
 
176 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 dropped into the lower room of the summer- 
 house, it must be admitted that if Annie had 
 been another Mrs. Baker, she would have 
 found a certain distraction, tasted a solemn 
 pleasure, even at this early period, in being 
 the centre of so much tragic interest and 
 telling her story over and over again to each 
 fresh arrival. As it was she sat at the table 
 with her chin on her hand, breathing every 
 now and then a deep sigh, partly of bewil- 
 dered misery, partly of physical exhaustion. 
 
 ' She won't touch the tea as I've made her,' 
 said Mrs. Baker, addressing the little circle of 
 matrons. ' There, my dear, you must drink 
 it down like medicine, you must, though I'm 
 sure it's as nice and sweet as can be. It's 
 not only yourself as you've got to think of, is 
 it, Mrs. Pike?' 
 
 ' No, no,' responded Mrs. Pike, wagging 
 her head ; ' it's the poor fatherless orphan of 
 a baby as you've got to mind.' 
 
 And all the matrons joined in chorus, lav- 
 ishing on the unborn infant more epithets of 
 sympathy and endearment than it was likely 
 to come by during the whole of its conscious 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 177 
 
 existence. This was followed by a chorus of 
 approval on seeing Annie drink the tea. 
 
 'Ah, I know what it is!' exclaimed Mrs. 
 Pike. ' When that poor baby of mine died 
 sudden you remember, Mrs. Clinker, the 
 one as I was waiting to have christened till 
 I could get it a new frock I took on that I 
 shouldn't have eaten a bit or a sup the whole 
 day, if Pike hadn't happened to be able to 
 get me a rabbit, which he knew I was par- 
 tickler fond of; and my sister Brown she 
 cooked it for me, me not having the spirit so 
 much as to make up the fire.' 
 
 ' Ay, I remember it very well, Mrs. Pike,' 
 returned Mrs. Clinker. ' Lor, how you did 
 take on ! Now it's an odd thing, seeing what 
 a number of deaths there've been in our family, 
 as not one of them have been sudden. But 
 my husband and me being first cousins, and 
 our fathers and mothers cousins beside, it's 
 all one family like, and they goes off mostly 
 very gradual in a decline.' 
 
 Here Mrs. Baker took up the tale, but ad- 
 dressing herself more to Annie. 
 
 ' No one 'ud ever think to look at me now,. 
 12 
 
1 78 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 fresh-coloured and hearty, how I went on 
 when my poor boy was took. Why, I pined 
 pretty near to a shadder. Poor fellow ! he 
 liked his glass a bit too much maybe, but he 
 was fond of his mammer he was, from the 
 time he was as high as that. And there he 
 was jogging along down the hill, just happy 
 like with his beer in him, when the horse 
 slipped and pitched him out into eternity, as 
 you may say, without a moment to prepare. 
 They picked him up and brought him home 
 on a shutter, but he was dead, quite dead. 
 I never heard him speak again after he says 
 to me, as he passed the door, " Don't wait 
 supper for me, mother don't wait supper for 
 me," he says. Jesse spoke to you afore he 
 died, didn't he, Annie ?' 
 
 The eyes of the whole party riveted them- 
 selves on Annie with eager attention. They 
 were all longing to question her, but there 
 was something about her which made it diffi- 
 cult ; yet she answered Mrs. Baker. 
 
 'Yes,' she said, with a little shiver. 
 
 That was all. There was a pause, each 
 one wishing: that some one else would continue 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 179 
 
 the cross-examination. Just at that moment 
 an unexpected auxiliary appeared in the door- 
 way ; one whom no scruples or awe of any 
 kind would restrain from asking any questions 
 that might occur to him. This was Mr. Solo- 
 mons, the bailiff from whom, as representative 
 of the landlord, Jesse had rented the summer- 
 house. 
 
 He was a man with a body shaped like a 
 swollen kind of gourd, and supported on two 
 crooked little legs. The shape of his nose 
 also suggested a gourd, though one of a dif- 
 ferent species, purple and drooping. A small 
 black hat, quite new, sat jauntily on the top 
 of his bloated face and fat red head. Mr. 
 Solomons lived just under the hill, and had 
 made a pretty penny by acting as bailiff to 
 the landowner, and as horse-breeder and 
 money-lender on his own account. He was 
 quite a potentate in High Cross ; a con- 
 descending potentate, who loved to spend his 
 evenings in the arm-chair at the King's Arms, 
 drinking gin and water and holding forth to 
 an admiring audience till he could hardly 
 tumble into his pony-cart. It behoved him 
 
i8o A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 to have the latest details of the catastrophe 
 to retail among the pipes and glasses that 
 evening; and who had a right to walk into 
 the house if not himself? He went through 
 the form of knocking on the open door with 
 his knobby stick, and came in without wait- 
 ing for an answer. Then he sat down on a 
 chair near the door, with his double chin rest- 
 ing on his stick and his watery eyes fixed on 
 Annie. 
 
 ' Well, my dear, how do you find yourself?' 
 he asked. ' It's a great trial, I'm sure a 
 great trial.' 
 
 Annie murmured some inaudible answer. 
 
 ' I really haven't heard anything about it,' 
 he continued, ' so I thought I'd just* come 
 round and see how you was getting on. 
 Dear, dear ! how ever did he manage to get 
 knocked over?' 
 
 Mrs. Baker furnished the due reply. She 
 felt a little nervous, for Annie's sake, at the 
 want of alacrity the girl showed to oblige 
 Mr. Solomons. She gave him the details 
 scrupulously, but there would have been 
 more piquancy in getting them first hand ; 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 181 
 
 so after listening to Mrs. Baker for a bit, he 
 turned once more to Annie. 
 
 ' So you got speech of him before he died 
 that was a comfort, though I don't suppose 
 he could say much to you, poor fellow, could 
 he ? ' He waited in vain for some response, 
 then, catching sight of her left hand ; ' Well, 
 you've got the ring, anyhow, I see ; that's a 
 good thing. I heard some talk as he was 
 going to marry you, but I didn't know he'd 
 done it.' 
 
 ' They was to have been married to-morrow, 
 poor things,' Mrs. Baker explained. ' He'd 
 been to Oxford to get the ring. That's how 
 it comes on her finger, I suppose.' 
 
 Annie flushed deep crimson. 
 
 ' It was his own doing, he made me put it 
 
 on himself before ' she said, and stopped 
 
 short. 
 
 ' That ain't legal, my poor girl, it ain't 
 legal,' returned Mr. Solomons, slowly shaking 
 his head. 'You're no more a wedded wife 
 for that than you were yesterday. I'm very 
 sorry for you, that I am, a pretty girl like 
 you, but I must tell you the truth.' 
 
182 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Annie rose from her chair. The perpen- 
 dicular lines which had come between her 
 brows during the last hour or two deepened 
 into a frown, and her eyes flashed. Mr. 
 Solomons became soothing. 
 
 ' Come, come, my dear, I don't think any 
 the worse of you for it. I dare say he meant 
 to do it legal, if he'd lived I'm sure I 
 can't say. Any way there's many a nice 
 girl has made a slip to begin with, and 
 found plenty of young fellows glad enough 
 to take up with her all the same. Ain't that 
 so, Mrs. Baker?' 
 
 Mrs. Baker was silent Mr. Solomons had 
 chosen a rather unfortunate moment for de- 
 livering himself of this immoral sentiment. 
 There was a momentary dispersion of the 
 little crowd of half-grown boys and girls that 
 had gathered round the door, and the figure 
 of Mrs. Hayes stood on the threshold. The 
 bailiff jumped up, and taking off his small 
 hat with a muttered something between a 
 greeting and an adieu, vanished with sur- 
 prising alacrity as she came in. Annie was 
 still standing at bay ; her apathetic calm had 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 183 
 
 given place to a sombre excitement. She 
 did not seem to notice her tormentor's flight. 
 
 'Yes, it's my wedding-ring,' she said, 
 stretching out her left hand, ' and I've as 
 good a right to wear it as any one who's 
 been married in church. It was Jesse's wish 
 as I should wear it. Mrs. Hayes, you can 
 bear me witness as everything was arranged 
 for us to be married at nine o'clock to-morrow 
 morning. It's bad enough for me to be left 
 without him ; it's cruel if its happening to- 
 day instead of to-morrow is to make a 
 difference to me and my child as long as 
 we live.' 
 
 ' Yes, it's a great mystery, a terrible judg- 
 ment,' sighed Mrs. Hayes, as she took off her 
 brown veil and folded it up. Her sigh was 
 one of genuine concern, yet she could not 
 resist the temptation to improve the occasion. 
 
 ' This ought to be a terrible warning to 
 you High Cross girls,' she said, turning to 
 the whispering group at the door. ' I grieve 
 very much for you, Anne Pontin ; but you 
 must remember " Whom He loveth He 
 chasteneth," and accept His chastisement.' 
 
1 84 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' Perhaps I could, if it came just,' returned 
 Annie rebelliously. ' But why are Jess and 
 me to be the only ones to suffer? There's 
 aunt, wasn't she to blame? And uncle, 
 who's been a hard man to us ? They go on 
 living comfortable enough, and so do plenty 
 as has done worse than we did.' 
 
 A groan of horror at this bold blasphemy 
 went up from every one in the room except 
 Mrs. Hayes. She was a cold woman, but 
 she had the qualities of her defects and was 
 reasonable, within certain limits. 
 
 ' These are mysteries we can't undertake 
 to explain,' she said. ' Still, supposing what 
 you say about your uncle and aunt's true, 
 they may have been punished in some way 
 you don't guess. But it's foolish to notice 
 the girl's talk pray, what business have you 
 here, all you idle folks, chattering and gaping 
 at the poor creature? No wonder she's half 
 crazy. Now in three minutes I expect this 
 house, and the garden too, to be clear of 
 every one of you except Sarah Baker.' 
 
 In one minute and a half every vestige of 
 a human form had disappeared from the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 185 
 
 Manor, with the exception of Mrs. Hayes, 
 Annie, and Mrs. Baker. 
 
 ' Now, Anne Pontin,' said Mrs. Hayes, 
 ' the sooner you get into bed the better.' 
 
 ' When are they going to bring Jesse ?' 
 asked Annie, still trembling, flushed, and 
 faintly rebellious. ' I don't want to go to 
 bed till they've brought him.' 
 
 ' Nonsense,' returned Mrs. Hayes. ' Mr. 
 Shepherd's sending a cart, but they probably 
 won't be here till quite late this evening.' 
 
 Annie allowed herself to be put to bed, 
 and Mrs. Hayes went home. As she passed 
 through the village, where the whole popula- 
 tion was standing about in groups, discussing 
 this and every other catastrophe that had 
 ever occurred within the knowledge of any 
 one, her mind was unusually disturbed dis- 
 turbed as her house might have been if an 
 earthquake-wave had passed under it, tempor- 
 arily disarranging the furniture. To-morrow 
 everything would be put straight again, but 
 to-day she had a passing consciousness that 
 the world was not so obviously justifiable in all 
 its arrangements as it usually appeared to her. 
 
1 86 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Meantime Annie lay on the bed, like a 
 person in a fever, tossing from side to side, 
 with little moaning sighs. It would have 
 been excruciating to any one with nerves to 
 sit by and listen to the ceaseless tossing, the 
 ceaseless sighing ; fortunately Mrs. Baker 
 had none. She lit a fire for company, and 
 sat over it, dozing from time to time. About 
 ten o'clock a cart stopped outside, and there 
 was a heavy tramping below. She started 
 up. 
 
 ' They're a-bringing him,' she said. 
 
 She would have liked to go down, but she 
 was afraid lest Annie should follow. How- 
 ever, to her surprise, Annie did not offer to 
 go, even after the men had gone. She lay 
 quite quiet now. 
 
 ' Mrs. Baker,' she said presently, ' please 
 do go home. You couldn't get much sleep 
 here with me, and there's no call for you to 
 sit up tiring yourself.' 
 
 'Lor, Annie Pontin !' cried Mrs. Baker, 
 'you can't think as I should go and leave 
 you alone all night with the corpse. 
 
 ' Oh, what does it matter?' answered Annie, 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 187 
 
 with suppressed impatience. ' I don't want 
 to be uncivil, but I'd really rather be alone.' 
 
 ' I might sit downstairs,' said Mrs. Baker 
 doubtfully ; but she did not particularly fancy 
 the prospect of spending the night with the 
 mangled remains of poor Jess. 
 
 There was a struggle, in which the argu- 
 ments of Annie were greatly assisted by 
 visions of a hot supper and a familiar feather- 
 bed, which presented themselves alluringly to 
 Mrs. Baker's mind's eye. 
 
 ' Well, you're an odd girl,' she said at last. 
 ' I'm sure I couldn't abide to be left like that. 
 But you must have it your own way, and if 
 you're taken bad in the night it's but a step 
 to my house.' Then, kindliness once more 
 prevailing over selfish relief, she kissed her. 
 ' Now don't you spend the night fretting and 
 hurting yourself and the little one. It's a 
 terrible thing when any one you cares about 
 is took sudden like that ; I know it well 
 enough, and no one could have fretted more 
 than I did about my poor Jim. But there ! 
 the Lord in His mercy don't .allow things to 
 last with us that way. Just you think as 
 
188 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 you'll have a hearty boy afore long, as'll work 
 for you the same as his father did. Bless 
 you ! a boy ain't none the worse for being a 
 love-child. My Jimmy as was took, he was ; 
 and there never was a son as was kinder to 
 his mother, if he was a bit fond of his glass, 
 poor fellow. Good-night, my dear, good- 
 night* 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 IT was a profound relief to Annie to hear 
 the door close after worthy Mrs. Baker, and 
 to be alone for the first time since this strange 
 horror had befallen. To-night she must 
 realise all it meant, collect herself, make up 
 her mind what to do ; to-morrow she would 
 be surrounded, carried off by Mrs. Hayes or 
 some one else, whither she knew not, unless 
 she had a settled determination of her own. 
 She partially dressed, and taking the candle 
 went downstairs. As she opened the door of 
 the lower room the light fell on a litter of 
 straw and something lying on it, covered with 
 a sheet. There was an indefinable awful- 
 ness about the veiled outline of the long 
 white motionless thing. She stepped forward 
 quickly and flung the sheet off the dead man's 
 face. Yes, that was Jesse's face, set and 
 
i go A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 strange, but calmer and less painful than when 
 she had seen it that afternoon. It would be 
 comforting, she thought, to sit by him, she* 
 would feel less lonely, and perhaps the tears 
 would come ; those tears which for hours had 
 seemed to be burning and seething in her 
 brain like liquid fire. It was not a year ago 
 since the stormy night when she had knocked 
 at this very door and Jesse had come down 
 and taken her in. She had been miserable 
 enough then, but her misery had been less 
 absolute. She remembered vividly the com- 
 fort it had been to lay her head on Jesse's 
 shoulder and cry and tell him all her troubles, 
 and how good and tender he had been to 
 her then and always yes, always. She 
 laid her head down now on the dead breast 
 and began to sob, with terrible hard tearless 
 sobs. 
 
 ' Poor Jess ! poor Jess ! ' she whispered. 
 
 Only last night, holding her in his arms, 
 he had said how well he was beginning to 
 feel, and told her again what a lucky fellow 
 he thought himself, and how he never dreamed 
 of being so happy as that, when he came out 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 191 
 
 of the workhouse school. And to-day he 
 had been snatched away out of the life he 
 had cared for so much by a cruel death, 
 made more bitter by the thought that he was 
 leaving her and her child in imminent danger 
 of failing victims to that Union which was to 
 him the embodiment of evil. ' Poor Jess ! 
 poor Jess !' She lay there sobbing, and 
 whispering her love and grief and pity, till 
 suddenly, as she kissed his face, its iciness 
 thrilled through her, and she felt that the 
 coldness of the corpse, striking through the 
 cotton shirt, had chilled to the bone the 
 cheek she had been resting on its breast In 
 a moment its strangeness and impersonality 
 were borne in upon her ; its severe impas- 
 sivity, its utter indifference to all that she 
 could say or do or feel or suffer. It was not 
 Jesse who lay there, it was Death himself, the 
 King of terrors. There seemed something 
 unnatural and sacrilegious about these endear- 
 ments, this passionate sorrow, and replacing 
 the sheet with trembling fingers she fled 
 upstairs. 
 
 When the thrill of awe and fear had 
 
192 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 passed, she said to herself that the night was 
 wearing on, and that she must think what to 
 do. She sat down in the old bee-hive chair 
 in which she had slept the first night she 
 had spent at the Manor. f You mustn't let 
 my child go to the workhouse.' That was 
 the injunction Jesse had laid upon her. How 
 was she to fulfil it ? She had money in the 
 house, but scarcely enough to carry her on 
 to the time when she expected her confine- 
 ment, certainly not enough to cover her 
 expenses then. She would be wholly unable 
 to prevent their sending her to the Work- 
 house Infirmary. And if she so far outraged 
 her own feelings and disobeyed Jesse's com- 
 mand as to allow their child to be born a 
 pauper, what was she to do afterwards ? She 
 would leave the Infirmary burdened with a 
 child, without money, without a character, 
 and without friends. Without friends ! That 
 was the bitterest part of it all. Turn where 
 she would, she could see no one in the least 
 likely to give her effective help. Her thoughts 
 did not even touch on her uncle and aunt, 
 and speedily dismissed Mrs. Hayes. Nurse 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 193 
 
 Mary was somewhere on the sea between 
 this and India, as lost as though she had 
 sailed for another planet. The schoolmistress 
 who had been so kind to her in London was 
 married and gone she knew not whither. 
 
 It was, as I have said, a misfortune to 
 Annie to have been born in a higher and 
 more provident class than that into which 
 she had fallen, and also to have a clearer and 
 more educated intelligence than is commonly 
 found in her own. The semi -destitute are 
 a great and not wholly unhappy family of 
 Micawbers. Had she belonged to them she 
 would have at once decided to live by taking 
 in needlework although she might have had 
 every opportunity of knowing how short a 
 cut is this same needlework to starvation or 
 the streets. But Annie had not only seen, 
 she had observed the struggle for existence ; 
 how hard it is for the robust respectable 
 woman who has a child to support, how 
 desperate for one like herself. 
 
 Needlework ! It is ' taken in ' at every 
 other house in a small street ; it buys butter 
 for those who have bread, but lucky and few 
 13 
 
194 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 are those who can feed and warm and clothe 
 themselves and their children by it. Annie, 
 it is true, had no ordinary powers of mere 
 good stitching ; if some kind-hearted energetic 
 woman, such as are common as daisies in our 
 English land, had known of her talents and 
 her sad plight, she might have been put in a 
 fair way to earn her bread, and butter too. 
 But they knew not of her, nor she of them, 
 nor did she realise that there was more in 
 her fingers than in those of all the other 
 women she had seen toiling and struggling 
 and falling around her. No. Like some wild 
 creature caught in a trap, and hearing the cruel 
 hunter's steps drawing nearer and nearer, she 
 sought round her desperately for some loop- 
 hole of escape from this darkness into the 
 light and movement of hopeful purpose. But 
 look where she would there was nothing to 
 be seen but a black hopeless wall of misery. 
 Her child would be taken from her, brought 
 up in the dreary prison of the workhouse 
 school, and turned out into the world despised, 
 friendless, fatherless and motherless. Mother- 
 less, because she herself would be a stranger 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 195 
 
 to him, either in the Union, or toiling some- 
 where as the drudge of a coarse mistress, who 
 would overlook the blot on her character, if 
 she were allowed to pay her less on account 
 of it All her shame came back upon her 
 mind with crushing weight, mingled with 
 impotent exasperation against the cruel fate 
 which had bound its burden irrevocably upon 
 her at the very moment when it seemed about 
 to be lifted off. It felt heavier now there 
 was no longer any living creature besides 
 herself who knew and understood all the 
 circumstances of her step aside from the path 
 of respectability. Our notions of our own 
 personalities are so largely gained by the 
 reflections of ourselves we see mirrored in 
 the eyes of others, that Annie's self-respect 
 was involuntarily injured by the consciousness 
 that now in the whole world there were no 
 longer any eyes which could reflect back to 
 her an unsullied Annie ; the victim not of 
 passion, but of injustice and ill-fortune. The 
 impudent bloated face of Mr. Solomons and 
 his coarse words kept reproducing themselves 
 in her mind. Ah! why had she minded the 
 
196 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 shame, when Jesse was there to protect and 
 believe in her? Now every insolent brutal 
 man she met was at liberty to insult her, 
 without even being blamed for it. What 
 would become of her ? What could she do ? 
 She peered forward into life and saw nothing 
 but abysmal darkness. 
 
 ' You mustn't let my child go to the work- 
 house. I'd rather a thousand times we were 
 all dead together.' The words returned to 
 her with an illuminating flash, and she stood 
 up with a kind of ' awful warmth about the 
 heart,' a feeling of trembling and exultation. 
 Here was the solution of the problem, to find 
 which she had been beating her brains for 
 half the night. She had found it at last, 
 just as the gray dawn was creeping in at the 
 window ; and it was so simple, so absolute. 
 She did not stay to ask what manner of death 
 she should choose ; simultaneously with the 
 idea of self-destruction had come the vision of 
 the long glittering lines of the railway, and 
 the thundering, rushing train. Throwing on a 
 shawl, she opened the door on to the staircase. 
 For a moment she paused, still holding the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 197 
 
 candle in her hand, glanced round the room, 
 and laughed a low triumphant laugh. Let 
 the world awake in an hour or two ; let Mrs. 
 Hayes and the rest come here with their 
 management and their hollow consolations 
 she would have escaped, be gone and free 
 from them for ever. She felt curiously exhila- 
 rated, like some thrice-wretched Cinderella, 
 who has been left to wait for the step- 
 sisters' return among her ashes, and to whom 
 a sinister fairy-godmother has unexpectedly 
 appeared with the promise that she too shall 
 go to the palace of the king. This sense of 
 exhilaration overcame her awe as she passed 
 through the lower room, and standing at the 
 feet of the corpse she addressed without 
 uncovering it. 
 
 'It's all right, Jesse,' she said, 'we need 
 none of us go to the Union. There'll be 
 money enough to bury us if they sell the 
 things, and we'll all lie snug in the church- 
 yard.' 
 
 Then she went out into the drear chill 
 twilight of dawn. As she walked swiftly 
 along the Horsley road her whole being 
 
198 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 was bent to one end. She was not thinking 
 at all ; but she was conscious of the hot blood 
 seething and drumming in her ears, and 
 occasionally of passing some familiar object 
 dim and mysterious in the dusk. When she 
 came to the windmill there was a band of 
 clear cold light round the horizon, just touch- 
 ing the lower edges of two thin black bars of 
 cloud. The dark bulk of the mill, untouched 
 as yet by daylight colours, the diagonal lines 
 of the sails etched themselves against the 
 pale distance and the brightening sky. 
 There flashed before her eyes a vivid picture 
 of Albert, laughing and dancing in the path 
 as the express rushed through the station. 
 She closed them for a moment and tossed 
 back her head, as though to shake off the 
 odious, importunate vision, and hurried on, 
 her mind once more absorbed in her purpose. 
 When she reached the bottom of the hill, 
 she turned off in the opposite direction to the 
 Horsley station. In a few minutes she came 
 to a level crossing, but though there were no 
 signs of life in the little house by the side of 
 it, scarcely higher than the hollyhocks and 
 
A VILLAGE TRACED? 199 
 
 sunflowers in its garden, the high gates closed 
 across the line on either hand effectually 
 prevented her from gaining it at this point. 
 With a feeling of petulant annoyance at the 
 obstacle she began to follow a rough lane 
 running parallel to the line. Presently the 
 hedge on one side stopped, and there was 
 nothing between her and the railway embank- 
 ment except a strip of waste land. It was 
 rough with tufts of brown-tasselled rushes, and 
 patched and striped with russet colour and 
 bright green, after the manner of marshy 
 places ; even the hot summer had not dried 
 it She plunged across the spongy ground, 
 through the dank white fog that hung over 
 it, and reached the embankment. Somehow 
 she had expected to find a train rushing to 
 meet her as soon as she arrived, and she 
 experienced again a movement of petulant 
 disappointment as she looked up and down 
 the line and saw and heard nothing. The 
 sun was now half above the horizon, brighten- 
 ing the low wreaths of mist that floated along 
 the valley and the stretch of pale water to 
 her right where the rushes and shimmering 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 willows blended imperceptibly with their own 
 reflections. No one but herself seemed stirr- 
 ing, or even breathing, in this silent, beautiful 
 world, yet she knew that in reality she might 
 at any moment find her way of deliverance 
 blocked by some stupid remorseless fellow- 
 creature. Going to the foot of the bank she 
 sat down under a bush which screened her 
 from the sight of any one who might look 
 from the level -crossing. A nervous im- 
 patience devoured her, a longing to have 
 done. Sitting quiet there, she could not be 
 so absolutely passive in her mind as she had 
 been while she was walking on to a definite 
 end. It occurred to her that she ought to 
 say a prayer, but she could think of nothing 
 to say. To people brought up in the habit 
 of prayer it becomes an instinct ; many who 
 have deliberately abandoned it find them- 
 selves in some crisis of their lives falling on 
 their knees and calling on a God whom they 
 do not for an instant believe can either hear 
 or help them. Annie had always heretofore 
 taken it for granted that He existed in some 
 remote conventional way ; but she had not 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 acquired the faculty of praying as a child, 
 and now she seemed powerless to do so. The 
 talk of London artisans of the higher class 
 who had come to see her father talk which 
 she had heard years ago, and never thought 
 of since came back to her mind. They 
 said that there was no God, and that when 
 we died it was for us the end of all things. 
 She hoped it was so ; she only wanted to 
 have done with everything, and sleep. But 
 up at High Cross no one, from Nurse Mary 
 to the worst and poorest man in the village, 
 questioned His existence. Ah ! Nurse Mary 
 would be sorry for Annie and Jess when 
 she heard about it a long time hence ; there 
 was a little pleasure in feeling that At any 
 rate if there was a God who knew about her, 
 He would also know she had not wanted to 
 be wicked, and that now she was doing the 
 only thing left her to do. If He punished her 
 in another life He could not make her suffer 
 more than she was suffering in this one, and 
 He would not punish her unborn child. 
 
 The far-off whistle of a train sent a shock 
 through her. ' Christ have mercy upon us ! 
 
202 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 Lord have mercy upon us ! ' she repeated, 
 clenching her hands. The thunderous vibrat- 
 ing sound was coming rapidly nearer ; she 
 got up, but she was trembling from head to 
 foot, and her knees gave way under her. She 
 was conscious of a great revolt of the flesh 
 against the fixed determination of her will. 
 The dull obedient body had allowed itself to 
 be driven so far by the impetuous spirit, but 
 now the end approached it started back 
 shuddering with instinctive horror, like some 
 beast when the doors of the slaughter-house 
 are opened. ' No, no ! I cannot die!' cried 
 the writhing flesh. 'You must, you shall!' 
 answered the implacable will. So distinct 
 were the two parts into which her being re- 
 solved itself, that they scarcely seemed to 
 cohere. It was as though two persons were 
 slowly climbing the steep bank , one a con- 
 demned criminal, struggling in cowardly 
 anguish away from her doom, the other an 
 iron-handed warder, steadily dragging and 
 pushing her on towards it There was a 
 taste like blood in her mouth, and the earth 
 and sky were veiled in a reddish fog. She 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 203 
 
 could not see the train coming, but she felt 
 sure it was now close to her. ' Kneel down,' 
 said the unyielding will, and the faint and 
 trembling body sunk on its knees. There 
 was a harsh grinding noise ; the driver of the 
 train had seen her and put on the brake, but 
 it was too late. She was groping for the 
 rails, like a blindfolded victim groping for 
 the scaffold, and suddenly the mist about her 
 changed into a thick black darkness, through 
 which she went falling and falling into utter 
 nothingness. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE blue of infinite space, stretching away 
 inconceivably high overhead, the silver of 
 clouds, beaten thin by far-off winds, drifting 
 and drifting across it. Was not this the 
 brightness, the illimitable calm of eternity ? 
 No, it was only the morning sky, into which 
 she lay looking up without any movement of 
 mind or body. Gradually she reassumed her 
 conscious being, and became aware that she 
 was lying on the ground, out of doors, and 
 that her hair was dripping, and her face cold 
 and wet. With an effort she sat up, and 
 stared stupidly at the scarlet poppies and 
 yellow ragwort and small pink bindweed that 
 flaunted beside her on the sunny bank. 
 
 'Where am I? What's happened?' she 
 asked herself aloud. A man in a dark green 
 corduroy jacket and trousers, who was coming 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 205 
 
 up to her with some water in his cap, answered 
 surlily : 
 
 ' As to what's happened, you knows more 
 nor I do except so far as I see you roll 
 down this here bank. I thought the train 
 had knocked you down, but I don't see 
 no bruises. As to where you are, you're 
 on the Great Central main line, and a 
 very great liberty you've took in coming 
 here.' 
 
 Annie looked round and saw she was sitting 
 half-way down the railway embankment. In 
 a moment she recollected how she came there. 
 She had passed through the agony of death, 
 the jaws of the grave, only to come out into 
 the old life, the old homeless world. She 
 laid her head on her knees and began to shed 
 hot tears of weakness and weariness and pas- 
 sionate disappointment. 
 
 ' I see very well what you was up to,' the 
 man went on after a pause, sternly, but not 
 without signs of relenting. ' And I tell you 
 again as you took a very great liberty with 
 our line. It ain't right and it ain't legal 
 what you was after, young woman, and if I 
 
206 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 do my dooty, I shall take you to the nearest 
 police-station.' 
 
 ' Oh no, you won't do that please say 
 you won't,' Annie pleaded ; * I've had so 
 much to bear already, I couldn't bear any- 
 thing more. I'll promise to go home and 
 never to come here again, if only you'll let 
 me off this time.' And she sobbed pitifully. 
 
 ' Well,' returned the man more mildly, ' I 
 don't want to be hard on you. I'm a family 
 man myself, and I know there's plenty of 
 women gets light in the head when they're 
 in your way. There's a goods train just due, 
 and if you'll come and sit in my house till 
 it's by, I'll think the matter over.' 
 
 She followed him along the stony line, 
 crying bitterly all the way, and sat down to 
 wait for him in his little room, with the sun- 
 shine coming in at the window through the 
 pink hollyhocks. There was a noise of gates 
 opening and shutting, the interminable roll 
 and rattle of a long luggage train, and 
 presently the man came in. 
 
 ' You seem a respectable young person,' he 
 said by which he meant, 'You're a nice- 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 207 
 
 looking young woman, and seem in a deal of 
 trouble ' ' and if you'll give me your word 
 to go home and not come trespassing on our 
 line again I'll let you go, and say as little as 
 I can help about this here business.' 
 
 Annie gave the required promise, in a 
 weary, listless tone ; nothing seemed to matter 
 much. He took a cup out of the cupboard 
 and poured something into it out of a milk- 
 jug, and also out of a black bottle. 
 
 ' You drink this,' he said ' and take a bit 
 of bread with you, if you're in a hurry to be 
 off. You ain't fit to go any distance,' he 
 added, looking at her doubtfully. He would 
 have liked to ask her where she came from, 
 but there was something about her which 
 forbade questions. 
 
 All that she wanted now was to get home 
 unobserved and keep the secret of her failure. 
 She thanked the man, and taking the bread 
 in her hand, started off. The man's rough 
 kindness and the nourishment he had given 
 her had refreshed her almost against her will. 
 Like a person recovering from a severe illness, 
 who feels a pleasure in the everyday process 
 
208 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 of living, however dreary Life in the abstract 
 may appear to him, so she too, returning from 
 the gates of Death, could not help relishing 
 her crust of bread, and feeling a peculiar 
 sweetness in the sights and sounds and scents 
 of the summer morning, with its sunshine and 
 dew, and intimations of re-awakening life. 
 An old man was milking by a meadow gate, 
 and lifted his head from his cow's sleek side 
 to wish her good-morning as she passed. 
 When she began to climb the hill she startled 
 large and prosperous families of rabbits, taking 
 their breakfasts on the short grass ; away went 
 their little white scuts, flying over the turf in 
 all directions, and disappearing into the gorse, 
 and under the banks and the hillocks. After 
 all, perhaps the village had not been wrong 
 in thinking Sarah Baker the right person to 
 comfort Annie. Last night the poor girl had 
 been impatient of her presence and of her 
 words, but now what Mrs. Baker had said to 
 her about having a son came back to her with 
 something like a gleam of hope. She began 
 to think it just possible that the fainting-fit 
 which had overcome her on the embankment 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 209 
 
 might turn out to have been providential. 
 But for that she would have taken her child 
 away from a life which he might come to 
 enjoy as much as Jesse had enjoyed his. Sup- 
 posing she had a boy, she could make a great 
 struggle, and if she could not prevent his 
 being put into the workhouse school, she 
 would try and live near him and see him 
 often, so that he might not grow up without 
 any one to love. Then when he was old 
 enough to work, they would live together. 
 Perhaps he would grow up strong like Jesse, 
 and quick and clever like her father, and be 
 a prosperous man some day, as other boys as 
 poor and friendless as he had come to be. 
 But a girl ah ! that would be different. It 
 was not worth toiling and suffering on through 
 life in order to bear and rear another woman, 
 to toil and suffer also. Nurse Mary herself 
 had indiscreetly allowed that a woman's life 
 was a poor affair for the most part, and that 
 she did not think the little girls of the lower 
 classes would lose much if Judgment Day 
 came before they had taken their turn at it. 
 If it was a girl ? well, then she hoped she 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 would be strong enough to resolve and act ; 
 but now she seemed to have no strength to 
 bear even the thought that it might be. It 
 was borne in upon her that she was going to 
 be the mother of a son. 
 
 The sails of the windmill that had looked 
 so black as she went down glittered in the 
 sun as she slowly mounted the hill. She got 
 three-quarters of the way up quicker than she 
 would have thought possible but what was 
 this ? She was not cold, yet her teeth were 
 chattering, she was shivering and shaking 
 from head to foot, and by no effort of will 
 could she modify the access. It did not hurt, 
 but it thoroughly startled her, and she almost 
 wished she could see some one about. There 
 was nothing moving except the rabbits and 
 the spiders running along their bright bridges 
 of gossamer, in the warm sunshine. She 
 went on ; but she seemed to have lead on 
 her feet, and to be walking up, up, an inter- 
 minable precipice. At first, in the general 
 sensation of weariness and strangeness, she 
 hardly noticed the spasms of pain that begun 
 to ache through her whole body, but by the 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 time she had reached the top of the hill 
 she was conscious of active physical suffering. 
 She sat down feeling as though it were 
 impossible for her to go a step farther, but 
 then it occurred to her what this anguish and 
 extreme weariness meant. And she who a 
 short time before had shrunk from her fellow- 
 creatures, and had deliberately devoted herself 
 and her unborn child to death, now mastered 
 by the pangs of the flesh and its imperious 
 instincts the terror, the craving for human 
 help and sympathy, which even the animals 
 feel when the hour of maternity is at hand 
 now rose up and fled with all the strength 
 and purpose that were left in her, back to the 
 village ; back to those rough neighbours she 
 had flung from her this morning, for all 
 eternity, as she supposed. 
 
 Oh, if some one would only come along 
 the road ! Many a morning carts and 
 labourers would be passing at this hour, but 
 the luck was still against her, and no one 
 came. Staggering on, sometimes running for 
 a few yards, sometimes falling on the roadside 
 bank crying out vainly for help oh ! would 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 it never finish, that long streak of white road, 
 roofed with its streak of blue sky, between 
 the high dusty hedges ? She knew every 
 inch of it, yet through the nightmare world 
 in which she moved it stretched itself out for 
 ever and ever, an unbroken interminable line. 
 At last, after hours, as it appeared, of 
 horrible effort, she saw the familiar Scotch 
 fir-tree and the high roof of the summer- 
 house. She reached the carved doorway in 
 the wall and looked in. Everything was 
 quiet. Evidently there was no one there 
 except the dead. She must go yet farther 
 to Mrs. Baker's cottage, which was the first 
 house in the village street, just beyond Pontin's 
 farm. When she got as far as the stone cross 
 she sunk down on the steps of it, opposite 
 the farm-house. The Pontins were early 
 people, and at that moment aunt was open- 
 ing the parlour casement Annie did not 
 notice her ; she did not think of the day she 
 and Jess had been thrust out across that clean 
 white threshold ; every faculty was bowed 
 under the tyrannous domination of bodily 
 anguish. Rising, she went on to Mrs. Baker's. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 213 
 
 She did not stay to knock, but hanging 
 desperately on the stiff latch, stumbled in 
 and subsided on a chair close by the door. 
 Mrs. Baker with her husband and two grown- 
 up children had just finished breakfast. She 
 was full of excitement and sympathy and 
 self-reproach at having overslept herself and 
 left Annie so long alone. 
 
 ' But you was so quiet last night,' she said. 
 ' I never thought as your troubles were coming 
 on you.' 
 
 The husband and son were stalwart men, 
 and quickly making a hammock out of a 
 blanket, they carried Annie back to the 
 Manor, Mrs. Baker following. James Pontin, 
 who was in his farm-yard, came to the gate 
 to look at the odd procession. 
 
 Old Master Godfrey, the village patriarch, 
 with his stick and his white smock and his 
 seedy beaver hat, was following it at a little 
 distance. 
 
 'Who's that they've got there, Master 
 Godfrey ? ' asked Mr. Pontin, with natural 
 curiosity. 
 
 It had been known in the village last 
 
214 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 night that the Pontins had not helped their 
 niece in her trouble ; the obdurate one had 
 been James, not his wife, for after all aunt 
 was a woman. Public opinion, which had 
 before been mainly in their favour, had now 
 turned strongly against them. 
 
 Master Godfrey hobbled up to the gate. 
 
 ' It's your niece Annie, Farmer. Pontin,' 
 he answered. ' She's took in labour, and not. 
 a soul in the house with her except the dead 
 Ay, poor thing ! It's a sad trial.' 
 
 James Pontin set his face like a flint. 
 
 ' As folks sow, so they must reap,' he said 
 shortly. His thoughts went quickly on to 
 Benny, and he hoped the boy too might be 
 eating of the bitter fruit of his ingratitude. 
 
 The old man looked up timidly in the face 
 which from being merely grave and a little 
 heavy had grown so immovably grim. 
 
 ' Ah, James Pontin ! ' he said, turning away, 
 'I hope it ain't true as the Lord sticks at 
 forgiving us as we forgive them as trespass 
 against us.' 
 
 A week after Annie's return Mr. Evans 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 215 
 
 was standing at the Manor door waiting to 
 mount his mare. He was waiting because 
 Mrs. Hayes, coming along the road with the 
 inevitable soup-tin, had held up from afar 
 a mandatory hand loosely swathed in a brown 
 cotton glove. 
 
 ' Good morning, doctor,' she said when 
 she came up. ' I want to know what you're 
 going to do with Annie Pontin. Here's 
 Solomons a wretched old sinner the man is, 
 too insists upon turning her out. In that 
 case she must go to the Union at once. After 
 all, she'd have to go there sooner or later.' 
 
 Mr. Evans was young, and still excited 
 about his cases. He brought his hand down 
 on his mare's sleek shoulder with a slap that 
 made her dance. 
 
 ' Solomons daren't do it,' he said. ' I've 
 warned him it's as much as the girl's life's 
 worth.' 
 
 ' He told the nurse last night he meant 
 to, all the same,' returned Mrs. Hayes calmly 
 
 ' She'll die and I shall prosecute him 
 I should like to prosecute him ! ' cried the 
 fierce doctor. 
 
216 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' People fuss so nowadays,' replied Mrs. 
 Hayes. ' Why, dear me ! my sister was 
 always up and about by the time her babies 
 were a fortnight old.' 
 
 Mr. Evans looked unutterable things. 
 
 ' You don't consider,' he said, ' this girl 
 had a delicate constitution to start with, and 
 now, of course, it's smashed up. The wonder 
 is how she's pulled through the business at 
 all.' 
 
 'Why, what's the matter with her?' asked 
 Mrs. Hayes. 
 
 ' Nothing's the matter everything's the 
 matter. She's organically weak. Bother 
 her and pull her about and she won't be ill, 
 she'll just leave off living. That's all.' 
 
 While her case was being discussed below, 
 Annie was lying in bed in the upper room of 
 the summer-house. Mrs. Baker sat in the 
 bee-hive chair with the baby girl on her knee ; 
 for the event had not justified Annie's pre- 
 sentiment that the child would be a boy. 
 The district nurse was in the house a good 
 deal, and by Mr. Evans' directions slept there ; 
 but when she was out Mrs. Baker would often 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 217 
 
 come and sit with Annie. Neither she nor 
 the nurse could make the girl out at all. She 
 hardly ever spoke, but lay still hour after 
 hour, staring before her with great cavernous 
 eyes. She did not seem much interested in 
 the baby when they laid it on the bed by 
 her. She would look at it in a fixed sad way, 
 and once or twice said ' Poor little thing,' as 
 though it belonged to some one else ; but 
 she never talked to it. She had asked where 
 Jesse was buried and nothing more. 
 
 Mrs. Baker was not fond of silence, and as 
 the baby lay on her knee stretching out its 
 tiny feet to the fire like the most prosperous 
 baby in the world, she said : 
 
 ' Lor, how nicely she's getting on ! She's 
 beginning to fill out her skin, that she is.' 
 
 'Do you think she will live, Mrs. Baker?' 
 asked Annie, turning a worn strange look on 
 the matron. 
 
 ' Live ? Of course she will,' Mrs. Baker 
 answered ' live and be hearty.' 
 
 ' Poor little thing !' said Annie again. ' It 
 would be happier for her to die, wouldn't it ? 
 Life's so hard for us poor folks.' 
 
2i8 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 ' Of course it's hard,' returned Mrs. Baker 
 indignantly, ' but we gets used to it, and we 
 likes it. It ain't right to be wishing your 
 baby dead, and if you talk so, Annie Pontin, 
 I shall think you're a wicked girl as wants to 
 be rid of the trouble and shame of it.' 
 
 The weak tears came into Annie's eyes. 
 
 ' Oh, don't scold me, Mrs. Baker,' she cried, 
 ' I can't bear it. It's not that I want to be 
 rid of the baby, but I don't want to leave 
 her to the Union and no one to care about 
 her. It would be much better if we was both 
 dead.' 
 
 ' The doctor says you're going on as well 
 as can be expected, and there ain't no call 
 for you to die,' returned Mrs. Baker severely. 
 ' I'm sure it's wonderful how the Lord in His 
 mercy have brought you through all this, see- 
 ing you always looked so as if the wind 'ud 
 blow through you.' 
 
 There was silence while Mrs. Baker was 
 engaged in wrestling with the white ribbons 
 of a minute pair of knitted shoes, which Annie 
 had insisted on having put on the baby's feet 
 because Nurse Mary had made them. It had 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 219 
 
 been in vain to tell her that for a baby of a 
 week old to wear shoes was clean against all 
 the sumptuary laws which regulate infant 
 apparel. 
 
 There was a loud rattat-at on the door 
 below, and popping the baby into the bed, 
 Mrs. Baker went down. Then a colloquy 
 began in the lower room, gradually assuming 
 the character of an altercation ; a man's voice 
 deep and bullying, and Mrs. Baker's raised in 
 wrath and indignation. At last, with a final 
 volley delivered from both sides at once, it 
 ceased, and there was a sound of heavy wad- 
 dling footsteps followed by the roll of depart- 
 ing wheels. 
 
 'Well, of all the brute beasts I ever see, 
 that Solomons is the worst !' exclaimed Mrs. 
 Baker, re-entering Annie's room. ' To come 
 here and talk about turning you out o' Friday, 
 with the corpse, as you may say, hardly across 
 the threshold, and you being as you are. I 
 says to him, " Mr. Solomons, don't you know 
 as doctor says you're as like as not to kill 
 the girl ?" " Bless you, I don't put no faith 
 in them doctors," says he. " She'd be a deal 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 comfortabler in the Union. I give notice 
 last week as I'd got a new tenant for this 
 house."' 
 
 Mrs. Baker stopped, terrified at her own 
 impulsive indiscretion, but Annie did not 
 seem agitated. 
 
 ' Do you think he'll do it so soon as all 
 that?' she asked. 
 
 ' Lor, my dear, I don't think nothing,' re- 
 turned Mrs. Baker hastily. ' Nor don't you 
 trouble your head neither. There's the doc- 
 tor or some one '11 see to it.' 
 
 That night the district nurse, who slept in 
 Annie's room, was summoned away to the 
 mother of the idiot ; a woman in an advanced 
 stage of disease, who was expecting her thir- 
 teenth child. She lived at the opposite end 
 of the village street to the Manor, near the 
 church and the Hall. About six o'clock the 
 next morning the nurse and the doctor stood 
 outside the cottage door. The former had to 
 appear at a coroner's inquest that morning, 
 and as she passed the Union on her way, she 
 was to send Mr. Evans up a temporary nurse 
 and some necessaries from the Infirmary. 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 221 
 
 As they stood there they saw Albert coming 
 along the churchyard path. He looked par- 
 ticularly dirty and unkempt ; probably he had 
 not been undressed the night before, but had 
 curled himself up to sleep in some corner and 
 stolen out as soon as the day broke. More- 
 over he seemed to have got some unusual 
 plaything which amused him exceedingly. 
 It was a long-shaped bundle, which he kept 
 holding up in the air and rocking in his arms. 
 At last, with a yell of glee, he laid it down 
 on the top of a flat tombstone. A feeble cry, 
 like the yawling of a weakly cat, reached 
 their ears. 
 
 ' Whatever have that boy got ? ' asked the 
 nurse crossly. 
 
 Mr. Evans had long-sighted eyes, and he 
 looked earnestly. 
 
 ' By Jove !' he exclaimed, ' I believe it's a 
 baby.' 
 
 Then he set off running to the churchyard. 
 The nurse saw him in brief pursuit of the 
 ungainly boy, who, instinctively foreseeing an 
 assault on his person or property, dived away 
 among the hillocks and stones. Mr. Evans 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 seized him and removed the bundle from his 
 arms, firmly but carefully, Albert's boots 
 meantime making considerable acquaintance 
 with the doctor's shins. Then Mr. Evans 
 came back to the cottage carrying the bundle. 
 
 ' Here, nurse/ he said, 'just warm this little 
 brat and give it some milk. There are no 
 bones broken, but it's squalling like anything, 
 poor little beast, and no wonder. Where on 
 earth can it come from?' 
 
 The nurse in amazement took the baby, 
 glanced at the shawl it wore, and then at 
 its feet. A tiny white shoe was on one of 
 them. 
 
 'Lor, if it ain't Pontm's baby!' she ex- 
 claimed. ' How ever did he get the child ?' 
 
 Mr. Evans gave a whistle of dismay. 
 
 'Then that young ourang-outang's been 
 frightening the mother into fits,' he said. 
 ' You wait here, and I'll be back as soon as 
 I can.' 
 
 And he started off up the village street at 
 a sharp trot. 
 
 When he came back he was panting and 
 hopelessly bewildered. 'She's gone!' he 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 gasped ' disappeared not a soul in the 
 house. Most extraordinary !' 
 
 The nurse was feeding the baby with a 
 spoon, in a skilful, professional, wholly unin- 
 terested manner. 
 
 'Just like them hussies !' she sniffed. 'The 
 quieter they are, the deeper they are. I 
 always thought Pontin was deep.' 
 
 'What the deuce can have happened to 
 her ?' soliloquised the doctor. ' I'd have taken 
 my solemn oath she couldn't walk ten yards.' 
 
 ' Folks can mostly do what they pleases,' 
 returned the nurse. ' I dare say she'd more 
 nor one string to her bow, and as soon as 
 she got the chance she's gallivanted with 
 somebody and left her brat to the parish.' 
 
 ' She can't be far,' insisted Mr. Evans, ' un- 
 less some one's carried her. I shall just go 
 across to Mr. Hayes. But what's to be done 
 with the baby ? Upon my word I've got my 
 hands pretty full this morning.' 
 
 The nurse shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 ' There's trouble enough in this house 
 already/ she said. ' It can't stop here, and 
 it's got no relations to count. It'll have to 
 
224 A VILLAGE TKAGEDY 
 
 go to the Union ; and if I was you, sir, I'd 
 just let it go straight off. I can carry it so 
 far, and there's Jones in the Lying-in Ward 
 as lost her baby the day before yesterday. 
 It was just the age of Pontin's, and they've 
 had a deal of worry with her and will be 
 glad to let her take to this one so the 
 sooner she has it the better.' 
 
 The doctor was bothered. 
 
 ' Very well,' he said. ' It can't do any 
 harm. If any one wants it it's easy to fetch 
 it back, and it will get a breakfast anyhow.' 
 
 The nurse was in a hurry and started off. 
 The path by which she was going led across 
 the churchyard, down some steps under the 
 branches of the great yew, through a wicket, 
 and so over the fields. The doctor also had 
 to cross the churchyard to reach the Vicarage. 
 When he was half across, it struck him that 
 the Hayes' were not exactly the sort of 
 people to appreciate going out into the wil- 
 derness after lost sheep at six o'clock in the 
 morning. He paused and wandered aimlessly 
 under the yew-tree, looking after the nurse 
 with a slight qualm at the summariness of 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 225 
 
 the step he had taken. She was already a 
 good way down the hill ; there was an inde- 
 finable something about her way of shoulder- 
 ing the baby, her stiff back and rough gait, 
 that would have prevented any observer from 
 mistaking her for a mother, or even an inter- 
 ested person. 
 
 It was a very fine morning, as fine as the 
 morning little more than a week ago when 
 Annie had walked up from the level crossing. 
 A heavy dew lay on the nettles and rough 
 grass of the churchyard and on the meadows, 
 where the shadows of the trees and hedgerows 
 lay long and cool. He saw on one side the 
 flat country, with its corn-fields all pale in 
 the early sunshine ; on the other the view 
 was partly blocked by the bulk of the old 
 Hall and its many elms. The blue smoke 
 was beginning to curl up from one of the big 
 chimney-stacks above its brick gables. Below 
 them was a long moat-like fish-pond, much 
 deeper than the one in which the horses were 
 watered. The field sloped to it suddenly, 
 making a steep bank, and all round stood 
 great elms. As he looked, the gray far-off 
 15 
 
226 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 hills seemed floating in the air between their 
 branches. Then his eye was caught by a 
 figure moving out from under the shadow of 
 the churchyard wall, and making for a small 
 white object that lay on the grass in the direc- 
 tion of the pond. It was Albert. He stooped 
 and picked up the white object, which Mr. 
 Evans then saw to be a baby's shoe. He re- 
 membered that the foundling had had but one, 
 and it suddenly occurred to him that Albert 
 might be of some use in tracing its mother. 
 He stood in the shadow of the yew to watch. 
 The idiot broke into a shuffling run, and dis- 
 appeared down the bank under the elms. Mr. 
 Evans followed, noticing as he went that there 
 were already several tracks through the dew. 
 As soon as he reached the bank he saw a 
 woman lying on it immediately below him ; 
 she was lying straight on her back with her 
 feet towards the pond. The idiot was crouch- 
 ing close to her with his arm across her 
 breast, peering in her face and jabbering to 
 himself. A sudden, dreadful thought came 
 into the doctor's mind. He stepped quickly 
 down, and the idiot moved away as quickly 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 227 
 
 with a howl of terror and annoyance. It 
 was undoubtedly Annie, and she was equally 
 undoubtedly dead, but there were no marks 
 of violence on the body. She had slipped 
 on a skirt over her nightgown, a pair of 
 shoes and a shawl, and had evidently, from 
 the position of her left arm and hand, been 
 carrying the baby. By some supreme exer- 
 tion of the will she had struggled so far with 
 it, probably intending to lay herself and her 
 child under the deep waters of the pond, 
 when suddenly her strength had failed her 
 and the end had come. Albert must have 
 found or followed her, and carried the child 
 away from its mother's body. There was a 
 look of painful effort stereotyped on the dead 
 face ; the square white teeth were clenched, 
 the brows drawn together, and the glazed 
 eyes very wide open, staring up into the 
 clear morning sky. Her right hand still 
 clutched a handful of coarse grass which she 
 must have caught at in her fall. The eastern 
 sunshine was filtering through the elms on 
 the other side of the pond a long narrow 
 ray slanting across it fell on her white night- 
 
228 A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 
 
 gown and her white young throat, another 
 caught the gold ring on her left hand, which 
 lay across her breast. The doctor was stand- 
 ing quite still now, and Albert forgot to be 
 afraid. He crept up close again, and kneel- 
 ing by the corpse, moved the left hand. He 
 touched the gold ring once or twice with his 
 finger, grinning meantime and scratching 
 his chin with his other hand, then stopped 
 short, as though half-frightened at his own 
 audacity. But in a minute he took hold of 
 it again, leering up in the doctor's face as he 
 did so. 
 
 ' Not here, Jess,' he said with his slow, 
 thick utterance ; and throwing back his head 
 with a loud chuckling laugh, ' Jess not here,' 
 he repeated, and pulled violently at the ring. 
 It sprung off into his hand, and at the same 
 instant Mr. Evans seized him by the arm. 
 As quick as thought he ducked his head, 
 and his strong teeth met in the flesh of the 
 doctor's wrist. Freeing himself thus from 
 the grasp of his captor, with a cry of rage 
 and spite he threw the ring over his shoulder 
 as hard as he could throw it. For a moment 
 
A VILLAGE TRAGEDY 229 
 
 it turned and glittered in the air, then with a 
 faint splash it disappeared, and a tiny circle 
 of ripples, widening and widening till they 
 touched the grassy bank, disturbed the dark 
 surface of the pond. 
 
 THE END 
 
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