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The November landscape was sombre and melancholy enough; brown, newly-ploughed fields alternating for the most part with the tawny stubble of land that still lay fallow. A few withered leaves clung to the branches of trees and hedges; the sky was grey, the air heavy and yet cold. It was a fit day to hear news of trouble, Mrs. Frizzell thought, as her eyes roamed over the prospect, not vaguely as another woman’s might have done, but with a definite object in view.

She proceeded at a round pace up the lane, and along the high road, leaving it, after half a mile or so, to strike across the fields.

She was a small, energetic-looking woman, with hazel eyes and prematurely grey hair. Her usually cheerful face was deadly pale to-day, and its characteristically alert expression had given place to one of devouring anxiety.

Presently against the sky-line above a distant hedge appeared the head and shoulders of a man, and a little way in front of him the ears and crests of two horses. Mrs. Frizzell quickened her pace, making for a familiar gap in the hedge aforesaid, through which she presently squeezed herself.

The man, who had not seen her, continued his slow progress across the field. Without calling out to him she broke into a run, her feet sinking deep at every step in the newly turned-up soil; after a few minutes she reached him, panting, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

He looked round with a start, and brought his horses to a standstill.

“Martha! what brings ye out at this time o’ day?”

“Nothing good,” said Martha. She threw a hasty glance round. “Be there any one about?”

She spoke in a peculiarly loud and distinct key, and he answered in the low, mumbling tone habitual to deaf people.

“Nay, who should be about? There bain’t nobody here but myself.”

“I think I’ll go with ’ee to the top o’ the hill and make sure—I don’t want nobody to hear what I’ve a-got to tell ’ee. Go on—go on to the top o’ the drill.”

“I be to go forrard?” questioned her husband, staring at her stupidly.

“’Ees, take them harses up to the top o’ the drill, and then I’ll talk to ’ee.”

Frizzell admonished his horses to proceed, and went plodding on up the rising ground along which he had traced his furrow, glancing round every now and then at the set face of his wife as she plodded in his rear.

He was a big, blond, good-natured man, whose natural dulness of wit was intensified by his infirmity.

When they reached the brow of the hill Martha slipped in front of him, and standing on tip-toe, cast a searching glance round. A flock of sheep was penned in a corner of the adjacent turnip-field, a few rooks were waddling up the furrows nearer at hand; over their heads a heron was slowly sailing with wide, sweeping wings on his way to the river, but not a human creature was in sight.

“Well,” said John Frizzell as she turned towards him, “whatever be the matter, Missus? I wish you’d out wi’ it.”

“I have had a letter from my cousin Julia, Father, and she have telled me some bad noos about our Susan.”

John’s jaw dropped, and the colour forsook his face, leaving it pale beneath its tan.

“Why—be the maid took ill?” he inquired with a gasp.

“She bain’t well—and she bain’t like to be well. She’ve a-been ill-used, Father. There, the silly girl wouldn’t hearken to what I did al’ays tell her, an’ now she be sufferin’ for’t. She’ve been an’ took up wi’ a soldier, an’ so far as I can make out he made a purtence o’ marryin’ her; got some raskil to dress up as a minister, an’ put on the ring and all. The poor maid was sure she was married honest, but she kep’ it secret, for he dared her to tell any one wi’out he gave her leave. Well, an’ now he’ve a-gone off to the war, and left a letter for her sayin’ as how ’twere all humbug, an’ they wasn’t married at all, an’ hopin’ she’d forgive en.”

“My God!” said the poor father, and he brought his hand down on the plough-handle with a force that made the mild horses start, “My God! I wish I had en here—I’d smash en!”

“An’ that’s not all,” went on Mrs. Frizzell, in a choked voice; “there’s a little ’un upon the road—our daughter ’ull be disgraced afore the whole parish.”

“Disgraced!” cried John, his honest face as red as it had before been pale, “who says disgraced! ’Tain’t no fault o’ the poor child’s! She’ve a-been deceived and used cruel hard. Nobody ’ull not have a word to say against her.”

“Won’t they, though!” retorted his wife, who, though as sore at heart as he, thought it necessary to assume an aggressive tone. “Who do you suppose ’ull ever believe as the girl ’ud be so simple as to be took in and think herself married when she warn’t married? They don’t believe it in Darchester, I can tell ’ee. There, they’ve a-gone and sent her away from her situation; and Julia—why I can see as my own cousin Julia don’t half believe her story—she’ve wrote to say she ’opes I’ll come and take her away at once, as she don’t like her for to be comin’ to the house.”

“Well, write an’ tell her as you will take her away,” returned Frizzell in a kind of muffled roar. “I bain’t ashamed o’ my child, whatever other folks may be. Write an’ tell her as Father an’ Mother ’ull be fain to have her home, and won’t let nobody worrit her when she d’ get there. I’ll soon shut their mouths if they try to make out as she bain’t a-tellin’ the trewth!”

“Now, Father, you listen to I.” And here Martha laid both her hands upon his great round shoulders and fairly shook him in her eagerness. “I bain’t a-goin’ for to let her tell the trewth—not all the trewth. I’m willin’ she should say she got married to a soldier unbeknown to us, but I don’t mean to let the rest come out. I’m goin’ for to give out as he were killed in the war. That way he’ll be done wi’, so to speak—nobody ’ull be axin’ questions about en, or wonderin’ why Susan have come home.”

John Frizzell fairly gasped.

“Bless my heart!” he ejaculated, staring at his eager little wife. “Why, what a tale! I don’t much fancy tellin’ sich a pack o’ lies; nay, now”—and he rolled his head obstinately—“I bain’t a-goin’ to tell ’em. I’ll speak the trewth, and knock down them as says contrairy—I’ll be danged if I won’t!”

“Don’t ’ee be sich a fool, Father. You’ll do jist as I tell ’ee. I’ve al’ays held up my head, and Susan, she’ve al’ays been a bit high, an’ have a-kep’ herself to herself, and there be folks as ’ud be only too glad to go a-crowin’ over we, an’ a-backbitin’ of we. I bain’t a-goin’ for to give ’em no cause. You keep your mouth shut—that’s all as you’ve got to do. Keep your mouth shut, and if folks d’ come a-worrettin’ of ’ee wi’ questions, don’t ’ee let on for to understand. You be hard enough o’ hearin’ at all times, and you can jist make out to be a bit harder. You’ll have to do as I do bid ’ee, for I’ve telled Mrs. Cross jist now the story about Susan’s husband bein’ killed in the war, and his name an’ all—”

“Why, do ’ee know his name?” interrupted Frizzell, staring at her in a puzzled sort of way. “What be his name? The young raskil! If he bain’t killed out abroad, I’ll half murder en when he do come back.”

Martha’s face assumed a set expression.

“He don’t deserve for to come back,” she said, in a tone too low for her husband to hear. “There, it bain’t Christian to wish ill to nobody, but the A’mighty be just, and I can’t think as He’d let a blessin’ rest on that there wicked fellow. I don’t know his name no more nor you,” she shouted, turning to John, who was still muttering vengeance. “Julia didn’t tell I; but when Mrs. Cross axed straight out what his name mid be, I had to say summat. I weren’t a-goin’ for to tell her as I didn’t know, so I jist thought of a name as I seed in the paper o’ Sunday among the list o’ killed—Private Griggs—so I telled her ’twas that.”

John stared at her solemnly and with unwilling admiration.

“Ye be wonderful quick at makin’ out things, and I do suppose it bain’t no use for I to go against ye; but I don’t believe no good ’ull come o’ it. Mrs. Cross be a terrible one to talk—she’ll ha’ spread the tale over village by now.”

“She will,” agreed Martha. “’Tis jist for that I did tell her. I must be gettin’ back now,” she continued, in an altered tone. “Don’t ’ee be took back when ’ee see blinds down, Father.”

“Blinds down! What’s that for?”

“Why, because Private Griggs be killed,” returned Mrs. Frizzell grimly. “They’ll ha’ to be kep’ down till I’ve a-fetched the widow home.”

“The widow!” exclaimed John. And he fairly burst out crying. “My poor little Susie! My poor maidie!”

He turned his back to his wife and stood for a moment with his shoulders convulsively heaving; then, rubbing his eyes with one horny hand, he shouted huskily to the horses, ordered his wife gruffly to stand out of the way, and started off down the hill again.

Mrs. Frizzell struck off at right angles across the field, and made for home with all possible speed. Her heart was full, nigh to bursting, and the lump in her throat caused her almost intolerable physical distress, but she resolutely forced the tears back. This was no time for crying—there was too much to be done—too much to be thought of.

* * * * *

It was about noon on the following day when Mrs. Frizzell arrived at Susan’s lodging.

The poor girl ran to meet her with an inarticulate cry, and the mother, without looking at her, began to talk rapidly in her characteristically matter-of-fact fashion.

“I be come to take ’ee home, my dear—Father an’ me think ’tis best—you’d better be gettin’ your things together. There, I did start so early as I could, but I had to go into one or two shops, and it did take I sich a time to find out this place! Ye’d best make haste and do your packing; there’s the getting back to be thought on. You can put up all as you’ve a-got ’cept your black dress—ye can slip that on. I’ve got everythin’ else as ye be like to want here.”

“My black dress!” said Susie. “’Tis too good for travellin’, mother; this here blue be quite tidy.”

“Do what I tell ’ee,” said Mrs. Frizzell, sternly, looking up from the parcel which she was unfastening, and fixing her eyes for the first time on the girl’s pale, agitated face.

“Mother, why have you got your blacks on?” cried Susan in sudden alarm. “And, oh! what’s that in your hand?”

“’Tis a bonnet, my dear, and you be to put it on. Now, Susan, I haven’t said one cross word to ’ee, and I bain’t a-goin’ to say a cross word to ’ee; and Father and me have a-made up our minds to stand by ’ee, and we’ll not let nobody go a-worrettin’ of ’ee, or a-castin’ up at ’ee about what’s past. If ye did deceive we, ye’ve a-been punished enough for’t.”

“Oh, dear! an’ that’s true,” wailed Susan; and she threw herself into her mother’s arms, her big, babyish, blue eyes drowned in tears; her poor head, with its crown of golden hair, hidden on the bosom where it had so often lain in innocent infancy. “I was a wicked girl to deceive ’ee and dear Father, as was always so good to me. But he—Jim—said I wasn’t to tell no one, or he’d be gettin’ into trouble, as we wasn’t on the strength!”

“And what mid that mean, my dear?”

“I don’t know, Mother. Some soldiers’ talk. Some of ’em has leave to get married, an’ some hasn’t.”

“Ah-h-h-h, ye mid ha’ knowed he was up to some tricks—ye couldn’t be married right that way. Why, where was your lines, my dear?”

“He said he was a-keepin’ them for me, an’ he took me to a kind o’ tin buildin’, an’ said it was the soldiers’ chapel, and he knowed I always went to chapel, so he wouldn’t ax me to be married in church; and there was another man there, as he said was the minister. And he put the ring on my finger—Jim did—he did indeed”—and here Susan raised her head to look earnestly in her mother’s face—“and he did say the words, and all.”

“There, there, no need to talk more on’t. Ye’ve been voolish, my maid, and he’ve a-been wicked; and you be left to pay for it all. But you’ve got Father and Mother to look to, and if you’ll do as I do bid ’ee, nobody need know o’ the trick as has been played on ’ee. There, slip on your dress, my dear, and pop this bonnet on, and–”

“Mother, ’tis a widow’s bonnet,” gasped Susan. “Oh, don’t—don’t make me wear a widow’s bonnet! Oh, I can’t bear the sight of en; it do seem so unlucky, so dreadful!”

“Now be still, Susan; I don’t want no idle talk about ’ee, an’ no insultin’ remarks passed, and I’ve a-made out a story and you be to keep to’t. You be the Widow Griggs—that be your name; and your husband, what was a soldier, have a-been killed in this here war.”

“Oh, not killed; not killed!” cried the girl wildly. “Oh, Mother, don’t ’ee talk like that, for I can’t a-bear it. There, ’twould seem so wicked to be sayin’ sich things—the Lard mid make it come true. I can’t but feel as Jim be my husband; whatever he’ve a-done, and so bad as he mid be, I can’t ever feel anything else. He did mean to marry I some day when he’d got leave, and he’d ha’ done it if it hadn’t ha’ been for the war. If you call me a widow, I shall feel all the time as if Jim were really killed.”

Mrs. Frizzell folded her arms and gazed at her resolutely and severely.

“Susan, don’t let me hear ’ee talk like that—the man’s dead to you if he bain’t killed, an’ his name mustn’t ever be on your lips. I’m doin’ the best I can for ’ee, an’ I can’t think the Lard ’ud be angry with me for makin’ out a story what does no harm to nobody. As for that fellow, he be in the hands o’ the Lard—the Lard ’ull see to en. I leave en to the A’mighty.”

Mrs. Frizzell spoke with a certain almost terrible significance which made poor Susie’s blood run cold.

The stronger will gained the day, and a short time afterwards the Widow Griggs, clad in her “deep,” and sobbing in a heartrending fashion that had no pretence at all about it under her long veil, was led out of the house by her resolute little mother.

Mrs. Frizzell was by nature truthful, but in this emergency it must be owned that her veracity was exposed to tests from which it did not always escape unscathed.

When one of her neighbours asked her if she did not mean to apply for relief on her daughter’s behalf from some of the funds instituted for soldiers’ widows, she could reply boldly enough that such an appeal would be useless, as Private Griggs had married without leave, and Susan’s claim would therefore not be recognised. But when the sympathetic, but exasperatingly pertinacious Mrs. Cross—the gossip who had been chosen in the first instance to spread the news of Susan’s bereavement—plied her with questions anent her departed son-in-law, the poor woman occasionally found herself so completely cornered as to be obliged to invent appropriate answers.

Thus, before very long, it became known in the village that the late Private Griggs had been a tall, dark man, very well-looking; that he came from somewhere up the country; that his mother was breaking her heart about his loss, but his father did seem to bear up very well. They didn’t write often to Susan—no, for the poor dear were that undone she couldn’t a-bear so much as to hear his name mentioned; in fact, Mrs. Frizzell herself did scarcely ever mention it to her. (“And that’s true!” remarked the originator of this history, with infinite satisfaction.) No more didn’t Frizzell—indeed, poor Frizzell were that upset about it that the less said to en the better.

Sometimes Mrs. Frizzell was a little startled when these figments were recalled to her—many of them, indeed, were so much embellished by transmission from mouth to mouth that she scarcely recognised her own original creation; but she deemed it best to let the story pass.

“Let ’em please theirselves,” she murmured. “I didn’t say so much as that, but ’tis better to let ’em think so if it do satisfy ’em. There,” she would add, when tormented by some particularly keen twinge of conscience, “’tis to be ’oped as the Lard will forgi’e me. I can’t believe as it ’ull be held agen me, seein’ as it’s for the sake of my own child.”

When poor Susan’s baby boy arrived great astonishment was elicited by the fact that the soft down which covered its little head was of a distinctly ruddy colour.

“Dear, to be sure,” remarked Mrs. Cross, “he can’t take after his father, poor, dear little hinfant. You said he was a black-haired man, didn’t you, Mrs. Frizzell? And Susan’s hair be just so yellow as the corn. I can’t call to mind as there be any red-haired folks in your family, or Frizzell’s either.”

“Very like the poor innocent do take after some o’ Mr. Griggs’ relations,” remarked another woman. “His mother, now—’tis strange how often I’ve a-known the first child be the very image o’ the father’s mother.”

Mrs. Frizzell’s hawk eyes immediately fixed themselves upon the mental picture of Private Grigg’s maternal parent, and she presently remarked, in a somewhat muffled tone, that she fancied she had heard summat about old Mrs. Griggs bein’ a red-haired woman.

“And that makes another of ’em!” she groaned to herself, “I d’ ’low I’ll soon forget what ’tis to speak the truth.”

Returning, after the departure of the visitors, to replace the little flannel-wrapped bundle by its mother’s side, she observed tentatively—

“His hair do seem to be red, Susie.”

“’Ees,” returned poor Susie faintly, “his hair be red—like Jim’s.”

“Ye mid ha’ told me that, I think!” exclaimed Mrs. Frizzell, with irrepressible irritation. “I’ve been a-tellin’ everybody as your husband were a dark-haired man. I had to make out a story now about your mother-in-law having red hair. P’r’aps she has?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. She’s dead long ago, and so is his father. Oh, Mother, how can you make up sich tales?”

“Well, I had to say summat when they axed me. If I were to say as I didn’t know, they’d be sure to guess as things wasn’t all right.”

“But if—if Jim ever do come back?” faltered the girl.

“He’ll not come back—put that out o’ your head,” said Mrs. Frizzell shortly.

The tears rolled down Susie’s face, and her eyes followed her mother’s energetic figure as it moved about the room. Once or twice she opened her lips as though to speak, but her courage failed her. Then, suddenly, the words burst from her—

“Mother, don’t ’ee pray agen him! I can feel as you’re wishin’ and wantin’ him not to come back. P’r’aps ye be a-prayin’ as—as summat may happen. Oh, don’t, don’t! ’Tis wicked.”

Mrs. Frizzell turned quite pale. She came and stood at the foot of Susie’s bed, gazing at her so oddly that the girl, who was by this time shaking with hysterical sobs, became more and more unnerved and frightened.

“There, don’t take on so,” said her mother at last, and her voice sounded husky and strange. “I mid be better nor what I am, the Lard knows, though, p’r’aps, it bain’t my own darter’s place to tell I so; but I’ve not gone so far as to pray for evil to fall on anybody, if that be what ye mean. I be a Christian woman, however wicked I mid be.”

“But you wish it,” sobbed Susan. “You know you wish it, Mother—you do wish as Jim were dead.”

“You lay down,” said Mrs. Frizzell, coming round to the side of the bed, and forcing her patient back upon her pillows. “Lay down, and keep still, and don’t go upsettin’ yourself and this poor innocent child. Leave the Lard to judge of I, as I do leave Him to judge of he.”

Susan was slowly recovering strength when one day a letter arrived containing news so consoling and yet so tragic that her heart very nearly broke.

Jim—her Jim—her husband, for as such, in spite of her mother’s protests, she continued to regard him, had written to her on the eve of battle—a manly letter, full of remorseful tenderness. Solemn thoughts had come to him out there on the lonely veldt, face to face with death. The remembrance of the innocent creature who had trusted him, and whom he had loved and wronged, haunted him perpetually. The conduct which had once seemed to him excusable now appeared to him in its true light. Moreover, his actual rough life, the hardships, the horrors of war, threw into stronger relief the happy hours which he had passed by her side; his brief glimpses of home—home of which pretty, guileless Susie had been the presiding goddess.

So, when the great fight was imminent, he had bethought him of writing to her, telling her a little of what was in his mind, announcing that he loved her still, and if God spared him to return he would do the right thing by her and make her his wife in earnest.