SHORT STORY.

Lake County Press, Issue 2186, 12 September 1907, Page 7

SHORT STORY.

Bill’s Blessing. f t\iJY goodness, who’d have children ? KYI I’d sooner have had stones. It’s w rry an’ work an’ work and worry- all day long. Como here yvith you. then,“you little wretch. That was young Bill. She caught him by the end of his blue woollen comforter and jerked him to her knee. ‘Can’t wipe uis own nose, an’ six last March 1 I’d bo ashamed. Where’s your gumption ? Like your daddy, ain’t you, an’ didn’t bring any into the world with you 1 There now, be off with ’em all four, Alary Anne, an’ mind I won’t have any mossiu’ with snowballs an’ things. Just you mind that, Alary Anne. D’ye hear ?’ Mary Anm nodded. She was a wistful ten-year-old. Even at that frivolous age she hac become a responsible, anxious-eyed little maid.

But instead of gathering her clan about her in accordance with her mother’s fierce bidding, she stepped stolidly to her father by the fire. Pipe in hand, old Bill had listened to his wife’s music, and watched the packing of the youngsters for school, while the toe of his boot rocked the cradle. He was, of course, only old Bill by contrast with young Bill, his fifth and last but one. ‘ Good-bye, daddy!’ whispered Mary Anne, offering a small pursed mouth to be kissed, ‘Be off with you, I say, an’ none of such soft nonsense, when you ought to be yards au’ yards on your way to school, miss!’ cried old Bill’s blessing. Bill himself had called her that long ago, and her own mother, Polly, and the others still occasionally spoke of her thus, to Bill, though never, now, for her to hear it. ‘ Steady, mother!’ said Bill. He kissed Alary Anne and held her, ‘ What’s up with you, little lass ?’ he asked. The reply came stammeringly, illustrated with a glint of tears. ‘lt’s the insurance, daddy. I—l’m thinking of it all the time.’ ‘ Well, diat me !’ shouted Bill Wossett’s blessing. *lf ever anyone heard the like of that before! A simperin’ young madam like her ro ’ave such notions. How then, the last one out ketches summab.’ Mary Anne was the last, easily. The other four bolted into the street like rabbits into their burrow after a scare. But Alary Anne was dignified, as well as responsible, before her time. She didn’t even hurry towards the uoor. which her mother held with one hand while the other was upraised, ready to smack. So coloured on both cheeks, and was piepared for her doom. But old Bill intervened. In two long strides he was at the dour as soon as Alary Anne, and he took possession of his wife’s suspended hand. ‘Be sensible, Jane,’ he said; and Alary Anne passed unharmed. The clatter of the live pair of little clogged feet on the first few yards of swept pavement outside was cut short by the slamming of the door. Bill and his wife wore face to face ; alone with the ticking clock and the baby by the fire.

‘ Well, an’ I do declare !’ exclaimed Bill’s blessing, ‘To lay hands on me like that before the kids!’ ‘ Nothing of the sort, missus,’ said Bill. ‘ It’s a lie then" It’s everythin’ of the sort. It’s showin’ me up to the world. What’s that the wench said —little hypocrite thing? Insurance, indeed! I wish you was dead, Bill, an’ I had the hundred pounds. My word I do. 1 never was more tired of anythin’ than of this tiresome life. As sure as that Bible there's a holy book, I wish to the Lord I’d stayed single at homo years an’ years ago, the same as Polly.’ She pointed a lean arm at the old family treasure with gilt clasps on the window sill. Half an hour ago Mary Anne had with difficulty read aloud six verses from St, John’s Gospel while her mother stirred the porridge on the fire. Bill Wossett marked the leanness of her arm as well as the wedding-ring on her hand. ‘ Come, come, my girl!’ he said, soothingly. ‘ I reckon I’ll be off to the sheds.’ * I mean it, every word!’ shrieked his blessing. ‘ I wish you was dead an’ buried.’ took his coat from its peg on the door. ‘ You don’t mean it,’ he said. ‘ I’ll call at your mothers, and ask your sister Polly to come round.’ ‘ I’ll brain her if she sets a foot in my house,’ Bill’s blessing shrieked on. ‘So there!’ She shook her clenched fist at Bill, and

Bill noticed how deplorably the knuckles stood up. For a moment or two Bill stood in doubt, breathing very deeply, and with heavy, almost clumsy, concern on his broad, brown face. Then he turned the door handle, and went out. He didn’t say a single other word, and he didn’t take his dinner, which lay ready for him in its basin and knotted cloth; Mary Anm had seen to it. But ho nodded several times quickly—and that was all. _ And then, with a gasp, Bill’s blessing sank into the wicker chair by the fire which Bill had just vacated, and stared at the baby in its cot on the hearthrug. She stared and stared. The clock ticked. A red cinder slipped out of the grate, and her eyes fastened on it; nor did she more until its glow had faded and it was only a lukewarm ash. Then, as if it were a great effort, she stooped and lifted the baby from its bod. It began to yell. It yelled so loud that the clock’s ticking was drowned in the noise, but its mother naid no heed ; didn’t whisper

a lullably word to it, laid it to her breast as if it were no more than hanging a kettle over the fire, and seemed as careless of it latter tranquillity as of its earlier wailing. Presently she looked round, with many lines on her face, and reaching for Bill’s dinner in its basin she put this on the hob, not too near the fire. She seemed to do it automatically; not at all as if she felt any interest in it.' Moreover, it was a foolish thing to do, for it was hours before Bill’s dinner-time, and the odds were Bill would in a very little while send one of the factory lads for the basin. It wasn’t at all as if they had been married only a year or two. In those first score or so of months she herself (save when the coming of Mary Anne interfered) had been wont to take Bill his dinner as hot as hot as could bo in the circumstances. She, herself! Ay, and sit with him in a select corner of the yard while ho ate it. likely she would do that to-day ! Nevei theless, she had put the mess of beaus and bacon where it would not chill, at least. She swayed to and fro with the baby, much like the clock’s pendulum, which she could see whenever her eyes looked up from the fire, What, was it the doctor had told her the -other day ? Run down like sand out of an egg boiler! Nerves, all to pieces! Couldn’t she manage a change of air and scene ? Hadn’t she anyone to help her with her family cares, which had so evidently tried her constitution ? 1 You’ll be good for nothing at all, by and -, if you don’t look out for yourself, Mrs ossett; but 1 think I’ve said that before, en’t I ? I can’t make you better if you ’t try to make yourself better. You dt want physic—only rest. And you idn’t waste shillings coming to me to be d just that, and nothing more, over and er again. Good day,’ She had told him (it was a panting strain) hat what troubled her most w osthe way she

I 1 si her temper, uud stormed herself into a ,t. a )o of exhau i, ti >n day after day new. It wu-hard to tell him that. She had blushed is if it were the eonfes.-ion of a deadly sin. But. it hadn’t shocked him a bit. He had simply said ‘Of course,’ and ho had even hinted that she might do worse tilings than stoim and throw por lids about unless she turned over a row loaf. He had said that there wei-c dozens of women in the county asylum who had been just like her before they were taken there. The trouble hadn’t been taken in time with them, and there they were, probably, mad for life.’ From these reflections, still rocking the meiciful infant, she switched on to another— Alary Anne and the insurance. Only a month back Bill had completed the greatest business transaction of his sturdy life since his marriage. He had yielded to the arguments of a very forcible young agent, and was now, as he had informed her in the watches of the night at the end of that important day, worth £IOO to her the moment he was dead. Worth more to her dead than alive—in money ! This in addition to payments that would be also due upon his demise from two clubs!

Bill had decided to do without beer for the rest of his life. He reckoned cocoa would serve his turn just as well when he felt tnirsty. The saving on beer would much more than pay the premium on that solid hundred pounds; a-.d the insurance company was mighty obliging in agreeing to take that premium by weekly payments, Four such payments had been made, and now, as Bill had jokingly said at supper two evenings ago, it mightn’t bo such a bad speculation for him to drop off sudden and make them all rich for a year or two. 1 Give you the chance to take things easy, Jane, look about you and marry again, eh ?’ he had said.

He had said it with young Bill standing nestled to him on one side, and Alary Anne’s thoughtful brown eyes fastened on nim from the other side of the table. | His blessing was feeling rather better then. * Don’t talk so wicked, Bill!’ she had cried. But he had persisted in talking about it, with smiling eyes, until all at once Mary Anne bent her head over the table and burst into tears. Even some subsequent slaps from her mother (feeling then by no means so well as before) had not succeeded in persuading Alary Anne that there was no danger of her father dying in a day or two. Poor Mary Anne was not clever. She was very tender-hearted and responsible, but she took to bed with her the unshaken belief that daddy had made a bargain for the good of his family, which compelled him to die quite soon. She grasped with feverish tightness the one chief fact that the sooner her daddy died, the bettor the bargain. She had been depressed ever since; and the foolishness increased in her mind like an ugly fungus.

A neighbour looked in, and Bill’s blessing made a abort attempt to be neighbourly. But the ne’ghbour only wanted, in the main, to borrow a shilling. Her man was a real torment to her, she said; and she didn’t know what was going to happen if he kept on losing five shillings a week on horses so perseveringly. It wasn’t only the hardship of being without money, but his sulky temper and the names he called her every evening because his horse never came in first, and seldom even second or third. It was telling on his heaLh, and where would he bo, and she and the children, if he were sacked for the consequent badness of his work.

‘Ah, Mrs Wossett,’ said this unfortunate neighbour, wiion Bill’s blessing had given her the shilling, ‘ you don’t know what a lot ■>'ou have to bo thankful for with a husband like yours. I know I should feel it a comfort just to be able to help other folks same as you help me.’ ‘ I dare say,’ Bill’s blessing had said to that. But her bitterness was lost on the other, who then withdrew with the shilling. And Bill’s blessing was loft again with the baby, the ticking clock, and the gradual realisation that it was something to be thankful for that she could space shillings like that, It came very gradually, that realisation, No doubt the sitting still and the quiet of the house (with the kids away) had something to do with its growth. And then she caught herself stiffening into rigidity under contemplation of a vision of Bill as he might be, yet was not. Bill as a backer of horses, a drunkard, an admirer of other women, and given to cursing and swearing, and the violent conduct at home which might be expected from such a husband ! An extraordinary sense of weakness stole upon her. ‘ Oh, my heaven,’ she whispered. ' It’s mo that’s the bad one—me !’ Her hands shook as she put the baby back in the cot. She was deaf to its protests, just covered it up and left it screaming ; swayed into the back kitchen and so into the strip of garden behind, in whieh Bill wag wont to toil with his spade, sometimes singing in that fine deep bass of his, and sometimes larking with the kids as if he were just a big kid himself. Bill’s passion in the garden was for scarlet runners. He said they were good to see as well as good to eat. But there were sweet-scented flowers also—mignonette and so forth. And in a corner were thyme and sage and other such trifles for the stuffing of an occasional goose. Bill’s blessing was fond of goose, and Bill made a point of pressing lor a Sunday goose several times in the year as well as at Michaelmas and Christmas.

Here in the garden she was promptly hailed by another neighbour, the right-hand one, who had come out of the house with clothes to hang upon the line. ‘ Have you heard about it. Mrs Wossott ?’ asked the neighbour, with curious restraint of voice as she gazed at Bill’s blessing. ‘ Heard what ?’ ‘ You haven’t then ? Well, I’m sure I hope your good man is safe. I didn’t like to come in to frighten vou. ; ‘What do you moan—frighten me?’ asked Bill’s blessing, faintly. She wasn’t in the least frightened, only weakened by remorse, conscience, and other things as well as her physical disorder, ‘ Oh, well, I suppose you’ll have co know,’ said the other. ‘l’m sure I hope Mr Wossett will be round himself to tell you. There's a smash up at Pybrooks. I should have thong! t you’d hear the folks running up the street for doctors and the ambulance. They do say the roof is all down. One of them great dangerous grindstones split in two, and flew all ways!’ Bril’s blessing glared at the speaker. It was Bill’s very particular duty to work under the shadow of the largest of all the stone wheels at Pybrooks. In fact, lie had charge of itAnd then she was recalled to herself by a sharp knock at the door of her house. ‘ Oh, my!’ exclaimed the neighbour, sympathetically, as her eyebrows rose, ‘ I do hope an’ trust—-' Bill’s blessing rushed inside, and to the door, and there she gazed past the man who had knocked; gazed at a light cart, with something in it, half covered with sacking. The upstanding booted feet, side by side, were ns still as logs of wood. ‘lm very sorry, missus,’ said the man, gently, ‘ but I’ve brought you—’

But Bill’s blessing waited for no more. She went very white, murmured something, and would have fallen if the man iiad not cought her. And it was herself that he had first to help to carry into the warm room, where the baby still wailed for continuing comfort. They laid her on the sofa under the windowsill, with the family Bible on it. ‘You’d bettor look after her, while we take him upstairs, I reckon,’ said ene of

them to the neighbour who had, with uibeis come upon the scene. ‘lt’s a rank bad job, bur. it cannot be helped. Yes, missus, he’s stone dead, and, what’s more, though not, 1 reckon, to her poor soul, he’s not the only one.’

They wore in the act of lifting the dead man from the cart, when who should the ossett’s neighbour see staggering up the street but Bill Wossett himsalf, with a bandage across his face from the left temple to the right ear. 1 Stop ! What you’re a doin’ of!’ he cried ‘ You’ve made a mistake!’

The men looked round, and by then Bill Wossett was upon them. Though hard pressed by pain, he made it quite clear that they were making a mistake. ‘ I asked you to call here to tell my missus I was all right,’ho said, ‘and to take that p>or fellow to Humber nine, Bank Street. Name of Firth—Roger Firth. Number nine. Bank Street, Firth, and break it softly to her. Uunderstand ?’ The man in charge of the cart ■ was sorry that he had confused his instructions ; and Bill stumbled to his threshold. ‘ Isn’t she in ?’ he gasped to the neighbour. whose face glowed with honest neighbourly gladness. And then he saw her, and hoarsely demanded an explanation. It was soon given. The neighbour found vinegar and water, and began to bathe Bill’s Blessing’s forehead. And Bill sat by, watching. The neighbour assured him it was nothing for a woman to taint like that under a shock, But Bill doubted. Though very much worn by the trials of life, his Jane bad never yet lost her senses. It was a falling brick that Lad cut Bills head open. It had laid him fiat and speechless for a minute or two, and he had shed more blood than he knew of. When tney had dragged him into tao open, his strong will had come to his rescue, and he had made someone tie up his wound, and had then positively himself taken a leading part in the rescue and disposal of others, living and dead. But now the reaction was upon him.

‘ Look here,’ he said, in a child’s voice, for lowness, ‘ I— ‘ must go and lie down. Fetch a doctor to her if you—’ Ho didn’t finish, but groped away like a man in the dark ; and it was ou his hands and knees that he went upstairs and sn to the bed, and there he collapsed. Oblivion seized him also, as his poor tired blessing on the sofa under the window sill in the kitchen.

Here the neighbour found him when she had called in vain to tell him that she couldn’t bring his wife round. Straightway off she \ycnt in quest of medical assistance for busbar d and wife, if, on so calamitous a morning, it could be procured. And now for several minutes the ticking clock had the house to itself. The baby had fretted itself to sleep. Bill’s blessing opened her eyes, wondered, leaned upon her elbows and—remembered. The cart with the two motionless booted feet in it—Bill’s feel!’

And then, with a wail such as the babe in the cot was not likely to match for misery in twenty years at least, Bill’s blessing rushed up the stairs. She knew what she should see.

‘ Bill!’ Bill!’ she moaned, as she sank her head on his broad chest, with her hands to her brows. ‘ Oh, my man, my own dear good man!’ She lay thus and sobbed, until suddenly Bill moved beneath her. And then she started up with a cry that had the note of a new agony though an agony of astounded joy. ' ‘Bill, my husband— you aren’t dead! Toll me you’re not dead!’ No need to tell her. He was looking at her. and moving with much determination. Ho sat up indeed. And then she was in his arms and beginning to babble of many things —her wicked temper and tongue, the heartaches she deserved, and the punishment with which she had believed Heaven was chastising her in taking him from her. He s r oothed the hair from the lined forehead and kissed her. But she babbled on, and cried until the ringing of a bell outsida checked her. «Yes, my lass,’ said old Bill. ‘ that’s school boll. They’ll be home directly. It’s been a morning to be thankful —for me ! I’m all right now,’ He set his feet on the floor, and stood up! and she stood by him, gazing at him wistfully. ‘ We’re both all right, eh, lass f’ said Bill, smiling, with his hand on her shoulder. She slanted her cheek to the hand, and still looked at him. ‘ I’m going to be a better woman,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Bill, I will try to be.’ ‘ You’re going to be your o d self—that’s good enough for mo,’ said Bill, patting her head. ‘Mother, where are you?’ cried little Mary Anne from below, anxiously. ‘ Coming, my dear love, said Bill’s blessing.—Charles Edwardes.