LITERATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 3948, 13 December 1880, Page 4

LITERATURE.

JAB STBANGEB THAN FICTION. (loiulou Society). Chapteb I. MBS CAICBS'S NABBATIVB. The most terrible day in all my life was that on which they brought my husband home dead. While I have memory the horror of that morning can never be forgotten. It was a lovely morning; the *ky was blue, and the aim shoni) down on the canal and rushes, among which the duckling* were bobbing in and out. The fields were yellow with buttercups; tlio larks were singing fit to burst their little throats; the hawthorn waß in full flower, and scented all the land. It was a cheery morning, and everybody waa in gocd heart but me. An hour ogo I had been cheery too ; exchanging friendly words with the neighbor-* as they passed, gathering our wateraresses i >i > ■while, and going up to tho ff nee to pay • y duty to the ladies walking along the lm «•,' •who knew me and stopped to say a kiuri / good-day when they saw what I was doirg Ifc comes back to me all as this is being set down in writing— the green of the earth; the blue of the Bky ; the soft flow of the vater; tho little swish and scurry of the ttucklinga darting after flies, rushing under the bank when strangers came in Bight ; the glory of sunlight that lay across the land, over the field?, over the -wild flowers— what a wealth of -wild flowers grow along that strip of waste land beside the towing-path !— over the water, over the dark pine-woods in the distance, and the blue hills in the further distance still. Before going out to gather the cresses, I had stood for a minute in the little porch before our door, looking at all theso things, and thinking what a happy woman I was. I envied no one; not liie squire's daughter, riding past on their slim-legged horses ; not Mrs Grainger, wife of the great miller, as she drove by in her open carriage and pair of beauliful bays-; not the young gentlemen rowing up" the water in their gaily-painted boata ; no, not a creafure in all the world. I had a good home, a good husband, four healthy children,- the prettiest garden, in a humble way, of any in the whole neighbourhood ; such a dear little house, which it was my pride as much as my pleasure to keep bright as a now pin : I was Btill under thirty, and I had good health, and had tried to do my duty all my life ; and I felt happy, ay, happier perhaps than the Queen on her throne. And it was most likely just at that minute my husband died ! I had not been long out in the garden, and, what with one interruption and another, I bad not gatherel many cresses, when I heard tho sound as of some one running like mad down our lane. I lifted my head to look, for the bonnet was tilted over my eyes to keep the eun out of them ; but before I could well see who was coming, Steve Henten, a young lad that lodged with us, had lifted the latch of the gate and stood beside me. I opened my mouth to ask why he did not ahut the gate after him, but the first look at his face stopped the words on my lip 3. It wa» not pale, it was white. He wa3 panting for breath, and Mie perspiration was dripping from his forehead. II For the Lord's Bake," I cried, " what has happened ! " " Yonr man," he said, " is badly hurt I They are bringing him here, and I am off for the doctor ! " And before I could ask how Sen had got hurt, or which way they were bringing him home, he was out of the gate and flying along the road again:. God help me ! I must have stood dazed for a bit, I think. When I came quite to myself (I really do believe people can faint standing) the sun did not shine so bright, the aiy did not look so blue, the rushes did not stand out so di-tinet as they had done before. In a minute, in a second, I had passed from yonfch. to age. Since that time I have loved the blue in the. sky and welcomed the sun«hine ; while I live in this beautiful world ib will always, I think, seem beautiful to mo: but the tunshme can never be exactly what it was of old ; I can never again look up into the clear vault of heaven with the same untroubled heart I had of yore. " Your man is badly hurt." Ycb, that, was what Steve had said. Badly hurt — my man, m j Ben ! I ran into the lane, and looked up tho canal nnd down iihe canal, and over the field* that lay on the opposite bank, like one distraught. I did not know which way to go. Steve had come down the lane, but that told me nothing. I I ran first a few steps towards the mill, and then a few in the other direction ; and then I shaded my eyes with my hand, and strained them over the meadows yellow with bu?tei--caps, looking if I could see aught coming between the vail grass along the field-path. If they had been working up near tho junction, tho field-path would be the likeliest way, and in the far, far distarce I did see •omething dark moving slowly, slowly. I was so sure, that I set off up to the foot-bridge over the water ; but before I got there, just at the bend of the lane, I saw tome men carrying a burden. It was Ben. I ran to meet them. I flew over the ground ; I felt as if my leet never touched the earth. They stopped when they aaw ine,and one said, " He ii badly hurt, Nell." He was lying on a hurdle, and one arm and hand had fallen over the edge of it. I pressed among them and took hold of that hand. Then they tell me — I don't remember anything ab;ut it myself— that I gave an awful acream, and, crying out, •' Hurt — he's dead ! " fell all in a heap at the feet of the man who had spoken to me. After that I was very ill. When I got a bit strong again, and able to sib up in bed with a pillow at my back, the funeral was over, and the house dreadfully still and quiet. The children had been sent out of the way, and my mother was with me ; and thero was no Ben, no husband, on earth any more. We had never been cross nor snappish to one another; ho waa the best man girl ever marriod ; he had kissed me that morning before he went away to his work, and I lay and cried when I remembered that parting till I ■ thought my very heart would break. But mother only said, " Cry all you can, my poor Nell— it'll do thee good ; " for I had • beea out of my head for many days, and then ; a hard callous- sort of way came over me, and il seemed to. feel no more than if I had been turned to stone. So she was thankfu at last to see the tears come, though they seemed to tear at my life- strings as they, ran. When I was well enough to walk across the kitchen, she holding me — for. I kept weak as a child— and sit in an easy chair placed in front of the door, the grass in the meadows was all cut and the hay carried, and cattle were grazing where the buttercups bad been ; and there iay a blue haze over the further landscape, that looked liko a thin veil hung between us and the pine-trees in the distance. Behind our cottage wheat was growing ; and the ears were already full, and the grain ripe, and the harvest quite ready for the reaper. But Ben would never see earthly grain nor human reaper more. I had cried all ray tears, or I should have wept when I crept out intotlie sunshine ovce again. There were the' flowers his han-.ij had planted, tho j scarlet runners he had sown, the potatoes ho had earthed up, the rosss he had trained — •but where was he ? There was net a bnsh in ;the garden but recalled .some memory of the •dead. The very click of the latch on Ilio .gate I associated with his outgoing and his incoming. It seoined to me as if he could not have; igone for ever; as if he must return, and; come whistling down the lane and crunch the gravel under his feet as ho came up tho walk, and shout, " Hillo ! Why, Jimmy ! why, j Susy!" as tho children ran to meet him, nnd clasped him round the knees and shrieked with delight because "daddy had gob home." I had no tears left to s'.-ied, and there was no wicked bitterness in my grief, thank God. I was sad and lonely and weak, hut not desperate, when I lay back in the old easy-chair, with the {lowers round and about me, and tho air full of all sweet scents, and mother sitting jcljse at hand shelling beans for •upper. Whether it -was my fancy or the way the light fell I do not know, Lut it struck me all at once she had Aged gnatly since Ben's death. What a mother she was ! What a wife she had been ! through what troubles she struggled to bring up her children respectably ! Poor father was not a man like Ben, Often as not ho never brought home a farthing of his wages. Ho was p. good workman, but he drank himself out of ono situation after another ; smd when at lust lie fell ill, she had to nursi? him and keep him, all out of her own hai\c turnings, and finally bury him too with tho money ah.c ma/Jo by washing for a

few of the gentry round arid' about. I thought of all this aB I looked at her worn patient face bent down over the beans, at her thin brown hands hardened with the honest labsur of years, at her plain stuff gown, at tho bdowv handkerchief f oldod across her bosom ; and my heart reproached me for all the anxiety my illness must have causod her ; for I aving thought so much of my own trouble that I had never considered the trouble I must bo giving her. " Mother," I said at last. She looked up as I spoke, and, Betting the basin into which she was shelling tho beans upon the ground, sho r093 and came nearer, thinking I wanted my pillows moved or tho shawl wrapped closer round mo. (To bo continued.)