CHAPTER VII
A VISIT FROM GRANDMOTHER
The summer began very early that year, and it was the hottest summer that Poppy had ever known. Even at the end of May and the beginning of June the heat was so great that it made people ill and tired and cross. Poppy's mother, who was never able to leave her bed, felt it very much. The court was close and stifling, and the old window in the small bedroom would only open a little way at the bottom, so that very little air could get into the room, and the poor woman lay hour after hour panting for breath, and almost fainting with the heat.
It was no easy time for Poppy. The neighbours were still very kind, but the heat made them unable to do as much as before, and somehow everybody's temper went wrong with the hot weather, and there was a good deal of quarrelling in the court. Mrs. Brown quarrelled with Mrs. Jones about something, and Ann Turner would not speak to Mrs. Smith because she had offended her about something else, and once or twice there were angry voices in the court, which troubled the poor sick woman. And when the neighbours came in to see her they would pour out the history of their grievances, and this worried and distressed her a good deal.
The babies, too, felt the hot weather very much. They were seven months old now, but they were poor sickly little creatures, quite unable to roll about the floor like other babies of that age, and needing almost as much nursing and care as they had done when they were first born. Poppy did her very best for them and for her mother, but she was only a child after all, and she could not keep them as clean as they ought to have been kept, nor the house as tidy and free from dirt as it used to be when her mother was able to look after it, and sometimes poor Poppy, brave though she was, felt almost inclined to give up in despair.
There was one day when she was very much cast down and troubled. It was, if possible, a hotter day than the ten very hot days which had gone before it. And it was everybody's washing-day. The court was filled with clothes, steaming in the hot sun, and shutting out what little air might possibly have crept down to the rooms below. But there seemed to be no air anywhere that sultry day.
Poppy's mother was very much worn and exhausted, and Enoch and Elijah did nothing but cry. Hour after hour they cried, not a loud, angry scream, such as strong babies might give, but a weak, weary wail, which went on, and on, and on, till Poppy felt as if she could bear it no longer.
She left them on the bed for a few minutes beside her mother, and ran downstairs to make a cup of tea and a piece of toast for mother's dinner. They lived on bread and tea now, for they had nothing but what they got from the parish, and if the neighbours had not been very kind, and brought them in little things from time to time, even the parish money would not have been enough to keep them from starving.
When Poppy went downstairs she had a little quiet cry. There was so much to do, and somehow that hot day it seemed impossible to do it. She knew that the house was untidy, and the babies needed washing, and there were dirty clothes waiting to be made clean, and cups and plates and basins standing ready to be washed up. And it seemed too hot and tiring to do anything.
Poppy went to the window for a minute, and putting her fingers in her ears that she might not hear the wail of the babies, she stood looking up at the strip of blue sky, which she could just see between the houses of the court. How pure and lovely it looked! And God lived somewhere up there Poppy knew. And God loved her—Poppy knew that, too. Her mother said He had sent His dear Son to die for her—the only Son He had—He had sent Him to die on the cross, that she might go to live with Him in heaven. God must love her very much to do that, Poppy said to herself. She thought she would ask God to help her that hot day,—if He loved her she was sure He would feel sorrow for her, now that she was so tired and had so much to do.
So, looking up at the blue sky, Poppy said aloud, 'O God, please help me, for I'm very tired, and I don't know how ever to get everything done, and please make me a good girl; for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.' Would God hear her prayer? Poppy asked herself, as she came away from the window; she wondered very much if he would. And, if He did hear her, how would the help come? It was not likely that He would send one of the neighbours in to help her, for they were all too busy with their washing to have much time to spare. There were the angels, they were God's servants, and Poppy had learnt at school that they came to help God's people; but she had never heard of an angel washing up cups and saucers, or cleaning a house, or nursing a baby, and that was the help Poppy wanted just then. Well, she had prayed to God, and mother said God always heard prayer; she would wait and see.
Poppy filled the kettle, and was trying to put a few things in order in the untidy kitchen when there came a knock at the door. Poppy started. Could some one be coming to help her? The neighbours never knocked—they opened the door and walked in—and Poppy thought the angels would not knock, for her teacher told her they could come in when the door was shut. Who could it be?
She went to the door and opened it, and there she found an old woman with a large market-basket on her arm, who wanted to know if Mrs. Fenwick lived there. Yes, that was her mother's name, Poppy said. Whereupon the old woman came in, put down her basket, and then seized Poppy and gave her a good hearty kiss on both her cheeks.
'Why, you're John Henry's bairn,' she said, 'and as like him as two pins is like each other.'
It was grandmother, dear old grandmother, who had come from her home far away in the country to see her son's wife and children, and to do all she could to help them. And grandmother had not been long in the house before Poppy felt sure that God had sent her, and that she was just the help the poor child so much needed.
Poor old grandmother! she was hot and tired and dusty, and she had been travelling in the heat for many hours on that hot summer's morning. She sat down on a chair by the door, fanning herself with her red cotton pocket handkerchief, and kissing Poppy again and again, as she called her 'my lad's bonny bairn,' and told her that she was the very picture of what her father was when he was her age, and how her John Henry was the best scholar in all Thurswalden School, and she felt sure his bairn must be a clever little girl too.
CHAPTER VIII
JACKY AND JEMMY
Now, my dear,' said grandmother, when she had rested for a minute or two, 'where's my lad's wife? Your mother, my lass; where is she?'
'Oh, she's in bed, grandmother!' said Poppy. 'She's very ill, is my mother.'
'I'll go up and see her,' said the old woman. 'To think that my John Henry has been a married man these ten years, and I've never seen his wife!'
But when she did see John Henry's wife, grandmother sat down and sobbed like a child. She was so white, so thin, so worn, that the kind old woman's heart was filled with love and with shame—love for her poor suffering daughter-in-law, shame that her son, the lad of whom she had been so proud, should have left her when she needed him so much.
How long grandmother would have cried it is impossible to say, had not a dismal wail come from one side of the bed, followed almost immediately by another dismal wail from the other side of the bed. It was Enoch and Elijah, who had fallen asleep for a few minutes whilst Poppy was downstairs, but who had waked up at the sound of a strange voice. Grandmother sprang from her seat as soon as she heard them cry. She had not seen the babies before, for they were covered by the bed-clothes. She held them one in each arm, and kissed them again and again.
'Oh, my bonny, bonny bairns!' she said; 'my own little darling lambs! To think that God Almighty has sent you back again! Why, I'm like Job, my lass; I lost them five-and-forty years ago;—ay, but it seems only five-and-forty days. Oh! my own beautiful little lads. I kicked sore against losing them, I did indeed, my lass, poor silly fool that I was! and now here's God given me them back again. I'm a regular old Job now, ain't I? Not that I was patient, like him; he was a sight better than me—a sight better. Oh, you dear things, won't your grandmother love you!'
'Had you twins of your own, grandmother?' asked her daughter-in-law.
'Ay, my dear, that I had, and little lads, too—the finest children you ever saw; why, it was the talk of the country-side, my dear, what beautiful bairns they was.'
'And how old were they when you lost them, grandmother?'
'Why, my dear,' said the old woman, 'my child was ten months and one week old, and his child was ten months and three weeks old—just a fortnight's difference, my dear.'
'I thought you said they were both yours, grandmother,' said Poppy.
'Ay, my darling, so they was; but that was how we got to talk of them. You see, me and my master had been married nigh on five years, and never had no childer (we lived up at the farm at that time), and then these babies came, and I think our heads were fairly turned by them—he was well-nigh crazed, he was indeed, my dear. "Sally," he says, when he came in to look at them, "you pick one and I'll have the other—half-and-half, that's fair share," he says. "Now, Sally, you choose first."
'"Well," says I, "I'll have the ginger-haired one; it's most like me." I used to have ginger hair, my dear; you wouldn't believe it, for it's all turned white now, but I had, just like Poppy there, beautiful ginger hair. Some folks don't like the colour, my dear, but your grandfather used to like it. Why, he said when he was courting me that my hair was the colour of marigolds, and they was always his favourite flowers; he had, 'em in his own little garden when he was a tiny lad, he said.
'Well, I picked the one with ginger hair, and called it my child, and he picked the black-haired one, which was the very picture of him—why, he had a head like a crow's back, my dear. And so we each had a baby of our own, and would you believe it, my lass, he took that care of it, you'd have thought he was an old nurse—you would indeed. He washed it and he dressed it,—ay, but I did laugh the first time,—and he gave it the bottle, and he got a little girl from the village to come and mind it when he was out, and in the evening we sat one on each side of the fire, he with his child, and I with mine; and then at night, when we went to bed, his bairn slept in his arms, and my bairn slept in mine. Well then we had them christened, and his was Jacky and mine was Jemmy, and he was proud of his child that day—as proud as Punch; he was indeed, my dear. He carried him all the way—Oh, dear! oh, dear! what have I done!' said the old woman, as she turned to the bed and saw Poppy's mother in tears.
'Why, you're crying, my dear; I oughtn't to have told you. What a silly old goose I am! I ought to have remembered that lad of mine, and how he's gone and left you, instead of giving a hand with his own babies, as my master did. Dear me, dear me, whatever was I thinking of?'
'Oh, granny,' said her daughter-in-law, 'do tell me about them; I like to hear—I do indeed; please go on.'
'Well, my dear, if you will have it so, I'll go on. They grew up beautiful babies, they did indeed, and didn't folks admire them! There's lots of people drives through our village when it's the season at Scarborough; they takes carriages, my dear, and they come driving out with lads in red jackets riding on them poor tired horses—"post-williams," I think they call them. I'm telling you no lie, my dear, when I tell you them little lads has brought in scores of threepenny bits that the ladies have thrown them from their carriages, when the girl took them out by the lodge gate; they was so taken with the pretty dears, they was.
'Well, all went on well, my lass, till the teeth began to come,—oh, them teeth, what a nuisance they are! I've lost mine, my dear, all but two, and I'm sure it's a good job to have done with 'em—they're nothing but bother, always aching and breaking and worrying you. Well, the teething went very hard with the babies; his child was the worst, though, and one day little Jacky had a convulsion fit, and didn't my master send off for the doctor in a hurry; and all that night he sat up watching his bairn, for fear it should have another fit. Doctor came once or twice after that, for the little lad kept poorly, though the fits did not come back.
'"Ay, doctor," I says one day, when he had little Jack in his arms, and was saying what a pretty boy he was—"Ay, doctor," I says, "but look at my child," and I held up little Jemmy. "He's the beauty now, isn't he, doctor?"
'"You're very fond of that boy, aren't you?" says doctor.
'"Fond of him! Why, doctor," I says, "I love him till I often think I could go bare-foot all my life and live on bread and water if it would do him a bit of good."
'"Take care you don't love him too much," says doctor, looking quite grave; "folks mustn't make idols even of their own bairns. Don't be offended, missis," he says, "but it doesn't do to set your heart too much on anything, not even on your own little lad: you might lose him, you know."
'Well, I was huffy with doctor after that; I was a bit put out, and I says, "Well, doctor, if I thought I was going to lose him I would love him a hundred times better than ever." So, my dear, doctor shook his head at me and went away, and (would you believe it!) only five hours after I had to send for him all in a hurry to come to my child. He'd taken a fit like Jacky had; but oh! my dear, he didn't come out of it as Jacky did; it was a sore, sore fit, and before doctor could get to him—and he ran all the way from the village—my bonny bairn was gone.'
'Oh, grandmother, you would feel that,' said Poppy's mother.
'Yes, my dear, I did indeed; and when bedtime came, and he had his child laid aside him, and my child was laid dead in the best room downstairs, I felt as if my heart would break. He wanted me to take his child, but little Jacky was used to father, and wouldn't come to me, and, my dear, I cried myself to sleep.'
'And how much longer did the other baby live, grandmother?' said Poppy.
'Only fifteen days, my dear, and we buried 'em both in one little grave,—I often go to look at it now;—and when we put his child in, and I saw my child's little coffin at the bottom of the grave, my dear, I wished I could go in too.
'I was very hard and rebellious, ay, I was, I see it all now,' said grandmother, wiping her eyes. 'But just to think of God giving 'em back to me after five-and-forty years! Why, it's wonderful,' said the old woman in a cheerful voice. '"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits." That's the verse for me, my dear, now, isn't it?'
And grandmother took up first Enoch and then Elijah, and kissed them and hugged them as lovingly as ever she had kissed her own little babies.