VI
After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great
while. Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were
continued, whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr. Miller must
have known, she thought, of this custom of hers. But though the
churchyard was not nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop
at Chalk-Newton, he never appeared in the accidental way that lovers
use.
An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her
mother, who casually mentioned that Mr. Bartholomew Miller had gone
away to the other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a
thriving dairyman's daughter that he knew there. His chief motive,
it was reported, had been less one of love than a wish to provide a
companion for his aged mother.
Selina was practical enough to know that she had lost a good and
possibly the only opportunity of settling in life after what had
happened, and for a moment she regretted her independence. But she
became calm on reflection, and to fortify herself in her course
started that afternoon to tend the sergeant-major's grave, in which
she took the same sober pleasure as at first.
On reaching the churchyard and turning the corner towards the spot as
usual, she was surprised to perceive another woman, also apparently a
respectable widow, and with a tiny boy by her side, bending over
Clark's turf, and spudding up with the point of her umbrella some
ivy-roots that Selina had reverently planted there to form an
evergreen mantle over the mound.
'What are you digging up my ivy for!' cried Selina, rushing forward
so excitedly that Johnny tumbled over a grave with the force of the
tug she gave his hand in her sudden start.
'Your ivy?' said the respectable woman.
'Why yes! I planted it there--on my husband's grave.'
'YOUR husband's!'
'Yes. The late Sergeant-Major Clark. Anyhow, as good as my husband,
for he was just going to be.'
'Indeed. But who may be my husband, if not he? I am the only Mrs.
John Clark, widow of the late Sergeant-Major of Dragoons, and this is
his only son and heir.'
'How can that be?' faltered Selina, her throat seeming to stick
together as she just began to perceive its possibility. 'He had
been--going to marry me twice--and we were going to New Zealand.'
'Ah!--I remember about you,' returned the legitimate widow calmly and
not unkindly. 'You must be Selina; he spoke of you now and then, and
said that his relations with you would always be a weight on his
conscience. Well; the history of my life with him is soon told.
When he came back from the Crimea he became acquainted with me at my
home in the north, and we were married within a month of first
knowing each other. Unfortunately, after living together a few
months, we could not agree; and after a particularly sharp quarrel,
in which, perhaps, I was most in the wrong--as I don't mind owning
here by his graveside--he went away from me, declaring he would buy
his discharge and emigrate to New Zealand, and never come back to me
any more. The next thing I heard was that he had died suddenly at
Mellstock at some low carouse; and as he had left me in such anger to
live no more with me, I wouldn't come down to his funeral, or do
anything in relation to him. 'Twas temper, I know, but that was the
fact. Even if we had parted friends it would have been a serious
expense to travel three hundred miles to get there, for one who
wasn't left so very well off . . . I am sorry I pulled up your ivy-
roots; but that common sort of ivy is considered a weed in my part of
the country.'
December 1899.
