CIRCUMSTANCES made it necessary that before the end of the month May should inform old Mrs. Trewhella of Jenny's expected baby.
"What did she say?" Jenny inquired when the interview was over.
"She said she thought as much."
"What a liberty. Why? Nobody could tell to look at me. Or I hope not."
"Yes, but her!" commented May. "She's done nothing all her life only make it her business to know. They're all like that down here. I noticed that very soon about country people."
"What else did she say?" Jenny went on with for her unusual persistence. She was not yet able to get rid of the idea that there was something remarkable in Jenny Pearl going to have a baby. Not even the universal atmosphere of fecundity which pervaded the farm could make this fact a whit more ordinary.
"She didn't say much else," related May, not rising to the solemnity of the announcement, the revolutionary and shattering reality of it.
"But she's going to tell him?" Jenny asked.
"That made her laugh."
"What did?"
"Her having to tell him."
"Why?" demanded Jenny indignantly.
"Well, you know they're funny down here. I tell you theydon't think nothing about having a baby. No more than picking a bunch of roses, you might say."
This humdrum view of childbirth, although it might have relieved her self-consciousness, was not at all welcome to Jenny. She could not bring herself to believe that, when after so many years of speculation on this very subject, she herself was going to have a baby, the world at large would remain profoundly indifferent. She remembered how as a child she had played with dolls, and how in the foggy weeks before Christmas she had been wont to identify her anticipation with the emotional expectancy of young motherhood. And now it was actually in the slow process of happening, this event, happening, too, as far as could be judged, without any violent or even mildly perceptible transfiguration, mental or physical. Still it must not be forgotten that Mrs. Trewhella had divined her condition. By what? Certainly not at present by her form or complexion.
"I think it's your eyes," said May.
"What's the matter with them now?"
"They look different somehow. Sort of far-away look which you didn't use to have."
"Shut up," scoffed Jenny, greatly embarrassed.
That evening when, after tea, Jenny leaned against the stone hedge under a sunset of rosy cumulus, Trewhella came through the garden and faced her.
"So you and me's going to have a child, missus?"
Jenny resented the assumption of his partnership and gave a cold affirmative.
"That's a good job," he sighed, staring out into the air stained with crimson from twilight's approach. "I feel brim pleased about that. There'll be some fine Harvest Home to Bochyn come September month."
Then from the vagueness of such expressed aspirations Zachary turned to a practical view of the matter on hand, regarding his wife earnestly as he might from the support of a gate have looked discriminatingly at a field of young wheat.
"Is there anything you do want?" he presently inquired.
Perhaps the cool straightness of the question contained a hint of expert advice, as if for his field he would prescribe phosphates or nitrate or sulphate of ammonia. There was no suggestion of spiritual needs that might call out for nourishment under the stress of a new experience. Jenny felt that she was being sized up with a view to the best practical conduct of the agitating business.
"I wish you wouldn't talk about me," she protested, "like you talked about that cow the other day at dinner."
Trewhella looked perplexed. He never seemed able to grasp whether this sharp-voiced Londoner whom he had married were laughing at him or not.
"I've always heard it spoken," he began slowly. He always proceeded slowly with a conversation that held a warning of barbed wire, as if by disregarding the obstacle and by cautious advance any defense could be broken down.
"I've always heard it spoken that the women do dearly love something or other at such times. Mother used to tell how before I were born, she were in a terrible hurry to eat a Cornish Gillyflower. But there wasn't one tree as bore an apple that year. Irish Peaches? Ess, bushels. No, that wouldn't do for her. Tom Putts? Sweet Larks? Ess, bushels. No more wouldn't they serve. Boxers? Sops and Wines? Ess, bushels, and, darn 'ee, they made her retch to look at 'em."
"She'd properly got the pip, hadn't she?" observed Jenny mockingly.
Trewhella saw the wire and made a circuit.
"So I was thinking you might be wanting something as I could get for 'ee on market-day to Camston."
"No, thanks, there's nothing I want. Not even a penny pomegranate," said Jenny, who was anxious for Zachary to go. She did not like this attempt at intimacy. She had not foreseen the alliance of sympathy he presumably wished to form on account of her child. The more she considered his claim, the more irrational and impertinent did it seem that he shoulddare assume any share in the unborn miracle worked by Jenny Pearl.
Trewhella pulled himself together, still progressing slowly, even painfully, but braced to snap if necessary every strand of barbed wire still between him and his object.
"What I were going to say to 'ee was, now that there's this lill baby, I'd like for 'ee both to go chapel. I've said nothing so far about your not going; but I daren't run up against the dear Lord's wrath in the matter of my baby."
"Don't be silly," said Jenny. "How can anything happen tomybaby without its happening to me?"
"Well, I'd like for 'ee to come," Trewhella persisted.
Here was Jenny in a quandary. If she refused, according to her fiery first impulse, what religious pesterings would follow her round the garden. How he would drawl in that unnatural manner of speech a lot of rubbish which had nothing to do with her. He might even take to preaching in bed. He had once frightened her by demanding in a sepulchral speculation whether she had ever reflected that the flames of hell were so hot that there a white-hot poker would be cool as ice-cream. If on the other hand she submitted to a few hours' boredom, what an amount of treasured liberty would be sacrificed and what more intrusive attempts might not be made upon the inviolable egoism.
"But I don't like church and chapel," said Jenny. "It doesn't interest me."
Then she saw her husband gathering his eloquence for wearisome argument and decided to compromise—and for Jenny to compromise meant character in the melting-pot.
"I might come once and again," she said.
Trewhella seemed relieved and, after a moment's awkwardness in which he gave her the idea that he was on the verge of thanks, departed to his business.
So, not on the following Sunday, for that would have looked like too easy a surrender, but on the Sunday after that, Jenny and May went in the wake of the household to the FreeChurch—a gaunt square of whitewashed stone, whose interior smelt of varnish and stale hymn-books and harmonium dust. The minister, a compound of suspicion, petty authority and deep-rooted servility, had bicycled from Camston and had in consequence a rash of mud on his coat. Without much fire, gnawing his mustache when in need of a word, he gave a dreary political address in which several modern statesmen were allotted prototypes in Israel. The mean Staffordshire accent destroyed whatever beauty was left to his maimed excerpts from Holy Scripture.
"What a terrible man!" whispered Jenny to May.
Presently during the extempore prayers, when the congregation took up the more comfortable attitude of prayer by bending towards their laps, Jenny perceived that the eyes of each person were surreptitiously fixed on her. She could see the prying sparkle through coarse fingers—a sparkle that was instantly quenched when she faced it. Jenny prodded May.
"Come on," she whispered fiercely. "I'm going out of this dog's island."
May looked alarmed by the prospect of so conspicuous an exit, but loyally followed Jenny as they picked their way over what seemed from their upright position a jumble of corpses. An official, either more indomitably curious or less anxiously self-repressive than the majority, hurried after them.
"Feeling slight, are 'ee, missus?" inquired this red-headed farmer.
"No, thanks," said Jenny.
"It do get very hot with that stove come May month. I believe it ought to be put out. And you're not feeling slight?"
"No, thanks."
The man seemed unwilling to go back inside the chapel; but the two girls walked quickly away from him down through the deserted village.
After dinner the incident was discussed with some bitterness.
"How did 'ee go out of chapel like that?" asked Trewhella.
"Because I don't go to a chapel or a church neither to be stared at. It's a game of mine played slow, being stared at by a lot of old crows like them in there."
Jenny defiantly surveyed Zachary, his mother and old Mr. Champion, while May murmured encouragement behind her.
"’Tisn't paying any great respect to the dear Lord," said Trewhella. "Trooping out like a lot of great bullocks! I went so hot as lead."
"’Tisn't paying any great respect to the dear Lord, staring at two women when you belong praying," said Granfa severely.
"Darn 'ee," said Trewhella savagely. "’Tis nothing to do with you, a heathen old man as was once seen picking wrinkles off the rocks on a Sunday morning."
"I believe it is then," said Granfa stoutly. "I believe that it's got a brae lot to do with me and, darn 'ee, if it hasn't——"
He thumped the table so that all the crockery rattled. This roused Mrs. Trewhella, who had been blinking in silence.
"Look, see what you're doing, Granfa. You'll scat all the cloam," she cried shrilly.
Trewhella, having surveyed Jenny's defenses, began his usual slow advance.
"What nobody here seems to understand is my feelings when I seed my missus making a mock of holy things."
"Oh, rats!" cried Jenny, flouncing angrily from the room.
Nothing could persuade her to humor Zachary so far as to go to chapel a second time. It pleased her to contemplate his anxiety for the spiritual welfare of the unborn child. "I wish you'd wrastle with the devil a bit more," he said. But she would only set her lips obstinately, and perhaps under his mother's advice, Zachary gradually allowed the subject to drop.
Jenny and May went often to the cliffs in the fine weather, mostly to Crickabella (such was Granfa's name for theirfavorite slope), where summer marched by almost visibly. The sea-pinks turned brown, the sea-campion decayed to an untidy mat of faded leaves and flowers. Bluebells came up in asparagus-like heads that very soon broke into a blue mist of perfume. The ferns grew taller every day, and foxgloves waved right down to the water's edge. On the moorland behind the cliffs, heather and burnet roses bloomed with azure scabious and white mothmulleins, ladies' tresses and sweet purple orchids. Here and there grew solitary columbines, which Jenny thought were lovely and carried home to Granfa, who called them Blue Men's Caps. Remote from curious eyes, remote from life itself save in the progress of inanimate things towards the accomplishment of their destiny, she dreamed unceasingly day after day amid the hollow sounding of the ocean, watching idly the metallic green flight of the shags, the timorous adventures of rock pipits, and sometimes the graces of a seal.
With the advance of summer Jenny began to dread extremely the various insects and reptiles of the country. It was vain for Thomas to assure her that apple-bees did not sting without provocation, that eeriwigs were not prone to attack, that piskies were harmless flutterers and neither Johnny Jakes nor gram'ma sows actively malicious. These rural incidents of a wasp on a hat or a woodlouse in a sponge were to her horrible events which made her tremble in the recollection of them long afterwards. The state of her health did not tend to allay these terrors, and because Crickabella was comparatively free from insects, that lonely green escarpment, flung against the black ramparts of the towering coast, was more than ever dear to Jenny.
In July, however, she was not able to walk so far as Crickabella, and was forced to pass all her days in the garden, gazing at the shimmering line of the hills opposite. Granfa Champion used to spend much time in her company, and was continually having to be restrained from violent digging in the heat. During August picture post-cards often arrived fromgirls spending their holidays at Margate or Brighton, postcards that gave no news beyond, "Having a fine old time. Hope you're alright," but, inasmuch as they showed that there was still a thought of Jenny in the great world outside, very welcome.
August dragged on with parched days, and cold twilights murmurous with the first rustle of autumn. Jenny began to work herself up into a state of nervous apprehension, brooding over childbirth, its pain and secrecy of purpose and ultimate responsibilities. She could no longer tolerate the comments passed upon her by Mrs. Trewhella nor the furtive inquisitiveness of Zachary. She gave up sitting at dinner with the rest of the household, and was humored in this fad more perhaps from policy than any consideration of affection. The only pleasure of these hot insufferable days of waiting was the knowledge that Zachary was banished from her room, that once more, as of old, May would sleep beside her. There was a new experience from the revival of the partnership because now, unlike the old theater days, Jenny would often be the first in bed and able to lie there watching in the candlelight May's shadow glance hugely about the irregular ceiling, like Valérie's shadow long since in the Glasgow bedroom. Where was Valérie now? But where was anybody in her history? Ghosts, every one of them, where she was concerned.
ALL day long the whirr of the reaper and binder had rattled from distant fields in a monotone of sound broken at regular intervals by guttural cries when the horses at a corner turned on their tracks, and later in the afternoon by desultory gunshots, when from the golden triangle of wheat rabbits darted over the fresh stubble. All day long Jenny, obeying some deep instinct, prepared for the ordeal. The sun blazed over the spread harvest; the fields crackled with heat; the blue sky seemed to close upon the earth, and not even from the whole length of Trewinnard Sands was heard a solitary ripple of the tide. In the garden the claret-colored dahlias hung down their tight, uncomfortable flowers; geraniums, portulacas, nasturtiums, sunflowers and red-hot pokers burned in one furnace of bloom. Red admiral butterflies soared lazily up and down against the gray walls crumbling with heat, and from flower to flower of the scarlet salvias zigzagged the hummingbird hawkmoths. Granfa Champion, wiping with gaudy bandana his forehead, came out to plant daffodil bulbs stored in the green shadows of a cool potting shed.
"Now, you know you mustn't go digging in this sun, Mr. Champion," said reproving May.
"My cheeks are so hot as pies," declared Granfa.
"Do come and sit down with us," said Jenny.
"I believe I mustn't start tealing yet awhile," said the old man, regretfully plunging his long Cornish spade into the baked earth, from which insufficient stability the instrument fell with a thump on to the path.
"Well, how are 'ee feeling, my dear?" asked Granfa, standing before Jenny and mopping his splendid forehead. "None so frail, I hope?"
"She isn't feeling at all well. Not to-day," said May.
"That's bad," said Granfa. "That's poor news, that is."
"I feel frightened, Mr. Champion," said Jenny suddenly. Somehow this old man recalled Mr. Vergoe, rousing old impulses of childish confidence and revelation.
"Feeling frightened, are 'ee? That's bad."
"Supposing it wasn't a person at all?" said Jenny desperately. "You know, like us?"
The old man considered for a moment this morbid fancy.
"That's a wisht old thought," he said at last, "and I don't see no call for it at all. When I do teal a lily root, I don't expect to see a broccolo come bursting up and annoying me."
"But it might," argued Jenny, determined not to be convinced out of all misgiving.
"Don't encourage her, Mr. Champion," said May severely. "Tell her you think she's silly."
Jenny buried her face in her hands and began to cry. Granfa looked at her for a moment; then, advocating silence with his right forefinger, with his left thumb he indicated to May by jabbing it rapidly backwards over his shoulder that inside and upstairs to her bedroom was the best place for Jenny.
So presently she was lying on the tapestried bed in the tempered sunlight of her room, while through the house in whispers ran the news that it might be any time now. Up from downstairs sounded the restlessness of making ready. The sinking sun glowed in the heart of every vivid Brussels rose and bathed the dusty floor with orange lights. Jenny's great thought was that never again would she endure this agony, if but this once she were able to survive it. She vowed, tearing in savage emphasis the patchwork counterpane, that nothing should induce her to suffer like this a second time.
The afternoon faded tranquilly into dusk. No wind agitateda single dewy petal, and only the blackbirds with intermittent alarums broke the silence. The ripe round moon of harvest, floating mild and yellow and faintly luminous along the sky, was not yet above the hills. Mrs. Trewhella was not yet willing to despatch a summons to the doctor. Two more hours sank away. Out in the fields, marching full in the moon's face, the reapers went slowly homewards. Out in the fields they sang old songs of the earth and the grain; out in the waste the fox pricked his ears and the badger turned to listen. Down in the reeds the sedge-warbler lisped through the low ground vapors his little melody. The voices of the harvesters died away in purple glooms, and now, as if in a shell, the sea was heard lapping the sand. Through the open lattice rose the scent of the tobacco plants. There was a murmur of voices in consultation. Jenny heard a shout for Thomas, and presently horses' hoofs trotting down the farm road.
High and small and silver was the moon before she heard them coming back. The dewdrops were all diamonds, the wreathed vapors were damascened by moonlight, before she heard the grate of wheels and the click of the gate and another murmur of voices. Then the room was filled with black figures; entering lamplight seemed to magnify her pain, and Jenny knew little more until, recovering from chloroform, she perceived a candle, large as a column, burning with giant spearhead of flame and, beyond the blue and silver lattice, apprehended a fuss of movement.
"What is it?" she asked in momentary perplexity.
"’Tis a boy," said Mrs. Trewhella. "A grand lill chap."
"What's all that noise?" she murmured petulantly.
"’Tis me, my dear soul," said Mrs. Trewhella, "putting all straight as we belong."
May leaned over her sister, squeezing her hand.
"I think I shall like having a baby," said Jenny, "when we can take him out for walks. You know, just you and me, young May."
JENNY was ivory now: the baby had stolen all the coral from her cheeks. Outside, the treetops shook tremulous black lace across the silver deeps of the sky and jigged with ebony boughs upon the circle of the moon. Clear as bells sounded the slow breakers on Trewinnard beach, and in the tall room a white moth circled round the candle-flame interminably. A rat squeaked in the wall.
"Fancy," said Jenny to May, who sat in the shadow by the foot of the bed. "I thought I shouldn't like nursing a baby, but I think it's glorious."
A curlew cried through the October night and was answered far down the valley.
"I wish mother could have seen my baby," sighed Jenny. "It's my birthday next week. Funny if we'd both been born the same day."
The candle spat with the moth's death, then burned with renewed brightness.
"Time the rogue went to sleep," said May authoritatively.
"Feel his hands," said Jenny. "They're like velvet bows."
"They are lovely and soft, aren't they?" May agreed.
"Won't the girls talk when they hear about my baby?"
"Rather," said May reassuringly.
"I expect they'll wonder if he's like me."
Remote winds muttered over the hill-side, and the curlews set up a chorus of chattering.
"Night's lovely with a baby," said Jenny, and very soon fell asleep.
THE naming of the boy caused considerable discussion in Bochyn. Indeed, at one stage of the argument a battle seemed imminent. Jenny herself went outright for Eric.
"Never heard no such a name in all my life," affirmed Trewhella.
"You must have been about a lot," said Jenny sarcastically.
"I think Eric's nice," urged May, in support of her sister's choice.
"I never heard the name spoken so far as I do remember," Mr. Champion put in, "but that's nothing against it as a name. As a name I do like it very well. To be sure 'tis a bit after Hayrick, but again that's nothing against a farmer's son."
"I don't like the name at all," said old Mrs. Trewhella. "To me it do sound a loose sort of a name."
"Oh, 'tis no name at all," Zachary decided. "How do 'ee like it, my dear?" he asked, turning to Jenny.
"I don't know why I like it," she answered, "but I do."
"There's a grand old name down Church," said Granfa meditatively. "A grand, old, rolling, cut-a-piece-off-and-come-again sort of a name, but darn 'ee if I can remember it. Ess I can now. Athanacious! Now that's a name as will make your Jack or your Tom look very hungry. That's a name, that is!"
Impressive as sounded Granfa's trumpeting of it, everybody felt that nowadays such a mouthful would hamper rather than benefit the owner. As for Jenny, she declared frankly against it.
"Oh, no, Granfa, not in these! Why, it would drive anyone silly to say it, let alone write it. I wish it was a girl and then she could have been called Eileen, which is nice."
Trewhella looked anxiously at the subject of the discussion as if he feared his wife could by some alchemy transmute the sex of the baby.
"I should dearly love to call the lill chap Matthew or Mark or Luke," he said. "John I don't take no account of. I do call that a poor ornary unreligious sort of a name for an Evangelist."
"I don't like John at all," said Jenny emphatically.
"Then there's Abraham and Jacob," Zachary continued. "And Abel and Adam."
"And Ikey and Moses," Jenny scoffingly contributed.
"How not Philip?" suggested old Mrs. Trewhella.
"Or Nicholas?" said May.
"Call him Satan straight away at once!" commented the father bitterly.
"I like a surname sometimes," said Jenny thoughtfully. "I once knew a boy called Presland. Only we used to call him Bill Hair. Still Eric's the nicest of all,Ithink," she added, returning to her first choice.
The argument went on for a long while. At times it would verge perilously on a dispute, and in the end, in accordance with Jenny's new development of character, a compromise was affected between Eric and Adam by the substitution of Frank for both and, lest the advantage should seem to incline to Jenny's side too far, with Abel as a second name, where its extravagance would pass unnoticed.
Winter passed away uneventfully except as regards the daily growth of young Frank. There was no particularly violent storm, nor any wreck within ten miles of the lonely farmhouse. When the warm days of spring recurred frequently, it became necessary to find a pleasant place for idle hours in the sun. Crickabella was too far away for a baby to be taken there, and Jenny did not like the publicity of the front garden,exposed equally to Zachary's periodical inspections and Mrs. Trewhella's grandmotherly limps away from housekeeping. Mr. Champion, when informed of all this, cordially agreed with Jenny that the front garden was no place at all under the circumstances and promised to go into the matter of a secure retreat.
So presently, on one of those lazy mornings when April pauses to survey her handiwork, assuming in the contemplation of the proud pied earth the warmth and maturity of midsummer, Granfa beckoned to Jenny and May and young Frank to follow his lead. He took them out at the back, past the plashy town-place, past a commotion of chickens, and up a rocky lane, whose high, mossy banks were blue with dog-violets and twinkling white with adders' eyes. The perambulator bumped over the loose stones, but young Frank, sleeping admirably, never stirred; while his rosy cheeks danced with ripples of light shaken down through the young-leafed elms. Not too far up they came to a rickety gate, which Granfa dragged open to admit his guests; and almost before they knew where they were, they stood buried in the apple-blossoms of a small secluded orchard cut off from the fields around by thick hedges of hawthorn.
"What a glorious place!" Jenny cried enthusiastically. "Oh, I do think this is nice."
Mr. Champion, his hair looking snowy white in the rosy flush of blossom, explained the fairylike existence of the close.
"This old orchard was never scat up with the others. They burnt they up in a frizz of repenitence. The Band of Hope come and scat them all abroad with great axes, shouting Hallelujah and screaming and roaring so as anyone was ashamed to be a human creature. Darn 'ee, I was so mad when I heard tell of it, I lived on nothing but cider almost for weeks, though 'tis a drink as do turn me sour all over."
"Idiots," said Jenny. "But why didn't they pull this to pieces? There must be lots of apples here."
"It got avoided somehow, and Zachary he just left it go;but 'tis a handsome place, sure enough. You'll dearly love sitting here come summertime."
"Rather!" Jenny and May agreed.
Already in isolated petals the blossom was beginning to flutter down; but still the deserted orchard was in the perfection of its beauty. Down in the cool grass, fortified against insects and dampness by many rugs, Jenny and May and young Frank used to lie outstretched. They could see through the pink and white lace of blossom deep, distant skies, where for unknown landscapes the cuckoos struck their notes on space like dulcimers; they could hear the goldfinch whistle to his nest in the lichened fork above and wind-blown in treetops the copperfinch's burst of song. They could listen to the greenfinch calling sweetly from the hawthorn hedge, while tree-creepers ran like mice up the gray bark and woodpeckers flirted in the grass. The narcissus bloomed here very fragrant, contending wild-eyed with daisies and buttercups. There was mistletoe—marvelous in the reality of its growth, but at the same time to Jenny rather unnatural. And later, when the apple-blossom had fallen, eglantine and honeysuckle and travelers' joy flung themselves prodigally over the trees, and when the birds no longer sang, it did not matter, such an enchanted silence of infinitely minute country sounds took their place.
As for young Frank, he was to his mother and aunt a wonder. He opened his eyes very often, and very often he shut them. He kicked his legs and uncurled his fingers like a kitten and twitched ecstatically to baby visions. He cried very seldom and laughed very often, and crooned and dribbled like many other babies; but whether or not the intoxication of the sweet close urged him to unparagoned agilities and precocities, there was no doubt at all that, in the companionship of elves, he enjoyed life very much indeed.
"He looks like an apple lying there," said Jenny. "A great round, fat, rosy apple. Bless his heart."
"He is a rogue," said May.
"Oh, May, he is a darling! Oh, I do think he's lovely.Look at his feet, just like raspberries. He isn't much likehim, is he?"
"No, he's not," said May emphatically. "Not at all like."
"I don't think he's much like anybody, I don't," said Jenny, contemplating her son.
It might have seemed to the casual onlooker that Arcadia had recompensed Jenny for all that had gone before; and, indeed, could the whole of existence have been set in that inclosure of dappled hours, she might have attained sheer contentment. Even Jenny, with all she had longed for, all she had possessed and all she had lost, might have been permanently happy. But she was no sundial marking only the bright hours; life had to go on when twilight came and night fell. Young Frank, asleep in golden candlelight, could not mitigate the injury of her husband's presence. Even young Frank, best and most satisfying of babies, was the son of Zachary; would, when he grew out of babyhood, contain alien blood. There might then be riddles of character which his mother would never solve. Strange features would show themselves, foreign eyes, perhaps, or a mouth which knew no curve of her own. Now he was adorably complete, Jenny's own against the world; and yet he was a symbol of her subjugation. Already Zachary was beginning to use their boy to consolidate his possession of herself. Already he was talking about the child's education and obviously making ready for an opportunity to thrust him into religious avarice and gloom. The arrival of young Frank had apparently increased the father's tendency to brood over the darker problems of his barbarous creed. He talked of young Frank, who would surely inherit some of the Raeburn joy of life, as if he would grow up in suspicion, demon-haunted, oppressed with the fear of God's wrath, a sour and melancholy dreamer of damnable dreams.
Zachary took to groaning aloud over the sins of his fellow-men, would groan and sweat horribly in the imagination of the unappeasable cruelty of God. These outbreaks of despair for mankind were the more obnoxious to Jenny because theywere always followed by a monstrous excess of his privileges, by an utterly abhorred affectionateness. Mr. Champion, the outspoken, clear-headed old man, would often remonstrate with his nephew. Once, while Trewhella was in a spasm of misery groaning for his own sins and the sins of the world, a sick cow died in audible agony on account of his neglect.
"You ought to be ashamed, you foolish man," said Granfa. "You ought to be ashamed to leave the poor animal die. Darn 'ee, I believe the devilwillhave 'ee!"
"What's a cow," said Trewhella somberly, "beside my own scarlet sins?"
"’Tis one of the worst of 'em," said Granfa positively. "’Tis so scarlet as wool. Get up, and leave be all your praying and sweating, you foolish man. You do drive me plum mad with your foolishness. How don't 'ee do your own work fittee and leave the dear Lord mind his own business? He don't want to be told at his time of life what to do. Oh, you do drive me mad."
"Another lost lamb," groaned Trewhella. "Another soul in the pit. Oh, I do pray wi' all my heart that my poor lill son may find favor in the Lord's eyes and become a child of grace to preach the Word and confound the Gentiles."
"Did ever a man hark to such nonsense in his life?" exclaimed Granfa.
"I shouldn't argue with him in one of his moods," advised Jenny, looking at her husband coldly and distastefully.
"Oh, dear Lord, give me strength to heal the blindness of my family and make my poor lill son a sword in the side of unbelievers."
Then presently the gloom would pass; he would go out silently to the fields, and after a day's work come back in a fever of earthly desires to his wife.
There were shadows in Bochyn, for all the sunlight and birdsong and sweetpeas blossom.
SUMMER went by very quickly in the deserted orchard, and in fine September weather young Frank's first birthday was celebrated with much goodwill by everybody. Zachary, with the successful carrying of a rich harvest, ceased to brood so much on the failure of humanity. He became his own diligent self, amassing grain and gold and zealously expurgating for reproduction in bleak chapels that winter a volume of sermons by an Anglican bishop. Young Frank began to show distinct similarities of feature to Jenny, similarities that not even the most critical observer could demolish. He showed, too, some of her individuality, had a temper and will of his own, and seemed like his mother born to inherit life's intenser emotions. Jenny was not yet inclined to sink herself in him, to transfer to the boy her own activity of sensation. Mrs. Raeburn was thirty-three when Jenny was born: young Frank arrived when his mother was ten years younger than that. It was not expected that she should feel the gates of youth were closed against her. Moreover, Jenny, with all the fullness of her experience, was strangely young on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, still seeming, indeed, no more than eighteen or nineteen. There was a divine youthfulness about her which was proof against the Furies, and, since the diverting absurdities of young Frank, laughter had come back. Those deep eyes danced again for one who from altitudes of baby ecstasies would gloriously respond. May was another triumph for affection. There was joy in regarding that little sister, once wan with Islington airs, now happyand healthy and almost as rose-pink as Jenny herself. How pleased her mother would have been, and, in retrospect, how skeptical must she have felt of Jenny's ability to keep that promise always to look after May.
Life was not so bad on her birthday morning, as, with one eye kept continuously on young Frank, Jenny dressed herself to defy the blusterous jolly October weather. She thought how red the apples were in the orchard and with what a plump they fell and how she and May had laughed when one fell on young Frank, who had also laughed, deeming against the evidence of his surprise that it must be matter for merriment.
The postman came that morning, and Granfa, waving his arms, brought the letters up to the orchard—two letters, both for Jenny. He watched for a minute her excitement before he departed to a pleasant job of digging in the champagne of October sunlight.
"Hullo," cried Jenny, "here's a letter from Maudie Chapman."
26 Alverton Street,Pimlico.Dear old Jenny,Suddenly remembered it was your birthday, old girl. Many Happy Returns of The Day, and hope you're in the best of pink and going on fine the same as I am. We have got a new stage manager who you would laugh to see all the girls think. We have been rehearsing for months and I'm sick of it—You're well out of the Orient I give you my word. Its a dogs' Island now and no mistake. Walter sends his love. I have got a little girl called Ivy. She is a love. Have you?With heaps of lovefrom your old chum, Maudie.Irene's gone off with that fellow Danbie and Elsie hadtwins. Her Artie was very annoyed about it. Madge Wilson has got a most glorious set of furs. No more from Maudie—Write us a letter old girl.
26 Alverton Street,Pimlico.
Dear old Jenny,
Suddenly remembered it was your birthday, old girl. Many Happy Returns of The Day, and hope you're in the best of pink and going on fine the same as I am. We have got a new stage manager who you would laugh to see all the girls think. We have been rehearsing for months and I'm sick of it—You're well out of the Orient I give you my word. Its a dogs' Island now and no mistake. Walter sends his love. I have got a little girl called Ivy. She is a love. Have you?
With heaps of lovefrom your old chum, Maudie.
Irene's gone off with that fellow Danbie and Elsie hadtwins. Her Artie was very annoyed about it. Madge Wilson has got a most glorious set of furs. No more from Maudie—Write us a letter old girl.
"Fancy," said Jenny. "Elsie Crauford's had twins."
This letter, read in the open air, with a sea wind traveling through the apple trees, with three hundred miles of country between the sender and the receiver, was charged with London sorcery. It must have been posted on the way to the theater. Incredible thought! Jenny visualized the red pillar-box into which it might have slipped, a pillar-box station by a crowded corner, splashed by traffic and jostled by the town. On the flap was a round spot of London rain, and pervading all the paper was a faint theater scent. The very ink was like eye-black, and Maudie must have written every word laboriously between two glittering ballets.
"I wonder if I could do a single beat now?" said Jenny. "I wish I hadn't given my new ballet shoes to Gladys West."
Then as once she danced under the tall plane tree of Hagworth Street to a sugared melody of "Cavalleria," so now she danced in an apple orchard, keeping time to the wind and the waving boughs. Young Frank quivered and kicked with joy to see the twirling of his mother's skirts. May cried, "You great tomboy!" but with robin's eyes and slanting head watched her sister.
Had she been a poet, Jenny would have sung of London, of the thunder and grayness, of the lamps and rain, of long irresistible rides on the top of swaying tramcars, of wild roars through the depth of the earth past the green lamps flashing to red. She danced instead about the sea-girt orchard-close all that once her heart had found in London. She danced the hopes of many children of Apollo, who work so long for so little. She danced their disillusions, their dreams of immortality, their lives, their marriages, their little houses. She danced their fears of poverty and starvation, their work and effort and strife, their hurrying home in the darkness. She danced their middle age of growing families and all their renewedhopes and disappointments and contentments. She danced a little of the sorrow and all the joy of life. She danced old age and the breathing night of London and the sparrow-haunted dawn. She danced the silly little shillings which the children of Apollo earn. Fifteen pirouettes for fifteen shillings, fifteen pirouettes for long rehearsals and long performances, fifteen pirouettes for a week, fifteen pirouettes for no fame, fifteen pirouettes for fifteen shillings, and one high beat for the funeral of a marionette.
And all the time the gay October leaves danced with her in the grass.
"Well, I hope you've enjoyed yourself," said May. Jenny threw herself breathless on the outspread rug and kissed young Frank.
"I don't suppose I shall ever dance again."
"What about the other letter?" asked May.
"There, if I didn't forget all about it," cried Jenny. "But who's it from? What unnatural writing! Like music."
She broke the seal.
Pump Court, Temple.My dear Jenny,I think I've been very good not to worry you long before this; but I do want to write and wish you many happy returns. Will you accept my thoughts? I got your address and history from Maudie Chapman whom I met last week. I wonder if I came down to Cornwall for a few days, if you would let me call on you. If you're annoyed by this letter, just don't answer. I shall perfectly understand.Yours ever,Frank Castleton.
Pump Court, Temple.
My dear Jenny,
I think I've been very good not to worry you long before this; but I do want to write and wish you many happy returns. Will you accept my thoughts? I got your address and history from Maudie Chapman whom I met last week. I wonder if I came down to Cornwall for a few days, if you would let me call on you. If you're annoyed by this letter, just don't answer. I shall perfectly understand.
Yours ever,Frank Castleton.
"Fancy," said Jenny. "I never knew his name was Frank. How funny!"
"Who is this Frank?" May inquired.
"A friend of mine I knew once—getting on for nearly four years ago now. Where could anyone stay here?"
"There's an hotel in Trewinnard," said May.
Jenny looked at young Frank.
"I don't see why I shouldn't," she said.
"Shouldn't what?"
"Have a friend come and see me," Jenny answered.
CASTLETON arrived at Bochyn under a November sunset, whose lemon glow, barred with indigo banks of cloud, was reflected with added brightness in the flooded meadows and widening stream. Jenny in the firelight was singing and rocking her baby to sleep. She jumped up to open the door to his knock.
"Why, Fuz," she said simply.
He stood enormous against the last gleams of day, and Jenny realized with what small people she had been living so long.
"Jane," he said, "this is a big moment."
He followed her into the room and waited while she lit the lamp and pointed with warning finger to the child asleep in a silence of ticking clocks.
"There's a surprise, or isn't it?"
"Rather," said Castleton. "It looks very well."
"Oh, Fuz. It! You are dreadful. He's called Frank, and fancy, I never knew you were called Frank till you wrote to me last month."
"Another disappointment," sighed Castleton.
"What?"
"Why, of course I thought you altered his name to celebrate my visit."
"You never didn't?" said Jenny, already under slow rustic influences not perfectly sure of a remark's intention. Then suddenly getting back to older and lighter forms of conversation, she laughed.
"Well, how are you, Jenny?" he inquired.
"Oh, I'm feeling grand. Where are you staying?"
"The One and All Inn."
"Comfortable?"
"I fancy very, from a quick glance."
"You'll stay and have tea with us and meet my husband," Jenny invited.
"I shall be proud."
A silence fell on these two friends.
"Well, what about dear old London?" said Jenny at last.
"It's extraordinarily the same. Let me see, had tubes and taxis been invented before you went away?" Castleton asked.
"Don't be silly. Of course," she exclaimed, outraged by such an implication of antediluvian exile.
"Then flatly there is nothing to tell you about London. I was at the Orient the other night. I need not say the ballet was precisely the same as a dozen others I have seen, and you have helped at."
"Any pretty new girls?" Jenny asked.
"I believe there are one or two."
"How's Ronnie Walker?"
"He still lives more for painting than by painting, and has grown a cream-colored beard."
"Oh, he never hasn't. Then he ought to get the bird."
"So that he could say: 'Four owls and a hen, two larks and a wren, have all built their nests in my beard'? It isn't big enough, Jane."
"And Cunningham, how's he?"
"Cunningham is married. I don't know his wife, but I'm told she plays the piano a great deal better than he does. As for myself," said Castleton quickly, "I have chambers in the Temple, but live at home with my people, who have moved to Kensington. There, you see what alarming cataclysms have shaken the society you deserted. Now tell me about yourself."
"Oh, I jog along," said Jenny.
Further reminiscence was interrupted by the entrance of Trewhella, who saluted Castleton suspiciously and from shyness somewhat brusquely.
"How do you do sir?" said the guest, conspicuously agreeable.
"I'm very well, thank 'ee. Come far, have 'ee?"
"London."
"That's a poor sort of place. I was there once. But I didn't take much account of it," said Trewhella.
"You found it disappointing?"
"Ess, ess, too many Cockneys for a Cornishman. But I wasn't robbed over-much. I believe I was too sharp for them."
"I'm glad of that," said the representative of cities.
"You do talk a lot of rot about London," said Jenny contemptuously. "As if you could knowanything about it!"
"I found all I wanted, my dear," said Trewhella winking. He seemed in a mind to impress the foreigner.
"By carrying off Je—Mrs. Trewhella, eh?" said Castleton. "Come, after that, I don't think you ought to grumble at London."
Trewhella darted a suspicious glance as if to demand by what right this intruder dared to comment on his behavior.
The presence of a stranger at tea threw a munching silence over all the lower end of the table; but Castleton made a great impression on Granfa, who asked him a number of questions and sighed admiration for each new and surprising answer.
"But there's one thing I believe you can't tell me," said Granfa. "Or if you can, you're a marvel."
"And what is that?" inquired Castleton.
"I've asked scores of men this question," said Granfa proudly. "Hundreds, I suppose, and there wasn't one of them could give me an answer."
"You really alarm me this time," said Castleton.
Granfa braced himself by swallowing a large mouthful of pasty and delivered his poser almost reverently.
"Can you tell me, mister, in what county o' Scotland is John o' Groats?"
"Caithness, I think," said Castleton.
Granfa coughed violent appreciation and thumped on the table in amazement.
"Hark, all you men and maidens down to the end of the table! I've asked that question in Cornwall, and I've asked that question in Australia. I've asked Scotchmen even, and I'm a brae old man now. But there wasn't one who could speak the answer till—till——" he paused, before the Cornish title of affection and respect—"Cap'n Castleton here spoke it straight away at once. Wish you well, my dear son," he added in a voice rich with emotion, as he thrust an open hand over a bowl of cream for Castleton's grip.
Then Granfa told his old intimate tales of wrecks and famous seines of fish, and even went so far as to offer to show Castleton on the very next morning the corner of a field where with two legs and a stick he could stand in the three parishes of Trenoweth, Nancepean and Trewinnard. In fact he monopolized the guest throughout the meal, and expressed very great regret when Castleton had to return to the One and All Inn.
Trewhella questioned Jenny sharply that night about the stranger, tried with all the fox in his nature to find out what part he had played in her life.
"He's a friend of mine," she said.
"Did he ever come courting 'ee?"
"No, of course not. You don't think all men's like you?"
"What's he want to come down here along, if he's just a friend? Look, missus, don't you go giving the village tongues a start by kicking up a rig with yon great Cockney."
"Shut up," said Jenny. "Who cares about the village?"
"I do," said Trewhella. "I care a brae lot about it. Me and my folk have lived here some long time and we've always been looked up to for clean, decent souls."
"Get out!" scoffed Jenny. "And don't put ideas in your own head. Village! Talking shop, I should say."
The next morning was fine, and when Castleton called at Bochyn, Jenny intrusted May with young Frank and suggesteda walk. Granfa, who was present during the discussion of the itinerary, declared the towans must be visited first of all. Jenny was rather averse from such a direction, thinking of the watchers who lay all day in the rushes. However, when she thought how deeply it would infuriate her husband to know that she was walking over that solitude in the company of Castleton, she accepted Granfa's suggestion with a deliberate audacity.
It was pleasant to walk with Fuz, to laugh at his excitement over various birds and flowers unnoticed by her. It was pleasant to watch him trip in a rabbit's hole and roll right down to the bottom of a sand-drift. But best of all were the rests in deep dry hollows above whose edges the rushes met the sky in wind-waved, sharply cut lines. Down there, making idle patterns with snail-shells, she could listen to gossip of dear old London. She could smell in the sea air wood pavement and hear in the scurry of rabbits passengers by the Piccadilly Tube.
And yet there was a gulf not to be spanned so readily as in the tentative conversations of a single walk. Often in the middle of Castleton's chronicles, she would wish desperately to talk of events long buried, to set out before him her life, to argue openly the rights and wrongs of deeds that so far she had only disputed with herself. In a way it was unsatisfactory to pick up a few broken threads of a friendship, leaving the reel untouched. Perhaps it was better to let the past and the present alone. Gradually London dropped out of the conversation. She wondered if, seeing London again, she would be as much disappointed as by the tale and rumor of it borne down here by an old friend. Gradually the conversation veered to the main occupations of Jenny's mind—May and young Frank. May's future was easy to forecast. She must in these fresh airs grow stronger and healthier, and supply with the passing of every day a more complete justification of the marriage. But what of young Frank's future? Jenny could not bear the notion of him tied to the soil. She wanted his lifeto hold experience before he retreated here to store up the grain and the gold. There must be a great deal of her in young Frank. He could not, should not be contented with bullocks and pigs and straight furrows.
Castleton listened sympathetically to her ambitions for the baby, and promised faithfully that when the time came, he would do his best to help Jenny achieve for her son at least one prospect of humanity, one flashing opportunity to examine life.
"You see, I knew what I wanted when I was quite tiny. Of course nothing was what I thought it would be. Nothing. Only I wanted to go on the stage and I went. I shouldn't like for young Frank to want to do something and have to stick here."
"You've a fine notion of things, Jane," said Castleton. "By gad, if every mother were like you, what a race we should have."
"I'm not in a hurry for him to do anything."
"I meant what a race of Englishmen, not bicycles," Castleton explained.
"Oh, I see," said Jenny vaguely. He was taking her aspirations out of their depth.
"No, but I do think it's dreadful," she went on, "to see kids moping just because their mothers and fathers want them to stick at home. My mother wasn't like that. Yes, she used to go on at me, but she always wanted me to enjoy myself so long as she knew there was no harm in it."
"Your mother, Jane, must have been a great woman."
"I don't know about that, but she was a darling, and always very smart—you know, dressed very nice and had a good figure. But look at my father. He sends us a postcard sometimes with a picture of a bed or a bottle of Bass on it which is all he thinks about. And yet he's alive, and she's dead."
Finally Castleton promised that should young Frank display a spark of ambition, he would do his best to help him achieve it.
"Whatever it is," said Jenny. "Of course not if he wants to be a dustman, but anything that's all right."
Then, the morning being nearly spent, they turned back towards Bochyn. Castleton mounted on a slope at a run to pull Jenny up from above.
"Hullo," he cried, "somebody's been watching us."
"They always do on these towans," said Jenny.
"I'll soon haul the scoundrel into daylight," and with a shout he charged down through the rushes, almost falling over the prostrate body of Old Man Veal. Castleton set him on his feet with a jerk and demanded his business, while Jenny with curling lips stood by. The old man would not say a word, and his captor, balked of chastisement by his evident senility, let him shamble off into the waste.
"That's one of the men on the farm," said Jenny.
"I suppose he'll get the sack."
"I don't think so, then. I think he's edged on by someone else to follow me round."
JENNY and Castleton followed the course of the stream along the valley towards Bochyn. The bracken was a vivid brown upon the hillsides; the gorse was splashed with unusual gold even for Cornwall; lapwings cried, wheeling over the head of the ploughman ploughing the moist rich earth; a flight of wild duck came unerringly down the valley, settling with a great splash in the blue and green marsh.
Trewhella met them, stepping suddenly out from a grove of arbutus trees, a thunderous figure.
"What do 'ee mean?" he roared. "What do 'ee mean by carrying my missus off for wagging tongues? Damn ye, you great overgrown Cockney, damn ye, what do 'ee mean to come sparking here along?"
By Trewhella's side stood his dog, a coarse-coated, wall-eyed brute, half bobtail, half collie. Much alike seemed the pair of them, snarling together in the path.
Jenny whitened. She had not yet seen so much of the wolf in her husband. Castleton looked at her, asking mutely whether he should knock Trewhella backwards or whether, as the world must be truckled to, he should keep quiet.
"Shut up," said Jenny to her husband. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What do you think I am? Your servant? Mind, or I shall tell you off as you've never been told off yet. Let me pass, please, and what's more let my friend pass. Come on, Fuz. Take no notice of him. He's potty. He's soft. Him! Pooh!"
She gathered her skirts round her as if to negotiate mudand swept past Zachary, who, all wolf now, recoiled for his spring. Castleton, however, seized his wrist, saying tranquilly:
"I'm afraid, Mr. Trewhella, you're not very well. Good-bye, Mrs. Trewhella. I'll come round this afternoon, then."
Jenny passed on towards Bochyn and Trewhella turned to follow her at once; but Castleton still held him, and whenever Jenny looked round he was still holding him. She waited, however, at the bottom of the garden for Zachary's return, strewing the ground by her feet with spikes of veronica blooms. Presently he appeared, his dog running before him, and at the sight of Jenny shook wildly his fists.
"You witch," he cried. "How have 'ee the heart to make me so mad? But I deserve it. Oh, God Almighty, I deserve it. I that went a-whoring away from my own country."
"Shut up," Jenny commanded. "And talk decently in front of me, even if I am your wife."
"I took a bride from the Moabites," he moaned. "I forsook Thy paths, O Lord, and went lusting after the heathen."
He fell on his knees in the shining November mud; Jenny regarded him as people regard a man in a fit.
"Forgive me, O God, for I am a sinful man. I have gone fornicketing after lilywhite doves that turned to serpents. I have coveted the love of woman and I have forsaken Thy paths, O Lord. I ran to gaze at loose women dancing in their nakedness, and——"
"Kindly shut up," Jenny interrupted. "And don't kneel there like a lunatic talking about me as if I hadn't got nothing on when you saw me. Don't do it, I say, because I don't like it."
Trewhella rose and faced his wife. The drops of sweat stood on his forehead big as pebbles. His eyes were mad. She had seen eyes like them in Ashgate Asylum.
"Why were 'ee sent to tempt me? Don't 'ee know I do love 'ee more than I do love the Kingdom of Heaven?"
"Well, I wish you wouldn't. It doesn't interest me, this love of yours as you call it. And you needn't carry on aboutMr. Castleton, because he's only a friend,whichyou can't understand."
Trewhella began to weep.
"I thought you were safe down here," he said. "I thought I held 'ee safe as carried corn, and when I brought 'ee to Bochyn, I was so happy as a piece of gold. All the time I've been preaching, I've wished to be home along, thinking of 'ee and wishing I held 'ee in my arms right through the black old night, as I belong."
Jenny shuddered.
"And 'tis a lawful thought," he cried defiantly. "You're my wife, you're mine by the power of the Lord; you're mine by the right of the flesh."
"I'm going indoors," said Jenny coldly, and she left him raging at temptation. Then she sat down and wrote to Castleton.