CHAPTER XXII.“THAThead-flannel may do for Annie; you know there is to be another little one about Lady Day. I must say that it is a pity when young wives have a family too fast.”Mrs. Turle gently laved her ample hands in the fancy-work box, apportioning the different articles according to her mind.“Nancy would like that embroidered newspaper rack. She and Duncan are so very literary. I’m sure Nancy would have distinguished herself in literature, if it had been necessary. She would have made her mark—ladies take up so many things nowadays, and are received by the best people just the same. When Nancy stayed with the Cluttons she moved in a very literary set, and was much admired.”“Have you heard from Barbara lately?” asked Pamela.She was sitting by the fire, with her back to the view of gravel drive and brand-new park land of Turle House. The big, dazzling white mantelpiece was a little above her head, loaded with family photos—a long, ogling, simpering line of family features.“No. But I saw her name in the papers; I am always seeing it. Her husband is really a very distinguishedman in his way. I can’t think why she buried herself at the Buttery, and talked so much at random, making enemies of so many people. How could anyone be expected to understand her? Nancy says that in London, when staying with the Cluttons, she met a great many women of that type—ill-balanced women, my dear, with a trick of extravagant talk and an unchristian, uncomfortable habit of poking fun at everything.”Pamela shifted her chair a little back from the hot fire. A quick, poignant shadow just flecked her face. A vivid picture of London, hot, restless, virile, flamed before her eyes and shook her calm for a moment. Then the peaceful slowness dropped down on her again. She looked, with a gasp of relief, at her surroundings—the big, ugly room—old-fashioned enough in its appointments and furniture to mark a distinct period. She looked at Mrs. Turle—who might or might not be her Aunt Sophy—looked at her motherly figure and hard, high-featured face. She remembered that Barbara had once said, with a laugh, that there was a strong streak of “old cat” in Aunt Sophy’s face.Nothing changed: nothing ever would change. Everything in that room was the same as it had always been in her knowledge of it. It was restful and slow: it fed and stilled one’s nerves. She no longer wanted London, no more wanted Love. But the mention of London, which had held Love, just stirred her—made her remember that she had never heard anything of Edred. She wondered if he and Sutton were still at Marquise Mansions; if they,with Milligan and a few more, were still carrying on risky financial schemes. The newspapers never mentioned them, the advertisements of their companies no longer necessitated an extra sheet.“How is Gainah?” Mrs. Turle brought out a cushion of crazy patchwork. “I’ll buy this for her, poor soul! What an invaluable woman she was! What a manager! Folly Corner would have gone all to pieces after Lilith died but for Gainah. It is a dreadful end for an active woman. I suppose, dear, you notice no change?”“None. She just sits upstairs—she won’t leave that room; my old room, you know——”“I know. You certainly had a most providential escape.”“She does patchwork; she cries to Jethro—never to me—for new pieces.”“She shall certainly have this cushion. It would give her a new idea. She might copy it. She has never done crazy patchwork.”“If any of you have any pieces, do send them to Folly Corner. Whenever we drive into Liddleshorn I will buy her some.”“I’ll have a hunt. We all remember Gainah. Maria brought some over from the Warren last week—you can take them back with you. And Annie had some beautiful corners of sateen. She has been re-covering the cot eiderdown. I went to help her last Monday; it takes two—one to machine and the other to hold the work perfectly steady. Annie is rather early with her preparations, but your Aunt Jerusha always insisted on having everythingready at least three months before: Annie is a very dutiful daughter. And Gainah still has that extraordinary dislike for you?”“Yes. She is afraid of me. It is natural and uncanny. She thinks I am a ghost; she knows she killed me. The knife was dug in to the very hilt. What an escape I had! Jethro won’t send her to the asylum. He could pay. She would have every care. Half the parlormaid’s time is taken up with Gainah.”“I can understand that it is a trial for you. It is telling on you, dear. You really look quite faded. I can see by your eyes that your head is aching at this moment. Take a dose of caffeine when you get back. And ask Egbert to give you a tonic. I must say that it isn’t natural, dear, for a young woman not quite thirty to look so yellow.”“Gainah and Chalcraft ought to be comfortably provided for away from Folly Corner,” Pamela persisted. “Chalcraft is anything but a graceful pauper. He is most familiar to me whenever I go to his cottage.”She laughed uncomfortably. She had grown into an elegant habit of philanthropy, after the manner of country ladies. Philanthropy was very gratifying. She bought courtesy with old gowns and paid for heavenly benedictions with a milk pudding. But Chalcraft was obdurate. He declined to bend his ancient knee to the interloper. He kept his bed nearly all the winter. He made his “missus” bring it down to the living-room and set it behind the door, so that he might see, in part, howthe world went. At Pamela’s entrance, foolish, half-daft Mrs. Chalcraft would courtesy and flip a chair, but Chalcraft only grunted. The cold stare of his rheumy blue eyes reminded her of the day when she first came to Folly Corner, when she trod down the gray tendrils of the vine with the pointed toes of her town shoes. She had been an adventuress then. She was assured now—the mistress of Folly Corner. She had routed them all—Gainah, Chalcraft, the rude manner of life. The fierce old head on the pillow behind the door, the blank, worn old face at the window of her old room, were unpleasant reminders. She would gladly have sent Chalcraft and Gainah away. But this was the one point on which Jethro was firm.“You haven’t heard from Edred lately?”Aunt Sophy’s placid, purring query struck her ears like a gunshot. “No,” she said shortly.Aunt Sophy’s keen blue eyes were full on her face.“He had a very serious illness?”“Yes.”“Why doesn’t he come down to Folly Corner?”“He’s busy. The train service is so bad.”“The train service is very good, now that we have the new line. He could go up every morning quite easily, with a quick horse to take him to the station. It would be better, dear. We hardly care for you to live alone with Jethro. You’re really much younger than you look. Strangers might consider the arrangement a fitting one, but we in the family, who know that you are really not thirty, consider it hardly proper. People talk. Youknow,” she laughed indulgently, “what a long tongue Maria has—and she visits at so many nice houses. You and Jethro ought to marry. Why doesn’t the wedding come off? Everyone is wondering. It is fifteen months since you came back from nursing Edred.”“We have changed our minds. We neither of us wish to marry. It doesn’t matter what people say.”“My dear, your family has every confidence. But I’m sure my idea is excellent. Let Edred come and live at Folly Corner. If you had your brother with you no one could say a word. Isn’t this a pretty workbag?”She held up a limp blue thing, worked with straggling leaves in brown silk. She held it so persistently, swinging it tantalizingly by the string, that Pamela was compelled to meet her inquisitive eyes—eyes that she had always known suspected her. There was more than a spark of malice in Aunt Sophy. She had been young once, a coquette, so they said. The embers of coquetry lay in her eyes still. She had never been a mere pink and silly girl like her daughter Nancy.“If you had your brother with you,” she repeated with emphasis, “no one could say a word. Why doesn’t he come? Is it because of Nancy? He was in love with Nancy. But she is married now.”“He cannot come. He has his business.”“Well, then, my dear,”—she never shifted her questioning eyes,—“I must say that you ought to marry to Jethro.”Pamela walked home thoughtfully. There was, then, nothing stationary in life—outside a happy marriage. The family had combined to drive her from Folly Corner or into Jethro’s arms. The family did not know the cold, sad repugnance that they both had for love-making—the dread avoidance of it, as a poignant, heart-wrenching thing. Aunt Sophy might suspect, but she would never be sure.She walked through the woods which she had once trodden with Edred on a spring day. Crisp frost—like the icing of Maria’s cakes: Maria’s forte was iced cake—spread over the thick, dead leaves. Every point on which her eye dwelt was glittering and white. When she reached Folly Corner she stopped to look at the cows, standing in golden straw and fenced by a gray paling on which serpent-green moss stood in a thick pile. Why wouldn’t the family let them alone—she and Jethro? They were happy—slow, peaceful, like their cattle:theircattle—she had come to believe that everything was hers, without the burning, binding tie of marriage. They were happy. The pensive melancholy and roundness of the old place, which no builder could inspire with modern feeling, had eaten into them. They only wanted to be left alone.She went round the house, meaning to enter, as she usually did, by the garden door. As she passed beneath the window of her old room she looked up. It stood open. Gainah was indifferent to temperature: she was stitching at her interminable quilts. All she had kept of her sane days was thefeverish energy, which now wrought itself on snipping up stuff and sewing it together again. She wore the same old gown of blue—they could not take it from her; her hair bunched out on each side of her chalky face in the absurd bunches of corkscrew curls. The velvet band across her head was tightly strained: it had made a bald spot in the middle of the parting—a spot which was rapidly spreading. Pamela saw her plainly: the restless fingers, distorted by rheumatism, but quite clean and yellow-white, now that she did not do any housework or cooking; the worn, blank face, the constantly moving lips. She stood looking up, not knowing why she stopped, lost in speculation which had little enough to do with this dormant Gainah.As she stood there Gainah suddenly looked down. She met the upturned eyes and gave a terrified baby’s cry. She tried to move, to scuttle out of sight. But her stricken limbs refused their aid; she began to whimper with fright at the sight of her victim. A flash of anger lighted on Pamela’s face. She had never forgiven.She held up her finger and shook it threateningly.“Go back,” she cried, “go back to the fire at once,” forgetting in her irritation that the old woman could not move across the room without help.The parlormaid came forward to the window. She caught Gainah by the shoulder, none too gently, and pulled her away, shutting the casement with an impatient click.Jethro was in the field beyond the garden. Pamelawent to him over the border of crisp, crunching grass which edged the furrows. She loved that field in all its moods. She had watched it, consulted it so often from the shadow of the deep bay window. She remembered just how it appeared at each particular crisis of her life at Folly Corner—half shorn of its yellow corn on that first day; mystic with clearing mist and great green moon the night she came back; dull brown to-day with thin ice on the upturned tips of its even furrows.He was near the hedge, talking to Buckman, who was ditching. She went up and hooked her hand through his arm without saying a word. They had grown into that attitude—the affectionate, silent attitude of long, dear familiarity. Sometimes they would sit without speech for a whole evening, until he suddenly looked up from the paper with a tender look and stretched his big hand out to touch her fingers.The ditch was clean, the hedge hacked. Small heaps of black leaf mold spotted the fringe of grass.“You’ll be about done that job to-morrow,” Jethro said. “Just tie the fagots together and put them on the stack.”The two walked toward the house.“I think,” she said timidly, “that I would like to go to London to-morrow. Some shopping—that’s all. And I’d like a sight of London streets—a bit of color and movement. One wants that twice in a winter.”He looked at her suspiciously. The clear fire blazed in her face. Standing there with the icyground under their feet and the scurrying, sunless sky above their heads, they read each other’s souls.“No,” she said passionately; “you can trust me. I think I can trust myself. London is very big. I am not likely to meet him.”“Go, if you like. But there will be a hard frost to-night and very likely snow to-morrow,” he returned, looking up to the sky for a weather sign.The clear, hard light showed his rugged face, stern and simple.
“THAThead-flannel may do for Annie; you know there is to be another little one about Lady Day. I must say that it is a pity when young wives have a family too fast.”
Mrs. Turle gently laved her ample hands in the fancy-work box, apportioning the different articles according to her mind.
“Nancy would like that embroidered newspaper rack. She and Duncan are so very literary. I’m sure Nancy would have distinguished herself in literature, if it had been necessary. She would have made her mark—ladies take up so many things nowadays, and are received by the best people just the same. When Nancy stayed with the Cluttons she moved in a very literary set, and was much admired.”
“Have you heard from Barbara lately?” asked Pamela.
She was sitting by the fire, with her back to the view of gravel drive and brand-new park land of Turle House. The big, dazzling white mantelpiece was a little above her head, loaded with family photos—a long, ogling, simpering line of family features.
“No. But I saw her name in the papers; I am always seeing it. Her husband is really a very distinguishedman in his way. I can’t think why she buried herself at the Buttery, and talked so much at random, making enemies of so many people. How could anyone be expected to understand her? Nancy says that in London, when staying with the Cluttons, she met a great many women of that type—ill-balanced women, my dear, with a trick of extravagant talk and an unchristian, uncomfortable habit of poking fun at everything.”
Pamela shifted her chair a little back from the hot fire. A quick, poignant shadow just flecked her face. A vivid picture of London, hot, restless, virile, flamed before her eyes and shook her calm for a moment. Then the peaceful slowness dropped down on her again. She looked, with a gasp of relief, at her surroundings—the big, ugly room—old-fashioned enough in its appointments and furniture to mark a distinct period. She looked at Mrs. Turle—who might or might not be her Aunt Sophy—looked at her motherly figure and hard, high-featured face. She remembered that Barbara had once said, with a laugh, that there was a strong streak of “old cat” in Aunt Sophy’s face.
Nothing changed: nothing ever would change. Everything in that room was the same as it had always been in her knowledge of it. It was restful and slow: it fed and stilled one’s nerves. She no longer wanted London, no more wanted Love. But the mention of London, which had held Love, just stirred her—made her remember that she had never heard anything of Edred. She wondered if he and Sutton were still at Marquise Mansions; if they,with Milligan and a few more, were still carrying on risky financial schemes. The newspapers never mentioned them, the advertisements of their companies no longer necessitated an extra sheet.
“How is Gainah?” Mrs. Turle brought out a cushion of crazy patchwork. “I’ll buy this for her, poor soul! What an invaluable woman she was! What a manager! Folly Corner would have gone all to pieces after Lilith died but for Gainah. It is a dreadful end for an active woman. I suppose, dear, you notice no change?”
“None. She just sits upstairs—she won’t leave that room; my old room, you know——”
“I know. You certainly had a most providential escape.”
“She does patchwork; she cries to Jethro—never to me—for new pieces.”
“She shall certainly have this cushion. It would give her a new idea. She might copy it. She has never done crazy patchwork.”
“If any of you have any pieces, do send them to Folly Corner. Whenever we drive into Liddleshorn I will buy her some.”
“I’ll have a hunt. We all remember Gainah. Maria brought some over from the Warren last week—you can take them back with you. And Annie had some beautiful corners of sateen. She has been re-covering the cot eiderdown. I went to help her last Monday; it takes two—one to machine and the other to hold the work perfectly steady. Annie is rather early with her preparations, but your Aunt Jerusha always insisted on having everythingready at least three months before: Annie is a very dutiful daughter. And Gainah still has that extraordinary dislike for you?”
“Yes. She is afraid of me. It is natural and uncanny. She thinks I am a ghost; she knows she killed me. The knife was dug in to the very hilt. What an escape I had! Jethro won’t send her to the asylum. He could pay. She would have every care. Half the parlormaid’s time is taken up with Gainah.”
“I can understand that it is a trial for you. It is telling on you, dear. You really look quite faded. I can see by your eyes that your head is aching at this moment. Take a dose of caffeine when you get back. And ask Egbert to give you a tonic. I must say that it isn’t natural, dear, for a young woman not quite thirty to look so yellow.”
“Gainah and Chalcraft ought to be comfortably provided for away from Folly Corner,” Pamela persisted. “Chalcraft is anything but a graceful pauper. He is most familiar to me whenever I go to his cottage.”
She laughed uncomfortably. She had grown into an elegant habit of philanthropy, after the manner of country ladies. Philanthropy was very gratifying. She bought courtesy with old gowns and paid for heavenly benedictions with a milk pudding. But Chalcraft was obdurate. He declined to bend his ancient knee to the interloper. He kept his bed nearly all the winter. He made his “missus” bring it down to the living-room and set it behind the door, so that he might see, in part, howthe world went. At Pamela’s entrance, foolish, half-daft Mrs. Chalcraft would courtesy and flip a chair, but Chalcraft only grunted. The cold stare of his rheumy blue eyes reminded her of the day when she first came to Folly Corner, when she trod down the gray tendrils of the vine with the pointed toes of her town shoes. She had been an adventuress then. She was assured now—the mistress of Folly Corner. She had routed them all—Gainah, Chalcraft, the rude manner of life. The fierce old head on the pillow behind the door, the blank, worn old face at the window of her old room, were unpleasant reminders. She would gladly have sent Chalcraft and Gainah away. But this was the one point on which Jethro was firm.
“You haven’t heard from Edred lately?”
Aunt Sophy’s placid, purring query struck her ears like a gunshot. “No,” she said shortly.
Aunt Sophy’s keen blue eyes were full on her face.
“He had a very serious illness?”
“Yes.”
“Why doesn’t he come down to Folly Corner?”
“He’s busy. The train service is so bad.”
“The train service is very good, now that we have the new line. He could go up every morning quite easily, with a quick horse to take him to the station. It would be better, dear. We hardly care for you to live alone with Jethro. You’re really much younger than you look. Strangers might consider the arrangement a fitting one, but we in the family, who know that you are really not thirty, consider it hardly proper. People talk. Youknow,” she laughed indulgently, “what a long tongue Maria has—and she visits at so many nice houses. You and Jethro ought to marry. Why doesn’t the wedding come off? Everyone is wondering. It is fifteen months since you came back from nursing Edred.”
“We have changed our minds. We neither of us wish to marry. It doesn’t matter what people say.”
“My dear, your family has every confidence. But I’m sure my idea is excellent. Let Edred come and live at Folly Corner. If you had your brother with you no one could say a word. Isn’t this a pretty workbag?”
She held up a limp blue thing, worked with straggling leaves in brown silk. She held it so persistently, swinging it tantalizingly by the string, that Pamela was compelled to meet her inquisitive eyes—eyes that she had always known suspected her. There was more than a spark of malice in Aunt Sophy. She had been young once, a coquette, so they said. The embers of coquetry lay in her eyes still. She had never been a mere pink and silly girl like her daughter Nancy.
“If you had your brother with you,” she repeated with emphasis, “no one could say a word. Why doesn’t he come? Is it because of Nancy? He was in love with Nancy. But she is married now.”
“He cannot come. He has his business.”
“Well, then, my dear,”—she never shifted her questioning eyes,—“I must say that you ought to marry to Jethro.”
Pamela walked home thoughtfully. There was, then, nothing stationary in life—outside a happy marriage. The family had combined to drive her from Folly Corner or into Jethro’s arms. The family did not know the cold, sad repugnance that they both had for love-making—the dread avoidance of it, as a poignant, heart-wrenching thing. Aunt Sophy might suspect, but she would never be sure.
She walked through the woods which she had once trodden with Edred on a spring day. Crisp frost—like the icing of Maria’s cakes: Maria’s forte was iced cake—spread over the thick, dead leaves. Every point on which her eye dwelt was glittering and white. When she reached Folly Corner she stopped to look at the cows, standing in golden straw and fenced by a gray paling on which serpent-green moss stood in a thick pile. Why wouldn’t the family let them alone—she and Jethro? They were happy—slow, peaceful, like their cattle:theircattle—she had come to believe that everything was hers, without the burning, binding tie of marriage. They were happy. The pensive melancholy and roundness of the old place, which no builder could inspire with modern feeling, had eaten into them. They only wanted to be left alone.
She went round the house, meaning to enter, as she usually did, by the garden door. As she passed beneath the window of her old room she looked up. It stood open. Gainah was indifferent to temperature: she was stitching at her interminable quilts. All she had kept of her sane days was thefeverish energy, which now wrought itself on snipping up stuff and sewing it together again. She wore the same old gown of blue—they could not take it from her; her hair bunched out on each side of her chalky face in the absurd bunches of corkscrew curls. The velvet band across her head was tightly strained: it had made a bald spot in the middle of the parting—a spot which was rapidly spreading. Pamela saw her plainly: the restless fingers, distorted by rheumatism, but quite clean and yellow-white, now that she did not do any housework or cooking; the worn, blank face, the constantly moving lips. She stood looking up, not knowing why she stopped, lost in speculation which had little enough to do with this dormant Gainah.
As she stood there Gainah suddenly looked down. She met the upturned eyes and gave a terrified baby’s cry. She tried to move, to scuttle out of sight. But her stricken limbs refused their aid; she began to whimper with fright at the sight of her victim. A flash of anger lighted on Pamela’s face. She had never forgiven.
She held up her finger and shook it threateningly.
“Go back,” she cried, “go back to the fire at once,” forgetting in her irritation that the old woman could not move across the room without help.
The parlormaid came forward to the window. She caught Gainah by the shoulder, none too gently, and pulled her away, shutting the casement with an impatient click.
Jethro was in the field beyond the garden. Pamelawent to him over the border of crisp, crunching grass which edged the furrows. She loved that field in all its moods. She had watched it, consulted it so often from the shadow of the deep bay window. She remembered just how it appeared at each particular crisis of her life at Folly Corner—half shorn of its yellow corn on that first day; mystic with clearing mist and great green moon the night she came back; dull brown to-day with thin ice on the upturned tips of its even furrows.
He was near the hedge, talking to Buckman, who was ditching. She went up and hooked her hand through his arm without saying a word. They had grown into that attitude—the affectionate, silent attitude of long, dear familiarity. Sometimes they would sit without speech for a whole evening, until he suddenly looked up from the paper with a tender look and stretched his big hand out to touch her fingers.
The ditch was clean, the hedge hacked. Small heaps of black leaf mold spotted the fringe of grass.
“You’ll be about done that job to-morrow,” Jethro said. “Just tie the fagots together and put them on the stack.”
The two walked toward the house.
“I think,” she said timidly, “that I would like to go to London to-morrow. Some shopping—that’s all. And I’d like a sight of London streets—a bit of color and movement. One wants that twice in a winter.”
He looked at her suspiciously. The clear fire blazed in her face. Standing there with the icyground under their feet and the scurrying, sunless sky above their heads, they read each other’s souls.
“No,” she said passionately; “you can trust me. I think I can trust myself. London is very big. I am not likely to meet him.”
“Go, if you like. But there will be a hard frost to-night and very likely snow to-morrow,” he returned, looking up to the sky for a weather sign.
The clear, hard light showed his rugged face, stern and simple.