PROLOGUE.THEsteam of that stifling London day rose up in a choking, enervating haze from the hot grass. The shrill cries of children, loose from the Board School, cut the thick air. A train rushed across the bridge. Two or three cyclists tinkled their bells irritably as they spun down Wood Lane to the Uxbridge Road, leaving a cloud of gray grit behind them. Omnibuses pulled up at the corner of the short street near the few newly-built shops. From Portobello Road came the heavy rumble of more traffic, mixed with the nearer shout of costers vending dried fish and over-ripe fruit.She was a young woman. She stood still, in a limp, hopeless attitude, her face turned on Wormwood Scrubbs, her strained eyes vacantly fastened on the buildings, spires, and chimneys in the distance.Some simple sound from the frowning prison on her left made her turn her head with the swift, watching movement of a cat. But there was nothing to see; no hint, no hope. Behind those walls! Her throat, rising white and firm from the tumbled collar of the cotton blouse, contracted. Those walls! those impenetrable walls! those relentless walls!She put out two hands in baggy gloves; she held them up, flat palms upward, toward the speechless prison. Her attitude was one of strong appeal, of hope, almost—as if she half expected that despair would work a miracle. They stretched out, big, strong, shapeless in the old gloves—those quivering, appealing hands of hers.With a sharp agonized movement of the wrists she let her hands drop nervelessly to her side. A sob was strangled in her throat; she turned her head abruptly, so that her eyes no longer rested on the walls. With a sudden impulse she started running across the grass; ran across the road and under the bridge to the spot where an omnibus was waiting.It grew dusk as she rattled back on the garden-seat to London. One by one the lights of night gleamed out. The life of night began. She looked down and saw the interior of smoothly rolling carriages, with women in evening dress lying idly back inside. Women on foot, smartly clad and with happy faces, flitted along the white pavements. Women clambered to the top of the omnibus, chattering and tittering. The one who sat next her glanced curiously at her grim mouth and shadowed eyes.The lights grew thicker; fantastic chains of light—red and yellow. London glittered like some fairy mine of jewels: jewels already cut and polished, every facet gleaming. Words winked out letter by letter, then vanished. She saw them come and go on the fronts of the houses. OXFORCE—NINONSOAP—DUNN’SNOSTRUM. To her strained sensesthey lost all common meaning and symbolized the weird, the threatening, the unknown.*****It was blinding hot in the market town that Wednesday. Sheep straggled into the pens; the drovers choked and cursed as the dust dried in their throats. A smart trap, driven by a girl, with a groom behind, bowled down the High Street, leaving behind an impression of coolness and smartness. Now and again a sharp, imperious cycle-bell cut the air, and as some female cyclist darted by pedestrians heard the soft flutter of sleeves, like the flapping sails of a yacht.A man came, with a slightly rolling walk, down the street. He made an imperial progress, nodding his head bluffly to deferential shopkeepers who stood at their doors, exchanging a jovial word or so with other substantial yeomen. Everyone knew and respected Jethro Jayne—“Young Jethro” of Folly Corner. Everyone in and around Liddleshorn knew that there had been Jaynes at Folly in unbroken succession since before the days of Cromwell.He was a picturesque figure, with his open, weather-tanned face, his clean-shaven lip, his buff breeches, and brown gaiters. He wore a linen coat and a flapping white linen hat. His eyes were lazily merry and roguish under the starched brim.He turned in at the door of the inn, with the low-pitched, paneled dining-room, where most of the farmers dined on market-day.A round-faced, pretty girl brought him his plateof beef and his two vegetables. Bread and cheese, and a jug of sweet cider, completed the meal.He looked at her thoughtfully whenever she approached: so very blue-eyed and round; such a plump, neat figure in a black gown! He looked at her through a strong cloud of smoke as he puffed at his pipe and drank a last glass of the cider. She had suggested something. He was thoughtfully asking himself, Why not?Presently he took a pencil and a letter from his breeches pocket. He began to write on the back of the envelope, making many erasions, knitting his brows and pouting his lips like an anxious child.The girl came softly to the table and took away the mustard for another customer. Jethro never looked up at her. She had done her part. She had suggested.He paid the bill and emerged into High Street. He looked a trifle more bluff and lurching than before. His face was red—with cider, with the excitement of his daring plan.For the first time in his life he was yielding to impulse. Already he half regretted yielding. He was afraid of himself; he was more afraid of Gainah.Yet he bent his head and went down two steps into the editorial offices of theLiddleshorn Herald.The place was empty save for a sharp-featured youth who was lounging at the side of the counter. He sharply asked the visitor what he wanted. He was a new importation, an embryo journalist, with a London journal as his goal. He touched thetown side of things only. He had a smoldering contempt for farmers, and knew nothing of the master of Folly Corner.Jethro pushed his envelope across the counter with a sheepish gesture.“How many insertions?” asked the youth laconically, yet throwing an amused, curious glance at the big figure which stood near the door—an unconscious, unappreciated color scheme—in white and russet, buff and brown.“How many times in?” The gentleman-farmer’s big, embarrassed laugh seemed to shake the silent place. “Well—once.”As he went slowly out of the town the tinkle of a piano came out clearly from the front room of a little buff villa. There were rows of these buff villas on the outskirts of the town. Some navvies were putting down new drain-pipes. The notes of the piano and the reedy voice of a girl came out slowly, each note isolated and mingled with the nervous tap of the pickax. Jethro stood still and listened. It was a song of Purcell’s:“To make us seek ruin, to make us seek ruin and love those that hate.”He walked on, a queer stirring at his heart. The thin voice of the girl in the villa had touched the romantic spot in him. He thought of that other girl at the inn—plump, blue-eyed, smiling. He thought of his carefully-worded advertisement which, by to-morrow, would be worming its waythrough Sussex, through Surrey and Hampshire to London perhaps.It was a joke; he began to regret, to blame the cider, or the demure little rings of light hair on the waitress’ unlined brow.And yet he could still hear the piano. He still felt the slow, wondering work of his heart.
THEsteam of that stifling London day rose up in a choking, enervating haze from the hot grass. The shrill cries of children, loose from the Board School, cut the thick air. A train rushed across the bridge. Two or three cyclists tinkled their bells irritably as they spun down Wood Lane to the Uxbridge Road, leaving a cloud of gray grit behind them. Omnibuses pulled up at the corner of the short street near the few newly-built shops. From Portobello Road came the heavy rumble of more traffic, mixed with the nearer shout of costers vending dried fish and over-ripe fruit.
She was a young woman. She stood still, in a limp, hopeless attitude, her face turned on Wormwood Scrubbs, her strained eyes vacantly fastened on the buildings, spires, and chimneys in the distance.
Some simple sound from the frowning prison on her left made her turn her head with the swift, watching movement of a cat. But there was nothing to see; no hint, no hope. Behind those walls! Her throat, rising white and firm from the tumbled collar of the cotton blouse, contracted. Those walls! those impenetrable walls! those relentless walls!
She put out two hands in baggy gloves; she held them up, flat palms upward, toward the speechless prison. Her attitude was one of strong appeal, of hope, almost—as if she half expected that despair would work a miracle. They stretched out, big, strong, shapeless in the old gloves—those quivering, appealing hands of hers.
With a sharp agonized movement of the wrists she let her hands drop nervelessly to her side. A sob was strangled in her throat; she turned her head abruptly, so that her eyes no longer rested on the walls. With a sudden impulse she started running across the grass; ran across the road and under the bridge to the spot where an omnibus was waiting.
It grew dusk as she rattled back on the garden-seat to London. One by one the lights of night gleamed out. The life of night began. She looked down and saw the interior of smoothly rolling carriages, with women in evening dress lying idly back inside. Women on foot, smartly clad and with happy faces, flitted along the white pavements. Women clambered to the top of the omnibus, chattering and tittering. The one who sat next her glanced curiously at her grim mouth and shadowed eyes.
The lights grew thicker; fantastic chains of light—red and yellow. London glittered like some fairy mine of jewels: jewels already cut and polished, every facet gleaming. Words winked out letter by letter, then vanished. She saw them come and go on the fronts of the houses. OXFORCE—NINONSOAP—DUNN’SNOSTRUM. To her strained sensesthey lost all common meaning and symbolized the weird, the threatening, the unknown.
*****
It was blinding hot in the market town that Wednesday. Sheep straggled into the pens; the drovers choked and cursed as the dust dried in their throats. A smart trap, driven by a girl, with a groom behind, bowled down the High Street, leaving behind an impression of coolness and smartness. Now and again a sharp, imperious cycle-bell cut the air, and as some female cyclist darted by pedestrians heard the soft flutter of sleeves, like the flapping sails of a yacht.
A man came, with a slightly rolling walk, down the street. He made an imperial progress, nodding his head bluffly to deferential shopkeepers who stood at their doors, exchanging a jovial word or so with other substantial yeomen. Everyone knew and respected Jethro Jayne—“Young Jethro” of Folly Corner. Everyone in and around Liddleshorn knew that there had been Jaynes at Folly in unbroken succession since before the days of Cromwell.
He was a picturesque figure, with his open, weather-tanned face, his clean-shaven lip, his buff breeches, and brown gaiters. He wore a linen coat and a flapping white linen hat. His eyes were lazily merry and roguish under the starched brim.
He turned in at the door of the inn, with the low-pitched, paneled dining-room, where most of the farmers dined on market-day.
A round-faced, pretty girl brought him his plateof beef and his two vegetables. Bread and cheese, and a jug of sweet cider, completed the meal.
He looked at her thoughtfully whenever she approached: so very blue-eyed and round; such a plump, neat figure in a black gown! He looked at her through a strong cloud of smoke as he puffed at his pipe and drank a last glass of the cider. She had suggested something. He was thoughtfully asking himself, Why not?
Presently he took a pencil and a letter from his breeches pocket. He began to write on the back of the envelope, making many erasions, knitting his brows and pouting his lips like an anxious child.
The girl came softly to the table and took away the mustard for another customer. Jethro never looked up at her. She had done her part. She had suggested.
He paid the bill and emerged into High Street. He looked a trifle more bluff and lurching than before. His face was red—with cider, with the excitement of his daring plan.
For the first time in his life he was yielding to impulse. Already he half regretted yielding. He was afraid of himself; he was more afraid of Gainah.
Yet he bent his head and went down two steps into the editorial offices of theLiddleshorn Herald.The place was empty save for a sharp-featured youth who was lounging at the side of the counter. He sharply asked the visitor what he wanted. He was a new importation, an embryo journalist, with a London journal as his goal. He touched thetown side of things only. He had a smoldering contempt for farmers, and knew nothing of the master of Folly Corner.
Jethro pushed his envelope across the counter with a sheepish gesture.
“How many insertions?” asked the youth laconically, yet throwing an amused, curious glance at the big figure which stood near the door—an unconscious, unappreciated color scheme—in white and russet, buff and brown.
“How many times in?” The gentleman-farmer’s big, embarrassed laugh seemed to shake the silent place. “Well—once.”
As he went slowly out of the town the tinkle of a piano came out clearly from the front room of a little buff villa. There were rows of these buff villas on the outskirts of the town. Some navvies were putting down new drain-pipes. The notes of the piano and the reedy voice of a girl came out slowly, each note isolated and mingled with the nervous tap of the pickax. Jethro stood still and listened. It was a song of Purcell’s:
“To make us seek ruin, to make us seek ruin and love those that hate.”
“To make us seek ruin, to make us seek ruin and love those that hate.”
He walked on, a queer stirring at his heart. The thin voice of the girl in the villa had touched the romantic spot in him. He thought of that other girl at the inn—plump, blue-eyed, smiling. He thought of his carefully-worded advertisement which, by to-morrow, would be worming its waythrough Sussex, through Surrey and Hampshire to London perhaps.
It was a joke; he began to regret, to blame the cider, or the demure little rings of light hair on the waitress’ unlined brow.
And yet he could still hear the piano. He still felt the slow, wondering work of his heart.