Time hung heavy on Will’s hands the first few days of his return, as heavy as the meals heaped before him by the adoring Martha. There was as much for “bever” as for breakfast, yet quantity did not suffice him. He became almost as finnicking and fractious as Cousin Caroline, not content, for example, to strain the pond-water through muslin for the larger insects, but insisting on its being boiled: indeed hinting preposterously that the mortality among his unknown brothers and sisters might have been connected with potations on which Caleb and Martha had patently flourished. He held views on the house-refuse, ignoring Caleb’s plea that “the best drain be a pig,” and by making hinges the very first evening for the lower windows to open by, he had raised such a draught in the house that it was all they could do to keep their bedroom and their kitchen air-tight, and even Martha was glad when on the Wednesday afternoon he went off to get some fishing in the Brad, and the windows could all be closed up again. But the few dace and bull-heads that rewarded his rod left too many intervals for reflection, and in the unsettlement of his thoughts, before settling down to a judicious expenditure of his ninety pounds, he felt he needed more deadening exertion. He tried poling against the stream to that ancient faery island—somebody’s half-decked shooting punt was doing no good rusting on the bank in the off-season, he thought—but the process soon became automatic and his mind was still restless, while after the islands of the St. Lawrence this enchanted playground of his youth seemed tame and its prettiness trivial. He fed his fancy on a salt-water expedition for the Thursday: recalled the great catches of flat-fish he and his brothers had made, the sport to be got out of the voracious if inedible “bull-rout,” but it would be a very long walk, and what if when one arrived the tide should be too low? So he walked inland around Bradmarsh Common. But though it was, he told himself, the “old haunts” that he went out for to see, he omitted to revisit that venerable landmark, Gaffer Quarles. Conscience adjured him he ought to look up the old carrier, whether for respect or reproof—and he actually did hover around Blackwater Hall—but pride forbade his entering, lest he stumble upon the new Carrier. The Hall appeared even more dwindled to him than Frog Farm as he stood surlily surveying it; even the Common—after the Canadian prairie—seemed no longer to roll towards the blue infinities. He had a strong impulse to burst in on that careless old Daniel and give him a piece of his mind, even at the risk of meeting his gadabout granddaughter; but the bleating of the goats sounded forbidding, and as he was hesitating he found himself under the gaze of another gaffer, the crown of whose battered beaver tied on to its brim with coloured strings gave him a festal grotesquerie. Will remembered this ancient, though despite his gay headgear he now seemed inexpressibly grimy in his patched corduroys, his two ragged coats, and the dirty towel wound round his throat. It was the Quarles’s nearest neighbour, “Uncle” Lilliwhyte, who lived in a cottage also on the Common; trading in cress, cherries, and mushrooms, driving home obstreperous cows and doing other odd jobs. This worthy was now exercising his equal right of gathering sticks on the Common, and the sordid association seemed to reduce Jinny to the same shrunken proportions as her cottage. “Buy a nadder, sir?” “Sir!” Yes, after all, his father had been a “looker,” not a mere labourer, he himself had a waistcoat lined with bank-notes and cut by Moses & Son, why should he expect a sense of dignity from a girl of so lowly a status? Let her earn her livelihood as she wished—it was not his affair, except in so far as she should have none of his custom. A cock crew lustily, and it subtly heartened him up. Yes, he would go in now, give her back her glove, professing to have just picked it up, and wash his hands of her for ever. “No, thank you, uncle,” he said, with an irrelevant memory of the ancient’s blind mother, “what should I do with an adder?” “But that’s a real loive nadder, just kitched, sir.” He cautiously displayed its hissing head and darting tongue. “There’s many a slowworm killed for a woiper, pore things. Onny fowrpence, sir!” “Well, here’s sixpence,” said Will graciously. “No, no,” he explained hastily, as the ancient began handing over the wriggling reptile. “Kill the beggar.” And he hurried homewards. On second thoughts—inspired perhaps by some dim impression of a female figure flitting among the clothes-lines behind the Hall—he would not risk an encounter with Jinny, but make a special call upon poor, lonely old Daniel on the morrow. Jinny would then be out on her rounds. And if he took care to go at about the hour she was due at Frog Farm, he could avoid her at both places. Yes, that were tactics worthy of a man of the world. Casual conversation with his elders reminded him, however, that Jinny was not expected that Friday. She had already left the parcel of groceries on the Tuesday. He was thus safe from her for eight days—he had only to remain at home. But the discovery that the whole of Friday was free from any possibility of her appearance at Frog Farm, and that Blackwater Hall was equally immune from her presence, seemed to remove the zest of his diplomacy. Neighbour Quarles remained unvisited, his solitude unmitigated, and Will wandered aimlessly on the high road between Bradmarsh and Chipstone. The year was at its most beautiful moment. The hedges were white with hawthorn, and the fresh young leaves on the trees gave an exquisite sense of greenness without blurring the structural grace of the branches, while the unspoiled cadence of the cuckoo’s cry came magically over the sunny meadows. But Will could only swish viciously with his stick at the hedges and litter the lanes with ruined blossom. It was with no little surprise that, as he and his elders sat at high tea on this same evening, they heard the windings of Jinny’s horn. The three sprang up: then Will sat down again. “Ain’t you comin’ out to see Jinny?” asked Caleb. “Let the boy drink his tea,” said Martha. “But you ain’t never spoke to her yet,” persisted Caleb. “And you used to give her eggs.” “Let the boy eat his eggs himself,” said Martha sternly. “Oi dedn’t mean they eggs,” laughed Caleb. “Do go and see what Jinny can want,” Martha commanded him. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it is eggs—now that Mr. Flippance has opened his show he’ll be wanting them regularly.” “Whatever for?” asked Will. “He sucks ’em raw, like weasels, him and his darter,” explained Caleb. “They should say it’s good for the woice, and by all accounts showmen fares to have a mort o’ pieces to speak.” “But why doesn’t Jinny sell him her own eggs?” asked Will. “How do you know she has them?” asked Martha quickly. “Hasn’t she?” he said lightly, reddening like the comb of the cock he had heard crowing. “Not enough. That old sinner eats her out of house and home.” “Mr. Flippance?” murmured Will. “No, no. Her grandfather. Why don’t you go, Caleb?” Will sat on stolidly, helping himself to more tea and pouring the milk into the slop-basin. Presently Caleb returned, announcing that Jinny had brought something for Will—she could only legally deliver it to Mr. Flynt, junior, she said. Will turned redder than at the egg-talk. “But I never ordered anything,” he said. “You can’t prewent folks sendin’ you presents, same as they’re foolish enough,” Caleb reminded him. A fantastic fear that the blue-eyed girl of the train was discharging some proof of devotion at him made him drum nervously with his teaspoon. “But who knows I’m back home?” he answered Caleb. Through the open house-door came the gay strains of a fresh young voice: “But still he’d sing fol de rol iddle ol!” “Don’t she sing pritty?” sighed Caleb. “I’d sooner hear her singing about Zion,” said Martha. “She’s rather flighty, to my thinking.” “That’s the first time Oi heard ye say a word agen Jinny,” said Caleb, “leastways behind her back.” Will, tingling between the two tortures—the song without and the table-talk within—sprang up brusquely. “Drat the girl—my tea’ll get cold. Sit down, dad, I’ll see what she’s brought.” |