  Righteous resentment saved Jinny from the collapse of the previous week. That dreadful gnawing of uncertainty was over. Whatever she had said, she was sure now that he did love her, even if she came second to his pride. That a way out of their difficulties would soon present itself to her nimble brain she did not doubt: her one fear was that he would find the way to Australia first, and it was a comfort to remember his helpless arm and his empty purse—“no money to think of foolishness,” as his dear old mother had put it. Already on the Tuesday after the unheard sermon, she found a means of communicating with him without a lowering of her own proper pride. For the fourteenth of the month was nigh upon them, and the shops—even apart from the stationer’s—-were ablaze with valentines, a few sentimental, but the overwhelming majority grotesque and flamboyant, the British version of Carnival. After long search she discovered a caricature that not only resembled Will in having carroty locks, but carried in its motto sufficient allusiveness to the quarrel with her grandfather to make it clear the overture came from her. Not that the overture looked conciliatory to the superficial eye. Quite the contrary. For apart from the ugliness of the visage, the legend ran: To such a man I’d never pledge my troth, I’d sooner die, I take my Bible oath. Not a very refined couplet or procedure perhaps, but Jinny was never a drawing-room heroine, and the valentine was dear to the great heart of the Victorian people. Besides, do not the grandest dames relax at Carnival? Jinny half expected a similar insult from Will by the same post, and though St. Valentine’s Day passed without bringing her one, she still expected a retort in kind the day after. And when Bundock appeared with a voluminous letter, directed simply to “Jinny the Carrier, Little Bradmarsh, England,” her disappointment at Mr. Flippance’s flabby handwriting was acute, though otherwise she would have been excited, not only by his letter, but by the foreign stamp, the first she had ever received. “So he’s still in Boulogne,” Bundock observed casually, lingering to pick up the contents. “I hope he’s sending you the money to pay Mrs. Purley.” “Why should he send it through me?” she said sharply. “Well, since he’s writing to you, it would save stamps, wouldn’t it? I do think it was rough on Mrs. Purley, though, a wedding breakfast like that, though I expect he bought his own champagne—and clinking stuff it was, nigh as good as the sherry at poor Charley’s funeral. However, she’s marrying her own daughter now—Mrs. Purley, I mean—and lucky she is too to have escaped young Flynt, who is off to Australia without a penny—looks to me almost as if they’re hurrying on the marriage so that Will may be best man before he goes, he and ’Lijah are that thick! He, he, he! Funny world, ain’t it? You’ve heard my riddle perhaps—Why are marriages never a success? Because the bride never marries the best man! He, he! Well, she came near doing it this time—he, he, he! Though whether she’s the best woman for either of ’em is a question.” “That’s their own business,” Jinny managed to put in. “So ’tis, but with ’Lijah a member of the Chipstone Temperance Friendly Society, he’ll hardly like a wife who washes her head in beer.” “What nonsense! How can you know that?” “Fact. It’s to make her hair wavy. There’s nothing her brother Barnaby don’t let out to my poor old dad. She was at it the day you all came to the Farm. It wasn’t that she had her bodice off and her hair down after the douche,”—Bundock seemed to savour these details—“she didn’t want him to smell it.” “Well, you seem to smell out everything,” she said severely. “I do have a nose like Nip’s!” he chuckled. But although Mr. Flippance’s letter was under it, he was forced to go off without even discovering that it did contain a financial document. Very amazed indeed was Jinny to see it drop out, this IOU, which was for herself and not Mrs. Purley, and represented half a crown! Retiring to her kitchen, she studied the large-scrawled pages. “My dear Jinny,—I have just read in Madame F.’s copy of her London Journal (which like Mrs. Micawber she will never desert, at least not till the present serial is finished) an extract from the Chelmsford Chronicle about the miraculous saving of a cornstack belonging to our mutual friend, Mr. Caleb Flynt. “I gather that a flood must have devastated Little Bradmarsh, and I write at once to know if all my friends are safe, especially your charming little self. Strange to think that the parlour in which I breakfasted on bacon and mushrooms in your sweet society may have been washed away! But such is life—a shadow-pantomime! “We are still at Boulogne, you see. For one thing—to speak frankly—it’s a providential place to be at when funds are for the moment low, and it appears that Madame F.’s fortune—all that the villain Duke left of it—is in Spanish bonds. I need say no more. (I think I told you she was the niece of the famous Cairo Contortionist, and doubtless it was during the star’s sensationally successful season at Madrid that she was thus misled.) The wily master of marionettes must have been aware of this when he got [“her off his hands” appeared quite legibly here, though scratched out with heavy strokes] back his show over her head. “Our present plans are, before attempting London (which though almost barren of talent calls for overmuch of the ready), to launch an English season in Boulogne itself, where there is such a large English circle, that saves so much by being here immune from sheriff’s officers that it can well afford the luxury of the theatre, not to mention the many French people here who must be anxious to learn English, especially after their visit to the Great Exhibition. “Between you and I, I fear that Madame F.’s hopes will be dashed by the fact that the French have no eyes or ears except for a Jewess called Rachel, but as they have nothing near as good in the male line, we may yet—between us—show them something! “If this fails—and I have seen too much of the public to be surprised at any ingratitude—there are always those wonderful new goldfields, where men of our race and speech are flocking, pickaxe on shoulder. Surely after their arduous toil for the filthy lucre, they must be longing of an evening for a glimpse of the higher life—I understand they have only drinking shanties. “Imagine it, Jinny—a theatre for the rugged miners amid the primeval mountains with a practicable moon shining over the tropical scene. Pity I sold Duke that theatre-tent, but I suppose it couldn’t be transported to Australia as easily as a convict. (Good gag, that, eh?) Admission, I suppose, by nugget. I don’t see how you can give change—unless they take it in gold-dust—and anyhow, flush as they are, they will probably hand in considerable chunks at the box-office, reckless of petty calculation. “So do not be surprised if one Easter morn you receive a golden egg laid by some Australian goose (I understand it is half a mole). Which reminds me to enclose herewith the half-crown I owe you. I dare say you have forgotten my borrowing it from you in the caravan of my blood-sucking son-in-law. But players have long memories. “I suppose you see nothing of him or of Polly, for Chipstone is a poor pitch, but I am afraid from a Christmas card Polly sent me in reply to mine that the rascal is making her happy, so I can’t hate him as much as he deserves. “‘I hope,’ I scribbled across the picture of the snowy Mistletoe Bough I sent her, ‘you are experiencing all that matrimony was designed for, when this institution was introduced into Eden.’ Lovely, isn’t it? And where do you suppose it came from? It was that delicious Martha’s farewell wish to me on my wedding morning! I fancy she took it out of the number of the Lightstand that I bought her. “Poor, dear Martha! Do give her my love and tell her there is a branch of the New Jerusalemites in Boulogne—no, best make it two, while you are about it, a French branch as well as an English branch, mutually emulous in ‘Upbuilding!’ “And how is her dashing cavalier of a son who posed as an American? I expect he’s married by now to the queen of the wasp-killers, judging by the warm way things were going at my own wedding-party. If so, pray hand him back his mother’s Christadelphian wedding-wish with my kind regards. “Oh, and don’t forget to say amiable things (as they put it here) to Miss What’s-a-name, the young and lovely bridesmaid! Tell her I haven’t forgotten about her becoming wardrobe mistress, though if we go to Australia, I’m afraid it’ll be too rough for her at her age, and even Madame F. may shrink from the snakes and the blacks and the convicts and the desperado diggers, in which case we shall have boys to do the female parts and revive the glories of the Shakespearean stage. “Heavens, how I have let myself chatter on! My paper is nearly at an end—like youth and hope! Believe me, dear Jinny, in this world or the next (don’t be alarmed, I only mean Australia), “Your ever devoted, “Tony Flippance. “P.S.—I am so sorry but I find I can’t find (excuse my Irish) any way of sending the half-crown by post, so I am compelled to send you an IOU, but if you send it to Polly (Duke’s Marionettes, England, is sure to find her some day) I have no doubt she will honour it on my behalf. Safest address for me by the way is Poste Restante, Boulogne, as Madame F. likes trying different hotels. “P.P.S.—There is a game here called ‘Little Horses.’ Most fascinating.” Many and mixed were Jinny’s feelings as she ploughed through this bulky document, swollen by the opulent handwriting. Having no notion about investments, she vaguely imagined that Spanish robbers had impounded Cleopatra’s money, and it added to her sense of the unsettled state of the Continent. As for the IOU, she was angrily amused to think that he had already paid her the half-crown on the very morning of the bacon and mushrooms so fondly recalled, and that she had bought him his wedding present—a Bible—with it. To pay little debts twice over while defrauding the big creditors (and she had reason to think Miss Gentry as well as the Purleys had been left unpaid) seemed to her only an aggravation of fecklessness. But perhaps the Flippances had not meant to be dishonest: it was those Spanish freebooters that were to blame, who had captured the gold destined for Little Bradmarsh. The humiliation of his reference to Blanche was hard to bear—it made her want to dismiss Will altogether—but oddly enough a still keener emotion was kindled by Mr. Flippance’s obsession with Australia. Yes, Australia was in the air, it was a net into which everybody was being swept. Will was going from her—and to a place bristling with blacks and snakes and convicts and desperado diggers. Never had she received so perturbing a letter. |
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