Carnival Part 80

"How did 'ee send him away, if there was nothing at all?"

"Because I'm ashamed for any of my friends to see what sort of a man I've married. That's why."

"I'll catch 'ee out one day," vowed Trewh.e.l.la. "You do think I'm just a fool, but I'm more, missus; I'm brae cunning. I can snare a wild thing wi' any man in Cornwall."

"Fancy," Jenny mocked.

And round the dark farmhouse the winter storms howled and roared, beating against the windows and ravening by the latches.

Chapter XLVI: _May Morning_

Young Frank had always been from his birth an excitement; but as he neared, reached and pa.s.sed his eighteenth month, the geometrical progression of his personality far exceeded the mere arithmetical progression of his age. He could now salute with smiles those whom he loved, was empurpled by rage at any repression, and was able to crawl about with a bl.u.s.terous energy that seemed inspired by the equinoctial gales of March. Jenny's fingers would dive into his mouth to discover teeth that were indeed pearls in their whiteness and rarity. Exquisite adumbrations of herself were traceable in his countenance, and so far, at any rate, his hair was curled and silvery as hers was once famed to be. His cheeks were rose-fired; his eyes were deep and gay. Only his ears seemed, whatever way they were judged, to follow his father's shape; but even they at present merely gave him a pleasant elfin look.

Jenny was very proud of young Frank.

Trewh.e.l.la, with the lapse of time, and after another violent outbreak on account of the arrival of a letter from Castleton, ceased to importune his wife with jealous denunciations of the old glittering days before they met. The farm prospered: he took to counting his money more than ever since an heir had given him a pledge for the commemoration of his thrift. During the winter Jenny drove once or twice in the high cart to Camston, and, with May to help her, scornfully turned out the contents of the drapery shops. On these occasions Granfa was made responsible for young Frank, and when they came back he had to give a very full account of his regency. Other winter events included a visit from Mr. Corin, who had opened a dairy away up in the east of the Duchy. He annoyed Jenny by his exaggerated congratulations, embracing as they did himself as much as Zachary and her. Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la would from time to time announce her surrender of the household keys; but Jenny was not anxious to control anything except her son, and the old woman, manifestly pleased, continued to superintend with blink and cackle maid Emily. Jenny lost her fear of bullocks, dreaded insects no longer, and might have been a Cornish maid all her life, save for her clear-cut c.o.c.kney, to which not a single western burr adhered. She no longer pined for London; was never sentimental towards eight o'clock; and certainly could not be supposed to exist in an atmosphere of regret. At the same time, she could not be said to have settled down, because her husband was perpetually an intrusion on any final serenity. She could not bear the way he ate, the grit and soil and raggedness of his face; she loathed the grimy scars upon his hands, his smell of corduroy. She hated his mental outlook, his pre-occupation with h.e.l.l, his narrow pride, and lack of humor, his p.r.i.c.king avarice and mean vanity, his moral cowardice and religious bravery, his grossness and cunning and boastfulness and cruelty to animals. She feared the storms that would one day arise between him and his son. She felt even now the clas.h.i.+ng of the two hostile temperaments: already there were signs of future struggles, and it was not just a fancy that young Frank was always peevish at his father's approach.

The equinox sank asleep to an April lullaby. Lambs bleated on the storm-washed air. The ocean plumed itself like a mating bird. Then followed three weeks of gray weather and much restlessness on the part of young Frank, who cried and fumed and was very naughty indeed. What with Frank and the southeast wind and the cold rain, Jenny's nerves suffered, and when May morning broke in a dazzle, she thought it would be a good plan to leave young Frank with Granfa, and in May's company to go for a long walk. May was delighted and together they set out.

They followed the path of the valley past the groves of arbutus, past the emerald meadows down into the sandy waste over which the stream carried little pebbles to the sea, flowing over the wide shallows like a diamonded lattice. They plunged in the towans that never seemed to change with the seasons. They rested in the warm hollows under larksong.

They climbed precipices and ran along ridges, until at last they raced gloriously down a virgin drift out on to the virgin sands on which, a long way off, the waves were breaking in slow curves, above them a film of spray tossed backwards by the breeze blowing from the sh.o.r.e.

Jenny sat in the solitude, making a necklace of wine-stained sh.e.l.ls. She was dressed in some shade of fawn that seemed to be absorbed by these wide flat sands, so that she became smaller and slighter. She wore a silver-gray bonnet set closely round her cheeks in a ruching of ivory.

May was in scarlet and looked, as she lay there in the castness, not much bigger than Jenny's cap of scarlet stockinette, left long ago on the beach at Clacton.

"Hullo, there's somebody coming along the sands. Can you see them?"

asked Jenny.

"A long way off?" inquired May, peering.

"Yes, just a speck--now--where those rocks are. No, you're looking in the wrong place. Much further along," directed Jenny.

"You _can_ see a way," said May.

The figure drew nearer, but was still too far off for them to determine the quality or s.e.x, as they watched the sea-swallows keep ever their distance ahead, swift-circling companies.

"I wonder who it is?" said Jenny.

"I can't ever remember seeing anyone on the beach before," said May.

"Nor can I. It's a man."

"Is it?"

"Or I think so," Jenny added.

"What a line of footmarks there'll be when he's gone past," said May.

"It is a man," Jenny a.s.serted.

Suddenly she went dead white, flushed crimson, whitened again and dropped the half-strung necklace of sh.e.l.ls.

"I believe I know him, too," she murmured.

"Shut up," scoffed May. "Unless it's Fuz?"

"No, it's not him. May, I'd like to be alone when he comes along. Or I don't think I'll stay. Yes, I will. And no, don't go. You stay, too. It _is_ him. It is."

Maurice approached them. He gave much the same impression as on the first night of the ballet of Cupid, when at the end of the court he raised his hat to Jenny and Irene.

"I--I wondered if I should meet you," he said.

His presence was less disturbing to Jenny than his slow advance. She greeted him casually as if she were saluting an acquaintance pa.s.sed every morning:

"Hullo."

Maurice was silent.

"Isn't it a lovely morning?" said Jenny. "This is my sister May."

Maurice raised his cap a second time.

"I wonder," he said, looking intently at Jenny, "I wonder if--if----" he plunged into the rest of the sentence. "Can I speak to you alone a minute?"

"Whatever for?" asked Jenny.

"Oh, I wanted to ask you something."

Jenny debated with herself a moment. Why not? He had no power to move her now. She was able coldly to regard him standing there on the seash.o.r.e, a stranger, no more to her than a piece of driftwood left by the tide.

"I'll catch you up in a minute," she said to May.

"All right, I'll go on. Pleased to have met you," said May, shaking hands shyly with Maurice.

He and Jenny watched her going towards the towans. When she was out of earshot, Maurice burst forth:

"Jenny, Jenny, I've longed for this moment."

"You must have treated yourself very badly then," she answered.

"I did. I----"

"Look," said Jenny sharply. "It's no good for you to start off, because I don't want to listen to _any_thing you say. I don't _want_ to."

"I don't deserve you should," Maurice humbly agreed. "All the same I wish you would."