II

Many years later another Jenny Comyn found Jenny's old diary, and read the following, all blotted and scrawled in faded ink on the yellowing paper. It began boldly:

We are immortal. Before God and man I stand to it that we are immortal.

Then, much more shakily:

Brevis came to me—oh, how shall I write it? I would not speak to him in the day because I was grown too old. So he came to me in the night. He climbed the apple tree that once I climbed down when my pony was ill, and he was into the room and knelt by the bed with his arms round me before I was aware. O God, O God Who made woman and man! And he was whispering, whispering: Why couldn't we be happy in secret, we who could never marry and had loved so long, so long? "Jenny, Jenny, let us have what we can," he was whispering. And I, half awake and my mind running all on Fanny like a clove-pink for sweetness and youth, I cried, "Nothing can give me back the wild freshness of morning. Nothing in all this world, oh my love, my love! Then—I cannot write it—and you may say what you like about Brevis being cold, but, ma foi, he is hot as hell fire and for a space we were both near in it. Jenny, Jenny, are you the fool he said you were to throw away joy? God, dear God, how I stood against him I do not know. It was not me, for I did not want to—I who would have wed him with the other woman looking on and borne his children in the proud knowledge that ours was the true marriage. But Brevis and I are as God and the Law made us. He cannot defy the Law and I cannot defy God.

His hair was wet on his black head in the heat and his face like a strip of the pale moon, and at his voice my heart near fainted in me, And never did I remember that my bed-gown had not even a lace frill, but I hope he did not notice.

So in the end he went, saying that in a few years he would go to Italy and make all clear. In a few years Brevis will still be young, but the treasure of my youth all spent, for so it is with a woman.

So he went back to his room in the New Wing, and I lay in my bed. Wear your panache now before the world, for you have need of it, Jenny Comyn.

Under date of a few nights later comes the next entry:

My hand shakes and I shall write worser than ever. Yet I laugh too, and Gyp on the floor at my feet whines and wants to sleep. And page 348here sit I still between the dawn and candlelight, with the first birds calling through the mists in the bush by the river.

Some hours since, Grandma sent for me when Celeste had prepared her for bed. Never did I see any one who lost so little of dignity in a nightcap. One could not take liberties with her even in her bath. I was uneasy, for I knew she would speak of how Brevis left early the morning after the wedding, and of the good Gamaliel who with his broad hat and broad clothes looked like a full-spread sail in the hall, and of that old Sir Stuart Maclean who has had two wives and would take me as a third, which is much more than any old maid of thirty has a right to expect. Of this Grandmamma reminded me, "You should be grateful, Jenny," she said, "and I have told Sir Stuart that you will be honoured."

"You have taught me to honour grey hairs," said I. "But what when there are none? Though indeed I do not suppose he is much older than Grandpapa, and he still has a few teeth."

"Gamaliel, then," said Grandmamma. "He comes of a good old Quaker family, and Quakers have ever been among our best settlers."

"True," said I. "Nor does he smell so evilly of hides and tallow, when he is away in Launceston." Grandmamma looked hard at that.

"Brevis?" she said. And I knew she would get to him in time, yet like the fool I am I jumped, and she looked harder than ever. Then she melted suddenly. "Dans ton cœur fait-il beau temps, ma mie?" she asked, and her voice so tender that I all but gave in and told. So much she has done and suffered for me and I grieve her so. But how could I tell? She is old, and the old cannot keep secrets. Soon it would be abroad in the land that Brevis has a wife in Italy, and they would give him no less than a dozen children, I'll be bound, and where would his future be then. So I said that I did not care to marry. Grandmamma shook her head.

"Do you think I do not see how it is?" she asked. "Moi qui sais bien la vie? Vois-tu, ckerie. It is that surely Brevis was not good in his youth, as how could he be with those eyes and that temperament? And you have discovered and will not bend. You ask too much, my girl. Men are not saints. Marry him, my pigeon, and let me be glad at last."

What could I say but that I preferred to coiffer St. Catherine, and still Grandmamma kept looking at me with those black little eyes between the cap frills. She did not speak of all she has done for me. Nor could I speak lest I should cry and tell all. "Bien. Then so you shall," she said suddenly, and would make me reach her down a box from the escritoire. So she opened it and took out a lace cap which Charlotte had assuredly bought in Trienna by the look of it. The sort of cap trying to be jaunty that elderly women wear.

"Spinster!" she said, and set it on my head. And turned her face against the chair-wing with its chintz parrots and I knew that she wept. I ran out lest I should cry and tell all.

I ran to the nursery, empty now except that old Nurse (who was Uncle Mab's nurse near fifty years ago) nodded there over the fire. She looked up and saw and she stretched her arms. "Eh, honey dear," she said, and so I went to her arms and cried at last.

Love is a thorn, and yet I would not pluck it from my flesh. With-page 349out courage we are nothing. With courage we lack nothing. May I always have the courage to cherish this sweet thorn.

Pouf! I don't think much of Lottie's taste in caps. It is perhaps right to wear the things now. But Jenny Comyn is going to make her own.