III

In the dim light Joe Merrick pottered about the yard as usual, bedding down the old cob, turning out the cows, and carrying the milk cans on a yoke to the kitchen door where a blowzy maid received them sulkily. He said nothing. He rarely did. But to-night he was thinking more than usual, for he had driven cattle into Trienna that day and had there heard the most surprisin' talk about Jenny and the lawyer chap, Brevis Keyes.

He fumbled the matter in his slow brain all the way home and all through the evening work with the animals in the yard; but page 368he had come to no decision about it when he went at last into the room with the stuffy air and the oil-lamp of yellowish glass on the coarse table-cloth, and began to take his way heavily through plates of cold meat and hunks of cheese washed down with cups of milkless tea.

Sometimes he stopped, his jaws moving slowly, to stare at her. A queer thing to have happened to pretty, lively Jenny, who was pretty and lively still although her eyes had grown so large and her pointed face so thin. He hoped it wouldn't make her queer like Ellen. This love! And how the fellers had the nerve. He'd never had the nerve for anything like that…. Sent her over here because they was ashamed of her, did they? he thought with the grumbling resentment rising in him…. That's Lottie, I'll be bound. I'll tell her she's welcome here as long as she likes to stay. Ah, more than welcome.

Jenny, sitting between them, chattered and laughed. There was cherry-pie out in the garden, white moths in the apple trees, and Ellen was going to take her with her on her tryst to-night. The spirit of adventure was strong in Jenny still, although she would never have dared go right up there in the bush alone after dark. But it would be gay to do it with Ellen, who got so much more fun out of her old love-affair than ever Jenny had done. Ellen, up in the bedroom, was very fussy and nervous. Her bony fingers shook as she tied her sandal strings, and under the pink Pamela bonnet the hollows in her cheeks were dark.

"You know how it is, Jenny. Gentlemen are naughty creatures and young ladies must not make themselves too cheap. That is why I need a chaperon when I go to meet Orlando. Put on a dark cloak, Jenny, and cover your hair. It is not necessary for him to notice you specially, but one sometimes requires the moral effect."

With gaunt body swaying the huge crinoline, with her pack of tragic fancies and her giggle, Ellen went down the stair and into the yard with Jenny following. It was very quiet in the yard; very quiet on the opposite tussocky hill. An owl hooted up in the dim bush topping it under the quiet stars, and Ellen whispered, "That's Orlando."

It seemed likely. A very suitable signal. Jenny began to laugh. page 369She had dressed Ellen so often for this that the affair had long since lost its strangeness; and adventure was entering into her and the soft chattering mystery of the river through the night.

"Hush," whispered Ellen. "We must wait till he calls again."

She minced off down the yard into the shadow of the hayrick, and Joe came lumbering up to take Jenny by the arm.

"Jenny," he said hoarsely. "I want to tell yer that you're welcome here as long as yer likes to stay."

"Thank you, Uncle Joe," said Jenny, wondering a little and watching the peahens mincing off to roost. They looked so exactly like Aunt Ellen.

"Even if they're ashamed to have yer at Clent any more, I'll be good to yer, Jenny."

"What?" She turned quickly, staring up at him. His loose lower lip hung down in the grey beard, and without his glasses his pale eyes were anxious and kindly. "I don't know what you mean, Uncle Joe."

"Yes, you know, Jenny. What they're sayin' all over town about you lettin' that Keyes chap make too free wi' yer … same as Snow did wi' yer aunt. I don't unnerstand you women … but there it is. You know."

Jenny stood dumb. She was not conscious of her body, of herself. She thought of Brevis. If this should harm Brevis!

"You know," repeated Joe. "Too free. But he had orter married yer, Jenny dear. It were diff'runt wi' Snow. But I'll allers be good to yer, Jenny. Don't forget that."

His heavy tread went rustling off over the hay the young calves had pulled from the rick, but still Jenny stood unmoving. She did not seem able to get beyond her terror for Brevis. Of course Uncle Joe had got it all mixed, and people would be talking of Frasquita and Brevis. That meant that she was here, and what would people be saying of Brevis? Undoubtedly he had posed as a bachelor all these years. Undoubtedly every one had once thought him engaged to Jenny. And here he was, the great Brevis Keyes, soon to be Prosecuting Attorney for the Crown, with a judgeship when he chose to take it … here he would be confronted by a Frasquita. Brevis would be laughed at, sneered at, belittled. She saw him fighting it; his face still page 370carrying its ironic smile but all his proud sensitiveness bleeding.

"Oh, I must go to him," she thought wildly; found her feet moving, and stopped. That only would make it worse. Her name was mixed in it already. … If he wants me he'll come to me, she thought, taking to herself the forlorn comfort of all the waiting women of the world.

"Jenny, Jenny. Are you deaf?" Ellen was shaking her arm. "I've screamed and screamed at you. Orlando has called three times and he will be gone if we don't hurry." She picked up her crinoline and ran off under the tilted shafts of the dray, past the pigsty and out through the gate on to the hill. Her lean legs in their white stockings twinkled in the dusk, and Jenny ran after her because any motion was better than keeping still.

Up the slippery dried grass of the hill Ellen ran fast, moths rising round her in faint points of light through the gloom, and a domestic hen bouncing out of a near-by gorse bush with a noise like a cracker. Jenny smelt the nutty odour of the gorse as she passed, and the good smell of the grass and of the gum trees scattered on the hill, each communing with his own shadow where the moon, just slipping over the hilltop, touched them. The sound of a horse cropping grass somewhere was very loud, and the breath of the bush meeting them tasted like wine.

At the top was a small kangaroo-clearing sunk in a hush of thick trees, and here the owl (or Orlando) called again. "Keep back," said Ellen, imperiously, and Jenny sank down in the long grass. She tried to think, but her heart was thumping, her head whirling. She lay flat, watching Ellen reeling out like a wrecked ship into the clearing.

As the moon rose, the shadows of the trees flitted silently like phantoms. The place had a phantom silence which Ellen's cracked singing in the shadows, in the moonlight did not break. There was a curious immobility in these few light clouds above the moon. Jenny thought, They are listening to everybody laughing at Brevis…. And suddenly she began to cry as she had not cried for many years.

Ellen, sidling like a crab about the clearing, was talking melodrama after the best models of kitchen literature. "I wonder, sir, that you will still molest me. May not a poor maid come out to page 371take the air but some bold fellow intercepts her? No, fair sir, I am not for such as you. There is another."

She came over suddenly and sat down by Jenny. "I flirt with them all. One does, you know," she said in her usual tones. "But my Snow is the only one I really care for."

Until Joe's revelation Jenny had classed Snow with Orlando and Sir Walter Raleigh among Ellen's wild fancies. Now she suddenly remembered, suddenly understood. She rubbed the tears from her eyes and looked at Ellen. There she sat, the wrecked ship with the grotesque figurehead, the yellow strings of naked neck like a harp. There she sat, her blue tarlatan taken by the night which takes so much, so that Jenny saw only her starved hands and face, her pink-and-white shepherdess fan. Suddenly she was terrified…. Oh, Brevis, Brevis, she thought…. Don't leave me to get like this! Don't leave me!

"There's Sir Walter back among the honeysuckles," said Ellen. "Ah, sir, I see you. I see you." She went off, her gauzy streamers and scarfs fluttering, and Jenny got up and walked out to the edge of the hill. It was necessary to get hold of herself somehow; stop this crying that was shaking her.

Far down across the slip of river like a dinner knife Trienna church and its graveyard stood on the hill like a heap of little white stones. Quietly, confidently those small decorous lozenges above the cracked cups and bottles full of cottagey flowers would be telling the moon: I am Lucy, wife of Jonathan Bolders. I am Sarah, the beloved wife … Mary, dearly beloved wife … Deborah … Back through all the marching ages, while honey-suckle bloomed and lily petals fell and the great seas went round the world, dead women told the living, accenting with dignity their state: I am Fulvia, a Roman matron…. Heracles the Greek, loving me more than life, raised for me this tomb. … Even in pale old Egypt: I am Nerfertis, wife …

Back in the clearing Ellen was laughing. The night turned and sighed, knowing all the long, half-human mystery of earth and grass and trees, the long, pitiful, gay history of human life. Mab came up over the shadowy hill and took Jenny in his arms.

At first she could not speak for the beating of her heart. Then: "Frasquita?" she whispered.

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"Lord, no!" said Mab. Then he held her off, trying to see her face. "What made you think of her? What have you heard, Jenny?"

"Uncle Joe told me people were saying things. I thought he meant Frasquita. You're sure she isn't found?"

"Sure as death. Jenny, old Gamaliel still wants to marry you. I think you'd better let him."

Jenny's mind brushed past Gamaliel. "What about Brevis? Tell me. Tell me. Has anything been said that can hurt him?"

"No. I wish it had been. It's you who are hurt, dear maid. D'you think that kind of talk can hurt a man? He'd laugh at it."

"But when … Uncle Mab, I don't understand. Are people saying that Brevis and I are … had …"she began to laugh shakily," had illicit relations? Is that it? Well, when Brevis makes it clear, I'm so afraid he'll explain about Frasquita."

"You needn't be. He won't explain anything. Jenny, can't you think of yourself a minute? Brevis is all right. He'll get a little added glory, perhaps. But … but things have been so close between you for so long. It won't be easy to explain it away. In fact … oh, my darling," said Mab, brokenly, "if you knew as much of the world as we do, you'd know it's one of the things that can't be cleared up. Once a damnable story like that gets going it's impossible to stop it. But if you'll marry Gamaliel…"

"You … you mean that everybody thinks that of me!" said Jenny, quivering.

"A good many do, I'm afraid. Damn fools."

She was silent. He stroked her hair, murmuring tender words. "Wear your panache, Jenny Comyn. Dear maid …"

Ellen's tryst was over. She had gone home down the hill. Far off in the river frogs were calling, but on the hilltop it was very silent, very still.

"Brevis says you might as well have had your years of happiness together, since it ends in this just the same,"Mab told Jenny. "People would—"

"Oh, people!" Suddenly that indestructible something in Jenny began to bubble and laugh. "And I did so think I was not being conspicuous. Oh dear! Poor Mamma! Poor Lottie! Oh, Uncle Mab, what a thing to happen in poor Lottie's family!"

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