IV

Two days later Brevis walked in just as morning prayers began and knelt down by Jenny in the yellow sunlight by the window. His hand sought and found hers; and she heard not a word while the Captain gabbled through a chapter and a sulphur-crested cockatoo tamed by Humphrey repeated "Amen" and "Damme" on the veranda until William could bear it no longer. He went out, to be met with such a screeching shower of "Dammes" that every one laughed except Susan, and the Captain shut his book in a hurry and told Brevis that he wanted to ask him a question. But, like all the Captain's questions, it was really an assertion.

"This imbecile notion of the Inspector of Police in Hobarton, Brevis. What d'you think of it, eh? Suggestion that municipalities should introduce local policing, indeed! Damme, I never page 291heard such nonsense. I've stopped it in Trienna District, I'm glad to say."

"I fear you'll be sorry, sir. The country is getting rather past State policing now; and all these small-holders coming in on the back blocks are hand-to-mouth, you know, and not likely to buy sheep and calves while they can steal them off the big runs which muster only at shearing-and branding-time. How many sheep do you think you lose in a year?"

"Well … well … damme, Humphrey says that on Latterdale … But I stick to the old ways, lad. They have been good enough for the colony these sixty years. They'll last my time, I hope. Brevis, did you see that the salmon and trout ova brought out by the Norfolk have acclimatized? Greatest triumph the colony has ever had. Beaten Melbourne and Sydney off the field, eh? The years and years we've been trying acclimatization! And now it's achieved. Not that our own blackfish isn't the best eating in the world, but we've wiped the eye of the other colonies handsomely."

Madam watched them a little sadly as they stood by the open window in the sunlight that showed the snuff on the Captain's tweed waistcoat, the neat slim lines of Brevis's riding-suit. There they stood, her white-haired sanguine young man who would never be old, and this cool rapier-like Brevis with his young disdainful mouth and smouldering reflective eyes. He was old from the beginning, this Brevis whom Jenny loved. If Madam had ever had any doubt of that love, she relinquished it now, seeing Jenny's eyes like radiant moons and the lines of her soft face quivering.

Jenny glanced round; saw Madam's look, and ran off, blushing…. Eh, my Jenny, thought Madam, reaching for the ebony cane she always used now, why won't you tell me? … She went up slowly to her room. Perhaps Brevis had not given Jenny anything to tell? Very possibly. Brevis was intent on a career as other men were intent on other toys. They must have their toys, their dreams, the dear men! But a woman's dreams are of her children's children; her toys are her own strange flesh and blood. Watching from the window Jenny and Brevis going presently down through the long grass of the lower orchard,

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Madam knew potently that the bluff, kindly mate with whom she had lain so many years had never roused in her the passion she had for that wild son she had borne—but Mab always would be a sorrow—or for Jenny dipping like a dandelion puff under the orchard bloom with close-knit Brevis behind her.

In the corner where the myrtles were thick with glossy green and frail white flowers, Brevis stopped and without a word took Jenny in his arms. He held her so long and so hard with his lips on hers that when he released her at last she was as white as he. Dizzily she felt that they could never be free from the passion of that kiss. It was a sacrament more complete than any marriage could be. They looked at each other, their eyes full of that sweet lust. And then they kissed again.

For some time they did not speak in more than broken incoherencies. Then they walked on, with grass pollen, with tiny pink-veined moths, with dusty gold rising about them. Earth's incense burned before her children, Jenny vaguely felt. Pan's music made palpable in showers of early gold. Jenny's spaniel came galloping back to her, looking up with adoring eyes. Then Brevis said unsteadily, "I've been living for this."

Jenny laughed because she must, or she would weep with joy. "You never think of me in town, until I make you."

"How make me?"

"I sit at my window in the night, and I think 'Brevis, Brevis' all across the sleepy paddocks and the hills and in through your door to the room where you sit over your papers. (I wish I could just once be in that room, Brevis.) And there you are with your dark head; and you feel me come, don't you, Brevis?"

"Perhaps I do. God knows I wish you could be there all the time. But listen, my sweet; it's rapture to know that I am working for you," intoxicated by her nearness, he really believed that he was working only for her, "but I must not ask for my reward yet. I have so far to go."

"I am content to wait. No, I'm not. I am very rebellious. Yet I will wait. But, dear heart, can't we tell Grandmamma? She deserves it of me."

"Now, Jenny, you know what would happen then. She'd either put it in all the papers or she would forbid me the house, and I page 293fear the last. But when I can come for you with a name and a position——"

"Oh, boom, boom!" cried Jenny. She marched a few steps, swinging her skirts, making gestures as though she beat a big drum. "Here comes the Conqueror, the Conqueror," she sang. "Make your curtsy, Madam. Captain Comyn, make your bow. Here comes——"

Brevis strode after her, taking her small mischievous face between his hands. "You wicked adorable witch! What am I to do with you!"

But presently he was talking theories at her as he always did. Jenny had few theories herself—only hot beliefs—but Brevis was fond of constructing theories and applying them to the individual and watching them work. If they wouldn't work he discarded them, for he had determined that he would never be weak, never overridden by his own conceit. They sat on the high roots of the weeping willows that the Captain had planted by the river long years before, and watched the fish rise in silver bubbles and the great bright dragon-flies shoot over, and there in the warm spring sunlight full of murmuring life they talked. And if Brevis thought once of wild, life-denied, grey Ellen he would not let her shadow fall upon Jenny's sun.

Jenny, talking very fast, persisted in seeing life so clean, so splendid that no sane man could have possibly borne it. In spite of glowing eyes and parted scarlet lips Brevis told her so. "Think of the dullness if people stopped cheating each other. And I'd have no more work, dear love. Let us be thankful that men are still as they claim God made 'em."

"Don't be cyncical with me, sir. Keep your poses for outsiders. Yes; I know it for a pose." Beside the singing river, under great lime trees full of flower, they walked in an enchanted land. "I thought," said Jenny, awed, "that adventure meant going to new countries. But it means this." She looked at him, her lips trembling and pouted as if she were going to cry. "I can't ever say what I want to, Brevis, but … we are going to make something real out of life, aren't we? You and I together. And in the joy we will forget the pain——"

"What have you to do with pain, you bright-white thing!"

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Again he took his kisses from those warm pouting lips, and in her glad surrender Jenny cried, "Heaven can't mean more, oh, Brevis, Brevis!"

But Brevis looked with strange hot eyes. "Earth will be more yet," he said.

And they walked back together under the blossoming cherry trees, with Brevis thinking of old Grecian lovers on the Carian hills and Jenny thinking of nothing whatever but Brevis.