II

It was broad day when he woke, with sunlight pouring in and Brevis standing by the dead fire, looking down on him. Quite page 316the usual immaculate Brevis bathed and brushed and saying in his usual tones: "You'll stay for breakfast? I have ordered ham and eggs."

Mab drew a long breath. So it was all a dream, then? A nightmare. He rubbed his hands over his face and looked again, seeing the new lines on the young man's face, the puffed and reddened eyelids, the twitching hands. No. It was not a dream.

"Won't you go into the bedroom and have a wash?" said Brevis. "Here is the girl to light the fire."

Mab went in silence. He was always a little nervous of Brevis, who knew so much. These young people with their educated certainties which he had never had. He splashed head and neck in the cold water and felt better. Damn the fellow! He'd have to answer to Jenny's uncle about this. He went back to the smell of frizzled ham and the crackling fire and to Brevis pouring tea and drinking it in great gulps.

"Well, Brevis," he said, "this is a bad business. Suppose we try to get to the bottom of it."

"Aren't we there now?"

So that was how he meant to take it? Sneering. On the defensive already. "Tea?" he said. "Milk and sugar?"

"Neither, thanks." Mab drank standing, a strange sensation of defeat creeping over him. Whatever Brevis might do, he would not ask advice or help … or pity, be hanged to him. Mab could appreciate that. Pride. That poor human pride, bitted and martingaled into control, which must not be stripped off Brevis to leave him naked.

"I think you might give me particulars, Brevis. You know … particulars …"

"Oh, certainly." Brevis, flipping out his napkin, glanced at him once. His eyes were strange. Like those of some unknown bird or animal peering out of its lair, its home that one could never get into. "Certainly. It was a civil marriage and perfectly binding. She was Roman Catholic, and so there can be no question of divorce. She is, apparently, alive, but I have not the least intention of finding and claiming her. Anything else you wish to know?"

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"By Heaven!" cried Mab, goaded. "I should think there was! What do you mean to do about Jenny?"

"That is my affair, I think. And hers." Then for a moment his control tottered. He gave a croaking laugh. "This comes of being a gentleman! I am grateful to my father for bringing me up a gentleman——"

"Come, old chap," said Mab, instantly moved. He went round and put his hands on Brevis's shoulders. They were so thin that it felt somehow like touching a quivering watchspring. "Come now."

Brevis looked up. Mab had always admired but never very much liked him. He was too fully the young generation which despises everything, is sure of everything. Brevis was not sure now. His face was all piteous and young. There were tears on his lashes. He said, faltering (how unbelievable it was to hear the assured Brevis Keyes falter), "Need Jenny know?"

"Need she know? What d'you mean?"

"I'll make inquiries. It may be all lies, and then she would only have been hurt for nothing." His look was appealing…. Surely, surely, it said, you wouldn't want Jenny to be hurt for nothing?

"Inquiries?" Mab stood back, staring at him. "Don't you know that you couldn't authenticate inquiries from this distance in less than a year? Possibly two. Possibly never. Is it your intention to make free with her kisses and … and her love until you have authenticated your inquiries?"

"You're hard, Mr. Comyn," said Brevis, cold again, and stretching a steady hand to pour more tea.

"Your father would say the same."

"My father will not know."

Mab drew a deep breath. He had lost his moment and he knew it. He would never get near Brevis now. He thought of this young dangerous Brevis and that courteous old gentleman browsing among his Russia-leather bindings in his old library. But they were the same blood. They must fight it out. He said, "I shall tell him."

"Excellent notion," said Brevis, buttering bread. "And do you know what he would do? Stop my allowance and tell Madam page 318Comyn. And do you know what she would do? Make it public property and marry off Jenny to save her face. She has always hated me, anyway. An excellent notion."

Mab groaned. For all his hot coppers last night, all the anguish of spirit which had led to them, Brevis's calculating clever brain had gone straight to the root of the matter. If there was one way to turn the knife in Jenny's wound it would be that way. "What can we do?" he cried despairingly.

Brevis said nothing. He pretended to eat his breakfast, but Mab noticed that he did not swallow a mouthful. Presently he glanced at the clock. It was the gesture of dismissal, but Mab would not take it. Instead he said weightily: "Jenny must know. And I shall tell her."

Brevis flushed now. "That is my business, I think, Mr. Comyn."

"No," said Mab, getting up and buttoning his coat. It was a relief to be certain of something. "I don't trust you." Or Jenny either, he thought. He felt that no one could be entirely trusted when that old tempest of desire and denial which has blown through human souls down all the ages struck those two together. Brevis seemed about to flame out in a fury; then he suddenly leaned back in his chair.

"It might be best," he said, very wearily, and Mab knew that he had the same doubt of himself … and perhaps of Jenny. "Thank you, Mr. Comyn. I will write to her," he said, not looking up.

"Good-bye," said Mab, brusquely, and went out into the autumn wind smelling of fresh brown leaves, to get a day off from Gamaliel and ride to Clent for the breaking of Jenny's heart.

Oliver was at Clent for a few days, and the house was always the livelier for his suave presence. If he noticed Golly plunging about with the toast and porridge and dribbling sauces (good table-maids were hard to get, with wages so very high) he made no more comment than he did on the empty stables, badly kept fences, thistles and gorse increasing in the paddocks, and all the other troubles which the Captain never saw and William saw at every turn. William complained of many things to his brothers, walking them both off to the pigsties directly Mab arrived. page 319(Jenny was teaching in the school-room and must not be disturbed, Susan had said. And Lottie was getting on splendidly, and the baby a perfect marvel, but Madam hadn't been over to see her yet.)

"Our mother doesn't accept the status of great-grandmother with rapture," said Oliver, switching at a thistle with his cane. "You are responsible for a good deal, you know, Bill."

"I wish our father would allow me to be responsible for more," snapped William, who had been very bitter on the subject of Berkshires crossed with something. "You know how essential purity in breed is, but he would cross with a more prolific strain to get heavier litters. Look here," he said, dragging at his sandy whiskers above a pen of squeaking runts. "Even this lamentable result don't convince him."

"I should call it more pigculiar than lamentable," said Oliver, lightly, and Mab felt a sudden angry disgust at this elegant brother delicately jesting his way through life and never tumbling into any of the bogs of passion which other poor mortals lost their way in. Noll went on: "Pity he don't confine his energies to this sort of thing, though I grant you it's scandalous enough. But he's making a shocking to-do about this new suggestion of income tax. Old Louisa Sorley did not dare let old James see his letter in the Tribune."

But here, most surprisingly, William agreed with the Captain. "I consider it iniquitous that those who have developed the country from virgin bush to its present prosperous state should be mulcted of their rewards."

"Prosperous?" said Mab looking at the old wagon-sheds which needed a fire-stick to 'em, by George. "I thought you just told us Clent hadn't a cent left to throw at a beggar."

"How can we have?" cried William, his pinched parrot mouth twitching. "Transport is prohibitive, and by the time we've hauled our grain and wool to the wharf-side, there is no profit left. If they would only give us railways; or if my father would only allow us to retrench …"

Mab shrugged. Poor Bill, who had retrenchment on the brain and was never able to get it anywhere else. Of course, Mab said, those who had first colonized with a free hand and a be-damned-page 320to-expenditure attitude were bound to go under when it came to the pull devil, pull baker of civilized commercialism. Up and down the country the gay gentlemen adventurers were having their legs pulled from under them by the little folk grubbing about in the soil and finding these straddling colossi in the way. Down they must come, were already coming, with bumps and noisy protests. But those would not save them. "One wonders," he said, rubbing the velvet nose of Vanity's daughter over the gate, "if all this is the natural evolution of a race or a case of devil take the hindmost."

"And here's Richard wanting to go into a town office. An office," complained William, who had made no more plans for Richard's future than the Captain had made for his own sons. "I cannot imagine why."

"Can't you?" said Oliver, dryly. "Perhaps Humphrey could tell you. Well, good luck to young Dick the dandy. I may be able to put something in his way." If he did, would young Dick be grateful? he wondered. It would be very acceptable, a little gratitude in concrete form.

From the gate Mab saw Jenny on the worn path winding through the yellowing paddocks to Bredon. Perhaps she was going to see Charlotte, in her little black-velvet coat and cap with its jaunty orange plume. But because the black spaniel given by Brevis was with her, flapping his long ears as he raced through the tall timothy, it seemed more likely that she purposed a rat-hunt for him in the old huts.

But when he overtook her he found that she had been waiting for him. "Something special brought you down from town," she said. "I knew it the moment I saw you. Come in here." She spoke imperiously; turned imperiously on him in the dark little place. "It's Brevis," she said. "What has happened?"

"He … he's quite well. Not dead or anything, dear." She put that aside with a gesture. She knew that. Apparently she thought the heavens would have fallen to tell her that. "What is it?" she said. "Tell me quickly."

"He … Jenny darling, you must be brave. He has heard that Frasquita is still alive, my dear."

He could not look at her, and for a minute she stood silent, as page 321though she were weighing this, taking it in. Then she laughed contemptuously. "Is that all? Nonsense! I don't believe it."

This was easier. But he had to make her believe it. He went over the details as clearly as he could, with Gyp snuffing round their feet, snuffing round the old 'possum nests in dark corners, and Jenny standing very still with her big bright eyes upon him. But at the end she said again, quite firmly, "I don't believe it."

"Dear maid——"

"Uncle Mab, you don't understand. You can't. If she had been alive I would have known it. I would have known it here." She held her two hands close over her breast. "If that woman was still between us I would have known. Any woman would."

"You—you didn't even know of her existence when you first loved him, did you, dear?"

"Then? Oh," she said, and her faint laugh had a falling cadence that touched his heart. "What was my love then? I hadn't begun to know the meaning of the word then."

"Brevis is afraid——"

"Poor Brevis. I will go to him at once and tell him. It is only a rumour, Uncle Mab. I will make him understand it isn't true." She smiled at him, but he saw that her lips trembled. "Oh, why didn't he come to me himself?" she said piteously.

"He …" Mab felt ashamed. They might have trusted Jenny. But he had in his mind Julia and her wild scenes, and Brevis would have had Frasquita. "He wanted to, but I … I thought it might be easier … You see, he believes it, Jenny dear."

"What does that mean?" she cried, alarmed at last. "Is he … is he going to look for her?"

"No. But he will have inquiries made. You see, he thinks of her as his wife, Jenny dear."

She shut her lips on a sharp cry. She shut her eyes as though meeting a sharp pain. Then she slipped her cold little hand in his. "To-morrow you will take me to Launceston to see him."

"No, dear. I can't do that."

"Then I will go alone. I am going. Now we had better turn back…. Come, Gyp."

He followed her out helplessly. Without doubt Jenny was Madam's granddaughter, and without doubt he had made another page 322mess of things. Far, far better have let them meet here, with all her well-known inhibitions to restrain her. But Jenny in this mood in Brevis's rooms … She mustn't go there, whatever happens, he thought, and knew that she would go there.

Autumn was in the air, and in shady places the log fences were white with rime yet. In the next paddock sheep were munching turnips. Mab heard the click of their little dry hoofs on the hard ground, the sharp grate of their coughing. But still with graceless love abandonment the magpies went calling.

It was pretty sentimental Fanny without any memories who asked Jenny that evening to sing her favourite song. And Jenny sat down to the piano at once, while Mab, by Madam's chair at the far end of the salon, told her that he was taking Jenny to Launceston in the morning. "I want her to see my rooms," he said, and Madam made three stitches on her embroidery frame before replying: "I will not bear this forever, Mabille, and so you may tell Brevis. When Jenny returns I shall know what has happened, and I shall know what to do."

Would she? Almost Mab believed it. Then she knew about Brevis as she knew about himself and Julia. A wonderful woman, his mother: piercing into the privacies of the soul with those keen bright eyes; fighting so long as there were battles to be won, accepting the inevitable but never resigned. He sat back in his chair with a sigh, listening to Jenny singing.

"Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me,"

sang Jenny in her rich mournful voice, and Mab thought on his memories of other days and wondered what his dear maid's were to be.

Brevis's letter came by the mail-coach that night, and Jenny carried it to her room unopened. She locked the door before she read it, then flung it on the floor and ran to the window, leaning far out into the night. It had taken Brevis three hours to write that letter, and Jenny trampled it under her feet as her mind trampled his words. "Wait, he says. I shall find out in time, he says. We must endure suffering as the saints did, he says. Pah! page 323Brevis and his saints! I hate them, weak fools, and so does Brevis, but he does not know what to say. Let us see each other, and our hearts and bodies will know what to say. I shall go to him. I shall go to-morrow."

She flung herself on her knees, her forehead to the edge of the sill. "What is this that has so taken me that wherever I look I see only Brevis? If I were knelt down at God's feet I would see only Brevis. How can I pray to God when he makes Brevis suffer like this? But I will put it right. I will go to him tomorrow."

On a strange high note of defying the universe she went to bed without prayers, in spite of Miss Bean, who had a ghostly habit of recurring in half-sleep like some dim tocsin sounding repentance.