II

After some weeks in her room Jenny was rather surprised to find her tremendous sense of relief still upholding her. That individual Me which she had first found in the kangaroo-clearing, and which Mr. Paige had almost obliterated, had returned with such glorious shouts of freedom that she often held high revels with it up there in the dark. Interviews with William or Susan only made it freer, and she was ashamed to remember afterward that it had made the long nose at Mr. Paige. Now that she was no longer afraid of him … Dieu! but he was funny! Yet she never went to Madam except reluctantly, for it is hard to fight those one loves even though at times one must love oneself better.

"For what, then, have I educated and considered you?" demanded Madam, stately in her high chair, and Jenny, a little white and shaky, answered:

"I cannot marry Mr. Paige. He is canaille."

"Gracious Heaven!" cried Madam, gripping her delicate hands until the rings and pointed nails hurt her. "Do you perhaps imagine that you know more of gentlemen than I?"

"Mr. Paige isn't a gentleman," persisted Jenny.

Because Madam knew that now, she was the more angry. Speech with le gros Paige left a sour taste au bouche. But he was a bon parti and she had chosen him. She cried: "Are you not my granddaughter? Do you not owe me obedience?"

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Jenny never could cry when tears might have been useful. She said helplessly: 'I am very sorry. I cannot marry that man."

"Eh bien." Madam reached for her embroidery frame. "I wash my hands of you. For many years I have depleted myself that you might have advantages. Wasted effort! You may go."

They were burning gorse and bracken on the low hills when Mab rode up to Clent and stopped to speak of Jenny to William, who stood watching him in the red glare with the columns of harsh-scented smoke eddying round him. He left William shocked and pulling at his sandy whiskers and went on to attack Madam, which was a harder job because they loved each other. But he did not mince words. "Marry Jenny as Julia was married," he said, "and you'll get a worse tragedy. Jenny was your blood and she'll go to the devil. And I'll help her."

"I marvel that you have the face to speak of Julia to me who knows what happened there," retorted Madam, very erect.

"Because you know, I am telling you that it will happen again. How would you like to be browbeaten yourself, maman? Gad! no one likes it, except such things as Susan, and they haven't the wit to know what they like."

"Jenny must marry."

"Multiply and replenish the earth, eh? Not with Paige."

"You have grown coarse, Mabille. You do not pleasure me."

"I am not here to pleasure you. My heavens!" he cried, switching about Madam's dignified furniture with his riding-whip. "Can't you see, you who have so much imagination? Can't you see how much farther she'll go, given her head, than if you couple her up with that dolt who'll never lift his nose from the manger except to nuzzle her?"

"A young girl cannot go far alone," said Madam, considering this.

"She'll have both of us behind her."

"And what can you do?"

"I'll show you, if you can persuade Bill to let Jenny out of that room. She won't be improved by losing all her colour and spirit."

"if I can persuade Guillaume? Is he, then, grand seigneur? If I pardon Jenny, I think we shall hear no more of Guillaume."

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"Touché," thought Mab content. He stooped to kiss her cheek, soft with the softness of age. "Egad, maman! Where would the Comyns stand now if you had been a man!"

At sixty Madam, who had begun life at fourteen, was no longer very young. She leaned her head against Mab's arm. "Life is too harsh. And you are harsh. But one lives down everything, including death. Our petite must marry, Mabille."

"Not unless she wants to."

"Mon Dieu, my son! Do we ever get what we want?" She looked up at him sadly. So much she had wanted for this big splendid child of hers, driven here and there by his passions. The cunning of love moved her. She drew his face down to hers. "Let us work for our little Jenny, Mab … together."

So, as a bone to placate dignity, it was settled that Jenny should go for a time to Lovely Corners, as a continued punishment. Susan, still upset about the trousseau and the fact that Jenny had four younger sisters and might have more (for you never could tell), reluctantly became William's mouthpiece again, requesting that the said punishment should not extend to bread and water nor solitary confinement. "Then where do the punishment come in?" demanded Mrs. Merrick, peering out of her black shawls. Susan looked round the fusty crowded room where her girlhood had so suffered, where Ellen's womanhood was so suffering, and said nothing. William had not told her the answer to that.