IV

Golly, the faithful friend of a lifetime, always jolting the heavy Chrissy into action, always putting her shoulder to extra wheels, had been spirited away by fat old Alsode Fremp. Pan piped from the woods, and the ancient nymph went dancing, pirouetting to a fresh servitude. So all that year and round into the next page 411autumn Jenny was rising early, and on this morning the pump was stiff with frost and the skimmer creaked at the half-frozen cream when she drew it round the pan. Golly had not been replaced because Charlotte thought "a certain amount of light work very good for Jenny, and Judge Keyes can always come to Bredon if she finds him too much for her now."

"Damn Lottie," said Jenny, working at the pump, and stopping for breath. But there was a robin with his breast blood-red up on the wall-top, and the walnut trees smelled clear and clean, and there were the rooks teaching the young ones to fly. Disgruntled Chrissy, clop-clopping about the yard (where the stones had worn unevenly as though they knew where the child Jenny had lightly run, where the Captain had trudged with his heavy bag of duck from the marshes), called Jenny to breakfast, and Mab was waiting in the red morning sun, very jovial. And there were two letters for Jenny, and a telegram.

"About the new iron for the pigsties, I suppose," said Jenny, opening it.

She remembered afterwards that Mab had been sitting at the table like the great bronze figurehead of a ship, that the porridge was in the blue bowl she had tried to find for the cream, and she didn't like the cream in that pink jug. She was still thinking of the pink jug as she went into the hall and rang up Charlotte. Charlotte, hearing Jenny's voice as she sat at breakfast, told Mark that it was just as she thought, and he shouldn't have put the telephone in at Clent three months ago.

"Here's Jenny always wanting something…. What is it? What?"

Could Jenny (she asked it very composedly) have the car at once, please Lottie? She wanted to go to Hobart. Brevis was ill.

"Well" said Lottie to Mark (she had just presence of mind to put her hand over the mouthpiece). "What do you think of that, I'd like to know!"

Mark thought that Jenny had better have the car.

"I'll be over in ten minutes," cried Charlotte into the mouth-piece; "and then we can just catch the nine-forty-five at Milton, Mark says."

Jenny's voice came back very clear, and Charlotte could tell page 412that she was looking just like Grandma. "No need for you to come. I'll have Uncle Mab. Thanks about the car."

Jenny put up the receiver and Charlotte hurried Patty upstairs to look for a hat that was not too gay. "Of course he's dying, though I won't suggest it to him. I'll wear my brown silk and turn in the tartan trimming at the neck."

Charlotte knew that she had not been so excited in years. Now she would at last get to the bottom of the mystery, for people always spoke the truth on their deathbeds and not wild horses should keep her out of the room. Besides, it was only right for the protection of Jenny's name that she should be there, and as for her not going to Hobart, Charlotte would like to see Jenny prevent her.

Jenny did not try, but Mab did. Charlotte said: "She needs a woman with her. You don't understand, Uncle Mab. Let me see the telegram." Jeffson (who was Brevis's man) briefly informed Miss Comyn that the judge had had a seizure and wanted her. It added that the sooner she came the better.

"Oh, hurry, hurry, Atkins!" cried Charlotte to the chauffeur, her heavy black veil which had done duty at many funerals blowing across Mab's face. But Jenny sat looking like Madam, and never said a word. Jenny, thought Mab, defying the civilizations and the centuries, defying disaster abroad in the frosty air where hawks sheered in the thin blue … little Jenny who had been so set apart from life….

The nine-forty-five rattled them at last down through the apple orchards of the Bagdad Valley. Red and yellow globes of light still loaded the trees, and carts stood under them, and girls in sunbonnets picking. There were glints from tin pails; and, later on, glints from the sea at Bridgewater Ferry. Charlotte, after trying unsuccessfully to comfort a Jenny who did not appear to need comfort—perhaps she had never really loved him, after all—thought that there was sure to be a public funeral and certainly splendid obituary notices for Brevis. England might even mention him in The Times. And Jenny, of course, would insist on going to the funeral in the first mourning carriage, supported by Charlotte. Brevis (how surprising when one thought of it!) had no relations. A lonely tower he had risen and stood above page 413Tasmania. A lonely tower he would fall. Unless, indeed, there had been a secret marriage. Oh, the glorious limelight that would fall then on Jenny, sitting so quiet that Lottie could have pinched her! The limelight that would fall upon them all!