Trewhella spent in Cornwall the fortnight during which Jenny insisted on
dancing out her contract with the Orient. The withdrawal, ostensibly to
prepare his mother for the wife's arrival, was a wise move on his part,
for Jenny was left merely with the contemplation of marriage as an
abstract condition of existence undismayed by the presence of a future
husband whom she did not regard with any affection. She did not announce
her decision to the girls in the theater until the night before her
departure. At once ensued a chorus of surprise, encouragement,
speculation and good wishes.
"If I don't like Cornwall," Jenny declared, "I shall jolly soon come
back to dear old London. Don't you worry yourselves."
"Write to us, Jenny," the girls begged.
"Rather."
"And mind you come and see us first time you get to London."
"Of course I shall," she promised and, perhaps to avoid tears, ran
quickly down the court, with her box of grease paints underneath her
arm.
"Good luck," cried all the girls, waving farewell in silhouette against
the dull orange opening of the stage door.
"See you soon," she called back over her shoulder. "Good-bye, all."
Another chorus of good-byes traveled in pursuit along the darkness as,
leaving behind her a legend of mirth, an echo of laughter, she vanished
round the corner.
Jenny and Trewhella were married next morning in a shadowy old church
from whose gloom the priest emerged like a spectre. She was seized with
a desire to laugh when she found herself kneeling beside Trewhella. She
fell to wondering how May was looking behind her, and wished, when the
moment came for her father to give her away, that he would not clip his
tongue between his teeth, as if he were engaged on a delicate piece of
joinery. Mr. Corin, too, kept up a continuous grunting and, when through
the pervading silence of the dark edifice any noise echoed, she dreaded
the rustle of Aunt Mabel's uninvited approach. It did not take so long
to be married as to be buried, and the ceremony was concluded sooner
than she expected. In the registry she blushed over the inscription of
her name, and let fall a large blot like a halo above her spinsterhood.
Luckily there was no time for jests and banqueting as, in order to
arrive in Cornwall that night, it was necessary to catch the midday
train from Paddington. Jenny looked very small beneath the station's
great arch of dingy glass, and was impressed by the slow solemnity of
Paddington, so different from the hysteria of Waterloo and frosty fog of
Euston. Trewhella, leaning on his blackthorn, talked to their father and
Mr. Corin, while the two girls ensconced themselves in the compartment.
"Take your seats," an official cried, and when Trewhella had got in, Mr.
Raeburn occupied the window with his last words.
"Well, I sha'n't go down to the shop to-day, not now. Let's have a line
to say you've arrived all safe. You know my address after I clear out of
Hagworth Street."
"So long, dad," said Jenny awkwardly. Neither she nor May had ever
within memory kissed their father, but on this last opportunity for
demonstrative piety they compromised with sentiment so far as each to
blow him a kiss when the train began to move, and in token of goodwill
to let for a little while a handkerchief flutter from the window.
There was no one else in the carriage besides themselves, and in the
stronger light that suddenly succeeds a train's freedom from stationary
dimness, Jenny thought how lonely they must look. To be sure, May's
company was a slight solace, but that could neither ease the constraint
of her attitude towards Trewhella nor remove the sense of imprisonment
created by his proximity. It was a new experience for her to be
compelled to meet a man at a disadvantage, although as yet the nearness
of freedom prevented the complete realization of oppression. Trewhella
himself seemed content to sit watching her, proud in the consciousness
of a legalized property.
So the green miles rolled by until the naked downs of Wiltshire first
hinted of a strange country, and in a view of them through the window
Trewhella seemed to gather from their rounded solitudes strength,
tasting already, as it were, the tang of the Cornish air.
"Well, my lovely, what do 'ee think of it all?"
"It's nice, I like it," replied Jenny.
Conversation faltered in the impossibility of discussing anything with
Trewhella, or even in his presence. Jenny turned her mind to the moment
of first addressing him as Zachary or Zack. She could not bring herself
to mouth this absurd name without an inward blush. She began to worry
over this problem of outward behavior, while the unusual initial twisted
itself into an arabesque at once laughable and alarming. And she was
Mrs. Z. Trewhella. Jenny began to scrabble on the pane filmed with smoke
the fantastic initial. As for Jenny Trewhella, madness would have to
help the signature of such an inapposite conjunction. Then, in a
pretense of reading, she began to study her husband's countenance, and
with the progress of contemplation to persuade herself of his unreality.
Sometimes he would make a movement or hazard a remark, and she, waking
with a start to his existence, would ponder distastefully the rusted
neck, the hands like lizard skin, and the lack luster nails frayed by
agriculture.
The train was rocking through the flooded meads of Somerset in a
desolation of silver, and the length of the journey was already heavy
on Jenny's mind. She had not traveled so far since she was swept on to
the freedom of Glasgow and Dublin. Now, with every mile nearer to the
west, her bondage became more imminent. Trewhella loomed large in the
narrow compartment as Teignmouth was left behind. They seemed to be
traveling even beyond the sea itself, and Jenny was frightened when she
saw it lapping the permanent way as they plunged in and out of the
hot-colored Devonshire cliffs. Exeter with its many small gardens and
populated back windows cheered her, and Plymouth, gray though it was,
held a thought of London. Soon, however, they swung round the curve of
the Albert Bridge over the Tamar and out of Devon. Sadly she watched the
Hamoaze vanish.
"Cornwall at last," said Trewhella, with a sigh of satisfaction. "'Tis a
handsome place, Plymouth, but I do dearly love to leave it behind me."
The heavy November twilight caught them as the train roared through the
Bobmin valley past hillsides stained with dead bracken--like iron mold,
Jenny thought. St. Austell shone white in the aquamarine dusk, and
darkness wrapped the dreary country beyond Truro. Every station now
seemed crowded with figures, whose unfamiliar speech had a melancholy
effect upon the girls in inverse ratio to the exhilaration it produced
in Trewhella. Jenny thought how little she knew of her destination: in
fact without May's company she might as well be dead--into such an abyss
of strange gloom was she being more deeply plunged with every mile.
Trewhella, as if in reply to her thoughts, began to talk of Trewinnard.
"Next station's ours," he said. "And then there's a seven-mile drive; so
we sha'n't get home along much before half-past eight."
"Fancy, seven miles," said Jenny.
"Long seven mile, 'tis, too," he added. "And a nasty old road on a dark
night. Come, we'll set out our passels."
It was like action in a dream to reach down from the rack various
parcels and boxes, to fold up cloaks and collect umbrellas. Jenny
watched from the window for the twinkle of town lights heralding their
stopping-place, but without any preliminary illumination the train
pulled up at Nantivet Road.
"Here we are," shouted Trewhella, and as the girls stood with frightened
eyes in the dull and tremulous light of the platform, he seemed fresh
from a triumphant abduction. The luggage lay stacked in a gray pile with
ghostly uncertain outlines. The train, wearing no longer any familiar
look of London, puffed slowly on to some farther exile, its sombre bulk
checkered with golden squares, the engine flying a pennant of sparks as
it swung round into a cutting whence the sound of its emerging died away
on the darkness in a hollow moan. The stillness of the deep November
night was now profound, merely broken by the rasp of a trunk across the
platform and the punctuated stamping of a horse's hoof on the wet road.
"That's Carver," said Trewhella, as the three of them, their tickets
delivered to a shadowy figure, walked in the direction of the sound.
"Carver?" repeated Jenny.
"My old mare."
The lamps of the farm cart dazzled the vision as they stood watching the
luggage piled up behind. To the girls the cart seemed enormous; the mare
of mammoth size. The small boy who had driven to meet them looked like a
gnome perched upon the towering vehicle, and by his smallness confirmed
the impression of hugeness.
"Well, boy Thomas," said his master in greeting.
"Mr. Trewhella!"
"Here's missus come down."
"Mrs. Trewhella!" said the boy in shy welcome.
"And her sister, Miss Raeburn," added the farmer.
Jenny looked wistfully at May as if she envied her the introduction with
its commemoration of Islington.
"Now, come," said Zachary, "leave me give 'ee a hand up."
He lifted May and set her down on the seat. Then he turned to his wife.
"Come, my dear, leave me put 'ee up."
"I'd rather get in by myself," she answered.
But Trewhella caught her in his arms and, with a kiss, deposited her
beside May. Thomas was stowed away among the luggage at the back; the
farmer himself got in, shook up Carver, and with a good night to the
porter set out with his bride to Bochyn.
The darkness was immense: the loneliness supreme. At first the road lay
through an open stretch of flat boggy grassland, where stagnant pools of
water glimmered with the light of the cart lamps as the vehicle shambled
by. After a mile or so they dipped down between high hedges and
overarching trees that gave more response to their lights than the open
country, whose incommensurable blackness swallowed up their jigging,
feeble illumination.
"It smells like the inside of a flower-shop, doesn't it?" said May. "You
know, sort of bathroom smell. It must be glorious in the daytime."
"Yes, 'tis grand in summer time, sure enough," Trewhella agreed.
The declivity became more precipitous, and the farmer pulled up.
"Get down, you, boy Thomas, and lead Carver."
Thomas scrambled out, and with a loud "whoa" caught hold of the reins.
"It's like the first scene of a panto. You know, demons and all," said
Jenny.
Indeed, Thomas, with his orange-like head and disproportionately small
body, leading the great mare, whose breath hung in fumes upon the murky
air, had a scarcely human look. At the walking pace May was able to
distinguish ferns in the grass banks and pointed them out to Jenny, who,
however, was feeling anxious as in the steep descent the horse from time
to time slipped on a loose stone. Down they went, down and down through
the moisture and lush fernery. Presently they came to level ground and
the gurgle of running water. Trewhella pulled up for Thomas to clamber
in again. Beyond the rays of their lamps, appeared the outline of a
house.
"Is this a place?" Jenny asked.
"'Tis Tiddlywits," Trewhella answered. "Or belonged to be rather, for
there's nothing left of it now but a few mud walls. A wisht old place,
'tis."
On restarting, they splashed through a stream that flowed across the
road.
"Oo-er," cried Jenny, "take care, we're in the water."
Trewhella laughed loudly, and a moorhen waking in sudden panic rose with
a shrill cry from a belt of rushes.
"Oo-er, I'm getting frightened," said Jenny. "Put me down. Oh, May, I
wish we hadn't come."
Trewhella laughed louder than before. The wish appealed in its futility
to his humor.
Now came a slow pull up an equally deep lane, followed at the summit by
another stretch of open country very wild. Suddenly the mare swerved
violently. Jenny screamed. A long shape leaned over them in menace.
"Ah, look! Oh, no! I want to go back," she cried.
"Steady, you devil," growled Trewhella to the horse. "'Tis nothing, my
dear, nothing only an old stone cross."
"It gave me a shocking turn," said Jenny.
"It made _me_ feel rather funny," said May. "You know, all over like."
The girls shivered, and the cart jogged on across the waste. They passed
a skewbald sign-post crowded with unfamiliar goblin names, and a dry
tree from which once depended, Trewhella assured them, the bodies of
three notorious smugglers. One of the carriage candles proved too short
to sustain the double journey and presently flickered out gradually, so
that the darkness on one side seemed actually to advance upon them.
After a long interval of silence Trewhella pulled up with a jerk.
"Listen," he commanded.
"Oh, what is it?" asked Jenny, with visions of a murderer's approach. On
a remote road sounded the trot of horses' hoofs miles away.
"Somebody coming after us," she gasped, clutching May's sleeve.
"No, that's a cart; but listen, can't you hear the sea?"
Ahead of them in the thick night like the singing of a kettle sounded
the interminable ocean.
"Wind's getting up, I believe," said Trewhella. "There's an ugly smell
in the air. Dirty weather, I suppose, dirty weather," he half chanted to
himself, whipping up the mare.
Soon, indeed, with a wide sigh that filled the waste of darkness, the
wind began to blow, setting all the withered rushes and stunted gorse
bushes hissing and lisping. The effort, however, was momentary; and
presently the gust died away in a calm almost profounder than before.
After another two miles of puddles and darkness, the heavy air was
tempered with an unwonted freshness. The farmer again pulled up.
"Now you can hark to it clear enough," he said.
Down below boomed a slow monotone of breakers on a long flat beach.
"That's Trewinnard Sands, and when the sea do call there so plain, it
means dirty weather, sure enough. And here's Trewinnard Churchtown, and
down along a bit of the way is Bochyn."
A splash of light from a dozen cottages showed a squat church surrounded
by clumps of shorn pine trees. The road did not improve as they drew
clear of the village, and it was a relief after the jolting in and out
of ruts to turn aside through a white gate, and even to crunch along
over a quarter of a mile of rough stones through two more gates until
they reached the softness of farmyard mud. As they pulled up for the
last time, between trimmed hedges of escallonia a low garden gate was
visible; and against the golden stream suffused by a slanting door, the
black silhouette of a woman's figure, with hand held up to shade her
eyes.
"Here we are, mother," Trewhella called out. Then he lifted down the two
girls, and together they walked up a flagged path towards the light.
Jenny blinked in the dazzle of the room's interior. Old Mrs. Trewhella
stared critically at the sisters.
"Yon's a wisht-looking maid," she said sharply to her son, with a glance
at May.
"Oh, they're both tired," he answered gruffly.
"And what do 'ee think of Cornwall, my dear?" asked the old woman,
turning to the bride.
"I think it's very dark," said Jenny.