Circumstances made it necessary that before the end of the month May
should inform old Mrs. Trewhella of Jenny's expected baby.
"What did she say?" Jenny inquired when the interview was over.
"She said she thought as much."
"What a liberty. Why? Nobody could tell to look at me. Or I hope not."
"Yes, but her!" commented May. "She's done nothing all her life only
make it her business to know. They're all like that down here. I noticed
that very soon about country people."
"What else did she say?" Jenny went on with for her unusual persistence.
She was not yet able to get rid of the idea that there was something
remarkable in Jenny Pearl going to have a baby. Not even the universal
atmosphere of fecundity which pervaded the farm could make this fact a
whit more ordinary.
"She didn't say much else," related May, not rising to the solemnity of
the announcement, the revolutionary and shattering reality of it.
"But she's going to tell him?" Jenny asked.
"That made her laugh."
"What did?"
"Her having to tell him."
"Why?" demanded Jenny indignantly.
"Well, you know they're funny down here. I tell you they don't think
nothing about having a baby. No more than picking a bunch of roses, you
might say."
This humdrum view of childbirth, although it might have relieved her
self-consciousness, was not at all welcome to Jenny. She could not bring
herself to believe that, when after so many years of speculation on this
very subject, she herself was going to have a baby, the world at large
would remain profoundly indifferent. She remembered how as a child she
had played with dolls, and how in the foggy weeks before Christmas she
had been wont to identify her anticipation with the emotional expectancy
of young motherhood. And now it was actually in the slow process of
happening, this event, happening, too, as far as could be judged,
without any violent or even mildly perceptible transfiguration, mental
or physical. Still it must not be forgotten that Mrs. Trewhella had
divined her condition. By what? Certainly not at present by her form or
complexion.
"I think it's your eyes," said May.
"What's the matter with them now?"
"They look different somehow. Sort of far-away look which you didn't use
to have."
"Shut up," scoffed Jenny, greatly embarrassed.
That evening when, after tea, Jenny leaned against the stone hedge under
a sunset of rosy cumulus, Trewhella came through the garden and faced
her.
"So you and me's going to have a child, missus?"
Jenny resented the assumption of his partnership and gave a cold
affirmative.
"That's a good job," he sighed, staring out into the air stained with
crimson from twilight's approach. "I feel brim pleased about that.
There'll be some fine Harvest Home to Bochyn come September month."
Then from the vagueness of such expressed aspirations Zachary turned to
a practical view of the matter on hand, regarding his wife earnestly as
he might from the support of a gate have looked discriminatingly at a
field of young wheat.
"Is there anything you do want?" he presently inquired.
Perhaps the cool straightness of the question contained a hint of expert
advice, as if for his field he would prescribe phosphates or nitrate or
sulphate of ammonia. There was no suggestion of spiritual needs that
might call out for nourishment under the stress of a new experience.
Jenny felt that she was being sized up with a view to the best practical
conduct of the agitating business.
"I wish you wouldn't talk about me," she protested, "like you talked
about that cow the other day at dinner."
Trewhella looked perplexed. He never seemed able to grasp whether this
sharp-voiced Londoner whom he had married were laughing at him or not.
"I've always heard it spoken," he began slowly. He always proceeded
slowly with a conversation that held a warning of barbed wire, as if by
disregarding the obstacle and by cautious advance any defense could be
broken down.
"I've always heard it spoken that the women do dearly love something or
other at such times. Mother used to tell how before I were born, she
were in a terrible hurry to eat a Cornish Gillyflower. But there wasn't
one tree as bore an apple that year. Irish Peaches? Ess, bushels. No,
that wouldn't do for her. Tom Putts? Sweet Larks? Ess, bushels. No more
wouldn't they serve. Boxers? Sops and Wines? Ess, bushels, and, darn
'ee, they made her retch to look at 'em."
"She'd properly got the pip, hadn't she?" observed Jenny mockingly.
Trewhella saw the wire and made a circuit.
"So I was thinking you might be wanting something as I could get for 'ee
on market-day to Camston."
"No, thanks, there's nothing I want. Not even a penny pomegranate," said
Jenny, who was anxious for Zachary to go. She did not like this attempt
at intimacy. She had not foreseen the alliance of sympathy he presumably
wished to form on account of her child. The more she considered his
claim, the more irrational and impertinent did it seem that he should
dare assume any share in the unborn miracle worked by Jenny Pearl.
Trewhella pulled himself together, still progressing slowly, even
painfully, but braced to snap if necessary every strand of barbed wire
still between him and his object.
"What I were going to say to 'ee was, now that there's this lill baby,
I'd like for 'ee both to go chapel. I've said nothing so far about your
not going; but I daren't run up against the dear Lord's wrath in the
matter of my baby."
"Don't be silly," said Jenny. "How can anything happen to _my_ baby
without its happening to me?"
"Well, I'd like for 'ee to come," Trewhella persisted.
Here was Jenny in a quandary. If she refused, according to her fiery
first impulse, what religious pesterings would follow her round the
garden. How he would drawl in that unnatural manner of speech a lot of
rubbish which had nothing to do with her. He might even take to
preaching in bed. He had once frightened her by demanding in a
sepulchral speculation whether she had ever reflected that the flames of
hell were so hot that there a white-hot poker would be cool as
ice-cream. If on the other hand she submitted to a few hours' boredom,
what an amount of treasured liberty would be sacrificed and what more
intrusive attempts might not be made upon the inviolable egoism.
"But I don't like church and chapel," said Jenny. "It doesn't interest
me."
Then she saw her husband gathering his eloquence for wearisome argument
and decided to compromise--and for Jenny to compromise meant character
in the melting-pot.
"I might come once and again," she said.
Trewhella seemed relieved and, after a moment's awkwardness in which he
gave her the idea that he was on the verge of thanks, departed to his
business.
So, not on the following Sunday, for that would have looked like too
easy a surrender, but on the Sunday after that, Jenny and May went in
the wake of the household to the Free Church--a gaunt square of
whitewashed stone, whose interior smelt of varnish and stale hymn-books
and harmonium dust. The minister, a compound of suspicion, petty
authority and deep-rooted servility, had bicycled from Camston and had
in consequence a rash of mud on his coat. Without much fire, gnawing his
mustache when in need of a word, he gave a dreary political address in
which several modern statesmen were allotted prototypes in Israel. The
mean Staffordshire accent destroyed whatever beauty was left to his
maimed excerpts from Holy Scripture.
"What a terrible man!" whispered Jenny to May.
Presently during the extempore prayers, when the congregation took up
the more comfortable attitude of prayer by bending towards their laps,
Jenny perceived that the eyes of each person were surreptitiously fixed
on her. She could see the prying sparkle through coarse fingers--a
sparkle that was instantly quenched when she faced it. Jenny prodded
May.
"Come on," she whispered fiercely. "I'm going out of this dog's island."
May looked alarmed by the prospect of so conspicuous an exit, but
loyally followed Jenny as they picked their way over what seemed from
their upright position a jumble of corpses. An official, either more
indomitably curious or less anxiously self-repressive than the majority,
hurried after them.
"Feeling slight, are 'ee, missus?" inquired this red-headed farmer.
"No, thanks," said Jenny.
"It do get very hot with that stove come May month. I believe it ought
to be put out. And you're not feeling slight?"
"No, thanks."
The man seemed unwilling to go back inside the chapel; but the two girls
walked quickly away from him down through the deserted village.
After dinner the incident was discussed with some bitterness.
"How did 'ee go out of chapel like that?" asked Trewhella.
"Because I don't go to a chapel or a church neither to be stared at.
It's a game of mine played slow, being stared at by a lot of old crows
like them in there."
Jenny defiantly surveyed Zachary, his mother and old Mr. Champion, while
May murmured encouragement behind her.
"'Tisn't paying any great respect to the dear Lord," said Trewhella.
"Trooping out like a lot of great bullocks! I went so hot as lead."
"'Tisn't paying any great respect to the dear Lord, staring at two women
when you belong praying," said Granfa severely.
"Darn 'ee," said Trewhella savagely. "'Tis nothing to do with you, a
heathen old man as was once seen picking wrinkles off the rocks on a
Sunday morning."
"I believe it is then," said Granfa stoutly. "I believe that it's got a
brae lot to do with me and, darn 'ee, if it hasn't----"
He thumped the table so that all the crockery rattled. This roused Mrs.
Trewhella, who had been blinking in silence.
"Look, see what you're doing, Granfa. You'll scat all the cloam," she
cried shrilly.
Trewhella, having surveyed Jenny's defenses, began his usual slow
advance.
"What nobody here seems to understand is my feelings when I seed my
missus making a mock of holy things."
"Oh, rats!" cried Jenny, flouncing angrily from the room.
Nothing could persuade her to humor Zachary so far as to go to chapel a
second time. It pleased her to contemplate his anxiety for the spiritual
welfare of the unborn child. "I wish you'd wrastle with the devil a bit
more," he said. But she would only set her lips obstinately, and perhaps
under his mother's advice, Zachary gradually allowed the subject to
drop.
Jenny and May went often to the cliffs in the fine weather, mostly to
Crickabella (such was Granfa's name for their favorite slope), where
summer marched by almost visibly. The sea-pinks turned brown, the
sea-campion decayed to an untidy mat of faded leaves and flowers.
Bluebells came up in asparagus-like heads that very soon broke into a
blue mist of perfume. The ferns grew taller every day, and foxgloves
waved right down to the water's edge. On the moorland behind the cliffs,
heather and burnet roses bloomed with azure scabious and white
mothmulleins, ladies' tresses and sweet purple orchids. Here and there
grew solitary columbines, which Jenny thought were lovely and carried
home to Granfa, who called them Blue Men's Caps. Remote from curious
eyes, remote from life itself save in the progress of inanimate things
towards the accomplishment of their destiny, she dreamed unceasingly day
after day amid the hollow sounding of the ocean, watching idly the
metallic green flight of the shags, the timorous adventures of rock
pipits, and sometimes the graces of a seal.
With the advance of summer Jenny began to dread extremely the various
insects and reptiles of the country. It was vain for Thomas to assure
her that apple-bees did not sting without provocation, that eeriwigs
were not prone to attack, that piskies were harmless flutterers and
neither Johnny Jakes nor gram'ma sows actively malicious. These rural
incidents of a wasp on a hat or a woodlouse in a sponge were to her
horrible events which made her tremble in the recollection of them long
afterwards. The state of her health did not tend to allay these terrors,
and because Crickabella was comparatively free from insects, that lonely
green escarpment, flung against the black ramparts of the towering
coast, was more than ever dear to Jenny.
In July, however, she was not able to walk so far as Crickabella, and
was forced to pass all her days in the garden, gazing at the shimmering
line of the hills opposite. Granfa Champion used to spend much time in
her company, and was continually having to be restrained from violent
digging in the heat. During August picture post-cards often arrived
from girls spending their holidays at Margate or Brighton, postcards
that gave no news beyond, "Having a fine old time. Hope you're alright,"
but, inasmuch as they showed that there was still a thought of Jenny in
the great world outside, very welcome.
August dragged on with parched days, and cold twilights murmurous with
the first rustle of autumn. Jenny began to work herself up into a state
of nervous apprehension, brooding over childbirth, its pain and secrecy
of purpose and ultimate responsibilities. She could no longer tolerate
the comments passed upon her by Mrs. Trewhella nor the furtive
inquisitiveness of Zachary. She gave up sitting at dinner with the rest
of the household, and was humored in this fad more perhaps from policy
than any consideration of affection. The only pleasure of these hot
insufferable days of waiting was the knowledge that Zachary was banished
from her room, that once more, as of old, May would sleep beside her.
There was a new experience from the revival of the partnership because
now, unlike the old theater days, Jenny would often be the first in bed
and able to lie there watching in the candlelight May's shadow glance
hugely about the irregular ceiling, like Valerie's shadow long since in
the Glasgow bedroom. Where was Valerie now? But where was anybody in her
history? Ghosts, every one of them, where she was concerned.