Jenny and Castleton followed the course of the stream along the valley
towards Bochyn. The bracken was a vivid brown upon the hillsides; the
gorse was splashed with unusual gold even for Cornwall; lapwings cried,
wheeling over the head of the ploughman ploughing the moist rich earth;
a flight of wild duck came unerringly down the valley, settling with a
great splash in the blue and green marsh.
Trewhella met them, stepping suddenly out from a grove of arbutus trees,
a thunderous figure.
"What do 'ee mean?" he roared. "What do 'ee mean by carrying my missus
off for wagging tongues? Damn ye, you great overgrown Cockney, damn ye,
what do 'ee mean to come sparking here along?"
By Trewhella's side stood his dog, a coarse-coated, wall-eyed brute,
half bobtail, half collie. Much alike seemed the pair of them, snarling
together in the path.
Jenny whitened. She had not yet seen so much of the wolf in her husband.
Castleton looked at her, asking mutely whether he should knock Trewhella
backwards or whether, as the world must be truckled to, he should keep
quiet.
"Shut up," said Jenny to her husband. "You ought to be ashamed of
yourself. What do you think I am? Your servant? Mind, or I shall tell
you off as you've never been told off yet. Let me pass, please, and
what's more let my friend pass. Come on, Fuz. Take no notice of him.
He's potty. He's soft. Him! Pooh!"
She gathered her skirts round her as if to negotiate mud and swept past
Zachary, who, all wolf now, recoiled for his spring. Castleton, however,
seized his wrist, saying tranquilly:
"I'm afraid, Mr. Trewhella, you're not very well. Good-bye, Mrs.
Trewhella. I'll come round this afternoon, then."
Jenny passed on towards Bochyn and Trewhella turned to follow her at
once; but Castleton still held him, and whenever Jenny looked round he
was still holding him. She waited, however, at the bottom of the garden
for Zachary's return, strewing the ground by her feet with spikes of
veronica blooms. Presently he appeared, his dog running before him, and
at the sight of Jenny shook wildly his fists.
"You witch," he cried. "How have 'ee the heart to make me so mad? But I
deserve it. Oh, God Almighty, I deserve it. I that went a-whoring away
from my own country."
"Shut up," Jenny commanded. "And talk decently in front of me, even if I
am your wife."
"I took a bride from the Moabites," he moaned. "I forsook Thy paths, O
Lord, and went lusting after the heathen."
He fell on his knees in the shining November mud; Jenny regarded him as
people regard a man in a fit.
"Forgive me, O God, for I am a sinful man. I have gone fornicketing
after lilywhite doves that turned to serpents. I have coveted the love
of woman and I have forsaken Thy paths, O Lord. I ran to gaze at loose
women dancing in their nakedness, and----"
"Kindly shut up," Jenny interrupted. "And don't kneel there like a
lunatic talking about me as if I hadn't got nothing on when you saw me.
Don't do it, I say, because I don't like it."
Trewhella rose and faced his wife. The drops of sweat stood on his
forehead big as pebbles. His eyes were mad. She had seen eyes like them
in Ashgate Asylum.
"Why were 'ee sent to tempt me? Don't 'ee know I do love 'ee more than I
do love the Kingdom of Heaven?"
"Well, I wish you wouldn't. It doesn't interest me, this love of yours
as you call it. And you needn't carry on about Mr. Castleton, because
he's only a friend, _which_ you can't understand."
Trewhella began to weep.
"I thought you were safe down here," he said. "I thought I held 'ee safe
as carried corn, and when I brought 'ee to Bochyn, I was so happy as a
piece of gold. All the time I've been preaching, I've wished to be home
along, thinking of 'ee and wishing I held 'ee in my arms right through
the black old night, as I belong."
Jenny shuddered.
"And 'tis a lawful thought," he cried defiantly. "You're my wife, you're
mine by the power of the Lord; you're mine by the right of the flesh."
"I'm going indoors," said Jenny coldly, and she left him raging at
temptation. Then she sat down and wrote to Castleton.
Dear Fuz,
Perhaps you hadn't better come and see me again--I expect you'll
think I'm mad, but it isn't any good to have rows because I've got
to live here any old way.
I liked seeing you, dear Fuz, and I'm sorry he made a fool of
himself and I'll write some day about young Frank. No more now from
your little friend,
Jenny.
Who cares?
She gave the letter to Thomas, who took it down to the One and All. It
was Jenny's inherent breeding that made her send it. All her pride bade
her insist on Castleton's company, begged her to defy Trewhella, and,
notwithstanding scenes the most outrageous, to establish her own will.
But there was Fuz to be considered. It would not be fair to implicate
him in the miserable muddle which she had created for herself. He
belonged to another life where farmers did not grovel in the mud before
Heaven's wrath, where husbands did not swear foully at wives, asking
forgiveness from above before the filthy echo had died away. Fuz was
better out of it. Yet she wished she could see him again. There were
many questions not yet asked.
Trewhella was foxy when next he discussed Castleton with Jenny.
"He wasn't too careful about calling of 'ee Mrs. Trewhella," he began.
"Don't be silly. He always knew me as Jenny in the old days."
"Oh, I do hate to hear 'ee tell of they old days. I do hate every day
before I took 'ee for my own."
"I can't help your troubles that way," said Jenny. "Perhaps you'd like
to have married me in the cradle?"
"I'd like to have kept 'ee locked up from the time you were a frothy
maiden," he admitted. "I do sweat when I think of men's eyes staring at
your lovely lill body."
Jenny stamped her rage at the allusion.
"Yes, you ought to have known my mother's aunts," she said. "They'd have
suited you, I think. They wanted to shut me up and make me religious."
The emphasis with which she armed her reminiscence gave the verbs an
undue value, as if the aunts had intended actually to lock her in a
larder of hymn-books.
"I wish with all my heart they had done so," said Trewhella. "Better
that than the devil's palace of light where you belonged to dance. Oh, I
wish that Cockney were in Hell."
"I can't do more than ask him to go away, so don't keep on being rude
about my friends," said Jenny.
"Ess, and I wish now I'd never kicked up such a rig and frightened the
pair of 'ee. He was too quick. That's where it's to."
"What are you talking about?"
"Why, if I hadn't been so straight out, I might have trapped you both
fitty. If I'd waited and watched awhile."
Trewhella sighed regretfully.
"You are a sneak," said Jenny.
"Oh, I wish I could see your heart, missus. Look, I've never asked 'ee
this before. How many men have loved 'ee before I did?"
"Hundreds," said Jenny mockingly.
"Kissed 'ee?" shrieked Trewhella.
"Of course. Why not?"
Veins wrote themselves across his forehead, veins livid as the vipers of
Medusa.
"Witch," he groaned. "'Tis well I'm a saved man or I might murder 'ee.
Hark! hark! Murder 'ee, you Jezebel! I do know now what Jehu did feel
when he cried, 'Throw her down and call up they dogs and tear the whore
to pieces.'"
He ran from the room, raving.
After this new fit when the wolf drove out the fox, Trewhella settled
down to steady cunning. Jenny became conscious of being watched more
closely. Not even the orchard was safe. There was no tree trunk that
might not conceal a wormlike form, no white mound of sand that was not
alive with curiosity, no wind even that was not fraught with whispered
commentaries upon her simplest actions.
Bochyn could no longer have been endured without young Frank and May and
Granfa. These three could strip the most secretive landscape of terrors,
could heal the wildest imaginations. All the winter through, Trewhella
never relaxed his efforts to trip her up over her relations with
Castleton, and compel an admission of the bygone love-affair that would
not necessarily, as he pointed out, involve her in a present intrigue.
"How did 'ee send him away, if there was nothing at all?"
"Because I'm ashamed for any of my friends to see what sort of a man
I've married. That's why."
"I'll catch 'ee out one day," vowed Trewhella. "You do think I'm just a
fool, but I'm more, missus; I'm brae cunning. I can snare a wild thing
wi' any man in Cornwall."
"Fancy," Jenny mocked.
And round the dark farmhouse the winter storms howled and roared,
beating against the windows and ravening by the latches.