Young Frank had always been from his birth an excitement; but as he
neared, reached and passed his eighteenth month, the geometrical
progression of his personality far exceeded the mere arithmetical
progression of his age. He could now salute with smiles those whom he
loved, was empurpled by rage at any repression, and was able to crawl
about with a blusterous energy that seemed inspired by the equinoctial
gales of March. Jenny's fingers would dive into his mouth to discover
teeth that were indeed pearls in their whiteness and rarity. Exquisite
adumbrations of herself were traceable in his countenance, and so far,
at any rate, his hair was curled and silvery as hers was once famed to
be. His cheeks were rose-fired; his eyes were deep and gay. Only his
ears seemed, whatever way they were judged, to follow his father's
shape; but even they at present merely gave him a pleasant elfin look.
Jenny was very proud of young Frank.
Trewhella, with the lapse of time, and after another violent outbreak on
account of the arrival of a letter from Castleton, ceased to importune
his wife with jealous denunciations of the old glittering days before
they met. The farm prospered: he took to counting his money more than
ever since an heir had given him a pledge for the commemoration of his
thrift. During the winter Jenny drove once or twice in the high cart to
Camston, and, with May to help her, scornfully turned out the contents
of the drapery shops. On these occasions Granfa was made responsible for
young Frank, and when they came back he had to give a very full account
of his regency. Other winter events included a visit from Mr. Corin, who
had opened a dairy away up in the east of the Duchy. He annoyed Jenny
by his exaggerated congratulations, embracing as they did himself as
much as Zachary and her. Mrs. Trewhella would from time to time announce
her surrender of the household keys; but Jenny was not anxious to
control anything except her son, and the old woman, manifestly pleased,
continued to superintend with blink and cackle maid Emily. Jenny lost
her fear of bullocks, dreaded insects no longer, and might have been a
Cornish maid all her life, save for her clear-cut Cockney, to which not
a single western burr adhered. She no longer pined for London; was never
sentimental towards eight o'clock; and certainly could not be supposed
to exist in an atmosphere of regret. At the same time, she could not be
said to have settled down, because her husband was perpetually an
intrusion on any final serenity. She could not bear the way he ate, the
grit and soil and raggedness of his face; she loathed the grimy scars
upon his hands, his smell of corduroy. She hated his mental outlook, his
pre-occupation with hell, his narrow pride, and lack of humor, his
pricking avarice and mean vanity, his moral cowardice and religious
bravery, his grossness and cunning and boastfulness and cruelty to
animals. She feared the storms that would one day arise between him and
his son. She felt even now the clashing of the two hostile temperaments:
already there were signs of future struggles, and it was not just a
fancy that young Frank was always peevish at his father's approach.
The equinox sank asleep to an April lullaby. Lambs bleated on the
storm-washed air. The ocean plumed itself like a mating bird. Then
followed three weeks of gray weather and much restlessness on the part
of young Frank, who cried and fumed and was very naughty indeed. What
with Frank and the southeast wind and the cold rain, Jenny's nerves
suffered, and when May morning broke in a dazzle, she thought it would
be a good plan to leave young Frank with Granfa, and in May's company to
go for a long walk. May was delighted and together they set out.
They followed the path of the valley past the groves of arbutus, past
the emerald meadows down into the sandy waste over which the stream
carried little pebbles to the sea, flowing over the wide shallows like a
diamonded lattice. They plunged in the towans that never seemed to
change with the seasons. They rested in the warm hollows under larksong.
They climbed precipices and ran along ridges, until at last they raced
gloriously down a virgin drift out on to the virgin sands on which, a
long way off, the waves were breaking in slow curves, above them a film
of spray tossed backwards by the breeze blowing from the shore.
Jenny sat in the solitude, making a necklace of wine-stained shells. She
was dressed in some shade of fawn that seemed to be absorbed by these
wide flat sands, so that she became smaller and slighter. She wore a
silver-gray bonnet set closely round her cheeks in a ruching of ivory.
May was in scarlet and looked, as she lay there in the castness, not
much bigger than Jenny's cap of scarlet stockinette, left long ago on
the beach at Clacton.
"Hullo, there's somebody coming along the sands. Can you see them?"
asked Jenny.
"A long way off?" inquired May, peering.
"Yes, just a speck--now--where those rocks are. No, you're looking in
the wrong place. Much further along," directed Jenny.
"You _can_ see a way," said May.
The figure drew nearer, but was still too far off for them to determine
the quality or sex, as they watched the sea-swallows keep ever their
distance ahead, swift-circling companies.
"I wonder who it is?" said Jenny.
"I can't ever remember seeing anyone on the beach before," said May.
"Nor can I. It's a man."
"Is it?"
"Or I think so," Jenny added.
"What a line of footmarks there'll be when he's gone past," said May.
"It is a man," Jenny asserted.
Suddenly she went dead white, flushed crimson, whitened again and
dropped the half-strung necklace of shells.
"I believe I know him, too," she murmured.
"Shut up," scoffed May. "Unless it's Fuz?"
"No, it's not him. May, I'd like to be alone when he comes along. Or I
don't think I'll stay. Yes, I will. And no, don't go. You stay, too. It
_is_ him. It is."
Maurice approached them. He gave much the same impression as on the
first night of the ballet of Cupid, when at the end of the court he
raised his hat to Jenny and Irene.
"I--I wondered if I should meet you," he said.
His presence was less disturbing to Jenny than his slow advance. She
greeted him casually as if she were saluting an acquaintance passed
every morning:
"Hullo."
Maurice was silent.
"Isn't it a lovely morning?" said Jenny. "This is my sister May."
Maurice raised his cap a second time.
"I wonder," he said, looking intently at Jenny, "I wonder if--if----" he
plunged into the rest of the sentence. "Can I speak to you alone a
minute?"
"Whatever for?" asked Jenny.
"Oh, I wanted to ask you something."
Jenny debated with herself a moment. Why not? He had no power to move
her now. She was able coldly to regard him standing there on the
seashore, a stranger, no more to her than a piece of driftwood left by
the tide.
"I'll catch you up in a minute," she said to May.
"All right, I'll go on. Pleased to have met you," said May, shaking
hands shyly with Maurice.
He and Jenny watched her going towards the towans. When she was out of
earshot, Maurice burst forth:
"Jenny, Jenny, I've longed for this moment."
"You must have treated yourself very badly then," she answered.
"I did. I----"
"Look," said Jenny sharply. "It's no good for you to start off, because
I don't want to listen to _any_thing you say. I don't _want_ to."
"I don't deserve you should," Maurice humbly agreed. "All the same I
wish you would."
It may have been that in his voice some vibrant echo of past pleading
touched her, so that across a gulf of four years the old Jenny asked:
"Why should I?"
He seemed on fire to seize the chance of explanation and would no doubt
have forthwith plunged into a wilderness of emotions, had not Jenny seen
May signaling from the towans.
"She wants me to go over to her."
"But you'll come out here again?"
"I might--I might come out on the cliffs over there." She pointed
towards Crickabella. "I don't know. I don't think I shall. But don't try
and see me at home, because I wouldn't know you there."
She ran from him suddenly across the sands back to May.
"Why did you wave like that?" she asked.
"I think there's been somebody watching you," said May, looking pale and
anxious.