When Mrs. Quiggin came down to breakfast next morning, a change both in
her appearance and in her manner caught the eye and ear of Jenny Crow.
Her fringe was combed back from her forehead, and her speech, even in
the first salutation, gave a delicate hint of the broad Manx accent.
“Ho, ho! what’s this?” thought Jenny, and she had not long to wait for
an answer.
An English waiter, who affected the ways of a French one, was fussing
around with needless inquiries--_would Madame have this; would Madame
do that?_--and when this person had scraped himself out of the room Mrs.
Quiggin drew a long breath and said, “I don’t think I care so very much
for this sort of thing after all, Jenny.”
“What sort of thing, Nelly?”
“Waiters and servants, and hotels and things,” said Nelly.
“Really!” said Jenny.
“It’s wonderful how much happier you are when you can be your own
servant, and boil your own kettle and mash your own tea, and lay your
own cloth, and clear away and wash up afterward.”
“Do you say so, Nelly?”
“Deed I do, though, Jenny. There’s some life in the like of that--seeing
to yourself and such like. And what are the pleasures of towns and
streets and hotels and servants, and such botherations to those of a
sweet old farm that is all your own somewhere? And, to think--to think,
Jenny, getting up in the summer morning before the sun itself, when the
light is that cool dead gray, and the last stars are dying off, and the
first birds are calling to their mates that are still asleep, and
then going round to the cowhouse in the clear, crisp, ringing air,
and startling the rabbits and the hares that are hopping about in the
haggard--O! it’s delightful!”
“Really now!” said Jenny.
“And then the men coming down stairs, half awake and yawning, in their
shirt sleeves and their stocking feet, and pushing on their boots
and clattering out to the stable, and shouting to the horses that are
stamping in their stalls; and then you yoursef busy as Thop’s wife
laying the cups and saucers, and sending the boys to the well for water,
and filling the big crock to the brim, and hanging the kettle on the
hook, and setting somebody to blow the fire while the gorse flames and
crackles, and bustling here and bustling there, and stirring yoursef
terr’ble, and getting breakfast over, and starting everybody away to his
work in the fields--aw, there’s nothing like it in the world.”
“And do _you_ think that, Nelly?” said Jenny.
“Why, yes; why shouldn’t I?” said Nelly.
“Well, well,” said Jenny. “‘There’s nowt so queer as folk,’ as they say
in Manchester.
“What do you mean, Jenny Crow?”
“I fancy I see you,” said Jenny, “bowling off to Balla--what d’ye call
it?--and doing all that _by yourself_.”
“Oh!” said Nelly.
Mrs. Quiggin had begun to speak in a voice that was something between a
shrill laugh and a cry, and she ended with a smothered gurgle, such as
comes from the throat of a pea-hen. After breakfast Peggy Quine came
chirping around with a hundred inquiries about the packing of luggage
which was then proceeding, with a view to the carriage that had been
ordered for eleven o’clock. Mrs. Quiggin betrayed only the most languid
interest in these hurrying operations, and settled herself with her
needlework in a chair near to Jenny Crow. Jenny watched her, and
thought, “Now, wouldn’t she jump at a good excuse for not going at all?”
Presently Mrs. Quiggin said, in a tone of well-acted unconcern, “And
so you say that the poor man you tell me of is still loving his wife in
spite of all she has done to him?”
“Yes, Nelly. All men are like that--more fools they,” said Jenny.
Nelly’s face brightened over the needles in her hand, and her parted
lips seemed to whisper, “Bless them!” But in a note of delicious
insincerity she only said aloud, “Not all, Jenny; surely not all.”
“Yes, all,” said Jenny, with emphasis. “Do you think I don’t know the
men better than you do?”
Nelly dropped her needles and raised her face. “Why, Jenny,” she said,
“however can that be?--you’ve never even been married.”
“That’s why, my dear,” said Jenny.
Nelly laughed; then returning to the attack, she said, with a
poor pretense at a yawn, “So you think a man may love a woman even
after--after she has turned him out of doors, as you say?”
“Yes, but that isn’t to say that he’ll ever come back to her,” said
Jenny.
The needles dropped to the lap again. “No? Why shouldn’t he then?”
“Why? Because men are never good at the bended knee business,” said
Jenny. “A man on his knees is ridiculous. It must be his legs that look
so silly. If I had done anything to a man, and he went down on his knees
to me, I would----”
“What, Jenny?”
Jenny lifted her skirt an inch or two, and showed a dainty foot swinging
to and fro. “Kick him,” she answered.
Nelly laughed again, and said, “And if you were a man, and a woman did
so, what then?”
“Why lift her up and kiss her, and forgive her, of course,” said Jenny.
Nelly tingled with delight, and burned to ask Jenny if she should not at
least let Captain Davy know that she was leaving Douglas and going home.
But being a true woman, she asked something else instead.
“So you think, Jenny,” she said, “that your poor friend will never go
back to his wife?”
“I’m sure he won’t,” said Jenny. “Didn’t I tell you?” she added,
straightening up.
“What?” said Nelly, with a quiver of alarm.
“That he’s going back to sea,” said Jenny.
“To sea!” cried Nelly, dropping her needles entirely. “Back to sea?” she
said, in a shrill voice. “And without even saying ‘good-by!’”
“Good-by to whom, my dear?” said Jenny. “To me?”
“To his wife, of course,” said Nelly, huskily.
“Well, we don’t know that, do we?” said Jenny. “And, besides, why should
he?”
“If he doesn’t he’s a cruel, heartless, unfeeling, unforgiving monster,”
said Nelly.
And then Jenny burned in her turn to ask if Nelly herself had not
intended to do as much by Captain Davy, but, being a true woman as well
as her adversary, she found a crooked way to the plain question. “Is it
at eleven,” she said, “that the carriage is to come for you?”
Mrs. Quiggin had recovered herself in a moment, and then there was a
delicate bout of thrust and parry. “I’m so sorry for your sake, Jenny,”
she said, in the old tone of delicious insincerity, “that the poor
fellow is married.”
“Gracious me, for my sake? Why?” said Jenny.
“I thought you were half in love with him, you know,” said Nelly.
“Half?” cried Jenny. “I’m over head and ears in love with him.”
“That’s a pity,” said Nelly; “for, of course, you’ll give him up now
that you know he has a wife.”
“What of that? If he _has_ a wife I have no husband--so it’s as broad as
it’s long,” said Jenny.
“Jenny!” cried Nelly.
“And, oh!” said Jenny, “there is one thing I didn’t tell you. But you’ll
keep it secret? Promise me you’ll keep it secret. I’m to meet him again
by appointment this very night.”
“But, Jenny!”
“Yes, in the garden of this house--by the waterfall at eight o’clock.
I’ll slip out after dinner in my cloak with the hood to it.”
“Jenny Crow!”
“It’s our last chance, it seems. The poor fellow sails at midnight, or
tomorrow morning, or to-morrow night, or the next night, or sometime.
So you see he’s not going away without saying good-by to somebody. I
couldn’t help telling you, Nelly. It’s nice to share a secret with a
friend one can trust, and if he _is_ another woman’s husband--”
Nell had risen to her feet with her face aflame.
“But you mustn’t do it,” she cried. “It’s shocking, it’s
horrible--common morality is against it.”
Jenny looked wondrous grave. “That’s it, you see,” she said. “Common
morality always _is_ against everything that’s nice and agreeable.”
“I’m ashamed of you, Jenny Crow. I am; indeed, I am. I could never have
believed it of you; indeed, I couldn’t. And the man you speak of is no
better than you are, and all his talk of loving the wife is hypocrisy
and deceit; and the poor woman herself should know of it, and come down
on you both and shame you--indeed, she should,” cried Nelly, and she
flounced out of the room in a fury.
Jenny watched her go and thought to herself. “She’ll keep that
appointment for me at eight o’clock to-night by the waterfall.”
Presently she heard Mrs. Quiggin with a servant of the hotel
countermanding the order for the carriage at eleven, and engaging it
instead for the extraordinary hour of nine at night. “She intends to
keep it,” thought Jenny.
“And now,” she said, settling herself at the writing-table; “now for the
_other_ simpleton.”
“Tell D. Q.,” she wrote, addressing Lovibond; “that E. Q. goes home by
carriage at nine o’clock to-night, and that you have appointed to meet
her for a last farewell at eight by the waterfall in the gardens of
Castle Mona. Then meet _me_ on the pier at seven-thirty.”