JENNY’S VISITOR.
Another blazing July afternoon, and all the cornfields baking under
the ripening sunshine. Jenny Faunthorpe lolls in her favourite
arm-chair--a dreadfully dilapidated arm-chair it is, with a faded
chintz cover which is always grimy--in the surgery window. She is
very fond of sitting in the surgery, chiefly because it is against
her uncle’s household laws--if any man so easy-going and mild as Dr.
Faunthorpe can be said to be a law-giver in his household--that she
should sit there. It is not an attractive apartment. It is dirtier
than any other room in the house, Hester being strictly forbidden to
interfere with things in this sacred chamber, or, in other words, to
sweep, dust, or scour. Its atmosphere is odoriferous with compound
rhubarb pills, colocynth, and pounded aloes. Its counter is sticky
with the traces of divers medicines which have been compounded upon
it. But there are attractions for Jenny in the room notwithstanding,
and she infinitely prefers it to the family parlour. There is the
syrup of poppies yonder on the second shelf from the top, in the
dusty recess where the spiders have such a good time of it, and
Jenny often indulges herself with a few sips of that soporific
decoction. If she has a surreptitious novel in her possession she
hides it on one of the lower shelves, behind the delf jar of leeches,
perhaps. Sometimes she takes the leeches out and plays with them. At
other times, when she is quite sure of not being disturbed by Dr.
Faunthorpe, she amuses herself by taking down sundry bottles and
making up prescriptions of her own. Thus:--
Syrup poppies, 1 oz.
Honey, lots.
Cons. roses, ½ oz.
Peppermint, 1 drachm.
Tamarinds, 2 oz.
Aqua pura, 4 oz.
This afternoon, however, she has a particular reason for preferring
the surgery to her usual happy hunting-grounds among the gooseberry
bushes. Faithful to her promise to Sibyl, she makes the surgery
window her post of observation, so that if the young man she expects
should approach by the front door she may be ready to receive him,
and cut off all communication with Hester. Should he come to the
garden wall, on the other hand, as on his previous visit, there can
be no harm done, as the wall adjoining the lane is beyond Hester’s
ken. With infinite diplomacy Jenny has contrived to get Marion out
of the way for the whole day by persuading her to take the train
to Krampston and visit her old schoolfellow, Maria Harrison, the
Krampston Wesleyan minister’s daughter, with whom Marion has kept
up some semblance of friendship, although the tastes of the two
young ladies are widely at variance, Miss Harrison being, as becomes
her, of a serious turn of mind, while Marion is to the last degree
frivolous. If there is one thing which Marion enjoys more than
another in Maria’s society it is the opportunity which it gives her
to talk over Sibyl, whose goings on, gay apparel, and chariots and
horses, Miss Harrison contemplates with the disapproving eye of
the Hebrew prophets. Jeremiah himself did not denounce the foolish
daughters of Israel with more vigour than Miss Harrison exhibits
towards her old schoolfellow.
Thus it is that whenever Marion is particularly offended with Sibyl
she is always in the humour for a visit to Miss Harrison, whose
home, though unpretentious in its character, and situated in an
obscure by way of the busy port of Krampston, is comfortable in its
arrangements, and of a hospitable turn. The five o’clock tea at the
minister’s table is a plentiful and substantial meal, which makes an
excellent substitute for dinner, and renders supper a superfluity.
Jenny, turning to account this idiosyncrasy of her elder sister’s,
has persuaded Marion that she owes Miss Harrison a visit, and that
to-day is a good opportunity for the settlement of that debt. Marion
has allowed herself to be persuaded, has put on her best bonnet, and
departed for Krampston in the one o’clock train, meaning to have a
good look at the shops, which means a two hours’ perambulation of
the principal streets, before proceeding to Miss Harrison’s paternal
dwelling.
‘You needn’t expect me till you see me,’ says Marion at departing.
‘For if there’s an evening service at Little Bethel I shall be
obliged to go, though if there are two people in the Scriptures I
dislike more than another it’s Ahab and Jezebel, and they always crop
up in Mr. Harrison’s sermons.’
Jenny has thus made the coast clear. It is Hester’s day for cleaning
the kitchen and outhouses, a day upon which the Miss Faunthorpes
must either open the door to patient or casual visitor, or encounter
Hester’s wrath, that faithful servant having a temper which is
aggravated by hearthstoning difficult corners and awkward steps, and
exasperated to fever point by scrubbing worm-eaten old floors, which
‘never do one no credit.’
Jenny is quite sure that Hester will not appear till she brings in
the tea-tray, scarlet of visage and perspiring, and puts it on the
table with a bang and a clatter, exclaiming, ‘There now, you’ve got
your tea, and don’t come worrying for anything else.’
It is between three and four--the sleepiest hour in the slumberous
balmy day, and Jenny basks in the sunshiny surgery window, with
folded arms, watching the wasps and vagabond bees bouncing their
stupid heads against the roses in the dusty front garden. It is the
very hour in which Sibyl and Mr. Trenchard are returning from the
How, and the first day of Jenny’s watch.
Just as the old minster clock with its mellow tongue chimes the
half-hour a dusty wayfarer comes in sight, and Jenny cries out loud,--
‘It’s the very man, by all that’s wonderful! but dressed like a
gentleman this time; and oh, how nice he looks!’
Yes, it is the man she saw in the lane two winters ago, tired,
footsore, out at elbows. To-day he is as well clad as any man in
Redcastle, and he walks as if he had only come from the station.
He looks about him doubtfully for a minute or so, as if unfamiliar
with the front of Dr. Faunthorpe’s house, then sees the name upon the
brass plate, and approaches boldly, opens the gate, and comes in.
‘If Marion or Hester were in the way now it would be all UP,’ Jenny
says to herself.
Before the stranger can ring she has opened the door, and stands face
to face with him upon the threshold.
‘You’re the very person I wanted to see,’ exclaims Alexis Secretan as
Jenny confronts him, her big round eyes staring their hardest; ‘I’m
lucky in finding you in the way.’
‘Luckier than you know of,’ thinks Jenny. ‘Are you a patient?’ she
demands aloud. ‘If you are, uncle’s out, and you can’t have any
medicine till after seven o’clock. Between seven and nine in the
evening are his hours, or before nine in the morning.’
‘Nonsense, child! You must remember me, surely.’
Jane Faunthorpe’s face expresses a total blankness. She shakes her
head stolidly.
‘Perhaps I look a little more decent to-day than I did one winter
afternoon two years and a half ago,’ says Alexis, with a laugh, ‘but
I’m the man who spoke to you across the garden wall. Do you remember
now?’
‘I have a faint recollection,’ replies Jenny, with a languid
_hauteur_, which is very fairly imitated from Sibyl. ‘Come into the
surgery, young man, if you please.’
Alexis laughs at the mode of address, and follows her down a step
into that temple of the healing art.
Jenny enjoys the situation, and means to make the most of it. She
looks at the stranger critically, as he drops into one of the frayed
horsehair chairs, where parish patients are accustomed to sit
awaiting Dr. Faunthorpe’s opinion as the fiat of fate--the opinion
rarely going beyond the statement that the patient is not so well as
he might be, and that his condition will be improved by the medicine
which Dr. Faunthorpe is about to give him. If, after this, the
patient goes home and dies, it is his lookout. The parish has done
all it can for him.
‘I want to know all about your sister Sibyl,’ says Alexis, looking
round the shabby room, and thinking that this home of his wife’s
uncle’s is not much better than Mrs. Bonny’s one pair front in Dixon
Street, Chelsea. ‘Is she at home?’
Jane shakes her head dolefully, and heaves a sigh which would do
credit to an actress of transpontine melodrama.
‘I was in hopes you had come to tell us something about her,’ she
says, ‘for it’s a hard thing to have one’s eldest sister wandering
about the world no one knows where.’
‘You mean to tell me that you don’t know where she is at this present
time!’ exclaims Alexis.
‘That’s precisely the fact. She was governessing in Jersey when we
heard from her last, but that’s full ten months ago, and she’s too
much of a rolling stone to have stayed as long as that in one place.
Especially as she told us that the lady had red hair and used to fly
into passions,’ adds Jenny, with a graphic touch that she thinks will
give reality to her narrative.
‘What was the lady’s name?’
‘Mrs. Yokohama Gray,’ says Jenny on the spur of the moment,
reminiscent of the advertisement of a certain dress fabric which she
has perused with keenest interest.
‘Yokohama,’ repeats Alexis, ‘that’s rather a queer surname.’
‘Well, it was very _like_ that, if not that exactly.’
‘Jersey,’ says Alexis, thoughtfully, ‘when last you heard of your
sister she was in Jersey, and that was ten months ago?’
Jenny counts her fingers meditatively, and appears to enter upon an
abstruse calculation.
‘Exactly ten months,’ she answers finally.
‘Could you show me your sister’s letter?’
‘It’s torn up. Uncle Robert never keeps his letters.’
‘But is not Dr. Faunthorpe anxious about your sister? It seems such a
strange thing for him to be ignorant of her fate.’
‘Of course it is. But Sibyl’s a strange girl. Uncle Robert has had
many a sleepless night on her account. I dare say we shall get a
letter from her some day, telling us that she has gone with a lady to
Peru, or Kamstchatka, or some of those hot climates where mosquitoes
devour you all night, and alligators hide themselves under your
bolster.’
Alexis sighs wearily.
‘I should like to see your uncle,’ he says, ‘he might tell me more.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ replies Jenny, who has posed herself gracefully on
a corner of the surgery table and swings her leg to and fro, as if
rather admiring the shabby leather boot at the end of it, deficient
of every alternate button. ‘Uncle Robert couldn’t tell you a word
more than I’ve told you. In fact, he mightn’t tell you quite as much.’
‘It’s hard to be left in the dark like this,’ says Alexis.
‘It’s hard upon us, but I can’t see that it matters much to you,’
remarks Jenny. ‘If you are ever so deeply in love with Sibyl, she
isn’t so much to you as she to us.’
‘Isn’t she?’ exclaims Alexis. ‘Suppose I tell you that she is more to
me than she is to any one else in the world, and that I am determined
not to be kept in ignorance of her present position. She is my wife,
Miss Faunthorpe, and the law of the land, as well as the law of God
which preceded that law, gives a husband custody of his wife.’
‘Gracious goodness!’ ejaculates Jenny, slipping off the angle of the
table, and recovering her equilibrium with a struggle, ‘do you mean
that my sister Sibyl is a married woman?’
‘She is my wife. An unfaithful wife, for she deserted me because I
was poor. Yet I am weak enough to love her still, and I will go to
the end of the world to find her.’
‘My!’ exclaims Jenny. ‘This is the awfullest thing I ever heard of.’
‘You can understand therefore that I have some right to make
inquiries about your sister, and that I am justified in insisting
upon seeing your uncle Robert.’
‘Oh, but you mustn’t,’ cries Jenny, with overwhelming energy. ‘You
mustn’t breathe one syllable about your marriage to uncle Robert. It
would be the ruin of all of us if you did. Don’t you know that we are
no better than paupers dependent upon his charity? He’d turn Marion
and me out of doors if he knew that Sibyl had married without his
consent. You don’t know what a man he is. Our innocence wouldn’t help
us. He’d wash his hands of the whole lot of us.’
‘That would be a very vindictive course of action.’
‘Uncle Robert is vindictive,’ exclaims Jenny. ‘He doesn’t know
what it is to forgive. Do you suppose he’d ever get over Sibyl’s
ingratitude? He never would, and he’d wreak his vengeance upon
unoffending Marion and still more unoffending me, for I’m not old
enough to go and get married clandestinely, if I wanted to.’
‘I had no idea your uncle was such a Tartar.’
‘Sibyl ought to have told you. I thought when a person married a
person they always described their relations to that person.’
‘I had an impression that Dr. Faunthorpe was quite an easy-going
little man,’ says Alexis.
‘Ah, Sibyl may have felt it her duty to make the best of him. You see
he gives us the bread we eat, and one ought to be thankful for one’s
daily bread even if it’s two days old, and scrapy as to butter. We
don’t ask for butter in our prayers, you see.’
‘And you expect me to leave this place without making any further
inquiries about my wife?’ demands Alexis.
‘What’s the use of inquiring when you’ve had all the information any
one can give you here?’ asks Jane, with a practical air. ‘You’d much
better go to Jersey and inquire there.’
‘Yet you say Sibyl is likely to have left Jersey by this time.’
‘More than likely. She was always fond of change. She may have gone
to Calcutta, or St. Petersburg, or Hong Kong, or Scarborough, or
anywhere where governesses are wanted. But you might trace her _from_
Jersey, you know. It would be a good starting-point.’
‘You tell me that she has never been home since she first left this
place to go to Mrs. Hazleton.’
‘Never,’ says Jenny, so resolutely that Alexis ought to know she is
telling a falsehood.
‘Well, if I can do myself no good by seeing your uncle----’
‘And are sure to do us a lot of harm,’ interjects Jenny.
‘I may as well go away without seeing him, and trust to my own wits
for finding your sister.’
‘Decidedly,’ replies Jenny. ‘A clever young man like you can’t be
long at a loss.’
‘Good-bye, Miss Faunthorpe.’
‘You’d better call me Jenny, if you’re my brother-in-law.’
‘Good-bye, Jenny; thou hast comforted me marvellous much. I must go
and try my luck elsewhere.’
‘If there was anything in this way I could do for you,’ says Jenny,
waving her hand in the direction of the shelves, ‘the surgery is at
your service. I know the bottles as well as uncle does. Anything from
syrup of squills to corrosive supplement. Uncle sends a good deal of
that to his parish patients, and I believe it cures them, but I’m not
quite sure whether they take it externally or internally.’
‘There’s one little blue bottle up there that might be useful to me,’
says Alexis, with a touch of bitterness.
He points to a dark blue bottle that stands in a corner by itself on
the topmost shelf in a recess by the fireplace, and away from the
light. A bottle with a gilt label.
‘Gracious!’ cries Jenny. ‘That’s prussic acid--deadly poison.’
‘A short cut out of a man’s troubles, Jenny. But I suppose a man who
takes that way is something of a poltroon, and I’m not disposed to
try it yet awhile. Good-bye, Jenny.’
‘Good-bye, brother-in-law. I’m really very sorry for you, and I hope
things will come right in the end. You may kiss me if you like, as we
are such near relatives.’
Thus privileged, Alexis imprints a brotherly kiss upon Jane’s
forehead, and with a final sigh of disappointment departs.