FOLLY CORNER
BY
MRS. H. DUDENEY
AUTHOR OF “THE MATERNITY OF HARRIOTT WICKEN”
[Illustration: Decorative Image]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PROLOGUE.
THE steam of that stifling London day rose up in a choking, enervating
haze from the hot grass. The shrill cries of children, loose from the
Board School, cut the thick air. A train rushed across the bridge. Two
or three cyclists tinkled their bells irritably as they spun down Wood
Lane to the Uxbridge Road, leaving a cloud of gray grit behind them.
Omnibuses pulled up at the corner of the short street near the few
newly-built shops. From Portobello Road came the heavy rumble of more
traffic, mixed with the nearer shout of costers vending dried fish and
over-ripe fruit.
She was a young woman. She stood still, in a limp, hopeless attitude,
her face turned on Wormwood Scrubbs, her strained eyes vacantly
fastened on the buildings, spires, and chimneys in the distance.
Some simple sound from the frowning prison on her left made her turn
her head with the swift, watching movement of a cat. But there was
nothing to see; no hint, no hope. Behind those walls! Her throat,
rising white and firm from the tumbled collar of the cotton blouse,
contracted. Those walls! those impenetrable walls! those relentless
walls!
She put out two hands in baggy gloves; she held them up, flat palms
upward, toward the speechless prison. Her attitude was one of strong
appeal, of hope, almost--as if she half expected that despair would
work a miracle. They stretched out, big, strong, shapeless in the old
gloves--those quivering, appealing hands of hers.
With a sharp agonized movement of the wrists she let her hands drop
nervelessly to her side. A sob was strangled in her throat; she turned
her head abruptly, so that her eyes no longer rested on the walls. With
a sudden impulse she started running across the grass; ran across the
road and under the bridge to the spot where an omnibus was waiting.
It grew dusk as she rattled back on the garden-seat to London. One by
one the lights of night gleamed out. The life of night began. She
looked down and saw the interior of smoothly rolling carriages, with
women in evening dress lying idly back inside. Women on foot, smartly
clad and with happy faces, flitted along the white pavements. Women
clambered to the top of the omnibus, chattering and tittering. The one
who sat next her glanced curiously at her grim mouth and shadowed eyes.
The lights grew thicker; fantastic chains of light--red and yellow.
London glittered like some fairy mine of jewels: jewels already cut and
polished, every facet gleaming. Words winked out letter by letter, then
vanished. She saw them come and go on the fronts of the houses. OX
FORCE--NINON SOAP--DUNN’S NOSTRUM. To her strained senses they lost
all common meaning and symbolized the weird, the threatening, the
unknown.
* * * * *
It was blinding hot in the market town that Wednesday. Sheep straggled
into the pens; the drovers choked and cursed as the dust dried in their
throats. A smart trap, driven by a girl, with a groom behind, bowled
down the High Street, leaving behind an impression of coolness and
smartness. Now and again a sharp, imperious cycle-bell cut the air, and
as some female cyclist darted by pedestrians heard the soft flutter of
sleeves, like the flapping sails of a yacht.
A man came, with a slightly rolling walk, down the street. He made an
imperial progress, nodding his head bluffly to deferential shopkeepers
who stood at their doors, exchanging a jovial word or so with other
substantial yeomen. Everyone knew and respected Jethro Jayne--“Young
Jethro” of Folly Corner. Everyone in and around Liddleshorn knew that
there had been Jaynes at Folly in unbroken succession since before the
days of Cromwell.
He was a picturesque figure, with his open, weather-tanned face, his
clean-shaven lip, his buff breeches, and brown gaiters. He wore a linen
coat and a flapping white linen hat. His eyes were lazily merry and
roguish under the starched brim.
He turned in at the door of the inn, with the low-pitched, paneled
dining-room, where most of the farmers dined on market-day.
A round-faced, pretty girl brought him his plate of beef and his
two vegetables. Bread and cheese, and a jug of sweet cider, completed
the meal.
He looked at her thoughtfully whenever she approached: so very
blue-eyed and round; such a plump, neat figure in a black gown! He
looked at her through a strong cloud of smoke as he puffed at his pipe
and drank a last glass of the cider. She had suggested something. He
was thoughtfully asking himself, Why not?
Presently he took a pencil and a letter from his breeches pocket. He
began to write on the back of the envelope, making many erasions,
knitting his brows and pouting his lips like an anxious child.
The girl came softly to the table and took away the mustard for another
customer. Jethro never looked up at her. She had done her part. She had
suggested.
He paid the bill and emerged into High Street. He looked a trifle more
bluff and lurching than before. His face was red--with cider, with the
excitement of his daring plan.
For the first time in his life he was yielding to impulse. Already he
half regretted yielding. He was afraid of himself; he was more afraid
of Gainah.
Yet he bent his head and went down two steps into the editorial offices
of the _Liddleshorn Herald_. The place was empty save for a
sharp-featured youth who was lounging at the side of the counter. He
sharply asked the visitor what he wanted. He was a new importation, an
embryo journalist, with a London journal as his goal. He touched
the town side of things only. He had a smoldering contempt for
farmers, and knew nothing of the master of Folly Corner.
Jethro pushed his envelope across the counter with a sheepish gesture.
“How many insertions?” asked the youth laconically, yet throwing an
amused, curious glance at the big figure which stood near the door--an
unconscious, unappreciated color scheme--in white and russet, buff and
brown.
“How many times in?” The gentleman-farmer’s big, embarrassed laugh
seemed to shake the silent place. “Well--once.”
As he went slowly out of the town the tinkle of a piano came out
clearly from the front room of a little buff villa. There were rows of
these buff villas on the outskirts of the town. Some navvies were
putting down new drain-pipes. The notes of the piano and the reedy
voice of a girl came out slowly, each note isolated and mingled with
the nervous tap of the pickax. Jethro stood still and listened. It was
a song of Purcell’s:
“To make us seek ruin, to make us seek ruin and love those that
hate.”
He walked on, a queer stirring at his heart. The thin voice of the girl
in the villa had touched the romantic spot in him. He thought of that
other girl at the inn--plump, blue-eyed, smiling. He thought of his
carefully-worded advertisement which, by to-morrow, would be worming
its way through Sussex, through Surrey and Hampshire to London
perhaps.
It was a joke; he began to regret, to blame the cider, or the demure
little rings of light hair on the waitress’ unlined brow.
And yet he could still hear the piano. He still felt the slow,
wondering work of his heart.
FOLLY CORNER.
CHAPTER I.
THE story begins with the emotions of two women--the two women
principally concerned--on a morning ten days after Jethro Jayne had
imprudently indulged in sweet cider at the market dinner in
Liddleshorn.
One woman was young--twenty-five or less. She was a big, fair girl; a
handsome girl, in the elementary way that satisfies most men. She
looked well able to take care of herself; an up-to-date girl,
accustomed to fight her way alone, to meet men on their own ground, to
jealously look after her own interests. There was, however, an
occasional haggard line at her mouth, and in her well-opened, rather
prominent gray eyes was a hunted, hopeless look.
She wore a coat and skirt, with sleeves of last year’s cut. Her hat was
trimmed with strict attention to fashion, and yet bore the brand
“home-made.” There was a crisp new veil tied about the brim.
She smacked so of cities that the few people she met turned round to
slowly gape at her, and a couple of small girls coming home from the
village shop laughed aloud in her angry face.
She walked slowly along the white road, stopping now and then to lift
her veil and wipe her burning cheeks.
The scenery was beautiful--with the characteristic beauty of the Sussex
Weald. But she did not notice: she was too preoccupied. Her own affairs
were in a critical state, and when one is anxious there is small
consolation in undulating hills, long stretches of pasture, and
red-roofed farmhouses. Her attitude was quite cockney--prim regard
for her shoes and half-contemptuous admiration of her surroundings
predominated.
Once she stopped to rest. A thatched and plastered cottage stood empty
under the shadow of huge oaks. Wide green glades wound into the very
heart of a little wood. The turf, inch-deep in moss, yielded like down.
It was irresistible. She threw herself flat on her back, settling her
skirt smoothly under her, and looked lazily through the wide mesh of
the veil at the sky. The heat and the perfect silence almost made her
sleep. A trap went by full of gayly-dressed country girls; a young man,
hideous in his Sunday clothes, was driving. They were all off to some
festivity, and they looked curiously at the prone figure on the turf.
At first they thought it was some tramp, but the thin-soled morocco
shoes stuck out from the dusty skirt contradicted that assumption. Such
vagrant ways these town folk had! They laughed derisively, and the
sound roused her. She sat up and stared a trifle vaguely at the
watchful hills, the glades of the wood, the white, winding ribbon of
highroad. Then she rose and whisked her skirt and went on again.
Only once more was she tempted to stop--at a bramble bush where the
blackberries were loose and juicy. She drew up her veil to her nose and
drew them off the stalks with widely parted lips, because she was
anxious not to soil the fingers of her gloves. It was so necessary to
make a good impression: the woman who could always make a good
impression had the world at her feet.
She crossed a common; fowls were scratching and shaking their wings in
the mounds of dust; a long string of geese waddled by, conversing
volubly, and with evident arrogance. A man with a timber wagon came
toward her, and she stopped him to ask the way. He told her that she
had a mile or more to go.
She went on, her feet dragging at every step. At every step she grew
more nervous, more undecided. She took a letter from her pocket and
read it over twice. She stopped, half turned back. Her face was violent
red and chalk-white in turn. Still she went on, with lagging, heavy
feet and a queer, terrified shame and excitement at her heart: went on
over that open common which was just beginning to flush with heather.
Another man came by, driving a black pig. It grunted, and seemed to run
in every direction but the right one. He looked a stupid man; but,
then, they were all half-witted in the country. She said--very slowly
and deliberately, as if she were speaking to a small child--that she
wanted Folly Corner. He gave a vacillating grin, keeping one eye on the
pig, and pointed to a substantial stack of chimneys on the left.
“That be Folly,” he said laconically, and left her.
She could see the house through the dense leafage of three great elms.
She stood, with one hand firmly gripping her gay parasol, and the other
twitching at the crisp edge of her veil. She looked at the red gables,
at the spreading outbuildings, at the garden, at the yard; she looked
back at the hot road cutting across the common. Should she go back or
should she go on? For a moment she closed her eyes, and immediately the
dark, straight wall of the prison shot up slowly like a specter and
chilled her.
The prison! The prison and the one damned, dear soul beating within its
walls! But that was past. She had wrestled out that finally--at night,
in her London room, close beneath the slates; at night, in her bed, the
letter under her pillow, or twisting in her hot fingers.
The gate which led into the garden was a white wicket. At each side was
a poplar. These had grown so thick and tall that they met midway and
formed an arch. There was a path of red brick, a little raised, leading
up to the house door; it led up straight, between box edgings two feet
high. The garden-beds were rather neglected, but a great clump of
red-hot pokers pointed flame fingers to the sky, and a loose white
rose, like foam, clung to the walls and ran along the low roof. There
was a long window each side the door, and in front of the one on the
right was a yew-tree clipped into the shape of an umbrella. The
clipping had been neglected, and the tree had the dishevelled
appearance of a man who neglects to shave. There was an air of
indolence about the garden, but it did not seem the indolence of
poverty. A pond partly encircled the place. A red-and-white cow came
down to drink and to look at her reflectively with its big,
closely-veined eyes.
What sort of greeting was garnering for her beyond that door with the
wooden hood, the veil of white roses, and the rough iron knocker? She
looked at a Virginia creeper twisting among the roses. Autumn had
touched it. She looked at the red leaves, then at the white flowers.
They seemed flame and pale fire to strained eyes, short of sleep and
dazzled with the sun. The deep, haggard line curved round her mouth.
Within! What waited within?
* * * * *
Within was the second woman, old Gainah Toat. She sat in a low-pitched
room--the room on the right, made dark by the umbrella yew. There was a
great open hearth. There were three doors: one led into a dairy; it was
open, and showed the bricked floor, the yellow and brown pans, the
thick cream and made-up butter; the second door opened into the
passage; the third into the garden.
She sat by the third door, which was thrown well back. She could see
the orchard strewn with mussel plums, ripe to rottenness, with little
yellow stewing pears and apples specked with black. She did not seem
to see anything; she had those eyes--cold blue with a dash of
gray--that are always dull; eyes that evade and puzzle. They were very
wide open, the lids rolled well back, and the lashes sparse.
She had a white face; there was a general appearance of wasting about
her. The fingers, holding a letter--the other woman had been influenced
by a letter too--were twisted and disfigured with rheumatism. Her body
was flat and square; her faded gown made no pretense of slurring the
defect. It went straight from her stringy throat to her hardly
perceptible hips without a break, without a kindly fold or ruck of the
stuff.
She was an odd-looking figure; a spectral woman almost--with her
bloodless skin, her dead eyes, her twisted, transparent hands. But the
people around Folly Corner were not given to fanciful imaginings; they
only knew that Gainah seemed made of iron, that she worked on the farm
without tiring from sunrise until night. Her life was spent in making
things for other people to eat. She belonged to a dying type: she was
one of those women who devote themselves to tickling the masculine
palate. Machine-made food did not enter into her economy. Her mushroom
ketchup, her marmalade, her blackberry jelly were renowned. She gave
them to anyone who asked, not because she was generous, but because she
was inordinately proud of her productions. She toyed with medicine too;
made balm tea, and, from a particular sort of nettle, green ointment
that would cure a gathering. She made herb beer and water cider to
save beer at harvest-time. She knew the effect of foxglove on the human
heart, and made a concoction of a certain herb which she gathered
secretly. With it she claimed to cure palsy. She was mistress at Folly
Corner. She had come to old Jethro Jayne when his wife died. She had
brought up the present master by hand; she ruled him still.
Every master of Folly Corner had been a Jayne, and every male Jayne had
been a Jethro since the first farmer had hidden his pet mare for ten
days in a cellar so that Cromwell’s Ironsides should not steal her.
The room was always cool because the yew threw a continual shadow.
Gainah, sitting without a glint of sun in her chilly blue gown and with
her feet flat on the stone floor, seemed to have no part with the hot,
throbbing world outside.
They were threshing on the farm; the whirring sound hummed in and the
smell from the engine hung on the air. On the south wall a man, by her
orders, was cutting back the foliage from the vine so that the sun
might get freely at the Sweet-water grapes. In a few weeks it would be
time to think about wine-making. The busiest time of the year was
coming on. She hadn’t a moment to waste. She should at that moment have
been straining the mushroom-juice from the salt and boiling it with
spices. But the letter, fluttering in her veined, gnarled hand, had
made her an idle woman before noon. She read it again with the weighty
deliberation of an almost illiterate person. It was written in a
dashing but undecided hand, and the words were stilted. Evidently the
writer had been ill at ease.
She got up stiffly at last and moved about the room, flicking a duster
over the ancient furniture. There was an oak cupboard reaching to the
ceiling--a double corner cupboard with delicate brass escutcheons and
an inlaid border of boxwood.
She ran the duster down the dark panels and breathed softly on the
brass. Then she took out her keys from her apron pocket and opened the
doors of the upper half. There were three shelves, the edge of each
scalloped out. On every shelf were bottles and jars full of preserves
and pickles. She touched them quite tenderly, looking at the faintly
written labels, pursing up her colorless lips and moving her head
spasmodically.
She shut the cupboard at last and went slowly on her journey round the
room. She dusted the oak sideboard, the long oak table, with the form
against the wall and the carved joint stools--the high one for the
master, the low one for the dame--at each end. She dusted the chairs,
some of solid oak, some of golden beech with rush seats. She dusted the
clock; its hand pointed ominously to twelve.
It was about time then. In a few minutes she should be here. Gainah
chuckled a little, remembering that she had purposely neglected to send
the trap to the station. All the men were at harvest, and she had
wanted old Chalcraft to trim the vine. She sat down by the door again,
looking out blankly at the warmth and life. There were thick
parchment-like mushrooms dotted over the meadow beyond the quickset
hedge, and in the orchard fruit kept thudding softly from the trees. It
was the beginning of rich autumn, when one makes provision for winter.
She was always so busy through August and September; on her feet until
late at night--late for Folly Corner--straining and boiling, and
pulping and stirring; scolding the two maids and tyrannizing over
Jethro.
Those mushrooms had been in salt too long; the wind-fall apples were
almost past preserving. It was washing-day, too--they had washed on the
first Monday in the month for thirty years. The soapy smell floated
into the dining-parlor; she could hear the rasping sound of the brush
and the gurgling swill of suds. She heard also the cackle of the two
maids and the mellow voice of the elderly washerwoman. They were
wasting their time. Yet she didn’t move. Her eyes fell to the letter
which she had taken out of her pocket again. Her lips mumbled the
signature--“PAMELA CRISP.”
After thirty-three years! And she had served his father before him! It
was very hard! She wouldn’t give up her keys--he wouldn’t expect that.
She smiled dryly. He wouldn’t expect that--he was a Jayne and he knew
when he was well off. He would never get anyone else to slave so. Even
the green tomatoes were pickled--with onions and apples and mysterious
spices. She was the only woman for miles round who had the recipe, and
before she died she meant to burn it, having no daughter to bequeath it
to. And scarlet runners put down every year for winter eating. Her
butter had never been known to have a twang. She could make cakes
without fat and used snow for puddings when eggs were scarce.
The bed in the best room had been made under her eye from the feathers
of birds killed on the farm.
Birds! It was not many henwives who could manage to hatch a full
sitting. She never thought fifteen eggs too many to put under a hen;
the Dorking might manage even more. The gray-and-white hen--didn’t it
steal a nest of twenty-two and come clucking home at the end of three
weeks with nineteen chicks, most of them pullets, too! A young, flighty
woman would have spoilt everything by poking about and interfering with
the bird. She had known all along that it was sitting in the barn, but
she wasn’t going to let it know she knew. Young women spoilt their
lives by haste. They spoilt the lives of other people too. Her eye
dropped again to the dashing signature--“PAMELA CRISP.”
She sat brooding by the door, thinking proudly of all her domestic
achievements and telling herself piteously that Jethro would never
allow her to be displaced. Of course, she had known that he would marry
some day, but then, in her own mind, she had picked him out a wife:
pretty, soft-looking Nancy from Turle House. A wife--pliable and a
little foolish, like Nancy--would not have mattered. But a cousin on
the mother’s side! An unknown girl from London! A girl whose capital
“P” trailed to the edge of the envelope!
She got up again and went round the dull room in her halting way,
dusting and tidying mechanically. Then all at once she straightened
her back and listened. There were light steps on the brick path which
led round to the garden door. The clip-clip of the shears ceased. There
were two voices--a young feminine one and the hoarse croak of old
Chalcraft, who was past work, and lived out his life of long service
like an ancient horse, doing light jobs, so that he might still believe
himself useful and independent.
Gainah went out, the sun on her uncovered head, with its wide parting
and gray-brown hair. She went round the corner. Chalcraft was on the
ladder still. The shears yawned in his tremulous hand; he had clipped
to the wall, and the Sweet-waters hung close to it and stripped of
foliage, pale green and luscious. The long trails of grayish leaves
were on the path; the girl trod them down. When she saw the elder woman
she made a step forward. She seemed half defiant, half ashamed. Her hat
was on one side; it gave her a rakish air of towns. Such a slight thing
may imperil a woman’s reputation--in prejudiced eyes. Gainah’s cold
eyes contracted, and her brows drew over them a harsh ridge.
Pamela put out her hand--in a new glove. A slim gold bracelet, from
which dangled a green charm, swung on her wrist.
“You must be Gainah,” she said in a conciliating way, and smiling.
Then she added, with a faint touch of injury, “I wrote to say I was
coming this morning. I hoped that you would send to meet me. It’s a
long walk.”
Gainah gave her a sharp look; she thought that this was the first
indication of authority.
“It’s harvest-time,” she said curtly; “the best harvest for seventeen
years. Come inside.”
They both slipped over the threshold of that dim gray room with the
stone floor and the solid family furniture. Pamela gave a swift glance
round to see if the room was empty. There was a flaming spot on each
cheek, and her glittering eyes moved uneasily behind her loose veil.
“I’d like to put myself tidy,” she said in the confiding whisper of one
woman to another, “before I go in to him.”
“To your Cousin Jethro?” Gainah’s dull eyes fastened on the hectic
face.
“To my Cousin Jethro--yes,” she laughed nervously; then added quickly,
“It seems strange to call him ‘cousin.’ We’ve--we’ve never met. You got
my letter? Yes. I--I want to be friends.”
Gainah didn’t answer. She only opened the door leading to the stairs.
The two went up together. There was a high window halfway up, with a
lattice of thick oak bars.
“No glass,” said Pamela in astonishment.
“They didn’t use glass in the days when that was cut,” Gainah said,
“and the Jaynes are not people to go with new-fangled ways. Every Jayne
says that what was good enough for his father is good enough for him.
It’s a family not given to changing. You ought to know that; you belong
to it.”
“On the mother’s side--yes,” returned the girl in a half-hearted way.
Gainah opened the door of her own bedroom. It was poorly furnished with
her own furniture, which she had brought with her to Folly Corner.
There was a wooden bedstead, painted clay color and touched with lines
of apple-green. The washstand and drawers matched it. There was a strip
or so of shabby felt carpet, and on the shelf a pair of brass
candlesticks and a red china cow milked by a diminutive woman. The girl
looked about her disdainfully, assertiveness getting the better of
nervousness. She took off her hat and veil before the murky glass,
splashed water over her face, patted her hair caressingly, arranged
again the smart hat and veil. Gainah watched this pretty toying of
youth with grim disapproval; even the girl’s big arms lifted to her
head were an offense.
“Like a brass button in a sweep’s eye, all glitter,” the old woman
mumbled to herself, as the yellow and green bracelet swung on the round
wrist and the jet buckles flashed in the elaborate hat.
On the way downstairs she was afforded a peep into other bedrooms.
“I can’t let you have the best spare room,” she declared
autocratically. “This is it. It’s never used, except for layin’s out
and weddin’ nights, and layin’s in. All the Jaynes, right back to King
Charles, have been born in that bed--and died in it afterward.”
Pamela looked at the ponderous piece of furniture and shuddered.
“I wouldn’t sleep there for worlds,” she said.
Gainah, her claw-like hand caught stiffly round the banisters to
help her progress, went slowly down, stair by stair. Pamela, close
behind her, looked contemptuous--of everything: the old-fashioned
place, the odd old woman.
They crossed the room which the yew made so dark. Gainah opened the
door into the narrow corridor. Pamela followed. There was a window
looking out at the garden. On the ledge were blood-red geraniums, and
on the distempered walls queer prints in black frames.
She didn’t approve of those crinkled, brownish prints; they were hardly
decent.
Gainah flung open the door of the other room.
“Jethro,” she said in her high, grating voice, “here’s your Cousin
Pamela--on the mother’s side.”