THE girl winced and hung back, as one does at physic or a possible
blow. She looked along the narrow passage, as if for the support of
another woman. But Gainah had hobbled away, shutting the door behind
her. Pamela stood alone. She looked round her--at the oak table strewn
with papers--old copies of the _Field_ and _Farm and Home_.
There were a pair of driving-gloves thrown down, and a whip with a
broken thong. There was a great blue bowl half full of waste paper and
ends of string. A pair of brass candlesticks winked on the ledge beside
the vivid geraniums. She gave a second nervous look at the colored
prints in black frames, prints of which she did not quite approve. A
full voice from inside the room said impatiently, “Come in.”
She didn’t advance, so the voice added, with a mellow laugh in it,
“Come in. Why did Gainah go away? Come in, Cousin Pamela. I cannot move
from this confounded sofa.”
So he was crippled! Her wild gray eyes darted across the garden and
along the hot road. If she could only just softly open that door and
slip out without seeing him! A cripple! She might have known that there
was something.
“Come in.”
She made a desperate step forward: it was so like a fool to stay
outside. She had come to the house on certain business, and she must go
through with it. Her foot in the arched morocco shoe tapped on the bare
oak floor. Then it sunk into a thick carpet. She could not see the
occupant of the room yet; he was on a couch in the bay window which
looked across the harvest fields. All that she could see was a wall
hung with gorgeous flowered paper, a carpet with a green ground and
bunches of Provence roses, a round walnut table, and a piano with a
closed lid.
It was like coming from December to June at a breath--this transit from
the dim ancestral living-room to the parlor with the walnut and velvet
suite from the best shop in Liddleshorn. Yet Pamela hardly noticed. The
only thing that mattered was the sofa in the bay window. Would that
man, that cripple on the sofa, be favorably impressed with her?
She was sick and hot with apprehension. Had any girl been in such a
position before? She began to think dimly of early tales that she had
read of slave markets, of a poem learnt and recited at school about a
quadroon girl.
Of course old Gainah didn’t know all--didn’t know anything that was
truth. What an odd old woman! Not pleasant to live with. Not a cheerful
house in which to spend the winter! She went slowly over that thick
carpet to the bay window, her head down, her upper lip caught fiercely
over her lower. When she reached the sofa she was in an agony of shame,
and hardly lifted her eyes.
Jethro said, almost tenderly:
“Do sit down.”
The words were simple, but she liked him from that moment. She felt
sure of him. He wouldn’t be--coarse. She sat down. There was a low
walnut chair with a green cover drawn into the bay all ready. Then she
dared to look up.
Jethro was flat on his back. He was so spare that his body seemed to
curve inward; but it was the spareness of a tough, muscular man. His
upper lip was bare and his eyes were keen, merry blue. A life of
sunshine and wind and rain had tanned his skin. The backs of his hairy
hands looked as if they had been steeped in tobacco juice; beyond his
wrist, where his coat sleeve pushed up, his skin was milky. He wore an
Oxford shirt with an unstarched collar. She saw a ring of milk-white
skin when he turned his head to look at her, and immediately above it
he was the color of delicate old leather.
She looked at his handsome face and muscular body with interest. Well!
It might be worse--or better. A little round table with a red and gold
cloth was within touch. He put out his hand and touched a toppling pile
of letters.
“These were all answers,” he said, smiling drolly. “I had them
addressed to Liddleshorn post-office, as you know. Three hundred and
fifty. I shall get some more to-morrow morning, no doubt.”
“Don’t!” she cried out sharply, “oh, don’t! It--it--it--a man doesn’t
know.... A woman has little secret shames--you won’t understand.... I
wish I hadn’t come. Three hundred and fifty girls! Oh! They are not
coming here, too?”
She stopped, panting. Her eyes were on those letters, letters in every
shape and color, some with gilt monograms on the back, one with a gilt
“Nell.” She looked at the handwriting, some blotted and some scrawling,
some neatly masculine and clerk-like. Her face looked old, her eyes
blistered with tears.
Jethro struggled to rise. Then with a groan of pain and sharp twist of
his injured leg he fell back on the cushions.
Her back was firm against the carved walnut of the green-seated chair,
as they sat in such strange conference in the deep shadow of the bay.
Through the hot mist of her tears she saw the harvest field, half
clipped, like the shorn head of beauty. A big brown fellow of a humble
bee came through the open casement and settled on her. She flinched.
Jethro regarded it as an omen.
“When a humble bee flies in at the open window and lights on a stranger
and flies out again, it’s a sign the stranger will not stay long,” he
said, looking quite disturbed as the insect droned out into the sun
again.
She looked at him with mild contempt, thinking it most extraordinary
that a big fellow such as he was should entertain such notions.
There were the usual sounds of fully blown summer; petulant buzz of
overworked insects, voices of harvesters, the whirr of the engine. Taps
from the smithy at the corner intensified in Pamela’s aching head;
ever afterward she regarded smithy sounds as indispensable to the
perfection of an August day.
Suddenly she broke out passionately:
“I can’t stay. I shouldn’t have come. It is the sort of thing that a
barmaid, a shop girl--someone a little reckless--would do. I am
different.” She stretched her hand and directed it haughtily toward the
letters. “I am not like these others. But it was a temptation: such a
rest, such a certainty for the future. And ... it was half a joke,
too.”
Jethro put out his immense brown hand and gripped her by the forefinger
and thumb round the wrist. She looked fully at him for the first time,
and, in spite of herself, she liked his face. It was handsome. The thin
high nose and beautifully curved lips made it even aristocratic. She
was a shallow town product, and had a flimsy horror of anything that
she considered coarse. Yet she admitted that on this man’s face was no
touch of boorishness. He looked, so she thought, like a patrician who
was masquerading in queer clothes. Her idea of masculine raiment was
confined to black cloth, with tweeds for the seaside and flannel for
tennis.
“I like you,” he said simply. “You are a nice-minded girl. It was a
joke with me, too--half a joke. I did it on market day; a fellow gets a
bit jolly then, perhaps. I shouldn’t have gone any further with these.”
He touched the letters with his free hand, and the touch was enough to
scatter them rudely on the floor. “But your name took my fancy. PAMELA
CRISP! Now, my mother was a Crisp.”
“Yes, so you told me in your letter,” she said faintly, and gently
fluttering her white, veined wrist in its handcuff. “You told me to
write and tell Miss Toat that we were cousins--on the mother’s side. I
did it--as a joke. Oh! a joke--you believe me?”
“Of course--a joke. It is nothing more--not yet.” His clear, blue eyes
were on her pastel-like face. Then he added ponderingly: “But we may be
cousins, after all. It wouldn’t make any difference--in the end. You
understand?”
She showed how fully she understood by the quick wave of color on her
cheek.
“My mother’s name was Lilith,” he went on.
“The name of my little sister who died.”
“My mother had a brother who ran away--some boy’s scrape at home. He
was never heard of afterward. His name was John.”
“My father’s name.” She became suddenly confidential. “He was a
contractor; plenty of money while he lived. We had a house a little way
out of London. He drove to his office every day. Two servants, a
governess for me, a dinner party now and then. When I grew up, a little
shopping, a little housework in an elegant way--arranging flowers,
setting the maids by the ears. You know. Thousands of girls live like
that and are bored to death. He died bankrupt; mother died of a broken
heart, or broken fortunes, poor dear. I was thrown on the world--the
creditors took everything. That is five years ago.”
He had been listening attentively, watching every shade and shine
upon her face, admiring her vivacious, half tragic gestures--not
understanding her in the least. The genteel life she so scornfully
sketched was unknown to him.
“You were the only one?”
“What?”
She lifted her head, rearing it almost, like an aggressive serpent.
“You were my Uncle John’s only child?”
“No.” The word came full and rounded from her mouth, and the eyes
behind the curtaining lashes were somber. “There was a--a brother. He
has gone away, a long voyage. He has a passion for the sea.”
“That settles it. Another brother of my mother’s, Uncle Thomas, was a
captain in the navy. He ran away before he was sixteen; nothing would
stop him. Every Crisp has a salt drop in his veins.”
“Father, in his most prosperous days, had a little yacht.”
“There you are again! The Crisp love for water. Well! I believe from my
heart that we really are cousins--Cousin Pamela. I shall tell the folk
hereabout that I advertised for my kin--Uncle John or his children--and
that you, seeing the advertisement, answered. That will make things
easy for us both. And now, cousin”--his voice was meaning, and his
handsome open face became roguish and bold--“I ought to kiss you.”
She slipped her wrist from his finger and thumb and fell back.
She looked at his face--handsome, thin, almost ascetic if it had not
been for the tan--with distaste.
“A kiss!” she murmured, with a quick, startled breath. “No, no; I
couldn’t dream of it.”
He seemed pleased at what he assumed to be her modesty. There was a
quaint pause, during which he thoughtfully examined her face, picking
feature from feature and dwelling most on the downcast lids. Then he
said, almost tenderly:
“What have you been doing these five years for a living? Cousin Pamela!
if only I had known that Uncle John’s child----”
“Don’t talk like that. We are not sure. What did I do?” She gave a
short, rather grating laugh. “Anything--short of scrubbing floors. I’ve
been a governess. I’ve tried to draw fashion-plates--but my drawing was
against me there. I’ve collected money for charitable institutions--on
commission. I was a companion. She was a publican’s widow with heaps of
money--one dare not be too particular. She was queer--a secret drinker
I always thought. I had twenty-five pounds a year. She liked me so much
that she raised my money at one bound to forty; money was only dirt to
her. Forty pounds a year--and she died before the first quarter was
due. I have always been unlucky.”
“And then?”
She shrugged with an artificial callousness.
“Looking out. Answering advertisements--until I answered yours.”
Directly she mentioned his the shame and outraged modesty in her surged
up again.
“I’ve never answered an advertisement like that before,” she burst out.
“But--it was fun, as you say. And I had put three advertisements in a
paper for a situation--at three-and-sixpence for forty words. Three
three-and-sixpences! Not a single answer! Something made me look at the
_Liddleshorn Herald_. It was in the stationer’s shop--ordered specially
for some customer. When I was a little thing I seem to remember that
paper about at home. The name, Liddleshorn, was familiar. Something
made me touch it, look down the advertisements. Then! You know!”
She put out her hands with a dramatic gesture. Jethro appeared to think
that it was time he made his explanations of the situation.
“I did it for fun--at first,” he said. “Afterward I was rather taken
with the idea. But not with the girls,” seeing her glance vindictively
at the scattered letters. “I wanted to marry; Gainah’s getting too
tight a hold on the place. And there is no one to entertain lady
visitors--no mistress. It isn’t natural. I wanted a wife. I advertised
for one. I wanted a change, too--a change of blood. It’s good for
stock, why not for us? That’s the way I argued it out with myself.”
Her chin was sunk in the puffs of her white muslin blouse and the color
was in her cheeks again. But he went on, apparently not noticing her
confusion.
“For generations back every Jayne has married in the neighborhood. We
are all related in some way; you meet the Jayne nose on a Crisp
face--you have the Crisp chin--and a Furlonger little finger,” he
crooked out his own, “on a Jayne hand. Nancy Turle has my father’s
waving red hair, and I’ve got the Turles’ white skin.”
He tucked up the sleeve of his coat to show her his smooth, milky skin.
“I thought,” he continued, as she neither looked nor spoke, “that a
change would be good. Change! You see it in stock; you see it in
flowers. Those crimson phloxes,” he pointed through the window, “are
twice as high this year because last autumn they were shifted in the
border. And Gainah, who knows all about flowers, says she can’t grow
heartsease three years running without lifting. They dwindle to
farthing-faces. Even cabbage mustn’t follow cabbage. I said to myself
that I’d graft new blood on the old Jayne stock.”
Pamela lifted her flaming face, and, putting out her thin foot,
contemptuously kicked the nearest letter.
“Then you had better take one of these,” she said, with temper, “if, as
you seem to think, I am a Crisp and your cousin.”
He looked at the foot which darted from her skirt.
“It’s a Furlonger foot,” he said simply. “Cousins! There isn’t a doubt.
But I’m content to take the way of my fathers.”
“I--I don’t know. It is early. You’d better let me go back.”
As she spoke she fleetly shut her eyes, so that she could see neither
the golden wheat-field nor the handsome face. At once the steep
wall of the prison ran up, and above it, searing her eyes, was the
blinding dome of sky. Beyond she saw the railway line, the dreary waste
land, a solitary old cottage, a tethered goat; on the edge of the
earth, meeting the sky, the bristling chimneys of the distant suburb
beyond the Scrubbs.
The prison! That chapter of her life was nearly ended. She knew that
she was weak; knew that she would yield to Jethro. Already she almost
felt as if that golden field of wheat half belonged to her. She would
yield. Why not? It was so simple, so idle. How she had longed for rest,
and more--for freedom! The heel of another woman had been very hard on
her neck. Just to go back to London, pack her boxes, take a cab, bid
her landlady farewell--and leave no trace. When _he_ came out from
prison he would not find her--that was all.
“I might stay--and see,” she said faintly, opening her gray eyes.
“Very well. You want a situation; I offer you one. I pay you
thirty-five pounds a year for gowns and things. That between ourselves.
At the end of the year--we’ll see. To the world, to Gainah, you are my
Cousin Pamela.”
“I’d like to earn my thirty-five pounds,” she said sturdily.
“Of course. You’ll make the place pretty, as young women can. You’ll
entertain all your distant relations--the Turles and Crisps and
Furlongers. You can write letters for me until I get about again. I’m
like a log just now. Look here!” He rolled down the covering and
showed his bandaged limb. “I got a fork run into my leg in the harvest
field, and it turned to a nasty wound. But I shall be about again
soon.”
“That is all?” She breathed relief, and the glint of distaste in her
eyes faded out.
“That is all. You didn’t think I was a cripple?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You really do favor my Uncle John,” Jethro said, after a pause. “Do
you mind--it will be your first duty--getting a leather case from that
top, left-hand drawer? Yes, that’s it,” when she brought it back. “See!
Here he is. Now, isn’t the mouth the same?”
He held before her the faded likeness, taken on silver, of a young man
in staid black clothes, and with straggling side whiskers.
“Taken just before he ran away. Is it anything like your father?”
She stared at the dim old portrait for a long time before she answered.
Her eyes took in every detail--the doubled fist on a bulky book, the
vapid smile, the too apparent watch-chain with its bunch of seals.
“I can’t say,” she returned faintly at last. “This is a young man.
Father was gray when I remember him. He married late in life. He had a
white beard. But I think,” she held the portrait thoughtfully sideways,
“that the mouth is something like. Father had a bare lip to the end of
his days.”
She shut the case and laid it on the table. Another bee came in and
darted at the nodding cherries in her hat. The metallic clink from the
smithy became more persistent. Jethro said gently at last, putting out
the big brown hand which was so dry and yielding:
“Then it is settled?”
Pamela, her head down, the long, haggard line deep on her lips, said
almost inaudibly:
“Yes.”
The word had hardly died away before Gainah, in her dim blue cotton
gown with the skimped skirt and straight bodice, put her head in at the
door and asked harshly if the newly-found cousin meant to stay to
dinner.