JETHRO was hoeing peas in the burning June sun. His white linen hat
flapped over his calm, shrewd eyes. Pamela, loitering along the grass
paths, marveled intolerantly at his choice of an occupation. Why should
a man of substance, a man of birth, a man with acres and with laborers,
hoe peas? She paced the paths thoughtfully, looking at her neat, broad
border of new roses, taking up a fluttering label now and then to read
the half-obliterated name. They were all the very latest and choicest
roses, and had been planted in the spring by the nurseryman at
Liddleshorn, to whom she had given a large order.
Her heart told her that Edred was close behind, and she turned, her
eyes seeking his humbly, pleading for tender recognition. He did not
trouble to look at her, but merely plucked one of her beautiful pink
Verdier roses without permission, and stuck it in his coat, with a
scornful laugh at its huge size.
Jethro, across his little heaps of flagging weeds and clods of yellow
earth, watched the two gloomily. He was tired of Pamela’s elegant
brother; he was suspicious, although he could not have explained why.
His welcome to the shipwrecked stranger had been warm--it had even
extended to a free drawing on his check-book; but he did not want his
kinsman’s-hospitality to be construed into a life invitation. He
remembered a funny story he had once heard about an engaging Irishman
who had come on a month’s visit to a country house and stayed
forty-five years. Edred had lamed his best horse; he had considerably
reduced the cask of old whisky; he dipped too deeply into the
tobacco-jar. He might stay until the wedding, and when that was over he
must take himself off--to the West Coast of Africa, to another wreck,
if he chose. The busy man, hoeing peas not because it was necessary but
as a positive outlet for his energy, was heartily sick of the idle one,
who strolled languidly along the rose border, the smoke from his cigar
making a lean, blue string.
The wicket-gate creaked. Pamela looked up sharply. Heels clattered on
the raised brick path, and a blithe voice called out, “Where are you
all?”
“It’s Nancy.”
Edred moved forward so abruptly that he broke the long ash of his
cigar, which he had been carefully preserving. Pamela followed. A tall,
slim figure stood for a moment in the frame of the shining holly arch
at the entrance of the garden. The sun caught Nancy’s masses of
brick-red hair and enveloped her pretty face in flame. She called out
to Jethro:
“Mother wants you to tell me how much you think she ought to get a load
for her hay. Write it down, please, or I am sure to forget.”
She met Pamela at the beginning of the grass path. They kissed. Edred
watched the tame little salute cynically. Then he took Nancy’s
hand in the cycling glove with the perforated palm--like a thin
crumpet--and watched her white lids fall. She was such a child that she
never tried to hide her feelings.
Pamela dragged off a great branch of damask rose and tore her fingers.
“You should always cut roses,” Nancy said reprovingly, taking up a
label. “Francesca Kruger--that’s flesh, tinged with saffron, isn’t it?”
“Copper,” returned Pamela curtly.
“I wish we could have some good roses. Evergreen isn’t successful with
flowers. But he lets us have plenty of vegetables. I came to know if
you would both come over to Malling Flower Show next Thursday. We could
bike--that would be great fun, wouldn’t it? Mr. Meadows has asked me to
judge the wild flowers, and I feel so horribly nervous. But I’ve been
reading it up.”
“You can’t go to Malling,” Pamela said, looking sternly at the weak,
radiant face, and hating Nancy all the more fiercely because her
temples were so purely white, and because the ruddy hair grew round
them so charmingly. “It’s lecture-day at Liddleshorn--the nursing
lecture. It will be very interesting; we are going to bandage a small
boy.”
“But I don’t care for the lecture. We are not going to finish the
course. Annie says that her mother--Aunt Jerusha--thought scientific
nursing a great mistake, and always said that no woman could expect to
be a good nurse until she had been the mother of a large family and had
buried two-thirds of it. You _must_ come to Malling.”
She was speaking to Pamela, but her blue eyes were on Edred.
“I’ll come, anyhow,” he said lightly. “I’ll call at Turle about three.
Will that do? Pamela would rather go to Liddleshorn and bandage her
small boy.”
“That would be fun. And you’ll come into supper afterward. I must go
now. Mother told me to look in at Hone’s--Nick Hone’s.”
“Where there are so many children?” asked Pamela, her gloomy eyes on
the straight line of beauty afforded by her choice roses.
“No. Those are the Peter Hones. The Bert Hones live near us. But Nick
Hone is a neighbor of yours. Jethro!” she called out shrilly, and he
came across the rough, dry ground, hoe in hand, “do send poor Nick Hone
in some new potatoes. You have plenty.” She glanced along the beds at
the rows in white blossom. “He’s dying, and he keeps saying that if he
had a dish of new potatoes he’d get better. Mrs. Hone went and dug some
yesterday, but they were only as large as cob-nuts. Mother would have
sent some, but Evergreen is a little touchy. He doesn’t like us to
interfere with the vegetables.”
“Daborn shall take a trug full,” said Jethro carelessly. “Dying, is he?
That’s drink. Never knew such a fellow! Three gallons of cider a day at
harvest time wasn’t enough for him. The other men save some and take it
home to their wives.”
“That is kind of you. Mrs. Hone will be so pleased. I’ll be off now.
Three o’clock on Thursday, Mr. Crisp.”
He seemed amused by her adorable air of sheepishness when he took her
hand. They all four went out into the inclosed garden, Jethro and
Pamela dropping behind as a matter of course--his eyes on her, and hers
fixed blankly on the well-cut back of Edred’s coat. Jethro picked up a
flat wooden basket, with pieces of wood at the bottom like the rockers
of a cradle. It stood by a row of early peas.
“Here’s a trug. Daborn shall take it to Hone when he goes home to
dinner. Here, Daborn!”
He put his earthy, hard hand to his mouth and shouted. Pamela saw the
man hurrying from the greenhouse, where he was getting young tomato
plants ready for planting out. She followed Nancy and Edred, dreading
to leave them alone for a moment, despising herself for dreading. They
had just passed through the holly hedge. She scurried after, not
knowing why she put her feet so softly on the gravel and coaxed her
skirt close to her limbs so that it should not brush the box edging.
When she stood in the frame of the arch she stopped. Her clear, jealous
eyes went straight across the garden, across the bed of newly-planted
cauliflowers which Chalcraft had been allowed to dibble in for the last
time--next year she would have a lawn and carriage-drive. She looked
across the brick path, through the tall heads of June flowers, to the
umbrella yew-tree beneath which Gainah’s lilies were blooming.
They were standing behind it, between the thick foliage and the
square lattice of the dining-parlor window. She saw Edred peer through
to see if the room was empty. She saw Nancy, her head down, her arms
and hands jerking, pretending to admire the lilies--bemoaning, in her
imbecile way, no doubt, because Evergreen would not let her have lilies
too.
They were very close together in the bosky kindness of the yew; no
doubt it had been a witness to many like scenes and been discreet.
Nancy seemed to sway a bit nearer the lithe figure in gray. Pamela saw
his face and her heart came to a startled stop. He had looked like that
when he kissed her for the first time--on the stairs of the
boarding-house. It had been the first man’s kiss of her life.
Nancy’s eyes and cheeks and lips blazed like her ruddy hair. He pulled
her toward him with the easy, insolent air of a man who is sure of his
woman--who has been sure of women all his life--and kissed her on lids,
lips, brows.
Pamela, wearing a white cotton gown, her head bare, looked like
statue--one of the statues that used to decorate old gardens. She
forgot everything--her approaching marriage and magnificence, her
border of tea roses, the carriage-drive, her wedding clothes--all the
big and little things which equally made her happiness or misery. For
the first time for many months she seemed to touch her past self. She
had almost forgotten, in the new strong life, the old one of dull
days, and sloppy streets, and shop-windows, and a struggle for the
latest fashion at the least possible cost. She was again that
sharp-witted girl in Bloomsbury, that wildly wretched one who used to
take omnibus in spare hours just to stand on the common and stare
hungrily at a wall.
He was kissing Nancy; he meant to marry her. She couldn’t let him do
that. She must abandon Jethro. Her life must run side by side with
Edred’s. She didn’t care what sort of life--one of poverty, hard work,
hard words; blows, perhaps. One of guilty prosperity, winding up with
the prison again for him. It didn’t matter--so long as they were
together, if only for a little. He didn’t love her. He wasn’t capable,
as she knew love. But she loved him, even when she saw him stoop again
to those red pouting lips behind the yew. All her rage was for Nancy.
Daborn came behind with the trug full of yellow-skinned potatoes. She
stepped back and watched him go through the yard, and presently watched
Nancy go down the bricked path, mount her bicycle, and skim away like a
light swallow. Nancy had forgotten the marked quotation for hay. She
could not carry two ideas in that limited head of hers.
The world was too gay and warm for Pamela’s blank misery. The hot sun
darted into her strained eyes like needles. She went round the house,
hugging the lichened wall, her head down, the woolly leaves and spiral
tendrils of the vine touching her dull hair. At the garden door she met
Gainah, with a flush on her wasted face and a gleam of the old industry
and importance in her cold eyes. She was attired in a loose garment of
unbleached calico, cut like an antiquated bathing garment. Her
skirts were bunched under it. She had a battered straw hat, round which
was firmly fixed a veil of green net. A pair of old stockings were
pulled over her hands and arms. She carried a tin frying-pan, which she
constantly beat with a long iron skimmer.
The air was hot and noisy. There seemed an unusual commotion along the
line of beehives which were set by the south wall. They were straw
skeps, which in winter were covered with turf to keep out the cold.
Pamela, who had read up bee-keeping, with other branches of country
life, had long decided to have bar-frame hives when she was mistress of
Folly Corner. But her knowledge of bees was only theoretical. She was
very frightened of them, and the deft, fearless way in which Gainah
would take a swarm excited her admiration and made her grudgingly admit
that it might be a point of superiority.
The angry buzzing grew louder, the monotonous tom-tom beating of the
frying-pan and skimmer more persistent.
“There’s a swarm over there in the crab-tree,” Gainah said excitedly,
forgetting for the time all party feeling. “I must go and take it. They
know me. They’ve been talking all the morning; I knew we should have a
flitting by dinner-time.”
Pamela languidly turned her head. A dark, pear-shaped mass hung from
the lower branch of the crab tree in the oat-field.
“They know I’m coming,” Gainah said, advancing and still beating, “they
know everything. These are fierce--I crossed them with an Italian
queen ten years ago--but they never sting me. They have more sense and
feeling than half the folk about. When old Bert Hone died and young
Bert took the bees from his mother, they didn’t flourish. He hadn’t
acted fair and they knew it. When there’s a swarm in the thatch none of
the girls in a house ever get married. All Len Daborn’s girls are maids
still.”
She strode on, a spare distorted figure in her calico wrapper, with the
green veil tucked safely down in her scraggy throat. Pamela watched her
vanish and reappear beyond the fruit-bushes. On any other day she might
have asserted herself--given a wise homily on bee-keeping up to date,
or deprecated old-world superstitions.
She went under the low door with the wooden hood and sat down in the
dull dining-parlor, her eyes vaguely looking out of the window at the
space between the casement and the yew. Nancy’s flame-colored hair and
thick scarlet lips seemed to stand out in relief from the curled somber
leaves.
Gainah’s work, just as she had thrown it down when the bees swarmed,
was huddled on the floor, and the blue cambric hearts which she had cut
ready for patching on the white dimity were dotted like huge pale
turquoises on the narrow oak table.
Pamela looked at the half-made quilt. Gainah had told her once, in a
moment of expansiveness, that the blue cambric and white dimity had
been her mother’s wedding petticoat and gown. It was a dainty quilt,
all white groundwork, with blue bordering and bands and carefully cut
hearts and leaves. The stitches were small and regular. Gainah sat at
patchwork from breakfast until supper, now that the garden and the
house were no longer under her control. In the lower drawer of her
chest she already had five quilts folded neatly away in camphor.
The front door opened. Edred came in, rang the hand-bell on the table
in the passage. Pamela heard voices--a little deprecating cackle, a
man’s voice subdued to a cautious bass growl. Unable to bear any more,
she started up, threw back the door, and advanced into the passage. As
she did so, the deep rose-color of Nettie’s cotton gown whisked out of
sight into the kitchen. She went, her head high on her throat, into the
drawing-room, and Edred followed.
Fate seemed to decide that her moments of decided comedy or tragedy
should be played in that room: the room with the ugly grate and marble
mantelpiece which Jethro’s father had put in to make the place smart
for Gainah; with the painted milking-stools and fretwork brackets and
cheap embroideries which she had herself brought from Liddleshorn.
The roses in the blue bowls were drooping, candle-grease had dropped on
to the keys of the piano, the open door of the china closet displayed
dusty shelves and a floor on which the gay red-and-blue rugs were
kicked up. Pamela saw these things; they reminded her sharply of the
change that of late had come over her. She no longer took a
housewifely pride in anything; her life was occupied in playing cat,
with Nancy and Edred for mice.
“Are you going to marry Nancy?” she asked abruptly.
“Are you going to marry Jethro?” he returned aptly.
“I--I suppose so. And yet, when it comes to the point---- Everything
depends on you.”
She looked at him again in an appealing way.
“We’re in a bit of a mess,” he said, shrugging his thin shoulders and
impatiently pulling the fine points of his black mustache.
She hunched her shoulders and clenched her hands between her knees as
if she were in actual physical pain.
“Oh! why did you come?” she moaned.
“Nonsense. It was very fortunate for me. I couldn’t have kept on with
sewing-machines--cut my throat, rather. And you can’t execute a _coup_
of any kind without capital. This sort of thing isn’t permanent, of
course. Old Jeth’s getting sick--he’s a good fellow. Men of that type
always show their feeling in mean ways. He ought to swear at me, kick
me out--he only looks blue when I fill up my glass. I must either marry
Nancy--it can’t make any difference to you, Pam--or I must get a couple
of hundred to set me up in life again. There are lots of good things
going in the City--beastly nuisance not seeing the evening papers. My
head is full of ideas. If I had a couple of hundreds I could turn them
into thousands in a week. Balaclavas have run up to----”
“Don’t talk to me about stocks; I don’t understand--and it is so
unimportant----”
“By Jove! it’s all-important to me.”
She straightened her curved back. He saw a convulsive lump working in
her throat, and the rims of her lids grew faintly pink. He frowned. She
was going to cry. A woman’s tears lashed him to any sort of brutality.
“When I saw you kiss Nancy,” she broke out, “it nearly killed me.”
“So you saw! But when old Jeth kisses you, in his open, whole-hearted,
smacking fashion?”
“It doesn’t affect you. Men are different--and you more different than
any other man,” she said confusedly.
“This sort of thing doesn’t help us,” he cried impatiently. “Which
shall it be? Turle, with Nancy as a wife and Aunt Sophy as a
mother-in-law, or London, with two hundred pounds in my pocket?”
“I haven’t fifty pounds.”
“But Jethro has. Get it out of him; you’ll do it better than I should.
Go to him frankly; say I’ve a scheme for making a fortune. He will be
delighted to get rid of me. He’s suspicious, without knowing why, poor
chap. This brother and sister humbug is the merest farce. If these
people were not fools, the most generous, gullible fools in the world,
they would have found us out long ago.”
He crossed to the sofa, threw himself beside her, and laxly hooked his
long arm round her firm waist.
“Get me the couple of hun, Pam,” he said tenderly, “and I’ll be off.
Nancy is a pretty imbecile. I’ll go to town. I’ll keep out of mischief,
sail just within the wind--don’t bother your dear anxious head about
me. Marry old Jeth; cut a figure in the neighborhood. With his money
and your brains you can be county swells.”
“And you?”
“I told you--don’t worry. Forget No. 4658.”
She started nervously.
“How can you think of that time without a shudder? Even now, when I go
to sleep at night, the prison wall shoots up and blinds me. Yet
you--were inside. And you say that number--the number that _was_
you--without a tremor. I’m afraid to let you go. It will happen again.”
“Not if I know it. I was green. Overent and Bladden victimized me. Only
fools are found out. Sin is a short name for stupidity. I shall never
overshoot the mark again. There are fifty ways--five hundred--of making
a fortune. No man but a fool need work--in these commercial days.
Milligan cleared fifty thousand only last week, just by buying a
concern and turning it into a company. He’s a prominent man, a
politician, a baronet. Ten years ago he kept a newspaper and sweetstuff
shop at Hornsey. Lady Milligan, whose drawing-room gowns are sketched
in the fashion papers, boiled toffee and sold it in pennyworths. No one
calls Milligan a blackguard.”
“He must have swindled somebody. It’s impossible else.”
“Of course he did. But everybody swindles everybody else--that’s the
commercial spirit; it has made us a great nation.”
“Jethro----”
“Was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He is a fool; without his
inheritance, he’d be plowing and hay-making. Why discuss idly and waste
time? The dinner gong will sound soon.”
He took out his watch. It was a costly gold hunter, which he had bought
in his brief prosperous time. He had put it in her hands only half an
hour before his arrest--when Overent and Bladden had flown with forty
thousand pounds and he was madly packing his bag in the Bloomsbury back
bedroom.
“What am I to do?”
“Get two hundred pounds out of Jethro. I will go away and make my
fortune. Some day, when you read the papers--a day old,” he sneered,
“you’ll see my name as chairman of a public dinner, or recipient of a
testimonial. I mean to be generous--when generosity can be made to pay.
I’ll present my district with a public library, a clock tower, or a
drinking fountain, and be knighted.”
“You’ll come to Folly Corner sometimes?”
“Never.” Even his honor, just because he was a man, was stronger than
hers. “I thought at first that it would work--you as Jethro’s wife, I
as Nancy’s husband. But you are one of those emotional women who go to
the devil and drag a man with them. When I leave here it will be for
good. You won’t even know my address.”
“I couldn’t bear it.”
Her eyes were not on him, but on the lattice. She looked across the
great field, with its uplands and its belt of oaks. She had seen it in
so many aspects--half shorn; plowed, the wet furrows shining like
glass; seen it smoothly iced with January snow; watched the green
needle-points of young grain. That outlook, that deep bay window, had
known the tearing of her heart.
She looked. The ripeness of harvest was suggested. There were the long
stretches of gray-green grain, soon to be golden, soon to rustle with
the dry, hot breeze of August. She saw the tossed-up lavish boughs of
wild roses wreathing above the hedge-rows, and saw the long grass on
the banks, tropical in its growth, and going rapidly to seed.
She couldn’t stay here and watch the changes of the season for
years--year after year and then death--without word of him.
“I couldn’t bear it,” she repeated.
“You wouldn’t be fool enough to throw Jethro over? You wouldn’t come
with me to London and take pot luck--a knight’s wife some day, perhaps,
or only the starving wife of--a number. I mean to be careful--but
failure’s on the cards. Even men like Milligan come a cropper now and
then. I’ve heard shaky stories about him. He doesn’t know when to
stop.”
His eyes were shining. Something of the old passion was stamping itself
anew on his face. She was looking lovely--the daredevil expression
of perfect abandonment and sacrifice strong on her mouth, on her
quickly-breathing body, on the very hands which shook in the lap of her
white gown.
“You wouldn’t come?” he said, under his breath.
She gave a quick sigh, a last sharp glance at the gray, gently-moving
uplands and the wreaths of dog-roses.
“I would go with you--anywhere. I would have gone with you to the
prison, been a number, a thing less than an animal behind the prison
wall--but they wouldn’t let me.”
He put his mouth to hers.
“Dear little woman! In India you’d go to the Suttee. Then it is
settled. Tackle Jethro to-night.”