SHE waited until supper was over, and then she asked Jethro for half an
hour alone in the little room looking due north, where he kept his
papers, his boots, his agricultural catalogues, stray packets of seeds,
and so on.
The door shut on them. It was nearly dark--the sun setting luridly and
throwing a coppery light across the wall. The oak bureau filled one
corner of the tiny room; turned full to the gaping hearth was a
high-backed oak chair, with the initials “J. J. 1625” cut into its
back. An oak chest beneath the window, carved also, and bearing the
initials “J. J. 1604,” with a coat of arms, showed that the Jaynes had
in the past been even more important people than they were now. A
shadow passed the window. Edred, a dog at his heels, the usual fat
cigar in his mouth, shouted through, saying that he’d stroll up to
Turle and tell Nancy that he couldn’t go to Malling on Thursday. He
gave Pamela a significant look and moved off. The copper light burned
on the wall again. There was a strong scent of jasmine; the wan white
blossoms looked in at the open window. Pamela sat in the chair by the
grate, her head against the carved wood.
“I wanted to speak to you about my--about Edred,” she said.
“I’m going to speak to him myself,” Jethro returned promptly. “He
oughtn’t to be loafing about here like this. The place is big enough
for all of us, but it’s bad for a man to be out of collar so long.”
“He’s very anxious to get something to do. He is full of ideas. He is
very clever.”
Jethro did not answer. He was sitting on the end of the chest, his back
to the window, one foot in a heavy shoe idly dangling. His clean-cut,
rugged face was in shadow; her guilty conscience made her fancy that
his mouth was relentless.
“He doesn’t want to go to sea again,” she straggled on. “His nerves
have been tried--you can understand that?”
“What _does_ he want?”
She heard the wicket-gate creak. Through the summer haze and the misty,
heavy-leaved trees she saw him pass along the road; white dog at his
heels, burning tobacco between his lips.
“He wants two hundred pounds. He would go away from Folly Corner; never
come back, never trouble you for a penny more, for a meal, even.”
Jethro’s light eyes opened. They looked to her like filings of steel in
the uncertain light. His voice came through the twilight suspiciously.
“Why does he talk like that? He is your brother, isn’t he? I want my
wife’s brother to have the run of my house whenever he’s in the
neighborhood.”
“He is afraid that he has trespassed on your hospitality too long.” How
parrot-like her voice was, how stilted her words! She burst out
feverishly:
“Give him the two hundred pounds--if you love me. Let him go at once.
If he delays he may lose his chance. I don’t understand business, but
he will explain it to you; it is something that will not wait.”
“He could come back for the wedding.”
“We shouldn’t want him; we could manage without him, I mean. He would
not be able to get away; business--a new business would be too
engrossing.”
“Two hundred pounds is a good lump.”
“But to set him up in life--to get rid of him.”
“You don’t want to get rid of your own flesh and blood, surely! There’s
no hurry. Wait until after the wedding. It’s in August--just six
weeks.”
He got up, bent over the high chair in his clumsy, hearty fashion, and
kissed her mouth. That kiss decided her, made her inflexible. She
gulped down a little scornful laugh in her throat: a man who kissed in
that way deserved to be jilted.
“Go back to the chest,” she cried petulantly. “This isn’t the proper
time for nonsense; we are talking business. You will give him the money
at once, won’t you?”
“I must think it over. Two hundred pounds!”
“It is nothing to you--everything to us.”
“To him.”
“To him--that is what I meant. Open the bureau; get your check-book. It
will only take a moment.”
“There is no hurry. I never rush things. I’ll talk the affair over with
Edred to-morrow--no, on Wednesday, before I drive in to market.
To-morrow I must see old Crisp, of the Flagon House, about that rye of
his.”
He pulled a wan, white jasmine bloom to pieces slowly, put his head
half out of the window into the damp, scented air, and said casually
that a couple of bats had flown out of the ivy.
Her palms tingled with rage and despair. This matter of two hundred
pounds was nothing to him. The clock in the dining-parlor struck nine
very softly; on the hedge across the road a nightingale was performing
a sad recitative. She jumped to her feet in a passion.
“If you don’t promise to give him the two hundred pounds to-morrow
morning, I’ll go away--I won’t marry you,” she cried.
Jethro only laughed. He felt so secure. The wedding was to be in six
weeks; workmen were coming out from Liddleshorn to-morrow to fit up the
bathroom and paint the place. Nearly every day a young woman came with
things from the draper’s at Liddleshorn. It was all settled. But she
looked pretty in a passion. He rose heavily from the chest again.
“If you touch me I shall strike you.”
“What’s the matter, dear? You’ve been cycling too much. I told Edred
that thirty-five miles would be more than you could manage, and it’s
nearly forty to Beer Hill and back.”
“It wasn’t a bit too long a ride. The others did it; even Nancy, who is
supposed to be so delicate. I cannot endure to think you so mean, so
lethargic--over a little thing. You must give him the money to-morrow,
or I swear----”
“Pam.”
“Don’t call me that. Will you----”
“He shall have a check to-morrow morning, as you wish it so much.”
He opened the bureau.
“I’ve got it in notes somewhere. I meant to bank on Wednesday. Two
hundred pounds!” Hereditary closeness got the better of him again. “It
is a good lump. But what is mine is yours--or will be in six weeks. If
it makes you happy.”
“It makes him secure. What are you doing?”
Jethro was pressing his broad thumbs carefully into the sides of a
pigeonhole.
“There is a secret drawer here. I wouldn’t show it to everyone--but you
are flesh of my flesh.”
“Not yet.”
“In six weeks.”
“Show me the secret drawer.”
“Wait a bit; it wants humoring. This is a home-made bureau. My
great-grandfather was a clever old chap, wasn’t he? I’ve heard my
father say that when he died the drawer was overhauled for money, but
all they found was three farthings of the year 1732. Here they are.”
The long shallow drawer was open. Bank notes were lying flat and crisp
in it; in one corner were the farthings, spotted with verdigris.
A shadow passed across the window again. Edred put his handsome,
insouciant face through the tangle of white blossom and green:
“Aren’t you two coming out?” he cried chaffingly. “The moon’s up, and I
never heard the nightingale in better form. I’ll run over to Turle in
the morning.”
Pamela flitted across the dusky room.
“We are coming--in a moment,” she said in a loud voice, looking at him
significantly; then looking back in the gloom at Jethro--burly and
well-favored--by the open bureau, with its shallow secret drawer and
pigeon-holes full of bills.
She watched Edred go down to the gate and lean over; the twin poplars
shooting up like two giant brooms above his head, the white dog like a
wraith in the green light. She shut the window and stepped back into
the silent little room, which, although it was June, felt cold. Jethro
had the notes in his hand. She put out hers with a sudden impulse.
“Give them to me to give to him--as a surprise,” she besought faintly.
She looked at the bank notes--white, crisp, heavily lettered with
black.
“Come,” she said, with a forced air of archness and spontaneity, her
hand still out, and Jethro’s diamonds burning with a pale fire on her
finger. Her gesture was a trifle ghastly in its struggle after
playfulness. Her lips were rolled back, showing the set teeth.
It was such a sudden, breathless impulse. She looked from one to the
other--the man at the bureau, who was so close that she could feel his
breath--sweet as a cow’s--on her hair; the man at the gate, jailed by
poplars.
Why shouldn’t she yield to this new impulse? Why shouldn’t she go away
from them both and begin a new, an absolutely feminine and nunlike
life? These men drove poor women mad. She knew what a future would be
with Edred--delirium, misery, wealth, disaster, disgrace. She knew what
a future would be with Jethro--fat ease, heart-hunger. But a future
apart she did not know. She would run away from them both--with two
hundred pounds in her pocket. Two hundred pounds in notes!
Jethro looked at her strangely.
“I’ll give it him myself--to-morrow morning,” he said soberly, putting
the notes into the drawer and letting it spring back into its
hiding-place.
She sat down in the oak chair, letting body and brain collapse. She
didn’t bother to think--to regret, to rage, to feel. Things were
decided for her.
“You’ll give it to him to-morrow morning, then. How serious you are!
Why do you look at me so oddly? Of course, I did not want the notes.
You never see a joke.”
“I’ll go out and have a talk with Edred now about this business. I
shall be too busy in the morning. You go to bed.” He tried to see her
face through the teasing dusk which had drawn between them; his voice
was tender. “You’ve been doing too much lately. Good-night, dear. Have
a long night’s rest.”
“Good-night.”
As she undressed, slipping her petticoats from her waist to her feet,
she saw through the half-drawn dimity curtains the two men and the dog
strolling about in the uncertain moonlight. Jethro looked magnificently
broad and kingly. When she stretched herself in the bed, almost sinking
in the feathers, she told herself that this might be her last night at
Folly Corner. Before she went to sleep she recalled Jethro’s girth and
bearing, together with his balance at the bank, and hesitated.