“THAT head-flannel may do for Annie; you know there is to be another
little one about Lady Day. I must say that it is a pity when young
wives have a family too fast.”
Mrs. Turle gently laved her ample hands in the fancy-work box,
apportioning the different articles according to her mind.
“Nancy would like that embroidered newspaper rack. She and Duncan are
so very literary. I’m sure Nancy would have distinguished herself in
literature, if it had been necessary. She would have made her
mark--ladies take up so many things nowadays, and are received by the
best people just the same. When Nancy stayed with the Cluttons she
moved in a very literary set, and was much admired.”
“Have you heard from Barbara lately?” asked Pamela.
She was sitting by the fire, with her back to the view of gravel drive
and brand-new park land of Turle House. The big, dazzling white
mantelpiece was a little above her head, loaded with family photos--a
long, ogling, simpering line of family features.
“No. But I saw her name in the papers; I am always seeing it. Her
husband is really a very distinguished man in his way. I can’t think
why she buried herself at the Buttery, and talked so much at random,
making enemies of so many people. How could anyone be expected to
understand her? Nancy says that in London, when staying with the
Cluttons, she met a great many women of that type--ill-balanced
women, my dear, with a trick of extravagant talk and an unchristian,
uncomfortable habit of poking fun at everything.”
Pamela shifted her chair a little back from the hot fire. A quick,
poignant shadow just flecked her face. A vivid picture of London, hot,
restless, virile, flamed before her eyes and shook her calm for a
moment. Then the peaceful slowness dropped down on her again. She
looked, with a gasp of relief, at her surroundings--the big, ugly
room--old-fashioned enough in its appointments and furniture to mark a
distinct period. She looked at Mrs. Turle--who might or might not be
her Aunt Sophy--looked at her motherly figure and hard, high-featured
face. She remembered that Barbara had once said, with a laugh, that
there was a strong streak of “old cat” in Aunt Sophy’s face.
Nothing changed: nothing ever would change. Everything in that room was
the same as it had always been in her knowledge of it. It was restful
and slow: it fed and stilled one’s nerves. She no longer wanted London,
no more wanted Love. But the mention of London, which had held Love,
just stirred her--made her remember that she had never heard anything
of Edred. She wondered if he and Sutton were still at Marquise
Mansions; if they, with Milligan and a few more, were still carrying
on risky financial schemes. The newspapers never mentioned them, the
advertisements of their companies no longer necessitated an extra sheet.
“How is Gainah?” Mrs. Turle brought out a cushion of crazy patchwork.
“I’ll buy this for her, poor soul! What an invaluable woman she was!
What a manager! Folly Corner would have gone all to pieces after Lilith
died but for Gainah. It is a dreadful end for an active woman. I
suppose, dear, you notice no change?”
“None. She just sits upstairs--she won’t leave that room; my old room,
you know----”
“I know. You certainly had a most providential escape.”
“She does patchwork; she cries to Jethro--never to me--for new pieces.”
“She shall certainly have this cushion. It would give her a new idea.
She might copy it. She has never done crazy patchwork.”
“If any of you have any pieces, do send them to Folly Corner. Whenever
we drive into Liddleshorn I will buy her some.”
“I’ll have a hunt. We all remember Gainah. Maria brought some over from
the Warren last week--you can take them back with you. And Annie had
some beautiful corners of sateen. She has been re-covering the cot
eiderdown. I went to help her last Monday; it takes two--one to machine
and the other to hold the work perfectly steady. Annie is rather early
with her preparations, but your Aunt Jerusha always insisted on having
everything ready at least three months before: Annie is a very dutiful
daughter. And Gainah still has that extraordinary dislike for you?”
“Yes. She is afraid of me. It is natural and uncanny. She thinks I am a
ghost; she knows she killed me. The knife was dug in to the very hilt.
What an escape I had! Jethro won’t send her to the asylum. He could
pay. She would have every care. Half the parlormaid’s time is taken up
with Gainah.”
“I can understand that it is a trial for you. It is telling on you,
dear. You really look quite faded. I can see by your eyes that your
head is aching at this moment. Take a dose of caffeine when you get
back. And ask Egbert to give you a tonic. I must say that it isn’t
natural, dear, for a young woman not quite thirty to look so yellow.”
“Gainah and Chalcraft ought to be comfortably provided for away from
Folly Corner,” Pamela persisted. “Chalcraft is anything but a graceful
pauper. He is most familiar to me whenever I go to his cottage.”
She laughed uncomfortably. She had grown into an elegant habit of
philanthropy, after the manner of country ladies. Philanthropy was very
gratifying. She bought courtesy with old gowns and paid for heavenly
benedictions with a milk pudding. But Chalcraft was obdurate. He
declined to bend his ancient knee to the interloper. He kept his bed
nearly all the winter. He made his “missus” bring it down to the
living-room and set it behind the door, so that he might see, in part,
how the world went. At Pamela’s entrance, foolish, half-daft Mrs.
Chalcraft would courtesy and flip a chair, but Chalcraft only grunted.
The cold stare of his rheumy blue eyes reminded her of the day when she
first came to Folly Corner, when she trod down the gray tendrils of the
vine with the pointed toes of her town shoes. She had been an
adventuress then. She was assured now--the mistress of Folly Corner.
She had routed them all--Gainah, Chalcraft, the rude manner of life.
The fierce old head on the pillow behind the door, the blank, worn old
face at the window of her old room, were unpleasant reminders. She
would gladly have sent Chalcraft and Gainah away. But this was the one
point on which Jethro was firm.
“You haven’t heard from Edred lately?”
Aunt Sophy’s placid, purring query struck her ears like a gunshot.
“No,” she said shortly.
Aunt Sophy’s keen blue eyes were full on her face.
“He had a very serious illness?”
“Yes.”
“Why doesn’t he come down to Folly Corner?”
“He’s busy. The train service is so bad.”
“The train service is very good, now that we have the new line. He
could go up every morning quite easily, with a quick horse to take him
to the station. It would be better, dear. We hardly care for you to
live alone with Jethro. You’re really much younger than you look.
Strangers might consider the arrangement a fitting one, but we in the
family, who know that you are really not thirty, consider it hardly
proper. People talk. You know,” she laughed indulgently, “what a long
tongue Maria has--and she visits at so many nice houses. You and
Jethro ought to marry. Why doesn’t the wedding come off? Everyone is
wondering. It is fifteen months since you came back from nursing
Edred.”
“We have changed our minds. We neither of us wish to marry. It doesn’t
matter what people say.”
“My dear, your family has every confidence. But I’m sure my idea is
excellent. Let Edred come and live at Folly Corner. If you had your
brother with you no one could say a word. Isn’t this a pretty workbag?”
She held up a limp blue thing, worked with straggling leaves in brown
silk. She held it so persistently, swinging it tantalizingly by the
string, that Pamela was compelled to meet her inquisitive eyes--eyes
that she had always known suspected her. There was more than a spark of
malice in Aunt Sophy. She had been young once, a coquette, so they
said. The embers of coquetry lay in her eyes still. She had never been
a mere pink and silly girl like her daughter Nancy.
“If you had your brother with you,” she repeated with emphasis, “no one
could say a word. Why doesn’t he come? Is it because of Nancy? He was
in love with Nancy. But she is married now.”
“He cannot come. He has his business.”
“Well, then, my dear,”--she never shifted her questioning eyes,--“I
must say that you ought to marry to Jethro.”
Pamela walked home thoughtfully. There was, then, nothing stationary in
life--outside a happy marriage. The family had combined to drive her
from Folly Corner or into Jethro’s arms. The family did not know the
cold, sad repugnance that they both had for love-making--the dread
avoidance of it, as a poignant, heart-wrenching thing. Aunt Sophy might
suspect, but she would never be sure.
She walked through the woods which she had once trodden with Edred on a
spring day. Crisp frost--like the icing of Maria’s cakes: Maria’s forte
was iced cake--spread over the thick, dead leaves. Every point on which
her eye dwelt was glittering and white. When she reached Folly Corner
she stopped to look at the cows, standing in golden straw and fenced by
a gray paling on which serpent-green moss stood in a thick pile. Why
wouldn’t the family let them alone--she and Jethro? They were
happy--slow, peaceful, like their cattle: _their_ cattle--she had come
to believe that everything was hers, without the burning, binding tie
of marriage. They were happy. The pensive melancholy and roundness of
the old place, which no builder could inspire with modern feeling, had
eaten into them. They only wanted to be left alone.
She went round the house, meaning to enter, as she usually did, by the
garden door. As she passed beneath the window of her old room she
looked up. It stood open. Gainah was indifferent to temperature: she
was stitching at her interminable quilts. All she had kept of her sane
days was the feverish energy, which now wrought itself on snipping up
stuff and sewing it together again. She wore the same old gown of
blue--they could not take it from her; her hair bunched out on each
side of her chalky face in the absurd bunches of corkscrew curls. The
velvet band across her head was tightly strained: it had made a bald
spot in the middle of the parting--a spot which was rapidly spreading.
Pamela saw her plainly: the restless fingers, distorted by rheumatism,
but quite clean and yellow-white, now that she did not do any housework
or cooking; the worn, blank face, the constantly moving lips. She stood
looking up, not knowing why she stopped, lost in speculation which had
little enough to do with this dormant Gainah.
As she stood there Gainah suddenly looked down. She met the upturned
eyes and gave a terrified baby’s cry. She tried to move, to scuttle out
of sight. But her stricken limbs refused their aid; she began to
whimper with fright at the sight of her victim. A flash of anger
lighted on Pamela’s face. She had never forgiven.
She held up her finger and shook it threateningly.
“Go back,” she cried, “go back to the fire at once,” forgetting in her
irritation that the old woman could not move across the room without
help.
The parlormaid came forward to the window. She caught Gainah by the
shoulder, none too gently, and pulled her away, shutting the casement
with an impatient click.
Jethro was in the field beyond the garden. Pamela went to him over the
border of crisp, crunching grass which edged the furrows. She loved
that field in all its moods. She had watched it, consulted it so often
from the shadow of the deep bay window. She remembered just how it
appeared at each particular crisis of her life at Folly Corner--half
shorn of its yellow corn on that first day; mystic with clearing mist
and great green moon the night she came back; dull brown to-day with
thin ice on the upturned tips of its even furrows.
He was near the hedge, talking to Buckman, who was ditching. She went
up and hooked her hand through his arm without saying a word. They had
grown into that attitude--the affectionate, silent attitude of long,
dear familiarity. Sometimes they would sit without speech for a whole
evening, until he suddenly looked up from the paper with a tender look
and stretched his big hand out to touch her fingers.
The ditch was clean, the hedge hacked. Small heaps of black leaf mold
spotted the fringe of grass.
“You’ll be about done that job to-morrow,” Jethro said. “Just tie the
fagots together and put them on the stack.”
The two walked toward the house.
“I think,” she said timidly, “that I would like to go to London
to-morrow. Some shopping--that’s all. And I’d like a sight of London
streets--a bit of color and movement. One wants that twice in a
winter.”
He looked at her suspiciously. The clear fire blazed in her face.
Standing there with the icy ground under their feet and the scurrying,
sunless sky above their heads, they read each other’s souls.
“No,” she said passionately; “you can trust me. I think I can trust
myself. London is very big. I am not likely to meet him.”
“Go, if you like. But there will be a hard frost to-night and very
likely snow to-morrow,” he returned, looking up to the sky for a
weather sign.
The clear, hard light showed his rugged face, stern and simple.