Carnival Part 71

"Come, leave me look at 'ee," said Granfa, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Keep quiet, uncle," said Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la. "You'll make her fire up."

"Ah, nonsense," contradicted the old man. "That's nothing. I do dearly love to see maids' cheeks in a blush. Wish you well, my lovely," he added, clasping Jenny's hands. "I'm terrible hurried I wasn't here to give 'ee a welcome by the door."

Jenny liked this old man, who for the exile from a distant country by his age and dignity and sweetness conjured a few tears of home. The supper, a late meal for such a household, went its course at a fair speed; for they were all anxious to be off to bed with the prospect of work in the windy November dawn. Very soon they all vanished through the out-house door, and Granfa, with lighted candle, a hot brick wrapped in flannel under his arm, twinkled slowly up to bed through the hollow staircase. The rest of them were left alone in a silence. It was ten o'clock, and the fire was already paling behind the fluted bars of the slab.

"Well, I suppose you're thinking of bed?" suggested Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la.

May looked anxiously at her sister.

"Yes, I suppose we are," Jenny agreed.

Zachary began to whistle a Sankey hymn tune.

"You'll be wishing to unpack your things first," continued Mrs.

Trewh.e.l.la.

"Yes, I ought to unpack," Jenny said in a frozen voice.

"I've put May in the bedroom next to you. Come, I'll show 'ee."

Zachary still sat whistling his hymn tune. A bird shielded from view by the window-curtain stirred in his cage. Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la lighted three candles. Cloaks were picked up and flung over arms, and in single file the three figures, each with her winking guide, vanished up the staircase.

"What a long pa.s.sage," whispered Jenny when they stood in a bunch at the top.

Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la led the way to the bride's chamber.

"You're here, where the wives of the Trewh.e.l.las have slept some long time."

After the low room downstairs the bedroom seemed enormous. The ceiling in Gothic irregularities of outline slanted up and up to cobwebs and shadows. It was a great barn of a room. A tall four-post bed, hung with faded tapestries of Love and War, was set off by oak chests-of-drawers and Court cupboards. The floor was uneven, strangely out of keeping with the rose-infested Brussels carpet so vividly new. Most of the windows, latticed and small, were set flush with the floor; but high up in a dormer was a large window with diamonded panes, uncurtained, black and ominous. A couple of tall cheval-gla.s.ses added to the mystery of the room with their reduplication of shadowy corners.

"And May's in here," Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la informed them, leading the way. "The loft begins again after your bedroom, so the ceiling isn't so tall."

Certainly, May's room was ordinary enough, even dainty, with the dimity curtains and wall-paper of bows and forget-me-nots. Round the toilet-table crackled a pink chintz valance, draped in stiffest muslin.

Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la looked closely at Jenny for a moment before she left them.

"You're thin, my dear," she commented. "Ah, well, so was I; and I can mind the time when they wondered what a man could see in such a maid.

The men was all for plumpness then. Wish you good night."

The old woman thumped off down the corridor, her candle a-bob with every limping step.

"What a dreadful place," said Jenny.

"Don't let's stay," said May eagerly. "Don't let's stay. Let's go back--now--now."

"_Don't_ be silly. How can we? But we never oughtn't to have come. Oh, May, I only wish I could sleep in here with you."

"Well, why don't you?" suggested May, who was shocked to see how the usually so indomitable sister was shaking with apprehension. "There's plenty of room and I'd chance what _he_ says."

Jenny pulled herself together by a visible effort.

"No, I can't go on sleeping with you. I've _got_ to be married, now I've done it."

The two sisters, as if drawn by some horrid enchantment, went back to the bride's room.

"How big that candle looks, doesn't it, but small in one way. May, I'm frightened," whispered the bride.

There was a rattle of falling plaster, a squeak, a dying scamper.

"Oo-er, what was that?" cried May.

"Rats, I suppose. Oh, this is a shocking place," said Jenny, trembling.

"Never mind, it's got to be done. It's got to be finished some day.

It'll be all the same in a hundred years, and anyway, perhaps it won't be so bad in the morning. May!" she added sharply.

"What?"

"Why, when you come to think of it, the second ballet's well on now and here am I starting off to undress in this dog's island. Let's go back to your room for a minute."

Again the sisters sought May's kindlier room and Jenny had an idea.

"May, if we pushed your bed back close to the wall, you could tap sometimes, and if I was awake in the night I'd hear you. May, don't go to sleep. Promise you won't go to sleep."

They pushed the bedstead back against the ribbons and forget-me-nots.

Then Jenny, summoning every tradition of pride, every throb of determination, kissed May and ran to the lonely Gothic room, where the flame of the solitary candle burned so still and shapely in the breathless night. She undressed herself in a frenzy. It was like falling into a river to enter those cold linen sheets and, worse, to lie there with pulses thudding and breast heaving under a bravery of new pink bows and ribbons. It could not be long now. She sat up in bed thinking to tap on the wall; but the tapestried headpiece m.u.f.fled the sound. May, however, heard and rapped her answer.

"To-morrow," vowed Jenny, "I'll slit those unnatural curtains with my scissors so as I can tap easily."

Then down the pa.s.sage she heard her husband's tread. He was still whistling that tune, more softly, indeed, but with a continuous reiteration that was maddening. Round the door his shadow slipped before him. Jenny hid beneath the bed-clothes, breathing faster than a trapped bird. She heard his movements slow and dull and heavy, accompanied by the whistling, the endless d.a.m.nable whistling. Then the lights went out and, as if he walked on black velvet, Trewh.e.l.la stole nearer to the bed.

Chapter x.x.xVII: _Columbine in the Dark_

Jenny lay awake in a darkness so intense, so thick, so material that her effort to repulse it produced an illusion of a suffocating fabric desperately torn. What ivory cheeks were hidden by the monstrous gloom, what sparkling eyes were quenched in the dry mouth of night!

"Oh, morning, morning," she moaned. "Come quickly, oh, do come quick."

Far away in the blackness a c.o.c.k crowed. She from London did not understand his consolation. Trewh.e.l.la, sleeping soundly as he was wont to sleep on market nights, did not stir to the appeal. Jenny lay sobbing.

"What's it all for?" she asked. Then sleep, tired of love's cruelty, sent rosy dreams to comfort her, and in the morning, when she woke, her husband was gone from her side. It was a morning of moist winds and rich November sunlight, of pattering leaves and topaz lights, full of sea-gulls' wings and the cawing of rooks.

A little sister stood by the end of the bed.