Carnival Part 74

"Look, see what you're doing, Granfa. You'll scat all the cloam," she cried shrilly.

Trewh.e.l.la, having surveyed Jenny's defenses, began his usual slow advance.

"What n.o.body here seems to understand is my feelings when I seed my missus making a mock of holy things."

"Oh, rats!" cried Jenny, flouncing angrily from the room.

Nothing could persuade her to humor Zachary so far as to go to chapel a second time. It pleased her to contemplate his anxiety for the spiritual welfare of the unborn child. "I wish you'd wrastle with the devil a bit more," he said. But she would only set her lips obstinately, and perhaps under his mother's advice, Zachary gradually allowed the subject to drop.

Jenny and May went often to the cliffs in the fine weather, mostly to Crickabella (such was Granfa's name for their favorite slope), where summer marched by almost visibly. The sea-pinks turned brown, the sea-campion decayed to an untidy mat of faded leaves and flowers.

Bluebells came up in asparagus-like heads that very soon broke into a blue mist of perfume. The ferns grew taller every day, and foxgloves waved right down to the water's edge. On the moorland behind the cliffs, heather and burnet roses bloomed with azure scabious and white mothmulleins, ladies' tresses and sweet purple orchids. Here and there grew solitary columbines, which Jenny thought were lovely and carried home to Granfa, who called them Blue Men's Caps. Remote from curious eyes, remote from life itself save in the progress of inanimate things towards the accomplishment of their destiny, she dreamed unceasingly day after day amid the hollow sounding of the ocean, watching idly the metallic green flight of the s.h.a.gs, the timorous adventures of rock pipits, and sometimes the graces of a seal.

With the advance of summer Jenny began to dread extremely the various insects and reptiles of the country. It was vain for Thomas to a.s.sure her that apple-bees did not sting without provocation, that eeriwigs were not p.r.o.ne to attack, that piskies were harmless flutterers and neither Johnny Jakes nor gram'ma sows actively malicious. These rural incidents of a wasp on a hat or a woodlouse in a sponge were to her horrible events which made her tremble in the recollection of them long afterwards. The state of her health did not tend to allay these terrors, and because Crickabella was comparatively free from insects, that lonely green escarpment, flung against the black ramparts of the towering coast, was more than ever dear to Jenny.

In July, however, she was not able to walk so far as Crickabella, and was forced to pa.s.s all her days in the garden, gazing at the shimmering line of the hills opposite. Granfa Champion used to spend much time in her company, and was continually having to be restrained from violent digging in the heat. During August picture post-cards often arrived from girls spending their holidays at Margate or Brighton, postcards that gave no news beyond, "Having a fine old time. Hope you're alright,"

but, inasmuch as they showed that there was still a thought of Jenny in the great world outside, very welcome.

August dragged on with parched days, and cold twilights murmurous with the first rustle of autumn. Jenny began to work herself up into a state of nervous apprehension, brooding over childbirth, its pain and secrecy of purpose and ultimate responsibilities. She could no longer tolerate the comments pa.s.sed upon her by Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la nor the furtive inquisitiveness of Zachary. She gave up sitting at dinner with the rest of the household, and was humored in this fad more perhaps from policy than any consideration of affection. The only pleasure of these hot insufferable days of waiting was the knowledge that Zachary was banished from her room, that once more, as of old, May would sleep beside her.

There was a new experience from the revival of the partnership because now, unlike the old theater days, Jenny would often be the first in bed and able to lie there watching in the candlelight May's shadow glance hugely about the irregular ceiling, like Valerie's shadow long since in the Glasgow bedroom. Where was Valerie now? But where was anybody in her history? Ghosts, every one of them, where she was concerned.

Chapter XL: _Harvest Home_

All day long the whirr of the reaper and binder had rattled from distant fields in a monotone of sound broken at regular intervals by guttural cries when the horses at a corner turned on their tracks, and later in the afternoon by desultory gunshots, when from the golden triangle of wheat rabbits darted over the fresh stubble. All day long Jenny, obeying some deep instinct, prepared for the ordeal. The sun blazed over the spread harvest; the fields crackled with heat; the blue sky seemed to close upon the earth, and not even from the whole length of Trewinnard Sands was heard a solitary ripple of the tide. In the garden the claret-colored dahlias hung down their tight, uncomfortable flowers; geraniums, portulacas, nasturtiums, sunflowers and red-hot pokers burned in one furnace of bloom. Red admiral b.u.t.terflies soared lazily up and down against the gray walls crumbling with heat, and from flower to flower of the scarlet salvias zigzagged the hummingbird hawkmoths.

Granfa Champion, wiping with gaudy bandana his forehead, came out to plant daffodil bulbs stored in the green shadows of a cool potting shed.

"Now, you know you mustn't go digging in this sun, Mr. Champion," said reproving May.

"My cheeks are so hot as pies," declared Granfa.

"Do come and sit down with us," said Jenny.

"I believe I mustn't start tealing yet awhile," said the old man, regretfully plunging his long Cornish spade into the baked earth, from which insufficient stability the instrument fell with a thump on to the path.

"Well, how are 'ee feeling, my dear?" asked Granfa, standing before Jenny and mopping his splendid forehead. "None so frail, I hope?"

"She isn't feeling at all well. Not to-day," said May.

"That's bad," said Granfa. "That's poor news, that is."

"I feel frightened, Mr. Champion," said Jenny suddenly. Somehow this old man recalled Mr. Vergoe, rousing old impulses of childish confidence and revelation.

"Feeling frightened, are 'ee? That's bad."

"Supposing it wasn't a person at all?" said Jenny desperately. "You know, like us?"

The old man considered for a moment this morbid fancy.

"That's a wisht old thought," he said at last, "and I don't see no call for it at all. When I do teal a lily root, I don't expect to see a broccolo come bursting up and annoying me."

"But it might," argued Jenny, determined not to be convinced out of all misgiving.

"Don't encourage her, Mr. Champion," said May severely. "Tell her you think she's silly."

Jenny buried her face in her hands and began to cry. Granfa looked at her for a moment; then, advocating silence with his right forefinger, with his left thumb he indicated to May by jabbing it rapidly backwards over his shoulder that inside and upstairs to her bedroom was the best place for Jenny.

So presently she was lying on the tapestried bed in the tempered sunlight of her room, while through the house in whispers ran the news that it might be any time now. Up from downstairs sounded the restlessness of making ready. The sinking sun glowed in the heart of every vivid Brussels rose and bathed the dusty floor with orange lights.

Jenny's great thought was that never again would she endure this agony, if but this once she were able to survive it. She vowed, tearing in savage emphasis the patchwork counterpane, that nothing should induce her to suffer like this a second time.

The afternoon faded tranquilly into dusk. No wind agitated a single dewy petal, and only the blackbirds with intermittent alarums broke the silence. The ripe round moon of harvest, floating mild and yellow and faintly luminous along the sky, was not yet above the hills. Mrs.

Trewh.e.l.la was not yet willing to despatch a summons to the doctor. Two more hours sank away. Out in the fields, marching full in the moon's face, the reapers went slowly homewards. Out in the fields they sang old songs of the earth and the grain; out in the waste the fox p.r.i.c.ked his ears and the badger turned to listen. Down in the reeds the sedge-warbler lisped through the low ground vapors his little melody.

The voices of the harvesters died away in purple glooms, and now, as if in a sh.e.l.l, the sea was heard lapping the sand. Through the open lattice rose the scent of the tobacco plants. There was a murmur of voices in consultation. Jenny heard a shout for Thomas, and presently horses'

hoofs trotting down the farm road.

High and small and silver was the moon before she heard them coming back. The dewdrops were all diamonds, the wreathed vapors were damascened by moonlight, before she heard the grate of wheels and the click of the gate and another murmur of voices. Then the room was filled with black figures; entering lamplight seemed to magnify her pain, and Jenny knew little more until, recovering from chloroform, she perceived a candle, large as a column, burning with giant spearhead of flame and, beyond the blue and silver lattice, apprehended a fuss of movement.

"What is it?" she asked in momentary perplexity.

"'Tis a boy," said Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la. "A grand lill chap."

"What's all that noise?" she murmured petulantly.

"'Tis me, my dear soul," said Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la, "putting all straight as we belong."

May leaned over her sister, squeezing her hand.

"I think I shall like having a baby," said Jenny, "when we can take him out for walks. You know, just you and me, young May."

Chapter XLI: _Columbine Happy_

Jenny was ivory now: the baby had stolen all the coral from her cheeks.

Outside, the treetops shook tremulous black lace across the silver deeps of the sky and jigged with ebony boughs upon the circle of the moon.

Clear as bells sounded the slow breakers on Trewinnard beach, and in the tall room a white moth circled round the candle-flame interminably. A rat squeaked in the wall.

"Fancy," said Jenny to May, who sat in the shadow by the foot of the bed. "I thought I shouldn't like nursing a baby, but I think it's glorious."

A curlew cried through the October night and was answered far down the valley.

"I wish mother could have seen my baby," sighed Jenny. "It's my birthday next week. Funny if we'd both been born the same day."

The candle spat with the moth's death, then burned with renewed brightness.