Carnival Part 79

She gathered her skirts round her as if to negotiate mud and swept past Zachary, who, all wolf now, recoiled for his spring. Castleton, however, seized his wrist, saying tranquilly:

"I'm afraid, Mr. Trewh.e.l.la, you're not very well. Good-bye, Mrs.

Trewh.e.l.la. I'll come round this afternoon, then."

Jenny pa.s.sed on towards Bochyn and Trewh.e.l.la turned to follow her at once; but Castleton still held him, and whenever Jenny looked round he was still holding him. She waited, however, at the bottom of the garden for Zachary's return, strewing the ground by her feet with spikes of veronica blooms. Presently he appeared, his dog running before him, and at the sight of Jenny shook wildly his fists.

"You witch," he cried. "How have 'ee the heart to make me so mad? But I deserve it. Oh, G.o.d Almighty, I deserve it. I that went a-whoring away from my own country."

"Shut up," Jenny commanded. "And talk decently in front of me, even if I am your wife."

"I took a bride from the Moabites," he moaned. "I forsook Thy paths, O Lord, and went l.u.s.ting after the heathen."

He fell on his knees in the shining November mud; Jenny regarded him as people regard a man in a fit.

"Forgive me, O G.o.d, for I am a sinful man. I have gone fornicketing after lilywhite doves that turned to serpents. I have coveted the love of woman and I have forsaken Thy paths, O Lord. I ran to gaze at loose women dancing in their nakedness, and----"

"Kindly shut up," Jenny interrupted. "And don't kneel there like a lunatic talking about me as if I hadn't got nothing on when you saw me.

Don't do it, I say, because I don't like it."

Trewh.e.l.la rose and faced his wife. The drops of sweat stood on his forehead big as pebbles. His eyes were mad. She had seen eyes like them in Ashgate Asylum.

"Why were 'ee sent to tempt me? Don't 'ee know I do love 'ee more than I do love the Kingdom of Heaven?"

"Well, I wish you wouldn't. It doesn't interest me, this love of yours as you call it. And you needn't carry on about Mr. Castleton, because he's only a friend, _which_ you can't understand."

Trewh.e.l.la began to weep.

"I thought you were safe down here," he said. "I thought I held 'ee safe as carried corn, and when I brought 'ee to Bochyn, I was so happy as a piece of gold. All the time I've been preaching, I've wished to be home along, thinking of 'ee and wishing I held 'ee in my arms right through the black old night, as I belong."

Jenny shuddered.

"And 'tis a lawful thought," he cried defiantly. "You're my wife, you're mine by the power of the Lord; you're mine by the right of the flesh."

"I'm going indoors," said Jenny coldly, and she left him raging at temptation. Then she sat down and wrote to Castleton.

Dear Fuz,

Perhaps you hadn't better come and see me again--I expect you'll think I'm mad, but it isn't any good to have rows because I've got to live here any old way.

I liked seeing you, dear Fuz, and I'm sorry he made a fool of himself and I'll write some day about young Frank. No more now from your little friend,

Jenny.

Who cares?

She gave the letter to Thomas, who took it down to the One and All. It was Jenny's inherent breeding that made her send it. All her pride bade her insist on Castleton's company, begged her to defy Trewh.e.l.la, and, notwithstanding scenes the most outrageous, to establish her own will.

But there was Fuz to be considered. It would not be fair to implicate him in the miserable muddle which she had created for herself. He belonged to another life where farmers did not grovel in the mud before Heaven's wrath, where husbands did not swear foully at wives, asking forgiveness from above before the filthy echo had died away. Fuz was better out of it. Yet she wished she could see him again. There were many questions not yet asked.

Trewh.e.l.la was foxy when next he discussed Castleton with Jenny.

"He wasn't too careful about calling of 'ee Mrs. Trewh.e.l.la," he began.

"Don't be silly. He always knew me as Jenny in the old days."

"Oh, I do hate to hear 'ee tell of they old days. I do hate every day before I took 'ee for my own."

"I can't help your troubles that way," said Jenny. "Perhaps you'd like to have married me in the cradle?"

"I'd like to have kept 'ee locked up from the time you were a frothy maiden," he admitted. "I do sweat when I think of men's eyes staring at your lovely lill body."

Jenny stamped her rage at the allusion.

"Yes, you ought to have known my mother's aunts," she said. "They'd have suited you, I think. They wanted to shut me up and make me religious."

The emphasis with which she armed her reminiscence gave the verbs an undue value, as if the aunts had intended actually to lock her in a larder of hymn-books.

"I wish with all my heart they had done so," said Trewh.e.l.la. "Better that than the devil's palace of light where you belonged to dance. Oh, I wish that c.o.c.kney were in h.e.l.l."

"I can't do more than ask him to go away, so don't keep on being rude about my friends," said Jenny.

"Ess, and I wish now I'd never kicked up such a rig and frightened the pair of 'ee. He was too quick. That's where it's to."

"What are you talking about?"

"Why, if I hadn't been so straight out, I might have trapped you both fitty. If I'd waited and watched awhile."

Trewh.e.l.la sighed regretfully.

"You are a sneak," said Jenny.

"Oh, I wish I could see your heart, missus. Look, I've never asked 'ee this before. How many men have loved 'ee before I did?"

"Hundreds," said Jenny mockingly.

"Kissed 'ee?" shrieked Trewh.e.l.la.

"Of course. Why not?"

Veins wrote themselves across his forehead, veins livid as the vipers of Medusa.

"Witch," he groaned. "'Tis well I'm a saved man or I might murder 'ee.

Hark! hark! Murder 'ee, you Jezebel! I do know now what Jehu did feel when he cried, 'Throw her down and call up they dogs and tear the wh.o.r.e to pieces.'"

He ran from the room, raving.

After this new fit when the wolf drove out the fox, Trewh.e.l.la settled down to steady cunning. Jenny became conscious of being watched more closely. Not even the orchard was safe. There was no tree trunk that might not conceal a wormlike form, no white mound of sand that was not alive with curiosity, no wind even that was not fraught with whispered commentaries upon her simplest actions.

Bochyn could no longer have been endured without young Frank and May and Granfa. These three could strip the most secretive landscape of terrors, could heal the wildest imaginations. All the winter through, Trewh.e.l.la never relaxed his efforts to trip her up over her relations with Castleton, and compel an admission of the bygone love-affair that would not necessarily, as he pointed out, involve her in a present intrigue.