Carnival Part 66

Trewh.e.l.la grunted, looked at Jenny again and said after a pause: "Well, being in the city, I suppose we must follow city manners, but darn'ee, I never thought to go gazing at dancing like maidens at St. Peter's Tide."

Corin chuckled at the easy defeat of the farmer's prejudice, and said he meant to open old Zack's eyes before he went back to Cornwall, and no mistake.

Soon after this the two girls left the tea-party, and while Jenny dressed herself to go down to the theater, they discussed Mr. Z.

Trewh.e.l.la.

"Did you ever hear anyone talk so funny. Oh, May, I nearly split myself for laughing. Oh, he talks like a c.o.o.n."

"I thought he talked like a gramaphone that wants winding up," said May.

"But what a dreadful thing to talk like that. Poor man, it's a shame to laugh at him, though, because he can't help it." Jenny was twisting round to see that no dust lay on the back of her coat.

"I wonder what he'll think of you dancing," May speculated. "But I don't expect he'll recognize you."

"I think he will, then," contradicted Jenny as she dabbed her nose with the powder-puff. "Perhaps you never noticed, but he looked at me very funny once or twice."

"Did he?" said May. "Well, I'm jolly glad it wasn't me or I should have had a fit of the giggles."

Presently, under the scud of s.h.i.+fting clouds, Jenny hurried through the windy shadows of twilight down to the warm theater. When she was back in the bedroom that night, May said:

"Mr. Trewh.e.l.la's struck on you."

"What do you mean?"

"He is--honest. He raved about you."

"Shut up."

"He went to see you dance and he's going again to-morrow night and all the time he's in London, and he wants you and me to go to tea again to-morrow."

"I've properly got off," laughed Jenny, as down tumbled her fair hair, and with a single movement she shook it free of a day's confinement.

"Do you like him?" May inquired.

"Yes, all right. Only his clothes smell funny. Lavingder or something. I suppose they've been put away for donkey's years. Well, get on with it, young May, and tell us some more about this young dream."

"You date," laughed her sister. "But don't make fun of the poor man."

"Oh, well, he is an early turn, now isn't he, Maisie? What did dad say to him?"

"Oh, dad. If beer came from cows, dad would have had plenty to say."

"You're right," agreed Jenny, standing rosy-footed in her nightgown. She gave one critical look at her image in the gla.s.s, as if in dreams she meant to meet a lover, then put out all lights and with one leap buried herself in the bedclothes.

On the following afternoon during tea Mr. Trewh.e.l.la scarcely took his eyes off Jenny.

"Well, how did you enjoy the ballet?" she inquired.

"I don't know so much about the ballet. I was all the time looking for one maid in that great old magic lantern of a place, and when I found her I couldn't see her so well as I wanted. But, darn'ee, I will to-night. William John!"

"Zack!"

"William John, if it do cost a golden guinea to sit down along to-night, we'm going to sit in they handsome chairs close up to the harmony."

"That's all right, boy," chuckled Corin. "We'll sit in the front row."

"That's better," sighed Trewh.e.l.la, much relieved by this announcement.

When Jenny said she must go and get ready for the theater, the farmer asked if he might put her along a bit of the way.

"If you like," she told him. "Only I hope you walk quicker than what you eat, because I shall be most shocking late if you don't."

Trewh.e.l.la said he would walk just as quick as she'd a mind to; but Jenny insured herself against lateness by getting ready half an hour earlier than usual.

They presented a curious contrast, the two of them walking down Hagworth Street. There was a certain wildness in the autumnal evening that made Trewh.e.l.la look less out of keeping with the city. All the chimneys were flying streamers of smoke. Heavy clouds, streaked with dull red veins, were moving down the sky, and the street corners looked very bare in the wind. Trewh.e.l.la stalked on with his long, powerful body bent forward from crooked legs. His twisted stick struck the pavement at regular intervals: his Ascot tie of red satin gleamed in the last rays of the sunset. Beside him was Jenny, not much shorter actually, but seeming close to him very tiny indeed.

"Look, you maid," said Trewh.e.l.la when, after a silent hundred yards, they were clear of the house, "I never seed no such a thing as your dancing before. I believe the devil has gotten hold of me at last. I sat up there almost falling down atop of 'ee? Yet I'm the man who's sat thinking of Heaven ever since I heard tell of it. Look, you maid, will you be marrying me this week and coming home along back to Cornwall?"

"What?" cried Jenny. "Marry you?"

"Now don't be in a frizz to say no all at once. But hark what I do tell 'ee. I've got a handsome lill farm set proper and lew-- Bochyn we do call it. And I've got a pretty lill house all a-s.h.i.+ning wi' bra.s.s and all a-nodding wi' roses and geraniums where a maid could sit looking out of the window like a dove if she'd a mind to, smelling the stocks and lilies in the garden and harking to the sea calling from the sands."

"Well, don't keep on so fast," Jenny interrupted. "You _don't_ think I'd marry anyone I'd only just seen? And besides you don't hardly know me."

"But I do know you're the only maid for me, and I can't go back without you. That's where it's to. When I've been preaching and sweating away down to the chapel, when I've been shouting and roaring about the glories of Heaven, I've all the time been thinking of maids' lips and wondering how I didn't care to go courting. I'm going to have 'ee."

"Thanks," said Jenny loftily. "I seem to come on with the crowd in this scene. I don't want to marry you."

"I don't know how you can be so crool-hearted as to think of leaving me go back home along and whenever I see the corn in summer-time keep thinking of your hair."

"But I'm not struck on you," said Jenny. "You're too old. Besides, it's soppy to talk like that about my hair when you've never hardly seen it at all."

Trewh.e.l.la seemed oblivious to everything but the prosecution of his suit.

"There's hundreds of maids have said a man was too old. And what is love? Why, 'tis nothing but a great fire burning and burning in a man's heart, and if 'tis hot enough, it will light a fire in the woman's heart."

"Ah, but supposing, like me, she's got a fireproof curtain?" said Jenny flippantly.

Trewh.e.l.la looked at her, puzzled by this counter. He perceived, however, it was hostile to his argument and went on more earnestly than before:

"Yes, but you wouldn't have me l.u.s.ting after the flesh. I that found the Lord years ago and kept Him ever since. I that showed fruits of the Spirit before any of the chaps in the village. I that scat up two apple orchards so as they shouldn't go to make cider and drunkenness. You wouldn't have me live all my life in whorage of thoughts."

"Who cares what you do?" said Jenny, getting bored under this weight of verbiage. "I don't want to marry."

"I've been too quick," said Trewh.e.l.la. "I've been led away by my preacher's tongue. But you'll see me there in front of 'ee to-night," he almost shouted. "You'll see me there gazing at 'ee, and I don't belong to be bested by nothing. Maid nor bullock. Good night, Miss Raeburn, I'll be looking after William John."

"Good night," said Jenny pleasantly, relieved by his departure. "I'll see you in front, then."

She thought as she said this how utterly inappropriate Trewh.e.l.la and Corin would look in the stalls of the Orient. She fancied how the girls would laugh and ask in the wings what those strange figures could be. It was lucky none of them were aware they lodged in Hagworth Street. What a terrible thing it would be if it leaked out that such unnatural-looking men, with such a funny way of talking, lodged at Jenny Pearl's. The thought of the revelation made her blush. Yet Corin had not seemed extraordinary before the arrival of his friend. It was Trewh.e.l.la who had infected them both with strangeness. He had an intensity, a dignity that made him difficult to subdue with flippancy. He never seemed to laugh at her retorts, and yet underneath that ragged mustache he seemed to be smiling to himself all the time. And what terrible hands he had. More like animals than hands. When Jenny caught his eye glinting down in the stalls, she wished she were playing anything but an Ephesian flute-girl, for Ephesian flute-girls, owning a happier climate, dressed very lightly.