IX

But at that moment the ground resounded with gallant hoofs, and a handsome red-haired cavalier riding a barebacked black horse and leading another steed of Satan, and followed by a bounding little white dog, brought life and spirit into the scene. The rabbits poked their noses greedily through their wires, and the pig grunted in perturbation. Jinny, shrinking back behind Mr. Flippance, remained paralysed on the steps of the caravan, while Tony, unconscious that he was needed as a screen, hurried forward with a joyous greeting and a query which served the purpose as effectually, for Jinny was left unnoted on her pedestal.

“You looking for me?” asked Tony.

“I was,” answered the horseman. “But now I’m looking for the stables. ‘The Black Sheep’s’ full up, and I thought I’d put up my spare horse at ‘The Learned Pig’ till I could find you. However, here you are.”

“But you crossed me, man, just outside the market!”

“Did I? Is Jinny here? I see her cart outside.”

“Never mind Jinny—you’re just in the nick of time. I want to talk business to you.”

“And so do I to you. If I crossed you, ’twas because I was galloping to you with the horse you ordered through Jinny.”

“And I was galloping to her to cancel it!”

“What!” cried Will. But the joyous rush and gambollings of Nip now directed his attention to Nip’s statuesque mistress.

“I’m afraid you’ve let yourself in for those horses,” she said, descending. She did not speak maliciously—the sting of her defeat was over, now that his victory had recoiled on the victor, and she was really a little sorry for him. But all other feelings were overwhelmed for the moment by this new sense of dash and grace, in which he and the beautiful pawing steeds were mixed up centaur-like, his figure looking so much taller on horseback that it almost corresponded to Miss Gentry’s ideal. Unfortunately Will himself had no sense of the horses except as a costly and burdensome mistake: the iron issuing from Jinny’s soul was entering into his.

“But surely you want one of ’em,” he said, addressing Mr. Flippance. He had cherished a dim hope that the Showman might launch out into binary grandeur, but at the worst he was prepared to keep one horse—it would be useful for riding into Chipstone—pending its sale. But to have two horses on his hands, eating their heads off, after consuming practically the whole of his capital—this was too much. Nor could he believe that Jinny was not gloating over the Nemesis that had overtaken his attempt to crush her will.

“I don’t see what I should do with a horse,” said Tony, “seeing that I’m setting up the Flippance Palace Theatre as a local landmark. Of course I might have a play written round him,” he mused, “or even round ’em both. They would certainly ‘draw’ all Chipstone, especially with a carriage behind ’em. Odd, isn’t it? There’ll be scores of carriages waiting outside my theatre, yet to see one on the stage gives everybody a thrill. Lord, how the public does love to see natural things in unnatural places! As my old pa used to say—my real pa, I mean—put an idiot on the stage and he gives pleasure, put him in the stalls and he writes dramatic criticism! Ha, ha, ha!”

“Then you do want ’em?” said Will eagerly.

“If you’re ready to bring in the noble animals as part of the capital, I’ll look around for a dramatist to work ’em in.”

“You’d best look around for a capitalist,” retorted Will in angry disappointment. “I’ve told you before, I’m going into farming.”

“Then you’ll want the horses yourself.”

“They’re no good for farming,” Jinny corrected.

“Ain’t they?” said Tony, surveying them with a fresh eye. “Then why did he buy them?”

Will got angrier. “That’s my business. Do you want them or not?”

“I can always do with anything. A play’s a pie you can shove anything into. You’d look bully yourself, as you Americans say, riding just as you are: just a cowboy costume, that’s all you need. Will you do it?”

“Will I do what?”

“Play lead and supply your own horses.”

“Don’t be a fool—or try to make me one. I’m a plain farmer.”

Tony grinned. “Jinny don’t seem to think ’em suitable for plain farming. I reckon you’d better set up as undertaker. They’ll go lovely with a hearse. All you need is a corpse.”

“And I shan’t be long finding one!” hissed Will.

Tony clapped his hands. “That’s the style. Lord, man, what a wasted actor!”

Jinny could not suppress a smile. It brought Will’s temper to breaking-point. “These horses at least won’t be wasted,” he said to her at a white heat. “For I’ll take our friend’s advice.”

“Harness ’em to a hearse?” murmured Jinny.

“No, to a coach. I’ll put an end, miss, to your mannish ways.”

“Indeed!” Jinny bridled up, without, however, quite following the threat.

“You’ve done for yourself,” he explained. “You’ve forced me into competition. You’ve got me the horses—there’s no end of out-of-work coaches on the market to be got for an old song. I’ll carry passengers and luggage faster and cheaper than you, and heavier stuff too, and I’ll wipe you out.”

Jinny grew white, but at the venom of his words, not their business significance. Her instinct retorted with a smile. “And I got you the horn, too, don’t forget that.”

“I don’t—I was thinking of that. It’s all your doing—and serve you jolly well right.” He turned sneeringly to Mr. Flippance. “So I won’t be a wasted musician either.”

“Oho!” said Jinny. “And shall we see you on the box-seat all a-crowing and a-blowing?”

“I know you still think I can’t blow—but you shall see.”

“Seeing isn’t believing,” said Jinny.

“Had you there, old cock,” said Tony.

“She knows what I mean, right enough. I’ll start a coach-service ’twixt Little Bradmarsh and Chipstone, ay and farther too, passengers inside, luggage on the roof. I’ll wake up this sleepy old spot.” And his vigour seemed to communicate itself to his horses: they caracoled and stamped.

“Better let sleeping spots lie,” said Jinny. “I thought you hated Yankee going-ahead.”

“It’ll save you going ahead, anyhow,” said Will. “Why didn’t you let things sleep?”

“Me! How could I help helping Gran’fer?”

“Women have always got an excuse. ‘And the man gave unto me and I did eat.’ ”

“Lord! He’s been reading the Bible!” laughed Tony.

Will flushed. All those hours in quest of orthography passed through his mind. And what had all his painstaking letters led to? Quarrels, recriminations, miseries. Well, let him have done with it all. Ignore her, crush her, that was the best way. Once he had driven her out of the business, that tongue of hers would wag more meekly. Then, perhaps——!

A rousing blast on Jinny’s horn cut defiantly into his thoughts. It was at once a challenge and a mockery. Will turned his horses’ heads sharply and trotted out, Nip at their heels. But at the edge of the enclosure Nip looked back wistfully to beg his mistress to join the party. She, however, lowering her horn, cried, “Come here, you naughty dog. Come here at once.”

Nip stood in pathetic hesitation.

“It’s that animal my play shall be written round,” said Tony decisively. “How much do you want for him?”

“You know I wouldn’t, part with him for love or money,” said Jinny.

“Well, I haven’t got any money,” said Tony slowly. “But if you’d like the other thing——”

“Don’t be silly!” Jinny moved towards her cart.

“I mean it—a wife like you would be the making of a man.”

“Now you’ll have to walk home!” said Jinny, springing into her seat. It was too ironic a climax to the morning.

“Not in my slippers!” gasped Tony.

“You should have put on your boots!” said Jinny sternly.

“But listen!” He clung to the cart as if he would stop it. “It’s a heaven-sent opportunity.”

“It must be sent back,” said Jinny gravely.

“I mean for me,” he explained desperately. “You know how Polly objects to my marrying again. But I’ve got to break the deal with Duke to her, so I could work in the two at once. It couldn’t be worse.”

“I shall never marry,” said Jinny. “Gee up!”

“But whoa, whoa, you don’t carry only your husbands,” cried Tony. “Stop!”

He pursued Methusalem for some yards, but even Methusalem was too quick for him. And then, as he stood panting and perspiring and overcome by a dark upwelling of disbelief in life, he perceived the Duchess with her manuscript and his daughter returning from the histrionic consultation at “The Learned Pig.”

“Thank the Lord, Polly’s feeding out,” he murmured, as he slunk into a doorway. Then his face brightened up. “After all,” he thought, “I’ve only got to break to her about the theatre.”

TWO OF A TRADE

I

The darkest season in Jinny’s life—outwardly a feast of light—was come to the crowning mockery of its August splendour. Day after day there was the lazy pomp of high summer; massive white clouds in a blue sky, a spacious voluptuousness, a languid glory. But Jinny felt less melancholy on the rare days when sea-mists rolled in from the marshes and spectral sheep were heard tinkling from dim meadows. The corn was now cut, and this too was a curious alleviation of the gnawing at her heart. When the far-spreading wheat-fields had rustled in the sun like the hair of the earth-mother, an auburn gold touched with amber and purple lights, infinitely subtle and suffusive, the beauty of it all had been almost intolerable. Now that remorseless reapers had turned the wheat into rows of stooks that were more suggestive of the hair of a village girl in curl-papers, Jinny found it easier to jog on her sorely diminished business along the sunbaked roads.

It was not merely that Will had turned from a swain into an enemy, and from a figure of romance into a business rival. It was not merely that his hated handsome visage kept coming up in her mind at the oddest moments, to the confusion of her work. It was the pressure of his competition.

Hitherto Jinny had believed in mankind. Despite “The Seven Stages of Life,” by which her Spelling-Book combined instruction in old English print with detailed information on how the Devil blurs God’s image in man; despite the testifyings of her fellow-Peculiars to their own wickedness, she had regarded her fellow-beings as in the main virtuous and kindly. What was she to think of human nature when she saw this dashing innovator literally “carrying” all before him?

In her pique and distress she failed to allow for the sensation created by the advent of the small second-hand coach with its pair of high-stepping black horses. Nothing so great and momentous had happened in Bradmarsh from time immemorial. Even in Jinny’s own mind it loomed as large as any of the events in the Spelling-Book, from Noah’s Flood to Trafalgar. Throughout all those somnolent Essex by-ways the passage of the novel equipage brought everybody to door or window. It was equal to the passing of the County Flyer on the main roads, a thunder of wheels and a jingle of harness and a music of the horn. True, two horses are not four, and a driver who blows his own trumpet has not the grandeur of a coachman with a scarlet-coated guard, not to mention the absence of relays to paw the ground and be switched without loss of a second to the fiery vehicle. Still, with scarcely a hill to negotiate before Chipstone, two horses and a man seemed velocity and magnificence to villages accustomed to a crawling two-wheeled tilt-cart and a girl.

And the Flynt Flyer—as it styled itself in vainglorious paint—had created a demand, as well as a sensation, even if the want had been unfelt before. Starting three services a week instead of two, it moreover dashed and zigzagged into corners and by-roads that Jinny had never pretended to serve, the denizens of which had been content to wait at cross-roads and landmarks, or to deal with her through intermediary neighbours or houses of call. And besides these attractions of convenience and novelty, there was the comfort for passengers of riding in the body of the coach with their feet in the straw, instead of dangling uneasily from the narrow side-ledges in Jinny’s cart or sprawling in contorted adjustment to parcels and boxes. Persons who had always walked, now found it simpler to jump into the coach than to fag along in the heat. The carrying business saw itself transformed and extended.

In this elegant and epoch-making vehicle the non-human freight overflowing from the fore and hind boots was stacked on the roof, though the lucky first-comer had always space to sit beside Will and hear his stories of the great world. A shipmate from ’Frisco had boasted of driving in kid gloves a polished silk-lined cab and spanking fifteen-hundred-dollar steeds with silver-gleaming harness, and earning his three hundred dollars a month. The vision beglamoured Will’s own status on the box, and reconciled him to lifting the luggage of his labouring inferiors. He aped it by driving in his best Moses & Son suit, as though more of a sporting charioteer than a menial, touting for custom. And parcels and clients flung themselves into his arms. What wonder if the high-piled load soon out-topped Jinny’s, revealed in its nakedness on these sweltering days when she drove without her tilt! For gradually folk’s eyes seemed opened, unsealed of a spell. Without a word spoken it was as if something unnatural and monstrous had been wafted away, and the simple order of nature—in the shape of a male carrier—had been restored. Without being quite conscious of how they had lugged their own boxes for the puny female, customers were aware of a new facility. They did not so much turn against Jinny as forget her in this gravitation to the natural centre.

At first Will had—with a touch of considerateness—fixed his days on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, not to clash with Jinny’s Tuesdays and Fridays. But as his supply created new demands, as he found he could widen his ambit as far even as Brandy Hole Creek or Blackripple, he took on new circuits, first for Tuesday and then for Friday and dropping his Wednesdays to give his hard-worked horses a solid rest in mid-week. It was not these new routes of his that galled Jinny, nor his impinging on her days—possibly she was not altogether displeased to meet the rival vehicle. No, the iron that entered her soul was the loss of her previous customers, who, despite Will’s comparative magnanimity, had changed their day to suit the rival round. In the cases where she had imagined herself a friend rather than an employee, it was heart-breaking.

Hence this new and rankling doubt of her species, waxing daily as her business waned. Folk seemed to follow one another like sheep, and whenever now on a bit of miry road she came upon the serried footmarks of a flock, she shuddered with a sense of the ignoble pettiness of the pattern: no massive individual stamp like Methusalem’s, not even a characteristic dent like Nip’s, but an ignominious churning of mud by a multiplication of innumerable little identities. Pigs, too, supplied her with bitter comparisons when, with her cart void of passengers and almost empty of parcels, she passed at some cross-road the Flynt Flyer, stiflingly chock-full of both. For she had often noted in the feeding of swine that however abundant the food at its snout, master pig will always rush to the thickest jostling-point.

Such was the crowd, such was humanity, thought our little cynic; who was, however, no mere soured philosopher, but a harassed housekeeper, with a couple of aged dependents, whose rashers or oats were becoming seriously endangered. Methusalem had always lived from hoof to mouth, and as for her grandfather, had he not spent all his savings on her Angel-Mother’s debts? There were still potatoes in the store, and half a flitch in the larder, and beer in the barrel, and vegetables in the ground, and milk in the goats’ udders, but the reserves of provender, as of cash, were small, and Methusalem, whose appetite age could not abate, now began to loom as a deficit rather than an asset. Nip was the first to notice—and with pained astonishment—the parsimony of the new regime. Why keep a mistress if one is to be practically thrown back on one’s own resources?

II

In these circumstances it scarcely seemed on a par with the ethics of the Spelling-Book, or of a piece with Jinny’s character, that she should go to Miss Gentry and order a new Sunday dress of pink sprigged muslin of the latest design—a gown that but for its not hooking up at the back was absolutely ladylike. Still less that she should drive in it on Tuesdays and Fridays. Whether it was in emulation of her rival, on the theory that fashionableness was a factor of his success, whether it was to brighten up her spirits, or to exhibit a defiant prosperity, Jinny did not reveal, even to herself. But that it was worn at Will rather than on herself, may be deduced from the fact that the commission to the “French dressmaker” followed hard upon her first encounter with the Flynt Flyer at the cross-roads.

It was on this occasion—as at many subsequent meetings on Tuesdays or Fridays—that Nip was torn almost literally in two by his desire to be in both vehicles at once. That they should wish to pass each other without a halt or even a hail was amazing to the poor animal, and if his distraction usually ended in a leap on to the coach, where Will was never without a beguiling biscuit, he was always careful to rejoin the cart before the interval had become too spacious. Though a Nip-o’-both-sides, he was disloyal to neither: indeed, if ever creature did his best to bring two foolish mortals together, that creature was Nip. But they no longer even saluted each other. At first, indeed, the gentleman driver had doffed his hat gallantly, but Jinny’s face had remained a stone, though that stone was a ruby. Will, therefore, when he had to meet or pass her, flew by at a rate which by its air of insolent superiority only increased her resentment. Later, he had begun to slow down when he espied her lumbering along his route, and to play the “Buy a Broom” polka on his horn with malicious accuracy.

By way of retort Jinny once tied a label to Nip’s collar, marked “In charge of the guard.” It was meant to taunt Will with lacking the dignity of a true driver, who never blew a horn. But the somewhat periphrastic sarcasm seemed to miss fire, for Will took the label literally, and when Nip had executed his usual leap on to the coach, he kept him prisoner for several days. The faithful animal, though fed as never before, was as unhappy, tied on the roof, as Jinny was, and when her cart at last passed, and her horn blew imperiously for him, he made such a supercanine effort that his cord snapped, and in an instant he was snuggling hysterically in the legitimate lap; regardless of that flowery summery fabric. His label, she found, now bore the words, “Pay Up The Gloves.”

Alas, paying up—whether for wagers or fabrics—was out of Jinny’s power. That very morning Miss Gentry had handed her the bill, delicately wrapped in a tract. Such a situation was quite new to her, though not unprovided against in the Spelling-Book:

This had been a large expense, yet she had not weighed it. It was her debts and not her savings that had in such haste amounted to pounds. Woe to the pride that had seduced her:

She did not need her book’s reminder of her head’s weakness—only too dismally she recognized that strange slipperiness of memory which made it more difficult to execute her commissions in proportion as their number dwindled. Was not the little notebook, to which she must now have recourse, the abiding symbol of this paradoxical humiliation?

She was not psychologist enough to understand that it was the very perfection of her memory which was now tripping her up. So many of her clients had for so long demanded the same things so seasonably that she was automatically compelled to carry out commissions that had now lapsed. She was like an actress who knows her part even backwards, but is broken up and confused when cuts are made; finding the too familiar words not to be ousted. Jinny would mechanically purchase items for clients who had forsaken her, and then—so scatterbrained was she become—leave them at other customers’ houses! And on the other hand, she was capable of forgetting the orders of the few faithful. It was thus that under the combined strain of Miss Gentry’s bill, the sultry August weather, the sight of the packed coach and its jaunty driver, the frantic return of Nip with his mocking message, Jinny, whom necessity had compelled to keep Farmer Gale as a customer, clean forgot his urgent need of a wedding-cake. It was not that she had forgotten to order it or even to fetch it from the leading confectioner’s. The sudden union of Farmer Gale with the wealthy land-surveyor’s widow, whose piano-playing had excited the far-off admiration of Elijah Skindle, was too sensational an event, especially to herself, to permit of complete oblivion. It was only that she forgot to deliver the cake at Beacon Chimneys. She was actually within sight of the stag-headed poplars that marked the horizon of home, when, turning her head as Nip suddenly leapt for a rabbit, she saw the great elegant carton in the cart. And the wedding was on the morrow. Conscience-stricken, and morbidly feeling as though the marriage would scarcely be legal without this colossal confection, she resolved, worn out as she was with the heat, to drive back to the house. But she had reckoned without Methusalem. To turn back within the very smell of his stable was unprecedented: it violated every equine code. Like Nip, he now became aware of the instability of things—of a new order. But, more obstinate, he refused to recognize it. Nothing short of the whip—which would have moved him, not out of pain but out of astonishment—could have sufficed to turn him, and how could a mistress who knew him in the right and herself in the wrong, resort to that, especially after such a sultry day? So after every effort to coax him or to lead him by the bridle had failed and almost twenty minutes had been wasted, she decided—in view of her grandfather’s supper—to make a special journey the first thing in the morning.

As she gave Methusalem his glad head, she remembered that it was just before the turning to the hymeneal homestead that she had met that scandalously successful coach.

III

Before Jinny reached home that evening, a complainant had already called at Blackwater Hall to unload his grievance. Such visitors were, alas, no longer a novelty to Daniel Quarles, who had one day begun to find himself no merely nominal representative of the business, but a principal charged with derelictions. His virulent rebuttals of the reproaches did but increase the defections. The flouted customers made no allowances for the ferocities of senility, and, when told to go to hell, simply went to the Flynt Flyer—a much pleasanter alternative. Indeed, one suspects they welcomed the insult as justifying gravitation to the new star. The indelicacy, however, of divulging its existence to the nonagenarian was reserved for Mr. Elijah Skindle.

That rising practitioner’s patronage was not the least of Jinny’s humiliations. Even after his proposal of marriage, she had not been able to refuse to carry dogs to and from his establishment when so commanded by her clients, though she had drawn the line at orders originating from himself. Now, however, in justice to her grandfather, she could not but accept his commissions, even though she was aware they were largely artificial, mere canals for communication and courtship. Why, for example, could not Mr. Skindle, whose gig was often at gardens buzzing with beehives, not purchase his own honey? Why must she procure him an article linkable with “moons” and permitting fatuous references to “sweetness”? His protestations of lack of time were too brazen even for his own mouth: he stuttered and blushed like a schoolboy. It will be seen that Elijah’s deeper self had not accepted his “lucky” escape from her. Hope springs eternal, especially when the desirable one’s pride is bent, if not broken, by adversity. That proud stomach which had rejected his proffered luxuries with disdain now bade fair to be empty. While he, moreover, touched nothing he did not profit by, and through a lucky rise in animal sickness was fast overtaking the respectable Jorrow.

With an audacity almost Napoleonic he had conceived the idea of at once blazoning and curing his baldness, purchasing a hair-restorer through Jinny herself, so that she might be an accessory to the improvement at which he was—obviously for her sake—slaving. And there did actually begin to sprout on his cranium microscopic dots, like pepper sprinkled over an egg-shell. Elijah lost no opportunity now of lifting his cap at the sight of her, though he had not yet acquired the habit of removing it indoors.

“Whoa!” Elijah drew up his trap in the grassy lane before Blackwater Hall and jumped down. The afterglow of sunset was in the sky, but the Common was still torpid with the breezeless heat of the day. He was in his best flannel suit and smartest cap, though the same old pipe stuck in his blackened teeth. Removing it, he rapped at the door with it, knocking out the ashes with the same taps. As nothing happened, he tugged from his pocket a paper-wrapped pot and thudded at the door with that. He had been simulating rage, for he had come to denounce a mistake, though enchanted to have the opportunity of calling on Jinny. But now for fear she was not yet back—and vexed with himself for not choosing one of her domestic days—he began to get really ruffled. He lifted the latch unceremoniously, but the door seemed bolted. Re-pocketing the pot with an unsmothered oath, he moved towards the living-room wall and peeped through the wide-flung little casement. Pah! Only the Gaffer snoring in his favourite posture, head on the family Bible. The shabbiness of the ancient earth-coloured smock-frock, like the meanness of the furniture, added to Elijah’s disgust.

“Fancy her slaving in this heat,” he mused, “when she might be snoozing on my horsehair sofa!” He shouted angrily, “Wake up, you old codger.”

The nonagenarian obeyed with a start. “What’s amiss, my little mavis?” he yawned.

“I ain’t a mavis,” Elijah informed him irately, “I’m a veterinary surgeon.”

Daniel Quarles sprang to his feet. “Marciful powers! Anything wrong with Methusalem?”

“No, no—” Elijah assured him through the little window, “I’ve come about Jinny.”

The old man tottered and caught at his chair. “An accident to Jinny?”

“Stuff and nonsense! She’ll be home any minute. Can I come in and wait for her?”

Daniel growled and grumbled. “Don’t you see Oi’m busy readin’ the Scriptures?”

“I won’t interfere with that.” He moved back to the door and rattled the latch masterfully. He suddenly saw the possibility of pushing his suit with the grandfather. “Why do you lock yourself in?” he demanded, as the bolts creaked back.

“Don’t you see they’ve took the Dutch clock?” said the Gaffer pitifully. “She desarts me all day long, and Oi can’t have my eyes everywheres.”

Elijah glanced up at the clock in the ante-room, ticking as imperturbably as ever.

“Why, it’s up there!” he said, puzzled.

“Do ye don’t try to befool me. That’s the same face, but they’ve took out the works and put in rubbidge. But it ain’t works we’re justified by,” he added musingly.

Elijah, picking his way among the old cypress chests, followed him into the living-room, sat down unasked on the settle, and mechanically pulled out his pipe.

“Git out o’ my house!” roared Daniel.

Elijah’s pipe fell on the rush mat.

“Boldero hisself,” explained the ancient, “never durst smoke in my nostrils. And who be you?”

Who was Boldero, Elijah thought a more sensible question. But he picked up his pipe with an apology. “All right, uncle, no harm done.” He wiped his forehead. “Warm, ain’t it?”

“Then why do ye want hell-smoke?”

“I shouldn’t quite call this hell-smoke,” Elijah deprecated.

“There’s no smoke without hell-fire,” Daniel explained. “Farmer Thoroughgood, he smoked just such a pipe as yourn.”

“And he was thorough good, you see,” said Elijah with an air of victorious repartee.

“Thorough bad,” chuckled the Gaffer with a still greater air of wit. “Starved his missus to death. The neighbours as come, to see the corpse found her on a bed made out of a common sheep-hurdle, stood on bricks.” He tapped the Bible with a dirty thumb. “Do ye don’t yoke a hoss and ass together, says the Book. But that evil-doer used to plough a field with a cow and a donkey, and when it ploughed too hard, he’d harness an old sow in front of the donkey—there’s currant-trees there now what pays better, not needin’ no ploughin’.”

“Quite like the old song,” observed Elijah, still feeling superior and witty. “There was a cow went out to plough.”

“Chrissimus Day, Chrissimus Day,” hummed the old man. Set agoing, he quavered on:

“Set ye down,” he broke off genially, though Elijah was already ensconced, leg over knee. “Jinny’ll be home in a jiffy.”

“I wonder she’s so long,” Elijah began tentatively, “when she’s got so little to do.”

“Ay,” assented the ancient, souring again. “ ’Tis me that’s got the whole work o’ the place. But gals likes to gad about in the summer, what becomes o’ the old folks never troubles the young ’uns nowadays.”

“They might just as well be married,” ventured Elijah boldly.

“Ay, their husbands ’ud make ’em work,” said the Gaffer, his eye gleaming maliciously. “But Oi don’t howd with starvin’ ’em, like Farmer Thoroughgood did his missus. When they come to see her corpse they found her on a bed made out of a common sheep-hurdle. Ay, and he used to plough his fields with a——”

Elijah, groaning inwardly, composed himself to hear the story again. Fortunately there was a fresh development at the finish. “One day ’twas a team o’ bullocks and a blind hoss he started droivin’. Powerful warrum it war—wuss than to-day—and the flies sow worritin’ that the bullocks set their tails up and bolted. The poor blind hoss couldn’t see where to goo and fell down. The oxen couldn’t drag him, and got tangled up in the traces.” He roared with laughter at the picture, and Elijah grinned too.

“Those flies do worrit,” he agreed, flicking at his forehead. “But about that Jinny of yours——” he added.

“She’ll onny have them harmless fly-papers, you see,” said Daniel, pointing to a coloured patch on the ceiling, blackened by a happy multitude. “Ef ye can’t wait for her,” he added amiably, “Oi’ll give her your message. A wet you said?”

“A veterinary surgeon, Mr. Elijah Skindle,” said Elijah grandly.

“Skindle!” The old man groped agitatedly in his memory. “That’s a name Oi know.”

“Known all over the Hundred,” said Elijah complacently. “Ay, and they’re hearing of my success at Colchester, too, where I come from.”

“Cowchester!” The old man sprang up. “That’s it—the man as married Annie! But that ain’t you—he had more hair to him.”

“Perhaps it was my father,” said Elijah, flushing.

“Nay, nay. Annie couldn’t have a son your soize,” the Gaffer pondered.

“My mother’s name is Annie,” said Elijah.

A strange fire crept into the old patriarch’s eyes. “A big-boned mawther of a girl, tall as the rod her father lit the lamps with, long raven hair and eyes as black as sloes, and a wunnerful fine buzzom,” he said with slow voluptuousness. “Your mother ain’t like that?”

“No,” admitted Elijah.

Daniel Quarles heaved a sigh. “Oi thought not, or you’d be more of a beauty.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” retorted Elijah. “For I’ve heard that my grandfather did use to light the lamps in Chipstone, and it’s a great shame the way my brothers and sisters all dump her on me to keep.”

The old man seized him suddenly by the coat-lapels. “She’s back in Chipstone?”

“Been back over two years—ever since father died.”

“He’s dead?” Elijah felt the hands trembling against his breast.

“Of course—and I’ve got her to keep, though I’m the youngest,” he grumbled.

“That’s the same luck as Oi had,” said the Gaffer, “with this bit of property, though Sidrach, he’s the first-born.” He dropped pensively back into his chair. “But Oi count Annie’s better off where she is, bein’ as Oi’ve got Jinny to keep and food gittin’ dearer every day, she says, something cruel. And happen Sidrach’ll come back too when he’s old, not havin’ landed property like me, ne yet no relations in Babylon. Never been sech a year since he went away—the Brad was all froze over.”

Elijah imprudently recollected—to the old man’s annoyance—that it had frozen equally in Queen Victoria’s first winter, and he brought up “Murphy’s coldest day,” the proverbial lucky hit of an almanack-maker. Fortunately the Gaffer recalled an ancient jest of Bundock’s: “Mother Gander’s gin-bottle’s froze over,” and relaxed in genial hysterics. “Ay, she’s conwerted now,” he said, wiping his rheumy eyes. “But what an adulteress in them days! Ye couldn’t get drunk at ‘The Black Sheep’ ef ye tried—beer without hops and wine without gripes.”

Mechanically drawing out his pipe and popping it back in alarm, Elijah reverted to Jinny. Daniel now blamed Methusalem for her lateness. Horses, too, were lazy and ungrateful, same as granddaughters.

“Why don’t you get rid of him?” said Elijah, with a sudden inspiration. That would cut her comb, he thought. Jinny docked of Methusalem would be ripe for the marriage-altar. “He’s long past his work.”

But Daniel Quarles shook his head. “Jinny wouldn’t like me to part with that. Besides, who’d buy him?”

“I would,” said Elijah, with a feeling of “All for love, or the world well lost.”

“You? Od rabbet, what for?”

“I’d give you a fiver!” parried the knacker in his reckless passion. “Though most people let me have ’em for the trouble of killing ’em,” he added incautiously.

The old man sprang up again. “Git out o’ my house! And don’t ye dare cross my doorstep agen!”

Elijah cowered back in his seat. “But I’ve come on business,” he protested.

“Oi bain’t a-gooin’ to sell Methusalem.”

“That’s not what I came for,” Elijah urged soothingly. “It’s about Jinny.”

“Oi bain’t a-gooin’ to sell Jinny neither.”

Elijah winced. Was it divination or drivel, he wondered.

“You might as well sell her,” he said boldly. “Look how she’s mucking up your business, muddling everything.” And rising and pulling out the pot again, he banged it down on the table.

“My Jinny muddle things! Git out o’ my house!”

Before the Gaffer’s blazing spectacles and furious fangs Elijah backed doorwards.

“Not before it’s set right,” he said, assured of his line of retreat.

“The Quarleses don’t make muddles. For a hundred year——”

“Oh, Jinny’s been all right the last hundred years,” he interrupted impatiently. “It’s the last few weeks I complain about! I hope it’s not sunstroke.”

“My Jinny!” The Gaffer’s anger died. “She went away singin’ as merry as could be, my little mavis,” he said anxiously.

“Then what do you make of that?” Elijah indicated the pot.

The old man unwrapped it slowly, and readjusting his spectacles spelt out the label. “Oliver’s Depil—Depil—” he stumbled on. “Is that pills?”

“No, it’s for the hair.”

“Well, that’s what you want, ain’t it?” he said naïvely.

Mr. Skindle coloured up. “But this is to take off the hair,” he explained.

“Well, you can’t do that,” chuckled Daniel, “bein’ more a ’Lisha than a ’Lijah.”

“Oh yes, I can,” said Elijah, his every dot bristling. “But if I hadn’t been a noticing man, I should have undone all the good of months of my pots of hair-restorer.”

“Whichever way it be, ’tis agen Nature,” said the Gaffer. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But pots be as like as peas. That’s the shopman’s fault, not Jinny’s.”

“Oh, indeed!” cried Elijah savagely. “And what about her bringing me hairpins?”

“Hairpins!” gasped the Gaffer. “Hairpins for a man without hair!”

“Even Samson in his prime didn’t want hairpins!” Elijah pointed out angrily. “But that’s what she brought me a packet of last week, instead of tobacco.”

“Sarve ye right, ye unswept chimbley,” the Gaffer growled, with a grin.

“That ain’t serving me right,” riposted Elijah. “That’s serving me wrong,” he added with redoubled wit. “And wouldn’t take ’em back neither, the little minx, maintained I’d ordered ’em for my ma.”

“Well, she’d want hairpins, wouldn’t she, with all that beautiful raven hair,” said the Gaffer, turning serious. “Happen you ordered ’em for her.”

“I never order anything for her,” said Elijah, waiving the description of her chevelure.

“More shame to you, then, young man. Ye don’t desarve to have her. Same as ye’re too stingy to pay for the hairpins, ye’d best give ’em to her with Daniel Quarles’s love.”

“I’m not stingy!” retorted Elijah hotly. “Would I be keeping my mother, with the poorhouse so handy, and me the youngest, too, if Elijah Skindle wasn’t the most generous man in Chipstone? But I won’t pay for Jinny’s woolgathering. No wonder everybody’s going to the coach!”

“The coach?” repeated Daniel Quarles. “What coach?”

“Hasn’t Jinny told you?” cried Elijah, equally astonished. “The handsomest pair of black horses——”

“A funeral coach?” half-whispered the Gaffer, paling. The notion of slaughtering Methusalem had already brought the thought of death unpleasantly near.

“You and Jinny may well call it so, old sluggaby,” said Elijah grimly.

The old man fell back into his chair. “Nobody never needed no funeral coaches here!” he quavered. “Our shoulders on the corpse-path was good enough for us. ’Twas onny that obstinacious little Dap, when poor Pegs laid by the wall, as wanted one.”

“Who’s talking of funeral coaches?” snapped Mr. Skindle. “Anyhow I’ve got to have that pot changed.”

“Git out o’ my house!” repeated the ancient for the fourth time, hurling the pot out of the window. Luckily it fell on grass.

Elijah’s patience was at an end. Besides it had now occurred to him he might cut off Jinny on the route, away from this tiresome nonagenarian. The effort to woo her through him had been baffled by his inconsequence.

“Who’s hankering after your wooden chairs? I’ve got horsehair at home,” he retorted crushingly.

As he climbed into his trap he heard the bolts shot behind him. But just as he was clucking off his horse, the Gaffer’s head popped frenziedly through the casement.

“Stop thief!” it cried. “Stop!”

“You be careful what you’re saying, old cockalorum,” said Elijah angrily, lashing his horse with vicarious wrath. “And pick up that pot. I shan’t pay for it.”

“You’ve stole my spectacles! Oi can’t find ’em nowheres!”

“Why, you’ve got ’em on!” Elijah called back contemptuously.

So eagerly did his horse respond to the whip and the homeward impulse that Elijah had the satisfaction of passing the equally enthusiastic Methusalem before he could pull up. He was not even sure that this arrogantly gowned Jinny had acknowledged his salute. She would be at her door before he could turn—confound it! Why had he not waited another moment or started earlier and cut her off at a remoter point? To face that old dodderer again would be an anti-climax.

IV

So swiftly did Daniel Quarles nod again over his big Bible that by the time Jinny had got Methusalem stabled, she could not rouse him to undo the bolts, and all her merry whistling as she neared the latch was a wasted pretence. This protective habit of his indoors was a recent development, coinciding curiously with the advent of the coach she was concealing from him, and these closed doors—even his bedroom was now locked from within—annoyed and alarmed her. She had visions of him agonizing in his bed and herself reduced to breaking open the door. Perhaps even now he was ill, dying, dead! She dashed to the living-room window—stumbling over a pot outside it. Ah, thank God, that dear, peaceful grey head, that sonorous snore!

Pausing now to pick up the mysterious pot, she was distressed again. The passing of Elijah was explained! Miss Gentry’s Depilatory she had brought to Mr. Skindle, Mr. Skindle’s Hair Restorer to Miss Gentry. He had come to complain, but unable to get admission, he had flung the pot on the path. Oh, plaguy similarity of potted pomades—fatal double error—she had killed two clients with one stone. Her eyes filled with tears: even with a notebook she could not keep straight.

So guilty did she look as she scrambled noiselessly through the casement, that an observer would have thought her a burglar. Creeping past her grandfather, she opened the house-door,—the gigantic key that used to hang on the beam was now always in the lock—brought in the carton with the wedding-cake from the cart, and placed it on the chest of drawers for unfailing reminder in the morning. Then swiftly changing into her old frock and hanging up the new behind a corner-curtain, she donned her apron and stole into the kitchen. Finally, to lay the table, she must with loving hands uplift the venerable head.

The ancient had not slept off his perturbation, though he did not remember the cause of it, and seeing his supper still unlaid, he was righteously wroth. “A muddler, mucking up everything—that’s what you be!” he said, repeating unconsciously Elijah’s indictment. And Jinny, remembering the pot that now stood by the wedding-cake, went about wanly, unresentfully, with movements lacking their wonted deftness. Her grandfather had already forgotten the suggestion of sunstroke, much as it had shaken him: for her actual pallor he had no eye.

When she finally brought in the meal, she found him risen and standing tranced before the great wedding-cake, gazing dazedly at its elaborately frosted architecture.

“You didn’t want to open it,” she cried with irrepressible petulance as she hooked down the pasteboard lid.

He ignored the reproach. “Weddin’s and funerals in one day,” he brooded. “Pomps and wanities.”

“Come to the table, Gran’fer,” she said more gently.

“Pomps and wanities!” he repeated. “Who’s this for?”

“It’s for Farmer Gale’s wedding—’twas too late to deliver it. Come along.”

“In my day folks made their own weddin’-cakes. And dedn’t want no funeral coaches neither. The church-path or the farm-wagon——”

“Come along!” She took his arm. “There’s no funeral coaches here.”

A whining and scratching at the door made a welcome diversion. Nip, back from the hunting-path, sneaked in, aware of sin, with ears flat, tail abased, and sidelong squint.

“Ain’t seen that for days,” said the Gaffer. “Where’s that been?”

“I don’t know,” she lied, glad of Nip’s guilty air, for to explain would reveal the coach. “On the razzle-dazzle, I suppose.”

After supper, she remembered a box must be put in the ante-room that had been left with her to be called for. It was stupid not to have brought it in at once, ere the cart had been put in its shed—as stupid as her pot-swapping. In a sudden fear that if unremoved to-night she would carry it off to Farmer Gale’s wedding just when the owner would be coming for it, she asked her grandfather to lend a hand with it. It was an unfortunate request, for as the still sinewy veteran was dragging his end over the sill, he said weirdly: “There ain’t no man in Bradmarsh more lugsome’n that. Who wants your new-fangled coach?”

“What coach?” murmured Jinny, half puzzled, half apprehensive.

“The funeral coach.” He stood still. “Where else ’ould a coffin goo?”

“Rubbish, Gran’fer. There’s no funeral coach.” Her little silvery voice rang out. “Heave away, my Johnny. Come along, Gran’fer, I’ve got to rub down Methusalem—you’ll be too tired now.”

“No funeral coach?” he repeated slowly, loosing the box.

“You’ve been dreaming, Gran’fer.”

“But the two black horses——”

Her heart beat like a criminal’s on the eve of detection. “Nightmares!” she laughed. “What did I say?”

“But he said——!”

“Who said?”

“Annie’s buoy-oy.”

“Annie’s——?”

“ ’Lijah, he calls hisself.”

“Elijah? And did he go up in a chariot of fire with the horses?” And more than ever incensed against Mr. Skindle, she hastily started her carrier’s chanty: