Chapter IX: Two of a Trade (2)

“Dang your coach!” But the imprecation was mild and the ancient shuffled to the door and surveyed the imposing equipage complete from box to boot, with its glossy sable steeds. Will, swelling with renewed pride, and mentally comparing it with the canvas-rotted, lumbering little carrier’s cart and the aged animal on its last legs, awaited with complacency the rapturous exclamations of the old connoisseur.

But they did not come. “Ay, quite soizable, not such a bad coach, rayther top-heavy. Where’s the leaders?”

“You don’t want more than two horses on these roads. Ain’t there plenty o’ pair-horse coaches? Besides it don’t set up for a coach exactly. I’m a carrier mainly!”

The old man winced at the word.

“You’ve called her the Flynt Flyer,” he said, peering at the painted legend.

“And fly she does!” said Will, recovering his complacency. “There’s life and spirit for you!” he added, as the horses pawed and tossed their heads.

“More like an adder biting their heels!” said Daniel balefully. “But Oi thought Oi heerd they was black!”

Will was outraged. “The Devil himself couldn’t be blacker!”

Daniel shook his head. “Mud-colour Oi should call the offside hoss.”

“Well, there’s black mud, ain’t there?”

“Nearside hoss seems wheezy,” Daniel said sympathetically, as it snorted with impatience.

“Wheezy? Cherry-blossom? Why, he could run ten miles more without turning a hair.”

“Why, he’s sweatin’ like one o’clock!”

“So am I.” Will wiped his forehead furiously. “But that’s only the weather.”

“Hosses don’t want to sweat when there’s nowt to carry.”

For a moment Will was knocked breathless. Recovering, he smiled complacently. “Why, it’s all delivered. And it _was_ a deliverance. A terrible load. Phew!”

“Nothing to ours! Lord, what a mort o’ custom! Look at that whopping box we’ve just carried in.” He pointed to the ante-room. “And all they other boxes!” he added with an inspiration, staring at the lumber of his deceased and scattered family.

“Oh, I know,” Will conceded graciously, “that there are folks that stick to Jinny—I mean to you—for old sake’s sake.”

“Ay, and you’re hankerin’ arter our hundred years’ connexion!”

“Eh?” said Will, dazed. He stole a reassuring glance at his magnificent turn-out.

“Oi could see what ye were droivin’ at with your friendly proposition. Want us to take you into pardnership.”

Will slapped his knee. “Well, I’m danged.”

Daniel chuckled fatuously. “Ho, ho! Guessed it, did Oi? Ye can’t keep much from Daniel Quarles.” And in high good humour he laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder and moved him back into the house.

They found Jinny, who had just deposited the beer-jug on the table, flitting up the stairs.

“Where ye gooin’, Jinny?” the Gaffer called after her.

“You’ve got things to talk over,” she called back.

“It ain’t secrets,” he crowed.

“Don’t run away,” Will added. “You’re the person most concerned.”

But his blushing rival had disappeared. It was all too unnerving, especially when the cracked mirror, aided by the fat lamp, showed her what a shabby unkempt figure was setting out the beer-glasses on the tiger-painted tray. As she could not change into her grand gown under the invader’s eye, she was furtively carrying it up to her grandfather’s bedroom.

VIII

“Set ye down,” repeated the Gaffer. “Have a glass o’ beer.”

“No, thank you, I’ve had water.”

“And the glass too,” the old man chuckled. “That ain’t much of a chate. Have a shiver o’ cake.”

Will did not like to refuse the slice till the Gaffer, after looking round with growing grumpiness, brought in the great wedding-cake from the kitchen, naked of its carton.

“Muddlin’ things away,” he was murmuring, as he posed it pompously on the table, whence its high-built glory of frosted sugar shed a festal air over the room.

“No, thank you!” cried Will hastily, divining a mistake—on the Gaffer’s part, if not on Jinny’s. He guessed Farmer Gale was concerned with it, for the whole countryside was agog with the meanness of a wedding that did not include a labourers’ supper, nay, even a holiday for them. The old man glared, bread-knife in hand.

“It would give me stomach-ache,” Will apologized.

The confession arrested the ancient. “Never had gullion in my life,” he bragged, laying down the bread-knife. “But you young folks——!”

“It’s like this,” said Will, taking advantage of this better mood. “There’s not enough business to keep both of us going. Suppose I buy you out.”

“Buy me out!” The prophet of wrath resurged. His arm shot out for the bread-knife, pointing it door ward. “Git out o’ my house. For a hundred year——”

Will got angry. “If I do get out, it _will_ be a hundred years before I come back. However,” he said, forcing a smile, “let’s put it another way. Jinny shall come and help _my_ business.”

“Jinny’ll never give up Methusalem.”

“Well, Methusalem’ll give up Jinny before very long—he can’t last for ever. And she can keep him for Sundays—yes, that’ll be a good idea. She can drive to chapel with him, not being a business animal.” “And then she’d be clear of successors to Farmer Gale,” a side-thought added.

“But Oi thought ’twas me you had a proposition for,” said the Gaffer testily.

Will hastily readjusted his tactics. “Of course, of course. It’s really lumping our businesses, instead of competing, don’t you see?”

“Well, dedn’t Oi say ’twas a pardnership you was arter?”

“Quite right. Only we’ll give poor old Methusalem a retiring pension.”

“He, he!” croaked the Gaffer. He added honestly, “But Oi don’t droive much meself nowadays. ’Tis onny the connexion ye’d be getting and the adwice and counsel.”

“Just what I want,” said Will enthusiastically. “And I’m willing to share and share alike.”

“Snacks?”

“Snacks!”

“It’s not a bad notion,” admitted the ancient.

“It’s a ripping notion.”

“Arter all, as you say, there’s no reason we should come into colloosion.” He dropped the knife back on the table, and looked out of the still open window.

“Ay, it’s a grand coach!” he gurgled.

“The talk of the countryside—only needs a turnpike road to beat the train!” said Will, expanding afresh. “Snowdrop and Cherry-blossom I call these horses for fun—because they’re so black, you see.”

“Ay, black as the devil! And hark at ’em pawin’—there’s fire and sperrit for you. That’s as foine a coach as ever Oi took up from. It’ll not look amiss with Quarles painted ’stead o’ Flynt.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Will quickly. “Flynt must remain. The Flynt Flyer—you can’t alter that.”

“Why can’t you?”

“You can’t say the Quarles Flyer—the Quarles Creeper runs better off the tongue. The Flynt Flyer—that goes together.”

“But it’s you and me’s got to goo together,” retorted the obstinate old man. “Anyways it must be the Quarles and Flynt Flyer.”

“That’s too long. Besides the Flynt Flyer’s become a trade-mark—known everywhere.”

“And what about Daniel Quarles, Carrier? That’s a better known trade-mark. We’ll paint that.”

Will shook his head. “I can’t do that, but I’ll paint Flynt and Quarles, Carriers, underneath the name of the coach. And that’s the limit.”

“Daniel Quarles was always a peaceable man. . . . Quarles and Flynt!” breathed the Gaffer beatifically.

“No, Flynt and Quarles,” Will corrected. “Flynt must go first.”

“Why must?”

“Don’t F come before Q? Folks would think we didn’t know our A B C.”

“It _would_ be more scholardy,” Daniel admitted.

Will proffered a conclusive hand. “Then it’s a bargain!” But Daniel let the hand hover.

“Oi don’t droive much meself nowadays,” he repeated with anxious honesty.

“We don’t expect it of the head of the firm,” said Will grandly; “there’s substitutes and subordinates.” But his hand drooped with a sense of bathos.

“Ay,” said the old man, swelling, “subordinators and granddarters.” He fished for the hand.

“Oughtn’t we to let ’em know?” Will insinuated.

“Oi allus liked young Flynt, your father,” answered the Gaffer, squeezing his fingers heartily. “And there warn’t much amiss with your mother. A forthright family, aldoe Peculiar. Jinny droives a-Sundays to chapel with the buoy-oys!”

At which sudden failure—or rather resurgence—of memory, Will felt more urgently than ever the need of getting Jinny’s consent rather than the nonagenarian’s.

“You’re mighty lucky,” he said craftily, “to have a granddaughter so spry. I reckon we’d better have her down and tell her.”

“Ay, that Oi be,” replied the Gaffer. “’Tis heartenin’ to hear her singin’ up and down the house.”

Indeed a little silvery trill was reaching them now. To Will it recalled more than one moment of mockery, but he felt nothing provocative in this song except its parade of happiness. It seemed to fling back his compassion, to be ominous of a refusal of his proposition. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be better to leave the old man to present her with a finished fact.

“Well, I must be getting home,” he said. “Glad that’s settled.”

Daniel clutched the knife again. “And we’ll cut the cake upon it.”

“No, no.” Mistake or no mistake, it seemed sacrilegious to slice into this quasi-ecclesiastical magnificence.

“But it’s a bargain. Jinny shall cut it. Jinny!” he called up.

“Just coming, Gran’fer.”

“That’s too grand for a bargain,” Will remonstrated. “Would almost do for a wedding,” he added with sly malice.

“Well, ain’t this for a pardnership?” the old man cackled. He moved to the door and stood looking out on the horses. “Steady, my beauties,” he said proprietorially. He shuffled to them and rubbed a voluptuous hand along the satiny sheen of their skins. “Flynt and Quarles,” he murmured.

Will had taken the opportunity to escape from the house. He now prepared to light his lamps. Bats were swooping and darting, weaving their weird patterns, but the air was still uncooled.

“Ye’re not a-gooin’ afore the cake’s cut!” the Gaffer protested.

“I’d best not see Jinny—she might only fly at me.”

“Rubbidge. When we’ve made it up!”

“But I’m late, and I shouldn’t wonder if there’s a thunderstorm.”

“Won’t take half a jiffy!” He dashed into the house and seized the knife. Will was only in time to arrest his uplifted arm, and Jinny, descending on the tableau, had a tragi-comic sense of rushing betwixt a murderer and her lover.

“What are you doing, Gran’fer?” she gasped.

He surrendered the bread-knife blinkingly to her, and Will released his arm, struck breathless by the change in Jinny. Not only were apron and shabby gown replaced by the Gentry masterpiece, not only was her hair combed and braided in a style he had never seen, but the face which reduced all these fripperies to insignificance seemed years younger and fresher. The little lines were gone from the forehead, the hard defiance from the eyes, and the wanness from the cheeks: the whole face was mantled with a soft light. How shrewd he had been to suggest this partnership, he thought with a pleasant glow, forgetting its origin in pity. For assuredly this softly radiant person made no call on that emotion. The old man was equally astonished. “Why, Jinny, ye’re as smart as a carrot!” he cried naïvely. “Bless ye.” He kissed her fondly. “Willie wants to goo into pardnership—Quarles and Flynt.”

The young people looked at each other, both as carrots in hue.

“Well, Willie, where’s your tongue? Tell her how we’ve settled it.”

“He can tell me on Sunday,” said Jinny, not utterly unresentful of their masculine methods.

“On Sunday?” the Gaffer gasped.

“After chapel,” Jinny explained.

“Oi won’t have no such talk a-Sundays. It’s got to be now. Goo ahead, buoy-oy!”

“Oh, Gran’fer,” Jinny pleaded. “Can’t you go and light Will’s lamps?”

“Ye want to upset it all behind my back,” he said with a cunning air.

“No, I don’t.”

“Ye can’t diddle Daniel Quarles. It’s a fust-rate proposition, and don’t ye dare say ‘Noa.’”

“But, Gran’fer!” Jinny hung her head. “You might understand.”

“Oi understand better nor you. Look at that coach now—a grand coach—Quarles and Flynt.”

“Never mind the coach—light the lamps,” Jinny cried paradoxically.

Daniel moved out reluctantly. “It’s a hansum proposition, Jinny,” he said. “Where’s your tinder-box, Willie?”

“Here’s matches,” said Will. He looked uneasy. Her grandfather seemed to be irritating the girl—it boded ill for his proposition.

“Don’t be afeared, Willie. She won’t fly at ye now. Easy, my beauties. Steady, Snowdrop!”

IX

“You don’t mind my clearing up,” said Jinny, pouncing upon Farmer Gale’s imperilled cake.

“Not if you don’t fly at me,” Will quoted with a nervous facetiousness.

Jinny smiled with equal nervousness: “Oh, I won’t fly at you—nor jump at you, neither.”

Will flinched. Had he not felt committed to her grandfather, he would have shrunk from the rebuff now menacing his proposition. Indeed, he was not quite clear as to how he could really amalgamate the two concerns. The notion of a girl guard, which had first flashed upon him as an inspiration, was now felt to be beset by obstacles. True, the operations of blowing such a long horn, taking so many fares, booking so many parcels, and locking and unlocking the boots, were a serious discount from the pleasures of driving, and a person familiar with the minutiæ of carrying, and a ready-reckoner incarnate, (and so agreeably incarnate) might well seem providential. But would the unfitness of so unconventional an occupation be glossed over by the existing acceptance of her in that line of business, and would his overlordship be a protection or an added scandal? Still, he was in for it now, unless she refused the post—which he hoped she would not! For after all, at the worst, with all these new circuits of his, he might still leave to her her little pottering round, counting it as a branch of the new Flynt and Quarles business. He would still have won the monopoly of the local carrying, and without the weight on his conscience of starving her out.

“I know you’ve got a deal of pride and all that,” he began diffidently, “but you’ll bear in mind your grandfather’s tickled with the notion.”

“It’s hardly Gran’fer’s business,” Jinny murmured, blushing.

“Oh, I quite understand that. Of course it’s your business really. Didn’t I ask you not to run away? I didn’t mean to reckon it settled unless _you_ said ‘Yes.’”

“I should hope not,” said Jinny with a spirit that banished the blush. She carried the cake back to the top of the chest of drawers.

“Of course it’s silly our going on separate, don’t you think so?”

“I haven’t thought.” She took up the beer-jug to remove it.

“Well, I have—I’ve thought a good deal—that’s why I figured that with you as my partner—No, not for me, thank you.”

For Jinny was mechanically filling a glass. Flushing afresh, she poured the beer back. “But who’s to look after Gran’fer?” she said, her eyes averted. “How can I leave him?”

“I’ve thought of that—naturally when you’re so much with me, you can’t be much with him. But, you see, there’ll be plenty of dollars to share out—money, I mean—and we’d be able to get in a woman to take care of him.”

To get in a woman! So he was prepared to let poor old Gran’fer live with them! O exquisite, incredible magnanimity! It solved all difficulties in a flash. “And what about Methusalem?” she asked, expectant of a similarly sublime solution.

“Poor old Methusalem!” he laughed. “Won’t he like going to grass? Well, if he’s so very keen, suppose he trots around once a week on his own little affairs—hair-restorers and the like.”

Even the little dart failed to pierce. She was overwhelmed by this culminating magnanimity. This was indeed surrender. So she was _not_ ignorant of horses, so her work had _not_ been improper. She smiled responsively, but her voice shook. “You mean I can carry on?”

“Under the Flynt flag, of course.”

“You wouldn’t really mind?”

“All’s grist that comes to the mill. Besides, it would leave me free to branch out to Totfield Major, and perhaps even Colchester. Tuesdays, say, if you like.”

But she did not like. Her conception of a wife’s dignity boggled at the notion of driving around as before. Unmaidenly it was not—he had handsomely admitted it—but unwifely it assuredly was. A wife’s place, she felt instinctively, was the home. She shook her head. “I don’t think I ought to drive Methusalem any more.”

He gasped. “Well, you wouldn’t expect to handle a _pair_ of horses, would you?”

If he meant she could not, Jinny was not so sure. But why argue so irrelevant a point? “No, of course not,” she murmured obediently. “I mean Methusalem _will_ like going out to grass.”

He breathed freely again. The path to his project was clear at last. “But as a sort of guard now——” he ventured, With an indulgent air.

Jinny beamed at so facetious a picture. She saw herself in red, with big buttons and shorn hair. “So I’m to blow your horn for you after all!”

“Sure—once you’ve paid up the gloves!”

She laughed merrily. Even Miss Gentry’s bill was a dissipated nightmare now.

“But where shall I get the money?” she joked, for the pleasure of his reply.

“Oh, you’ll take all the money,” he instructed her seriously.

“I’ll have to allow you some, though,” she pointed out gaily.

“Half,” he explained. “We divide the takings equally—that’s my proposition. Snacks!”

“Oh, that’s much too much,” she protested as seriously.

The apparent admission pleased him, but increased his sense of magnanimity. “Share and share alike,” he repeated magnificently.

“But you don’t want to spend half the takings,” Jinny persisted. “How could I manage on a half?”

“Why, you’ll have much more than you ever had!”

Jinny was mystified. “But there’ll be the house to keep up and—and——” She paused with shy flaming cheeks.

Will was getting a bit puzzled too. “And your grandfather? But I’ve already offered to pay for him and his minder too—out of the joint takings, I mean. Surely half and half is the most you can expect.”

But it showed once more how little our Jinny had really been changed from early-Victorian womanhood by her exceptional experiences, that so unconventional a system of joint housekeeping made no appeal to her. “A quarter is the most _you_ can expect,” she retorted.

“What!” Will was even more revolted by her ingratitude than by her impudence. “When you only bring in your wretched little cart, and I sank all my capital in the coach!”

“Your capital?” Jinny repeated blankly.

“You know what I had to pay for the horses!”

It was an unfortunate memory to stir up, and it helped a flood of raw light to burst upon her.

“You’re not really proposing I should be your guard?” she asked in a changed voice.

“Yes, I am,” he reassured her.

“For money?” she breathed incredulously.

“Of course. You don’t suppose I ask it for love! Business is——!”

Jinny turned on him like a tigress—anger was the only thing that could drown this dreadful sense of shame. “How dare you?” she cried. “How dare you ask me to work for you for money?”

Will winced before her passion. “You promised not to fly at me,” he reminded her glumly.

“I didn’t think you’d suggest that.”

“And what’s wrong in suggesting a partnership?”

“A partnership!” she sneered. “Do you suppose I’m going to pull you out of the mud?”

Will’s blood was up in its turn. “You pull _me_?”

“What else? You find yourself stuck and you come to me to save your funeral coach.”

“Funeral coach?”

“That’s what Gran’fer calls it. And you _will_ find yourself carrying corpses if you go on cooping up your passengers in this weather. Your silly concern hasn’t got a tilt to take off, but at least you might put the luggage inside and the live-stock on top. Oh, don’t be frightened, I won’t charge for my advice. But you being young and raw——”

“Here! Stow that!” Will banged the floor with his whip. “Then you refuse my offer!”

“Offer? I call it a petition.”

“Me petitioning——!” His breath failed.

“It wasn’t me that came with a flag of truce.”

He snorted. “You’ll come one day with a cry for mercy.”

“Me! You’ll never see _me_ at Frog Farm. I’d rather go to the poorhouse—to see you, I mean.”

Will set his teeth. “Very well then—my conscience is clear. I did think I might have been hard on you. But now——!”

“Now,” she echoed mockingly.

“I shall crush you.”

She laughed tauntingly “Pride goes before a fall.”

“I shall crush you without pity.”

“You young rapscallion!” It was the Gaffer hobbling back. Having lit the coach-lamps, he had lingered in voluptuous contemplation of what they illumined. But the noise of high words had reached him, and now with the astonishing muscularity that still lingered in his shrunken frame, the ancient seized the whip and wrenched it from Will’s grasp. Jinny flew between them, fearing he would strike as he stood there in prophetic fury, palpitating in his every limb. Her earlier intervention, though against a knife, had been comic: here was tragedy, she felt.

“You crush my Jinny! Why, Oi’ll snap ye in two like this whip.” And he hurled the pieces of the stock at Will’s feet.

Nip leapt for the butt-end and brought it back in his mouth with high-wagging tall, demanding another throw. He broke the tension of foolish mortality.

“Don’t excite yourself, Gran’fer,” said Jinny, leading him to his chair. “I’ll cut him out before he’s a month older.”

Will guffawed. “I offered her a fair chance, Mr. Quarles,” he said, taking the butt from Nip’s mouth. “You yourself said it was a handsome offer.”

“We don’t want your offers, ye pirate thief, nor your chances neither. Ye’ve only got our crumbles. Oi’ve sent a mort o’ customers to hell, and you can goo with ’em.”

“As you please.” Will picked up the whip-end quietly. But the old volcano was still rumbling.

“You crush my Jinny—you with your flags and rags. Why, all Bradmarsh ’ould give ye rough music. Ye’d be tin-kettled.”

“Very well! Only don’t say I didn’t give you a fair and friendly chance. Don’t blame me if you come to want bread.”

“Bread!” The old man sprang towards the chest of drawers and this time the cake was stabbed to the heart. “Have a shiver?” he cried magnificently, holding up a regal hunk on the knife-point.

Even Will was taken aback by this deed of derring-do. “Better save it up,” he said sullenly.

“Save it?” repeated Daniel hysterically. Nip was already on his hind legs begging for it—with a superb gesture the prodigal grandfather threw it at the tireless mouth. “Never you darken my doorstep again!” he cried to Will.

Will cracked his bit of whip with a scornful laugh. “Before you see me in this house again, you’ll have to carry me in!”

“Carry him in? D’ye hear that, Nip?” The ancient chuckled contemptuously. “That’s a good ’un.”

“Carry me in,” repeated Will fiercely. And holding up his hand, “So help me God!” he cried.

“Spare your swearings, buoy-oy,” said Daniel grimly, throwing the plaintive Nip another pile of sugary splendour. “Ye ’ont never cross this threshold agen save on your hands and knees.” And sending his knife quivering into the floor, he brought down his hand on his Bible. “On your hands and knees,” he repeated solemnly.

Will turned and strode out stiffly. He looked almost tall. A moment later they heard the clatter and jingle of the great equipage moving forwards and the jubilant winding of the long horn.