Chapter XIII: The Course of True Love (4)

“‘Well, Oi can’t take her away without clothes,’ roared your Gran’fer. He said he counted it unrespectable enough that they should allow her to wash a strange old man, alone in a room, and that if they didn’t mend their ways he’d have a piece put in the paper about it all. ‘Well, let ’em give me back my own clothes,’ says Mrs. Skindle. ‘I’ve got to have twenty-four hours’ notice about that,’ says the Master. ‘Ha, you’ve stole ’em!’ says your Gran’fer. ‘You be careful what you’re sayin’,’ says the Master, bridling up. ‘Who wants her rags and jags?’ But in the end it was all settled friendlywise—your Gran’fer buying up some of the cast-off grandeur of the matron’s (they drove a good bargain with your Gran’fer, the pair of screws, but he was free and flush with his teapot), and off the happy pair went at last, the bride as spruced up as the bridegroom, and I saw him hand her into the wedding-cart with her bouquet, while the old gentlemen in the corduroys and the old ladies in blue, and especially the little orphans, raised a cheer. Even Jims waved. I expect he’d had a drop out of the teapot.”

“Daniel Quarles, Carrier-Off,” laughed Jinny, half hysterically, for scandalized and startled though she was, a rosy light, whose source was yet unclear to her, seemed rising on her horizon.

“I went up to the cart under pretence of patting Nip,” Will went on, “and asked the old boy where he was off to. ‘Home, of course,’ he answers friendly. ‘You should be going to chapel first, you old rip,’ I told him. ‘We’re going to be married in church,’ answers Mrs. Skindle stiffly. ‘I’m Church of England.’ ‘That’s all right, Annie,’ he says, patting her hand, ‘we’ll look in on Mr. Fallow about they banns,’ and singing ‘Oi’m Seventeen come Sunday,’ drives off with her.”

But Jinny refused to sympathize with the course of true love. “He’s not really going to marry her?” she now cried. “But that’s dreadful!”

“You scandalous creature! It would be more dreadful if he didn’t!”

“But at his age!”

“Why, he’s quite young yet,” laughed Will. “One hundred and fifty-two is his little span, remember.”

She let herself relax under his laughter. “Will they ring a peal of Grandsire Triples at his wedding?” she asked whimsically. Then with renewed anxiety: “Oh, but I do hope it hasn’t all excited him too much,” she cried. “I’d best get home as quick as possible.”

“Home? You don’t mean Blackwater Hall?”

“Where else?”

“You can’t go there. As your Gran’fer remarked to the Master, that’s no place for a respectable female.”

She stared at him. “Besides,” he said, “you don’t want to interfere with the young couple.”

“But I’ve not cooked the dinner!”

“Let the bride do that. She’s as strong as a horse. It’s the best thing that could have happened for both of ’em. After fending for all of us at Rosemary Villa, Blackwater Hall will be a holiday to her.”

“But I must go and see about things. She won’t know where anything is. And even if she cooks the dinner, she’ll want my apron. She can’t spoil her fineries.”

“That’s enough,” he said sternly. “I don’t often quote my father, but I’m bound to say some people _are_ near-sighted and can’t see God, their friend. You’ve done with Blackwater Hall.”

“But where am I to go then?”

He laughed. “And what about Frog Farm?” He took her arm. “And we, too, must get tied up as soon as possible. No, Jinny, we can’t do better than follow in your Gran’fer’s footsteps. The way he held that grey-headed old woman’s hand in the wedding-cart, while I—you’re right, I haven’t called you ‘beautiful’ enough.” He paused to do so without words. “The old boy’s taught me a lesson, dashing in like that, while I’ve been sitting growling and grizzling and wasting our best years.”

“But you see, Will, it couldn’t be before. And he _was_ sacrificing himself to me, poor Gran’fer, if he wanted her so badly all the time. Just see how he waited till he could support her!”

“On your money! Under the roof you re-thatched for him!”

“It wasn’t my money. And it was Ravens who did the roof.”

“You paid for it!”

“No, I didn’t,” she protested.

“Why not?”

“He won’t send me in the bill.”

“Oh, won’t he!” Will clenched his fist. “I’ll jolly soon stop his singing if he don’t hurry up with it! And why didn’t you ask _me_ to mend your thatch?”

“You couldn’t come in.”

“You don’t come in to the roof.”

“That _might_ have been a way of coming in,” she laughed, “it was so leaky. Anyhow you might have done Uncle Lilliwhyte’s—it is his money that has saved us all.”

“In a roundabout way,” he admitted.

She snuggled to him. Happiness, which had hitherto seemed like the soaped pig at village sports, was seizable at last. “Won’t it be wonderful when we’re in the hut!” she said.

He opened his eyes. “You don’t propose to live in Uncle Lilliwhyte’s hut with the three top-hats!”

“Of course not,” she said, blushing. “It’s in Australia. There’s just poles stuck in the ground.”

“Why, when have you been in Australia?”

“Never you mind! You see, I’ve already saved up a little towards my passage and——”

But her words died on his lips. “I don’t know that we need pull up our stakes,” he said when he released her. “Farmer Gale’s looking for a looker.”

“You don’t really mean that?” she said.

“_He_ does, anyhow. I just met him in his dog-cart and he’s mad about his flood-losses. ‘You should have paid a good man,’ I told the hunks to his head.”

“Oh, but, Will,” she said, shrinking, “you don’t like Farmer Gale!”

“Well, he’s safely married now, and after all, my father had the place first. . . . It belongs to the family. . . . Anyhow,” he broke off masterfully, “I’d pay my wife’s passage-money.”

“Then I’ll be able to buy Methusalem,” she said in cheerful submission. “He’s only five pounds—I suppose your father would take care of him.”

“Rather! It would be a refuge from the New Jerusalem.”

“But we’ll take Nip with us, sweetheart—it won’t be the goldfields, you know, just a farm. And we can take over the Bidlake girls too, if you like.”

“Lord, what a crowd! But I don’t see Nip on an emigrant ship.”

“Haven’t I heard of dog-watches?” she smiled.

“I guess you’d smuggle him in somehow,” he laughed. “I’ve noticed you generally get your own way. And captains are but men.”

“I thought they were sea-dogs,” she laughed.

“You generally get the last word too,” he grumbled with adoring admiration. “But I tell you, Jinny, though there may be more money, all these new countries are terribly raw.”

“I know—‘no longer an egg, not yet a bird, only a smell,’” she quoted with wistful humour, and these words of his in the English wood last May evoked again for both of them all the magic of their love at its dawning.

They walked on in silence towards Frog Farm. After all, with their united treasure of youth, energy, and love, their livelihood was no grave problem. Larks were carolling, the little wrens piping, and ringdoves calling, calling, for the Spring was near after all, and the daffodils had already come. It seemed indeed a vain snapping of the heart-strings to leave such a homeland.

“That’ll be winter soon in Australia,” mused Will tenaciously.

“Not if we were together,” Jinny whispered, although the more she pondered during that wonderful walk the more the Antipodes receded to their geographical distance, the more shadowy grew the danger of falling off her planet. But, however they were to decide, she could see no reason—once her grandfather’s wedding-bells had rung—why they should not all live—wherever they all lived—happy ever after.

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_THE NOVELS OF ISRAEL ZANGWILL_

CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO GHETTO COMEDIES GHETTO TRAGEDIES THE GREY WIG THE KING OF SCHNORRERS THE MANTLE OF ELIJAH THE MASTER THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS THE CELIBATES’ CLUB

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_NEW NOVELS: 7s. NET EACH_

THE THREE BLACK PENNYS JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

(_In preparation, by the same author_) JAVA HEAD

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE SOMERSET MAUGHAM

STORM IN A TEACUP EDEN PHILLPOTTS

THE ROLLING STONE C. A. DAWSON SCOTT

A SAILOR’S HOME and Other Stories RICHARD DEHAN

THE OLD MADHOUSE A posthumous novel by WILLIAM DE MORGAN

THE BONFIRE ANTHONY BRENDON

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

The list of other works by the author has been moved from the front of the book to the end. Spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. A few obvious typesetting and punctuation errors have been corrected without note.

[The end of _Jinny the Carrier_ by Israel Zangwill]