Jinny

“ And imperceptibly his attitude had changed. In spite of himself he was coming round to Henry's view, regarding genius as a malady, a thing abnormal, disastrous, not of nature; or if normal and natural—for Jinny—a thing altogether subordinate to Jinny's functions as a wife and mother. There was no sane man who would not take that view, who would not feel that nature was supreme. And Jinny had proved that left to nature, to her womanhood, she was sound and perfect. Jinny's genius had had, as he put it, pretty well its fling. It was nature's turn. ”

“ His face hardened. “Silly or sensible, I stick to my word.”
“Drumsticks!” she mocked again. “Jump up and tell me all about your affair with Miss Flippance.”
“Don’t be saucy, Jinny. It don’t become you:”
For the life of him he could not accept her as grown up, much less as an equal, though she sat on high, dominating the situation, whip in hand and horn at girdle, spick and span and cool; while he, astride the stile, was a forlorn figure, with dusty shoes and hot, lowering look.
“It becomes me as much as silliness does you,” said Jinny. ”

“ Apple-trees flowered in the cottage gardens and in the hedges was early May-blossom, and on the brinks primroses, anemones, and even a few precocious bluebells rioted in an intoxicating fertility of beauty. Larks rose palpitating with song, bumble-bees boomed, butterflies flittered, and ever and anon came the haunting cry of the cuckoo. And when Jinny’s voice soared up too, Elijah Skindle’s heart seemed melting down his spine. ”

“ As a hermit’s sick fantasy conjures up the temptation he knows he will resist, so Jinny saw yearningly, vividly, but hopelessly, the spread banquet, the dumplings soused in gravy, the brown bread and butter for the oysters, the juicy meats, the mysterious champagne-bottles, the sunny napery, the laughing festival faces, and, above all, the curly aureole of Will’s hair. ”

“ The small coin of conversation appertaining to these deliveries Jinny did not refuse him, and every cluck she gave to Methusalem, every ripple of laughter on her busy way, deepened the spell. The unexpected faces; the quaint cottage interiors; the cheerful-smiling women in high green aprons who received stay-laces or bobbins, sugar or tea-packets, in bare dough-powdered or soap-frothed arms; the panting figures that tolled after the cart with forgotten bundles; the dogs—the fiercer in their barrels and boxes, the milder waving free and friendly tails ”

“ Jinny experienced an entirely new sensation in her life—something none but herself had ever felt before—something romantic. 'He's like a soldier—a General,' she said to anybody who cared to listen, and she said it so loudly that many did listen. But she did not care. She stood apart from the others, staring as though it were a railway accident. This tall figure of a cousin she could fit nowhere as yet into her limited scheme of life. She admired him intensely. Yet Daddy laughed and chatted with him as if he were nothing at all! ”

“ The truth was, Jinny felt a physical need of the toning up the Showman somehow imparted to life. To drive around the rest of the day with practically no business but her own thoughts would be too dreadful. He must surely babble happily about his bride, and apart from the interest of her identity, some of his glow could not but radiate to her. And there was Caleb and Martha to see, too—how were they faring, these dear, simple creatures, too long unvisited? But then—thought that froze the heart!—had she not declared she would never set foot in Frog Farm again? ”

“ What a blessing we all do run to hay, she brooded, in a warm flood of self-pity.
But if Jinny thus saw the wedding-guests through a blur of self-torturing bitterness, their feast did not begin as merrily as she beheld it, despite that Mrs. Purley, as soon as she had exchanged her bonnet-cap with the net quilting for a home cap, served up unexpected glasses of gin. Anthony, no less than Barnaby, was upset by Jinny’s absence, and Cleopatra resented this fuss over a super. But still more disgruntled by the gap at the table was, odd to say, Will. For his soul had not been so placid as his pipe. ”

“ As I always say to Bundock—oh, we ought not to have mentioned names, ought we, Squibs dear? Please forget it.” She stroked the cat in her arms. “But there, Jinny! You can’t understand these things—you too were born under Saturn.”
“How do you know that?” Jinny was vaguely resentful.
“You’re so cold-blooded—perhaps it was even under the constellation of the Pisces—the Fishes, that is. You’ve never taken the faintest interest in Love. Do you know, I made a rhyme about you the other day.”
“A rhyme!” Jinny was excited. “Do tell me!”
Miss Gentry shook her head. “You wouldn’t like it.” ”

“ Thus swaying herself rhythmically, turning now a little to the right, now a little to the left, Jinny slowly approached Mrs. Johnson, who regarded her impassively, continuing to trot Nando without change of expression. But when Jinny had come within a distance of fifteen feet, suddenly Mrs. Johnson rose, dropped her offspring (who took it philosophically) , and began in her turn to sway herself gently from side to side, and then, with arms akimbo, her bare feet performing the same slow, exact evolutions, she advanced with gravity to meet Jinny, the two now joining in a crooning song. ”

“ Once, when the hare, crossing her cart with the dogs at his very heels, cleared the broad ditch with a magnificent leap, Jinny clapped her hands as though at a Flippance melodrama.
Sport for life’s sake was another affair, and she looked back regretfully to the good old times described by her grandfather, when the farmer, having finished his day’s work, would go out rabbit-shooting to preserve his crop, or when the fox could be shot, snared, or even hooked, as a dangerous animal. ”

“ Under cover of it Polly took to her heels and fled, regardless of the open door, or the padding of her bare feet on the boards.
Without replying to the astonished Jinny's query in respect of the water, she climbed over Tilly to her place beside the wall, and shutting her eyes very tight, drew the sheet over her face: it felt as though it would never be cool again.—Hence, Jinny, agreeably wakeful, was forced to keep her thoughts to herself; for if you lie between two people, one of whom is in a bad temper, and the other fast asleep, you might just as well be alone in bed. ”

“ Jinny was enchanted at this smoothing of the path for Miss Gentry. “But I’m so busy,” she protested professionally. “I can’t wait till you’re up.”
“Jinny’s too busy,” Martha corroborated. And in her eagerness to be rid of the girl, she unconsciously clucked to Methusalem, and so exactly like Jinny that the noble animal actually started.
“Wait! Wait!” Mr. Flippance shouted down wildly. “Do wait! Such a lot to consult you about. Haven’t even got a best man yet. ”

“ Jinny hardly glanced at her sister: it was Mary she wanted, Mary's hand she fumbled for while she told her trouble. "It's the children, Mary," she whispered. "I can't die happy because of the children. John doesn't understand them." Jinny's whole existence was bound up in the three little ones she had brought into the world. ”

“ The bare elms and poplars rose in rigid beauty in the cold starry evening. Death was far from her thoughts till she reached the hut and saw the sunken cheeks in their tangle of hair illumined weirdly from the stove, which lay so close to the patriarch’s hand he could replenish it from his bed of sacks.
“Just in time, Jinny!” he said joyfully. “Oi was afeared you wouldn’t be.” His excitement set him coughing and, frightened, she knelt and put her jug of tea to his lips. ”

“ The bluff, freeborn Briton was Farmer Gale’s favourite rôle, and his ruddy face, grey bowler, and smart gaiters made him sympathetic enough superficially, while the potent landowner’s consideration for Jinny’s religious necessities had not failed to evoke a flattered gratitude in her humble breast when they drove together of a Sunday to their respective chapels. ”

“ Mr. Giles Purley, a rosy-wrinkled apple-faced ancient, stood in his shirt-sleeves, looking as pleasantly untidy as his farmyard, which was full of felled logs and split wood, and bean and corn stacks, and ramshackle sheds. He was planing off knots with a bill-hook, and as Jinny drove up to the gate of the old timbered red house, he greeted her with a cheery grumble at the drought which forced such winter work prematurely upon him. ”

“ Often it seemed to Jinny that he was returning thanks to his Maker for the sunshine or the good smells, rebuking unconsciously her heart-heaviness, bidding her cry no more over spilt milk, but just lap up what she could. “Cheer up, Jinny!” she heard him bark. “Men are brutes and women fools and gran’fers grumpy and customers cruel, but life is jolly and odours numerous and where there’s a way there’s a Will.” ”

“ Jinny: “You perfectly unbearable Mr. Flynt! How mean of you to come spying into my empty cart! If you want to know, I am not out on business to-day at all, it’s a little friendly call I am making on the farmer. I haven’t, like you, to work all the week round to scrape together enough to feed my horses. Two days a week keeps me in luxury—ay, and Gran’fer too. And don’t pretend to be so gay and happy—I know what a grumpy, runty chap you are at home, and how you’re still hankering after that Blanche Jones who has thrown you away like an old shoe. ”

“ It was Nip that brought Jinny the news, though she did not understand its purport till the service was over. For it was to church that he brought it. That ancient building, standing isolated on its green knoll flaked with gravestones, had begun to appeal to him as much as to Jinny, and despite her efforts to dodge or shake him off, he had become a regular churchgoer. Nobody seemed to mind his sitting in her pew or squatting by the stove: perhaps so exiguous a congregation could not be exigent, and in that aching void even a canine congregant was not unwelcome. ”

“ As the horses tossed their wedding-favours and the coach jingled off with its fashionable burden, even the trap moving on under the stimulus of Mrs. Purley’s rhetoric, the whole scene became a blur to Jinny, and standing there by the old pillion-steps, she felt herself dwindled into a little aching heart alone in a measureless misery. How tragic to be cut off from all this gay eating and drinking! ”

“ Martha was jarred by this profane use of the sacred vocabulary, and moreover felt it almost as improper to leave Jinny alone in her house, even with a budding bridegroom. “Jinny’s got no secrets from me,” she said tartly; and Mr. Flippance, divining his error, remarked blandly, “Nor have I.” And as Martha started to dust the mantelpiece ornaments and to discover cigar-ash in her china shoes, he drew Jinny’s attention to the “beautiful” silk sampler that hung over them. “And all worked with Mrs. Flynt’s own hand! What a wonderful lion—and as for the unicorn, she’s got it to the life!” ”

“ At once a whirligig of images circled round Jinny and she saw dizzily the explanation of a disappearance that had puzzled her, for Tony had vanished from “The Black Sheep” without leaving a tip, the old waiter grumbled. What had led up to this adventure, she wondered, and how was Polly taking her intended stepmother?
“Isn’t that the Showman you’ve spoken of?” Miss Gentry inquired, as the congregation of seven streamed out, swollen by musicians, sexton, clerk, and pew-opener. “The fomenter of ungodliness?”
“It certainly seems my old customer,” replied Jinny, somewhat evasively. ”

“ Here was the Gaffer’s beer-barrel, and the thumb-hole tray, painted with tigers, on which she brought in his morning draught from it. Here also were the jug and basin of her toilette, for bedroom Jinny had none; the need of disturbing the ancient chests or the office—which would have been a sad blow to her grandfather—being avoided through the fortunate talent of the chest of drawers in the living-room for turning into a bed. Its drawers, in which the bedding was concealed, would come out and hook on to one another, while legs would swivel out from beneath them. ”

“ Bundock looked apoplectic.
“Jinny never loses anything,” said Martha, unimpressed.
“She’ll lose her character if she ain’t careful,” he said viciously; “driving of a Sunday with Farmer Gale.”
“That’s onny to chapel,” said Caleb.
“A man that rich’ll never take her there!” sneered Bundock.
“Why, Jinny’s only a child,” said Martha, roused at last. “And the best girl breathing. Look how she slaves for her grandfather!”
“Jinny! Jinny!” Bundock muttered. “Nothing but Jinny all the day and all the way.” ”

“ The excellent lady, whose erudition Jinny had always absorbed with the reverence due to a reader of The Englishwoman’s Magazine, was always delighted to have the girl sitting at her feet—even though to the crude physical vision Jinny always appeared to be sitting above her head, and Miss Gentry to be looking up to her. ”

“ The delicate solicitude of Martha on her behalf was thus a pure morbidity, for in going to and fro like a weaver’s shuttle, Jinny could scarcely remain ignorant that women were as liable to offspring as any other females, though it seemed a part of Nature’s order that had no more to do with herself than the strange, hirsute growths on the masculine face—or for the matter of that on Miss Gentry’s. ”

“ And Jinny was sorry she had not left the cobwebbed corners in their original mystery, for as the stories multiplied, the old man began to loom as a sort of sinister raven that drives out its own offspring, though gradually she came to see behind all the stories the same tale of a cast-iron religion against which the young generation broke itself. Or was it only a cast-iron obstinacy, she asked herself, after working out that the first at least of these family jars must have occurred before her grandfather’s oft-narrated encounter with John Wesley. ”