TREWHELLA spent in Cornwall the fortnight during which Jenny insisted on dancing out her contract with the Orient. The withdrawal, ostensibly to prepare his mother for the wife's arrival, was a wise move on his part, for Jenny was left merely with the contemplation of marriage as an abstract condition of existence undismayed by the presence of a future husband whom she did not regard with any affection. She did not announce her decision to the girls in the theater until the night before her departure. At once ensued a chorus of surprise, encouragement, speculation and good wishes.
"If I don't like Cornwall," Jenny declared, "I shall jolly soon come back to dear old London. Don't you worry yourselves."
"Write to us, Jenny," the girls begged.
"Rather."
"And mind you come and see us first time you get to London."
"Of course I shall," she promised and, perhaps to avoid tears, ran quickly down the court, with her box of grease paints underneath her arm.
"Good luck," cried all the girls, waving farewell in silhouette against the dull orange opening of the stage door.
"See you soon," she called back over her shoulder. "Good-bye, all."
Another chorus of good-byes traveled in pursuit along the darkness as, leaving behind her a legend of mirth, an echo of laughter, she vanished round the corner.
Jenny and Trewhella were married next morning in a shadowy old church from whose gloom the priest emerged like a spectre. She was seized with a desire to laugh when she found herself kneeling beside Trewhella. She fell to wondering how May was looking behind her, and wished, when the moment came for her father to give her away, that he would not clip his tongue between his teeth, as if he were engaged on a delicate piece of joinery. Mr. Corin, too, kept up a continuous grunting and, when through the pervading silence of the dark edifice any noise echoed, she dreaded the rustle of Aunt Mabel's uninvited approach. It did not take so long to be married as to be buried, and the ceremony was concluded sooner than she expected. In the registry she blushed over the inscription of her name, and let fall a large blot like a halo above her spinsterhood. Luckily there was no time for jests and banqueting as, in order to arrive in Cornwall that night, it was necessary to catch the midday train from Paddington. Jenny looked very small beneath the station's great arch of dingy glass, and was impressed by the slow solemnity of Paddington, so different from the hysteria of Waterloo and frosty fog of Euston. Trewhella, leaning on his blackthorn, talked to their father and Mr. Corin, while the two girls ensconced themselves in the compartment.
"Take your seats," an official cried, and when Trewhella had got in, Mr. Raeburn occupied the window with his last words.
"Well, I sha'n't go down to the shop to-day, not now. Let's have a line to say you've arrived all safe. You know my address after I clear out of Hagworth Street."
"So long, dad," said Jenny awkwardly. Neither she nor May had ever within memory kissed their father, but on this last opportunity for demonstrative piety they compromised with sentiment so far as each to blow him a kiss when the train began to move, and in token of goodwill to let for a little while a handkerchief flutter from the window.
There was no one else in the carriage besides themselves, and in the stronger light that suddenly succeeds a train's freedom from stationary dimness, Jenny thought how lonely they must look. To be sure, May's company was a slight solace, but that could neither ease the constraint of her attitude towards Trewhella nor remove the sense of imprisonment created by his proximity. It was a new experience for her to be compelled to meet a man at a disadvantage, although as yet the nearness of freedom prevented the complete realization of oppression. Trewhella himself seemed content to sit watching her, proud in the consciousness of a legalized property.
So the green miles rolled by until the naked downs of Wiltshire first hinted of a strange country, and in a view of them through the window Trewhella seemed to gather from their rounded solitudes strength, tasting already, as it were, the tang of the Cornish air.
"Well, my lovely, what do 'ee think of it all?"
"It's nice, I like it," replied Jenny.
Conversation faltered in the impossibility of discussing anything with Trewhella, or even in his presence. Jenny turned her mind to the moment of first addressing him as Zachary or Zack. She could not bring herself to mouth this absurd name without an inward blush. She began to worry over this problem of outward behavior, while the unusual initial twisted itself into an arabesque at once laughable and alarming. And she was Mrs. Z. Trewhella. Jenny began to scrabble on the pane filmed with smoke the fantastic initial. As for Jenny Trewhella, madness would have to help the signature of such an inapposite conjunction. Then, in a pretense of reading, she began to study her husband's countenance, and with the progress of contemplation to persuade herself of his unreality. Sometimes he would make a movement or hazard a remark, and she, waking with a start to his existence, would ponder distastefully the rusted neck, the hands like lizard skin, and the lack luster nails frayed by agriculture.
The train was rocking through the flooded meads of Somerset in a desolation of silver, and the length of the journey was already heavy on Jenny's mind. She had not traveled so far since she was swept on to the freedom of Glasgow and Dublin. Now, with every mile nearer to the west, her bondage became more imminent. Trewhella loomed large in the narrow compartment as Teignmouth was left behind. They seemed to be traveling even beyond the sea itself, and Jenny was frightened when she saw it lapping the permanent way as they plunged in and out of the hot-colored Devonshire cliffs. Exeter with its many small gardens and populated back windows cheered her, and Plymouth, gray though it was, held a thought of London. Soon, however, they swung round the curve of the Albert Bridge over the Tamar and out of Devon. Sadly she watched the Hamoaze vanish.
"Cornwall at last," said Trewhella, with a sigh of satisfaction. "’Tis a handsome place, Plymouth, but I do dearly love to leave it behind me."
The heavy November twilight caught them as the train roared through the Bobmin valley past hillsides stained with dead bracken—like iron mold, Jenny thought. St. Austell shone white in the aquamarine dusk, and darkness wrapped the dreary country beyond Truro. Every station now seemed crowded with figures, whose unfamiliar speech had a melancholy effect upon the girls in inverse ratio to the exhilaration it produced in Trewhella. Jenny thought how little she knew of her destination: in fact without May's company she might as well be dead—into such an abyss of strange gloom was she being more deeply plunged with every mile. Trewhella, as if in reply to her thoughts, began to talk of Trewinnard.
"Next station's ours," he said. "And then there's a seven-mile drive; so we sha'n't get home along much before half-past eight."
"Fancy, seven miles," said Jenny.
"Long seven mile, 'tis, too," he added. "And a nasty old road on a dark night. Come, we'll set out our passels."
It was like action in a dream to reach down from the rack various parcels and boxes, to fold up cloaks and collect umbrellas. Jenny watched from the window for the twinkle of town lights heralding their stopping-place, but without any preliminary illumination the train pulled up at Nantivet Road.
"Here we are," shouted Trewhella, and as the girls stood with frightened eyes in the dull and tremulous light of the platform, he seemed fresh from a triumphant abduction. The luggage lay stacked in a gray pile with ghostly uncertain outlines. The train, wearing no longer any familiar look of London, puffed slowly on to some farther exile, its sombre bulk checkered with golden squares, the engine flying a pennant of sparks as it swung round into a cutting whence the sound of its emerging died away on the darkness in a hollow moan. The stillness of the deep November night was now profound, merely broken by the rasp of a trunk across the platform and the punctuated stamping of a horse's hoof on the wet road.
"That's Carver," said Trewhella, as the three of them, their tickets delivered to a shadowy figure, walked in the direction of the sound.
"Carver?" repeated Jenny.
"My old mare."
The lamps of the farm cart dazzled the vision as they stood watching the luggage piled up behind. To the girls the cart seemed enormous; the mare of mammoth size. The small boy who had driven to meet them looked like a gnome perched upon the towering vehicle, and by his smallness confirmed the impression of hugeness.
"Well, boy Thomas," said his master in greeting.
"Mr. Trewhella!"
"Here's missus come down."
"Mrs. Trewhella!" said the boy in shy welcome.
"And her sister, Miss Raeburn," added the farmer.
Jenny looked wistfully at May as if she envied her the introduction with its commemoration of Islington.
"Now, come," said Zachary, "leave me give 'ee a hand up."
He lifted May and set her down on the seat. Then he turned to his wife.
"Come, my dear, leave me put 'ee up."
"I'd rather get in by myself," she answered.
But Trewhella caught her in his arms and, with a kiss, deposited her beside May. Thomas was stowed away among the luggage at the back; the farmer himself got in, shook up Carver, and with a good night to the porter set out with his bride to Bochyn.
The darkness was immense: the loneliness supreme. At first the road lay through an open stretch of flat boggy grassland, where stagnant pools of water glimmered with the light of the cart lamps as the vehicle shambled by. After a mile or so they dipped down between high hedges and overarching trees that gave more response to their lights than the open country, whose incommensurable blackness swallowed up their jigging, feeble illumination.
"It smells like the inside of a flower-shop, doesn't it?" said May. "You know, sort of bathroom smell. It must be glorious in the daytime."
"Yes, 'tis grand in summer time, sure enough," Trewhella agreed.
The declivity became more precipitous, and the farmer pulled up.
"Get down, you, boy Thomas, and lead Carver."
Thomas scrambled out, and with a loud "whoa" caught hold of the reins.
"It's like the first scene of a panto. You know, demons and all," said Jenny.
Indeed, Thomas, with his orange-like head and disproportionately small body, leading the great mare, whose breath hung in fumes upon the murky air, had a scarcely human look. At the walking pace May was able to distinguish ferns in the grass banks and pointed them out to Jenny, who, however, was feeling anxious as in the steep descent the horse from time to time slipped on a loose stone. Down they went, down and down through the moisture and lush fernery. Presently they came to level ground and the gurgle of running water. Trewhella pulled up for Thomas to clamber in again. Beyond the rays of their lamps, appeared the outline of a house.
"Is this a place?" Jenny asked.
"’Tis Tiddlywits," Trewhella answered. "Or belonged to be rather, for there's nothing left of it now but a few mud walls. A wisht old place, 'tis."
On restarting, they splashed through a stream that flowed across the road.
"Oo-er," cried Jenny, "take care, we're in the water."
Trewhella laughed loudly, and a moorhen waking in sudden panic rose with a shrill cry from a belt of rushes.
"Oo-er, I'm getting frightened," said Jenny. "Put me down. Oh, May, I wish we hadn't come."
Trewhella laughed louder than before. The wish appealed in its futility to his humor.
Now came a slow pull up an equally deep lane, followed at the summit by another stretch of open country very wild. Suddenly the mare swerved violently. Jenny screamed. A long shape leaned over them in menace.
"Ah, look! Oh, no! I want to go back," she cried.
"Steady, you devil," growled Trewhella to the horse. "’Tis nothing, my dear, nothing only an old stone cross."
"It gave me a shocking turn," said Jenny.
"It made me feel rather funny," said May. "You know, all over like."
The girls shivered, and the cart jogged on across the waste. They passed a skewbald sign-post crowded with unfamiliar goblin names, and a dry tree from which once depended, Trewhella assured them, the bodies of three notorious smugglers. One of the carriage candles proved too short to sustain the double journey and presently flickered out gradually, so that the darkness on one side seemed actually to advance upon them. After a long interval of silence Trewhella pulled up with a jerk.
"Listen," he commanded.
"Oh, what is it?" asked Jenny, with visions of a murderer's approach. On a remote road sounded the trot of horses' hoofs miles away.
"Somebody coming after us," she gasped, clutching May's sleeve.
"No, that's a cart; but listen, can't you hear the sea?"
Ahead of them in the thick night like the singing of a kettle sounded the interminable ocean.
"Wind's getting up, I believe," said Trewhella. "There's an ugly smell in the air. Dirty weather, I suppose, dirty weather," he half chanted to himself, whipping up the mare.
Soon, indeed, with a wide sigh that filled the waste of darkness, the wind began to blow, setting all the withered rushes and stunted gorse bushes hissing and lisping. The effort, however, was momentary; and presently the gust died away in a calm almost profounder than before. After another two miles of puddles and darkness, the heavy air was tempered with an unwonted freshness. The farmer again pulled up.
"Now you can hark to it clear enough," he said.
Down below boomed a slow monotone of breakers on a long flat beach.
"That's Trewinnard Sands, and when the sea do call there so plain, it means dirty weather, sure enough. And here's Trewinnard Churchtown, and down along a bit of the way is Bochyn."
A splash of light from a dozen cottages showed a squat church surrounded by clumps of shorn pine trees. The road did not improve as they drew clear of the village, and it was a relief after the jolting in and out of ruts to turn aside through a white gate, and even to crunch along over a quarter of a mile of rough stones through two more gates until they reached the softness of farmyard mud. As they pulled up for the last time, between trimmed hedges of escallonia a low garden gate was visible; and against the golden stream suffused by a slanting door, the black silhouette of a woman's figure, with hand held up to shade her eyes.
"Here we are, mother," Trewhella called out. Then he lifted down the two girls, and together they walked up a flagged path towards the light. Jenny blinked in the dazzle of the room's interior. Old Mrs. Trewhella stared critically at the sisters.
"Yon's a wisht-looking maid," she said sharply to her son, with a glance at May.
"Oh, they're both tired," he answered gruffly.
"And what do 'ee think of Cornwall, my dear?" asked the old woman, turning to the bride.
"I think it's very dark," said Jenny.