CASTLETON arrived at Bochyn under a November sunset, whose lemon glow, barred with indigo banks of cloud, was reflected with added brightness in the flooded meadows and widening stream. Jenny in the firelight was singing and rocking her baby to sleep. She jumped up to open the door to his knock.
"Why, Fuz," she said simply.
He stood enormous against the last gleams of day, and Jenny realized with what small people she had been living so long.
"Jane," he said, "this is a big moment."
He followed her into the room and waited while she lit the lamp and pointed with warning finger to the child asleep in a silence of ticking clocks.
"There's a surprise, or isn't it?"
"Rather," said Castleton. "It looks very well."
"Oh, Fuz. It! You are dreadful. He's called Frank, and fancy, I never knew you were called Frank till you wrote to me last month."
"Another disappointment," sighed Castleton.
"What?"
"Why, of course I thought you altered his name to celebrate my visit."
"You never didn't?" said Jenny, already under slow rustic influences not perfectly sure of a remark's intention. Then suddenly getting back to older and lighter forms of conversation, she laughed.
"Well, how are you, Jenny?" he inquired.
"Oh, I'm feeling grand. Where are you staying?"
"The One and All Inn."
"Comfortable?"
"I fancy very, from a quick glance."
"You'll stay and have tea with us and meet my husband," Jenny invited.
"I shall be proud."
A silence fell on these two friends.
"Well, what about dear old London?" said Jenny at last.
"It's extraordinarily the same. Let me see, had tubes and taxis been invented before you went away?" Castleton asked.
"Don't be silly. Of course," she exclaimed, outraged by such an implication of antediluvian exile.
"Then flatly there is nothing to tell you about London. I was at the Orient the other night. I need not say the ballet was precisely the same as a dozen others I have seen, and you have helped at."
"Any pretty new girls?" Jenny asked.
"I believe there are one or two."
"How's Ronnie Walker?"
"He still lives more for painting than by painting, and has grown a cream-colored beard."
"Oh, he never hasn't. Then he ought to get the bird."
"So that he could say: 'Four owls and a hen, two larks and a wren, have all built their nests in my beard'? It isn't big enough, Jane."
"And Cunningham, how's he?"
"Cunningham is married. I don't know his wife, but I'm told she plays the piano a great deal better than he does. As for myself," said Castleton quickly, "I have chambers in the Temple, but live at home with my people, who have moved to Kensington. There, you see what alarming cataclysms have shaken the society you deserted. Now tell me about yourself."
"Oh, I jog along," said Jenny.
Further reminiscence was interrupted by the entrance of Trewhella, who saluted Castleton suspiciously and from shyness somewhat brusquely.
"How do you do sir?" said the guest, conspicuously agreeable.
"I'm very well, thank 'ee. Come far, have 'ee?"
"London."
"That's a poor sort of place. I was there once. But I didn't take much account of it," said Trewhella.
"You found it disappointing?"
"Ess, ess, too many Cockneys for a Cornishman. But I wasn't robbed over-much. I believe I was too sharp for them."
"I'm glad of that," said the representative of cities.
"You do talk a lot of rot about London," said Jenny contemptuously. "As if you could know anything about it!"
"I found all I wanted, my dear," said Trewhella winking. He seemed in a mind to impress the foreigner.
"By carrying off Je—Mrs. Trewhella, eh?" said Castleton. "Come, after that, I don't think you ought to grumble at London."
Trewhella darted a suspicious glance as if to demand by what right this intruder dared to comment on his behavior.
The presence of a stranger at tea threw a munching silence over all the lower end of the table; but Castleton made a great impression on Granfa, who asked him a number of questions and sighed admiration for each new and surprising answer.
"But there's one thing I believe you can't tell me," said Granfa. "Or if you can, you're a marvel."
"And what is that?" inquired Castleton.
"I've asked scores of men this question," said Granfa proudly. "Hundreds, I suppose, and there wasn't one of them could give me an answer."
"You really alarm me this time," said Castleton.
Granfa braced himself by swallowing a large mouthful of pasty and delivered his poser almost reverently.
"Can you tell me, mister, in what county o' Scotland is John o' Groats?"
"Caithness, I think," said Castleton.
Granfa coughed violent appreciation and thumped on the table in amazement.
"Hark, all you men and maidens down to the end of the table! I've asked that question in Cornwall, and I've asked that question in Australia. I've asked Scotchmen even, and I'm a brae old man now. But there wasn't one who could speak the answer till—till——" he paused, before the Cornish title of affection and respect—"Cap'n Castleton here spoke it straight away at once. Wish you well, my dear son," he added in a voice rich with emotion, as he thrust an open hand over a bowl of cream for Castleton's grip.
Then Granfa told his old intimate tales of wrecks and famous seines of fish, and even went so far as to offer to show Castleton on the very next morning the corner of a field where with two legs and a stick he could stand in the three parishes of Trenoweth, Nancepean and Trewinnard. In fact he monopolized the guest throughout the meal, and expressed very great regret when Castleton had to return to the One and All Inn.
Trewhella questioned Jenny sharply that night about the stranger, tried with all the fox in his nature to find out what part he had played in her life.
"He's a friend of mine," she said.
"Did he ever come courting 'ee?"
"No, of course not. You don't think all men's like you?"
"What's he want to come down here along, if he's just a friend? Look, missus, don't you go giving the village tongues a start by kicking up a rig with yon great Cockney."
"Shut up," said Jenny. "Who cares about the village?"
"I do," said Trewhella. "I care a brae lot about it. Me and my folk have lived here some long time and we've always been looked up to for clean, decent souls."
"Get out!" scoffed Jenny. "And don't put ideas in your own head. Village! Talking shop, I should say."
The next morning was fine, and when Castleton called at Bochyn, Jenny intrusted May with young Frank and suggested a walk. Granfa, who was present during the discussion of the itinerary, declared the towans must be visited first of all. Jenny was rather averse from such a direction, thinking of the watchers who lay all day in the rushes. However, when she thought how deeply it would infuriate her husband to know that she was walking over that solitude in the company of Castleton, she accepted Granfa's suggestion with a deliberate audacity.
It was pleasant to walk with Fuz, to laugh at his excitement over various birds and flowers unnoticed by her. It was pleasant to watch him trip in a rabbit's hole and roll right down to the bottom of a sand-drift. But best of all were the rests in deep dry hollows above whose edges the rushes met the sky in wind-waved, sharply cut lines. Down there, making idle patterns with snail-shells, she could listen to gossip of dear old London. She could smell in the sea air wood pavement and hear in the scurry of rabbits passengers by the Piccadilly Tube.
And yet there was a gulf not to be spanned so readily as in the tentative conversations of a single walk. Often in the middle of Castleton's chronicles, she would wish desperately to talk of events long buried, to set out before him her life, to argue openly the rights and wrongs of deeds that so far she had only disputed with herself. In a way it was unsatisfactory to pick up a few broken threads of a friendship, leaving the reel untouched. Perhaps it was better to let the past and the present alone. Gradually London dropped out of the conversation. She wondered if, seeing London again, she would be as much disappointed as by the tale and rumor of it borne down here by an old friend. Gradually the conversation veered to the main occupations of Jenny's mind—May and young Frank. May's future was easy to forecast. She must in these fresh airs grow stronger and healthier, and supply with the passing of every day a more complete justification of the marriage. But what of young Frank's future? Jenny could not bear the notion of him tied to the soil. She wanted his life to hold experience before he retreated here to store up the grain and the gold. There must be a great deal of her in young Frank. He could not, should not be contented with bullocks and pigs and straight furrows.
Castleton listened sympathetically to her ambitions for the baby, and promised faithfully that when the time came, he would do his best to help Jenny achieve for her son at least one prospect of humanity, one flashing opportunity to examine life.
"You see, I knew what I wanted when I was quite tiny. Of course nothing was what I thought it would be. Nothing. Only I wanted to go on the stage and I went. I shouldn't like for young Frank to want to do something and have to stick here."
"You've a fine notion of things, Jane," said Castleton. "By gad, if every mother were like you, what a race we should have."
"I'm not in a hurry for him to do anything."
"I meant what a race of Englishmen, not bicycles," Castleton explained.
"Oh, I see," said Jenny vaguely. He was taking her aspirations out of their depth.
"No, but I do think it's dreadful," she went on, "to see kids moping just because their mothers and fathers want them to stick at home. My mother wasn't like that. Yes, she used to go on at me, but she always wanted me to enjoy myself so long as she knew there was no harm in it."
"Your mother, Jane, must have been a great woman."
"I don't know about that, but she was a darling, and always very smart—you know, dressed very nice and had a good figure. But look at my father. He sends us a postcard sometimes with a picture of a bed or a bottle of Bass on it which is all he thinks about. And yet he's alive, and she's dead."
Finally Castleton promised that should young Frank display a spark of ambition, he would do his best to help him achieve it.
"Whatever it is," said Jenny. "Of course not if he wants to be a dustman, but anything that's all right."
Then, the morning being nearly spent, they turned back towards Bochyn. Castleton mounted on a slope at a run to pull Jenny up from above.
"Hullo," he cried, "somebody's been watching us."
"They always do on these towans," said Jenny.
"I'll soon haul the scoundrel into daylight," and with a shout he charged down through the rushes, almost falling over the prostrate body of Old Man Veal. Castleton set him on his feet with a jerk and demanded his business, while Jenny with curling lips stood by. The old man would not say a word, and his captor, balked of chastisement by his evident senility, let him shamble off into the waste.
"That's one of the men on the farm," said Jenny.
"I suppose he'll get the sack."
"I don't think so, then. I think he's edged on by someone else to follow me round."