Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 532
“No doubt, old lad, no doubt!” she laughed. “Well, if you’d be one, why aren’t you?”
“I think because,” he cried, “I’m not yet kind enough.”
“Oh! Oh!” Jinny cried, showing him mock frowns and chiding gestures. “Not kind enough to she-Quakers, you stony villain?”
“Not kind enough and not meek enough,” he said, ignoring her merriment. “I think the world lives in a false wisdom, Jinny, because it needs a false wisdom to give it the bravado to live for itself. It grows in body-pleasures, and that’s to be spendthrift of the spirit; it grows in ambitious pride, and that’s to be cruel.”
“Grandmother! Dear grandmother!”
“So be it,” he said mildly. “Self-righteousness, too, grows in the world; I must keep from that. But I’ve seen these sober folk, the Friends, walking their own way in a world that cudgeled ’em for it, yet couldn’t gain their resentment, and so, to my thinking, they were above the world.”
“Above the rest of us, to your thinking?”
“Above me,” he said, now as wistfully earnest as she was seemingly light. “Meekness is a part of their kindness, and I’ve striven hard to find that meekness in me; but it doesn’t come. Times I think it’s nigh me and that I could bear blows and stand quiet — and then I know I couldn’t.” He sighed heavily. “If ever I could be struck and give a gentle answer—”
She glinted the diamond upon her finger close to his eyes. “Shall I try your lip with that again?”
“Oh, from you—”
“Useless, I see,” she said. “From me or any woman it would be no test and you could not be sure whether or no you’re fit for a Quaker. I see! Then there’s a kindness could be granted you — to get you struck by a gentleman so that you could put yourself to the proof and discover if you’re true or feigned as a Quaker. I’ll think of this on your behalf, Tom; but first you was to tell me what you do with Quakers on Wanton Mally.”
“Jinny, will you pledge me your honor you’ll not speak of it?”
“I will,” she said, with a smile that was a riddle. “I’ll tell none, on my very honor.”
“Well, I do what my ability lets me to help these kind poor folk. Many that I learned were to have writs against them I’ve fetched here and led on a little way to a ship I have that carries them to plantations granted me in the provinces across the sea. That’s all the truth, Jinny.”
She shook her head gayly. “Oh, no! That’s something of what you’ve done, perhaps. I’m curious and ask to know what you do. I mean the pretty lady that’s here now — with her husband.”
“Why, no more than that,” he said. “I’m carrying them to the ship, Jinny, as I carried the others.”
“How soon?”
“Why — very soon.”
She nodded as if satisfied; then seemed to have a second thought. “How long has she been with you — she and her husband?”
“Not all of two days.”
“So quickly!” she said musingly. “But they were known to you before, I’m sure.”
“Not long.”
“No? Well, I was not long, myself! What was it? Was it an hour or only the half of one before you saw the looks I couldn’t hide? Or perhaps you don’t remember, or, if you do, perhaps you’ve seen others so much readier to be daft that the time I took to it seems long? This she-Quaker, for an instance.”
“You cling tight to your misunderstandings,” he said. “Anne Tanner dearly loves her husband.”
“I’m sure she does! So would I, most dearly, if I had one and if I desired to show another gentleman how dear a husband he cost me.”
In desperation Colpoys turned from her; then wheeled back to face her, and suddenly put a hand upon her shoulder and laughed, all friendly. “Why, Jinny, it’s as if you irked yourself to be angrier and angrier with me for the sake of a desire to hate me. In my life I’ve liked no other so well, either man or woman. There’s a rashness in you that could be lofty; but when I was with you I turned you only to folly. Well, I think I blundered in my manner of leaving you, because any manner of leaving you went so hard with me that I thought the shortest and most vacant held the least anguish. That’s all you can find to hate in me, and hate it if you will but don’t pant to feed the hatred — not even if I’m your grandmother again and tell you that feeding hatred’s rubbing a sore to be sorer, and kindness is the only thing in the world that’s grateful for feeding; it spouts honey back at you if you give it a drop. Come, Jinny dear, be kinder!”
She looked at him hatefully and began to speak with fierceness. “Oh, my grandmoth—” she said. But all at once she trembled, not with anger, and her lip twitched pathetically. “Why did you misuse me?” she asked. “I mean when I’d have kept her in the room to answer me and excuse herself for being here. Why did you bruise my wrist and lift me and bear me across the room and thrust me towards the wall for her sake?”
M. le Chevalier de Champvallon, watching from a window and seeing Colpoys with his hand still upon Jinny’s shoulder, was aware, too, even through the mist, of the expression with which her eyes searched his host’s face when she asked this question. M. de Champvallon was suddenly filled with alarm.
CHAPTER XI
THE NOBLE YOUNG French traveller, abreast of the best attitude in his own country, would have said of himself that in all his relations to life he was a philosopher. He could be readily a duellist, or, without hesitation, could put his fortune upon the hazard of a gaming table or his life upon the chance that a lady’s window could be opened soundlessly; but, however vitally any such matter engaged him, his pride was to maintain in mind, as well as in manner, the posture of a man who deals with what is sympathetically amusing but inconsequent. The truth of him is that like many another of his fellow-countrymen he was, in the operation of his life and of his thoughts, not a philosopher but an artist. It was the artist’s heart within him that had been stirred by Jinny Wilmot; he saw her as the most vivid portrait in a gallery of ladies and had a great desire to add some touches to the canvas, himself. He loved to put Jinny’s face through a variety of aspects: to make it smile and to make it laugh; to make it brood, then grow impatient, then rage. Thus, under grim pressure at Mally Older, and for her sake, he was still an artist and still painted what expressions he chose upon her face; but now he feared his brush had slipped. It was far from his intention that she should look tenderly at Colpoys.
He turned from the window, muttered to Chedlowe that he would “take the air” for a time, and went to a door opposite that of the bedchamber known to him. The latch yielded; he went into a second bedchamber, thence through two others and so into a little room cluttered with books of a dreary appearance; but here he found what he sought, a door that let him out, with the length of the house and its outbuildings between him and any roving glance of Jinny Wilmot’s. He walked lightly to the rear of the stables, entered and found the tanner and his pretty wife rearranging a saddle-pack. The Chevalier looked politely disappointed.
“No?” he said. “ ’E is not with you? Misterr Colpoys?”
Francis was on his knees before the pack; but jumped up. “I’ll fetch him.”
“No.” The Chevalier detained him quickly with the word. “You are a man w’ich love’ a ‘orse, so I wish you and Misterr Colpoys together will look at mine and think if I should give ’im some medicine.”
“That bay beside the black? Why, he’s as stout as—”
“No, no,” M. de Champvallon said with hurried solicitude. “ ’E cough. Now ’e stand still, ’e do not; but all the morning while ’e is ridden, ’e cough. Please come put your ‘and upon ’im with me and if we could ask Misterr Colpoys—” He looked at Anne, as if absently.
She rose cheerfully from beside the pack and went to the open doorway opposite to that just entered by the Chevalier. “A little while ago he was near by with friend Lecky,” she said. “I’ll tell him he’s needed.” She went out briskly and saw Colpoys with Jinny before the main part of the house; moreover, she saw that Jinny instantly saw her and changed a posture that had a kind of humbleness in it for one that was all rigidity.
Colpoys’s back was toward the Quakeress; but he turned to see what brought the change upon Jinny. Anne came something more than half way, hesitated, then stopped. Her color was high but her heart was not; she and Francis had been mobbed at Biddesley and then she was not afraid, yet now at Mally Older she feared the great London dame she’d called a “perisher for pleasure”.
“Well, Anne?” Colpoys said encouragingly.
“When she’s said her say,” Anne began, and felt that it was a poor beginning, vulnerable to misinterpretation. “When the dame’s finished with thee—” She stopped and tried again. “When thou’st heard all her say—”
This time she was stopped by Jinny’s laughter, which was noisy. “Why, here’s kindness! Your she-Quaker’s restless when you’re a little with me, yet grants me the time to have my say out, so that she stands by to listen until she fetches you away! Didn’t I say I thought she might be as quick with you as others have been, Tom? Go with her; go with her, old lad, for I’ll not keep you!”
“Nay,” Anne said. “I’ll wait. I mean the matter’ll wait. I—” But with Jinny’s laughter noisier upon this, she could say no more. Breathless, she turned and went back to the stables, having done much better for M. de Champvallon than he had hoped. His thought had been that the mere sight of her would be enough to freshen what he wished to be refreshed within Jinny, and his thought was shrewd — Anne Tanner was never lovelier than when she blushed, as he was sure she would — but she had done more than let herself be seen blushing.
Jinny’s laughing stopped sharply and she stared after the Quakeress with what seemed a placid thoughtfulness. “I didn’t know they went bare-head so often, these Quakers,” she said. “I thought they — but no, if they have hair like that! — and a face so cunningly aware of its own harmony, with little features in such pleased agreement with one another — No, no! She-Quakers’d never cover such hair or shade skin so pink and white with the modest headgear I’ve heard they boast of. She’s been uncovered all her time with you, hasn’t she, Tom?”
He moved his arm as if to place his hand where it had been when she dislodged it at the sight of Anne; but Jinny jerked back her shoulders and prevented him. “You hate me again so soon, Jinny?”
“Well, don’t you give me cause?” Then, for that last moment — he had asked the question with a wistfulness that shook her — Jinny’s mood again wavered; but Colpoys had no art like M. de Champvallon’s, and least of all did he possess the Chevalier’s understanding of Jinny.
“How do I give you cause now?” he asked.
“What! When you bruise me for her, thrust me to the wall for her, throw bolts against me to go with her, and, when you dare to stand alone with me for the twinkling of an eye, you turn away from me because you’ve made her so calf-sick for you she comes running—”
“Turn away from you? Yes, to ask her what she wished, so she’d go,” he said, and was so far wise, for Jinny was a little pleased; but then, as he was a frank, outspoken man by nature, he thought to settle Jinny’s doubts completely, and he did. “Hark to you,” he said, and laughed in a way that begged her for an open good-fellowship with him. “I have the task to put this tanner and his wife where they’ll not be harmed for their goodness; that’s all. They’re two pretty hearts, gentle but would keep their faith in a gaol with the plague in it, and I mustn’t fail ’em. Come, you’ll not wish me to fail ’em, I’m certain! Why, Jinny, this Anne is a sweet, kind woman; I’ll tell you what she thinks o’ me: she has thanks for me, and that’s natural for the service I do her and her husband; but beyond these thanks all that she feels is the wish I’d become a true Quaker. There’s a ‘light’ she’d be glad to bring me, she’s said often; she thinks it will come to me — and truly I hope it will. Now what’s there in this to make a pother? Why, she and her husband both pray constantly that this ‘light’ may come upon me for my soul’s sake, she told me, and said her life would be little cost to pay to bring it to some soul. Why, Jinny, her whole thought o’ me is for my soul.”
“Sweet!” Jinny said in a dead voice. “Sweet! Sweet! Sweet! So, I think already she has two soul-husbands.”
“Why, what?” he cried, startled more by her look than by what she said. “Why, I’ve told you—”
“So you have,” Jinny said, nodding. “You’ve told me, and now I have the whole of it at my fingers’ ends. Take heart, old lad; she’ll bring you the ‘light’, the ‘light’ your poor soul needs. Before it comes, though, I must cry quits with you. I mean what I spoke of when I promised to rid you of me.”
“Ah, Jinny, you’re angry with me again, truly!”
“Why, yes!” she cried, her voice grown astringent. “Truly, I think I’m angry truly — as I need be, I tell you, Colpoys — as I need be if I’m to rid you of me. How am I to rid myself of this trouble in me that makes me come teasing you? Why, here’s the answer: I’ve been tedious for you, I’ve been a worry to your poor soul, I’ve fretted you; but, with all this and all that, never brought true harm to you, never did you a brave hard hurt. How if that’s what’s needed for your riddance of me and my riddance of my trouble that’s so wearying for us both?”
He saw and heard her dreadful earnestness, and was alarmed. “To do me a hurt? What will you do, Jinny?”
“Why, how if I set in motion that pleasantry I spoke of? Oh, a singular good jest.”
“What jest?” he asked, his anxiety sharply increased. “Jinny, you’ll not forget my honor’s concern to keep these two poor Friends in safety? You’ll not betray—”
“Not a word of their being Quakers, Colpoys, I swear; not a word o’ that!”
“But if you harm me now, there’s no help for it but to harm them with me. Jinny, what’s in your mind to do?”
“Ho, Colpoys, begging?” She shook her head, giving him looks from wild and dangerous eyes. “Don’t you know all pleasantries are spoiled when they’re told to the butt of them afore they’re loosed?”
He caught at her hands, uselessly; she walked backward from him as he followed. “I must know what’s in your mind — I must know!”
She put her hands behind her and halted, puckering her brow. “Well, let me think. If you must know, I’ll think of something to tell you; so you’ll be easy. My fancy’s not barren.” She cleared her forehead and smiled at him. “Oh, here’s a brave thought; I’m glad it comes to me! How if I do you that service your soul needs most, so that you can discover whether or not you’re worthy of her? Why, yes, I’ll do this for you, Tom. If I have you beat by a gentleman and you stand craven, you’ll know you’re her own true Quaker, and so shall I!”
“What, Jinny? You—”
“Ho, excellent!” She clapped her hands, applauding herself. “If you tremble with rage and fight, why, that’s failure for you, and she’ll weep; but if you quake under cuffing like a true Quaker it’ll show all three of us, you and her and me, that your soul’s saved at last and she’s brought you the ‘light’! So then, if that’s proved and you’re shown to be her Quaker surely, I’ll heap pleasantry on pleasantry and let you see that other merry jest I have in mind.”
“Will you listen?” he said. “I’ve put a charge upon myself to carry this poor man and his wife to the ship. Until that’s done I’ll risk no hurt to myself for any cause — last of all for a sour whimsy of yours.”
“Whimsy? Whimsy?” She laughed with shrillness and stepped toward the house.
“So that’s why Rafe Chedlowe’s with you,” Colpoys said bitterly. “And the Frenchman, too, if Rafe fails!”
But at this she turned back at him in open fury. “I did not! Ah, now I’ll do it for your never having one thought of me that isn’t hateful. Those two are with me for no reason that has to do with you; but, since you think they have, they shall have! No rest for me now, Colpoys, until I’m quits with you!”
She turned again and ran into the house. He turned, too, almost as quickly, but in the direction of the stables, and went that way in haste. M. de Champvallon had decided for himself that no medicine would be needed for his horse and had returned apologetically to the hall; Master Tanner and his wife were busy with another of their packs when Colpoys strode through the doorway. He unbuckled his belt, removed his sword from him and hung it upon a peg in a rough cupboard near the door.
Anne, on her knees, watched his face as he did this; then, as he turned from the cupboard to go out again, she sprang up, blushing, and uttered a little cry of happiness. “Oh, thou’lt leave it here behind thee forever? The light’s come, friend?”
He shook his head. “I’m not so good,” he said. “I only leave it here until we go from Mally Older to-night. It’s a clouterly thing to be ever whacking about a man’s heels.”
CHAPTER XII
MRS. JINNY CLANGED behind her the outer door of the hall and stepped fiercely toward two bowing gentlemen. “Now which of you’ll be first to fight Tom Colpoys for a lady who’s had put upon her what can’t be borne?”
“I will!” said Mr. Chedlowe, upon the instant. “I’d sooner fight him than chouse him with the horses.”
“One moment!” the Chevalier interposed quickly. “Jeeny, you desire to leave ’im and ’is lady — and the ‘usban’ — to Misterr Bron-age and the Colonel Bourne?”
“I do!”
“Then we devote ourself to that. Ha! Misterr Chedlowe and I, we also ‘ave thought of the ‘orses, you see! Now we ‘ave not very much time and—”
“I’ll do nothing,” Jinny said. “An you don’t first make him fight, I’ll do nothing!”
Through a window, M. de Champvallon peered upward at the sky, slightly hunched up his left shoulder, smiled and said, “I think there may be time; but, if there is or if there is not, you are a lady who mus’ be satisfy. I will speak with Misterr Colpoys.”
