Nan jerked the punt forward. “I don’t want to know. You can keep your secret to yourself.” Then, glancing at Jehane, “I say, Janey, you ask him. He can’t be rude to you. He’ll have to answer.”
Jehane had no option but to enter into the jest. “I know. Father told me. Mr. Barrington is a widower.”
The man’s eyes flashed and held hers steadily; they twinkled with surprise and humor. “Go on, Miss Usk; you tell her. It’s altogether too sad.”
While she was speaking, she was excitedly conscious that he was examining her and approving her impertinence. “Mr. Barrington married his mother’s parlor-maid soon after he left Cassingland. She was a beautiful creature and very modest; because she felt herself unworthy of the brilliant Mr. Barrington, she made it a condition of their marriage that it should be kept secret. Then she got it into her head that she was spoiling his promising career, and——- Well, she died suddenly—of gas. After she was dead, a volume of poems was discovered—love poems—and published anonymously; my mother attributes them to Bacon and my father used to attribute them to Shakespeare. Then father found out, but he’s never dared to tell mother; she was always so positive about it.”
Nan had stared at her friend while she was talking. Could this be the serious Jehane? What had happened? At the end she broke into a peal of laughter. “It won’t do, old girl; you’re stuffing. Billy hasn’t got a mother.”
“And he isn’t married,” he said; “and he doesn’t want to be married yet. Now are you content?”
Jehane was not content. As they drifted through Mesopotamia with its pollard-willows, sound of running waters and constant fluttering of birds, she kept hearing those words “And he doesn’t want to be married yet.” Did men ever want to be married, or was it always necessary to catch them? Catch them! It sounded horrid to put it like that, and robbed love of all its poetry. As a girl with a Pre-Raphaelite appearance, she had liked to believe all the legends of chivalry: that it was woman’s part to be remote and disdainful, while men endangered themselves to win her favor. But were those legends only ideals—had anything like them ever happened? And supposing a woman wanted to catch Barrington, how would she set about it?
The roar of water across the lasher at Parsons’ Pleasure grew louder, drowning the conversation which was taking place in low tones at the other end of the punt. As they drew in at the landing, Jehane bent forward and heard Barrington say, “I believe you’d have been disappointed if I had been married”; and Nan’s retort, “I believe I should. You know, it does make a difference.”
Nan turned to Jehane, “What are we going to do next? There’s hardly time to go further.”
“Oh, don’t go back yet,” Barrington protested; “let’s get tea at Marston Ferry.”