And Jinny shall then learn Passion’s force.
Of course this was not the Brad, nor was it really going two ways at once, and in any case who wanted a husband or Passion? Clucking so suddenly to Methusalem that his movement scattered some poultry pecking around him amid golden straw, she turned up through the High Street. At a fishmonger’s shop she got down and bought a pennyworth of bloaters for her grandfather’s supper, the man sliding them off a rod where they hung like blackened corpses from a gibbet. She was half minded to inspect the shop of the “Practical Tailor” next door, to see if she could not pick up something cheap and serviceable for the old man’s winter wear, but there was nothing in the little house-window, not even a roll of cloth, except illustrations of men’s clothing so ultra-fashionable and dear that she was frightened to go in. “Pacha D’Orsay Chesterfields, Codringtons, Sylphides, Peltoes, Zephyr Wrappers, etc., etc., every description of Winter Coat”—here was assuredly what he needed. But one pound five? Who was there behind the sea-wall that could rise to such prices? Possibly it was here that Mr. Flippance had got his wedding equipment. She returned sadly to her cart, not even noticing that all these fashionable pictures were simply cut out of the catalogue of the great Moses & Son, London.
The road now led again through great grass-lands under shimmering clouds floating in a spacious blue, and with gentle slopes and hillocks, though little streams had replaced the broad ditches. There were rabbits taking the air that showed white scuts at the approach of Nip. Far to the right she left the saltings with their grazing cattle, but she could still see them from her driving-board, and the marshes stretched, humped and brown and infinitely interstreaked, a mud-maze with purple herbage and motley sea-birds.
Then suddenly there was a thunder and clatter behind her, and she pulled her horse mechanically to the left to avoid a coach, not realizing till it slowed down that this was the “Flynt Flyer’s” day for the district. Her heart beat fast, almost painfully, and she went scarlet with the thought that Will would think she had come purposely on his track. Why, oh why, had she just chosen that day? There was no turning to be seen and desperately she steered Methusalem’s nose towards a farm-gate, prepared to trespass, but it proved to be only a “lift” for wagons, opened by raising the rail from its slots, a feat which Methusalem’s nose could not achieve. She leaped down and tried to pull it up herself, but her fingers were trembling, and in an instant Will was at her side, hat gracefully in hand, the rail lifted up, and the gate held aside for her passing. Blushing still more furiously under the gaze of the coach passengers, she led Methusalem through, and as she passed she said with a sweet smile: “Thank you.”
This was all the audience heard or saw, but what was really said and substantially understood by both principals was:
Will: “Oh, my dear Jinny, how pretty and kissable you look in that becoming new bonnet, and isn’t it silly to be trying to compete with me along this road, when, though you get business from goodness knows who, you can’t even keep your old customers on your own route? You haven’t got the tiniest parcel, I see, nor any hope of one. Really you would do better to accept my offer of a partnership, or better still to get off the roads altogether, for the winter is going to be a hard one, and perhaps if we dropped our silly sullen silence and began to find out each other’s good points again, who knows but what we might come to another sort of partnership? Anyhow I am delighted to open this lift for you, but what the devil you are going to do in a field just being ploughed is what I shall watch with amusement.”
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. Or if it’s my refusal to be partners with you that’s rankling, and you are even thinking after all of a closer partnership, then all I can say is, you must be the village idiot if you fancy I’ll put up with Blanche’s leavings. Don’t imagine that silly old coach with the silly wanty-hook and skewers painted on it is very attractive to me. Why, if you were to come to me in a coach of gold like the Lord Mayor of London, with six milk-white steeds spruced up with flowers and ribbons like Methusalem on May Day, and say: ‘I love you, Jinny, come and sit in silks and diamonds on my box-seat,’ I should up with my horn and blow a blast of scorn, for I hate and despise you, and how dare you come ogling me before all the coach?”
And still retaining her sweet smile, Jinny gazed at the shirt-sleeved ploughmen, who though vaguely astonished at the invasion of their field, continued their stolid operations. Jinny arrested her cart to watch with equal stolidity the white whirls and long lines of fluttering gulls that followed the slow-moving ploughs, with such a twittering and circling and looking so beautiful over the reddish earth and under the blue sky. There was beauty, too, she felt, in the youth who from his white basket sprinkled seeds with a graceful motion, and when he smiled at her, she did not hesitate to remark in her sweetest tone on the rainy autumn, spinning out the hygrometric conversation till Will felt it almost a flirtation. Fuming and fumbling with the top rail, he took as much time as possible to readjust it in its slots. But in this game of patience he knew he must be beaten: however amusedly he might pretend to watch her pretences, his passengers would compel him to go on, and so, in no amused state of mind, at a moment when the gulls as by a magic clearance disappeared to a bird, he followed their example. When the whirlwind of his passing had died in the distance, Jinny came back again through the lift, with the feeling that Methusalem must think her a fool, and wondering if he were not right.
Soon after, she fell in with a carter who was going her way with sacks of flour for his master, and as they jogged along, conversing pleasantly, after the failure of his attempt to chaff and flirt, she was surprised to learn that he had till recently plied as a carrier on this very road, but had been ousted by the “Flynt Flyer.” It had never occurred to her that there were other victims, but as he went on to denounce Will, she found herself defending the rights of competition and pointing out the service the coach rendered to the neighbourhood, and the carter fell back upon another grievance about which he was even more embittered. On one of his last journeys a man he had carried from the Creek had got off without paying, and he had foolishly let him go, thinking he was “a Brandy Hole chap” and would be returning by the same vehicle. But he had vanished from his ken. “Oi thought he was a Brandy Hole chap,” he kept repeating plaintively.
She was glad to shed him at “The Jolly Bargee,” a small inn with a sanded tap-room and no visible taps, where, amid a company she saw already gathered over frothing mugs, he would doubtless bewail the competition of the coach and the trickery of the fare he had taken for “a Brandy Hole chap.”