“Perhaps there’ll be a flood that will put out hell one day,” said Jinny evasively.
“Martha Flynt should be sayin’ there ain’t no hell to put out. That looks as if ye’ve got to goo to Heaven, do what ye will.”
“Oh, I don’t think she means that,” said Jinny, smiling despite her heavy heart.
“That’s what the humes sounded like as her and the looker used to sing of a Sunday afore Master Will come home and stopped ’em. Oi used to listen to ’em chance times—put me in mind of my young days like—but Oi don’t howd with their doctrines.”
“With whose then?” asked Jinny, interested.
“With nobody’s. Dedn’t Oi say, git over me? Ef the Lord was to offer me Heaven or Hell, which d’ye think Oi’d choose?”
“Is there a catch in it?” she asked cautiously.
“We’ve got to be catched in one or the tother,” he said, misunderstanding. “But Oi mislikes ’em both. Will you be buyin’ the bird?”
As Jinny produced two of her only three pennies, she began to realize for the first time the revolution in her fortunes implicit in the destruction of the coach. But her heart was aching too poignantly for any joy of victory. She could not savour, as her grandfather was savouring, the miraculous collapse of the competition. Victory or defeat—heaven or hell—she thought ruefully, she misliked them both. She was consumed with yearning, anxiety and compassion for the young rival who had failed to “come on a horse,” who had perhaps no longer even a single horse to come on. Nor did the fate of Snowdrop or Cherry-blossom—that superb vitality turned into a floating carcase—leave her jubilant. In the morning, indeed, she was to awake to a sense of her triumph. But what endless hours of insomnia and nightmare had first to be lived through! Again Queen Victoria, who was also quite intelligibly Miss Jinny Boldero, was saved by “The Father of the Fatherless” from the gins and stratagems of the red-haired villain who cut away London Bridge just as Her Majesty was going over it in her gold coronation coach with its six black ponies and its canvas tilt. Struggling in the cold waters, she was held up by Henry Brougham, Esq., who helped her to scramble athwart the naked carcase of a black pony on which she floated to shore, when it stood upon its feet, and with Queen Jinny astride the saddle and Miss Gentry (in bridal attire) not at all surprisingly on the pillion, galloped towards Blackwater Hall across the dry Common where anglers sat with broomsticks. And while she was lying along the pony’s mane to get through the door to the red-haired young man (now become the hero), just as she was beginning to feel Passion’s force, that stupid Miss Gentry came crack with her neck against the lintel, and off rolled her head on the floor, its moustache dabbled in blood. Picking herself up, and her scattered bedclothes, and rubbing her bruised crown, Jinny congratulated herself on sleeping in a chest of drawers in such proximity to the floor.
But the bang, slight as it was, had cleared away the vapours of sleep and she awoke to a consciousness of victory brimming her veins with vital joy. Song, so long strange to her lips, unless simulated to lull Gran’fer, came back to them as she dressed, and when she prayed “Give us this day our daily bread,” it was no longer an almost despairing cry to a deaf heaven.