“That’s what King David prayed, Jinny, and he was a man after God’s own heart. ‘Break thou the arm of the wicked’—Oi’ll show it you in the Psalm.”
“I don’t want to see it—King David wasn’t a Christian yet. And we’ve got to forgive and forget, and not bear a grudge for ever, especially when a man’s down. Think of John Wesley.”
“Happen you’re right, Jinny,” he said, softening. “We’ve got to forgive the evil-doer, and ef the Lord’s got him in hand Oi count we needn’t trouble—he’ll git all he desarves.”
And with that Jinny felt fairly content.
III
But though the ground was thus prepared for his advent, Will did not come. “What are you prinkin’ yourself for?” her grandfather asked in the morning. “It ain’t your day.” It was certainly not her day. It was more like a night—a long agony of expectation with every rustle of wind on the dead leaves sounding like his footstep. Towards dusk she even swept the water-logged landscape with the now neglected telescope. If she did not find him, she found—what was almost as soothing—a reason for his not coming. The broken bridge! How could he go all those miles round? Joyfully she called herself a fool, and awaited the letter he would send instead. The letter would fill up the Thursday and on the Friday she would go to him.
But even this milder expectation of a visit from Bundock went unfulfilled. At first she thought with some relief that Bundock was again shirking the circuit. But no! The glass revealed the slave of duty serving Beacon Chimneys. Throwing on her jacket, but bonnetless, she ran across the Common to meet her letter. But Bundock only gave her grumbles at the overstrain on his feet, and leaving him, to hide her dismay, she walked blindly up Beacon Hill till she was startled to come upon Master Peartree in the bosom of his new-born flock. It did not even occur to her that this was a proof he had escaped the flood, and that the occasion called for congratulation. But the sight of his lambs bounding and his ewes scooping out mangolds brought to mind his old account of a sheep that had broken its arm “in a roosh,” and at once a second rush of joy at her silliness and a still more paradoxical pleasure in Will’s broken arm flooded her soul. How could he write, the poor boy? It was not that she had really forgotten the state of his arm—indeed, she had thought of the sling as clogging the springiness of his walk, and making it still more impossible for him to come—only she must be going crazy again, she felt; just as in the days when she had taken home wedding-cakes and brought Elijah hairpins. Her eyes now filled with happy tears and, joyous as the yeanlings whose tails vibrated with such voluptuous velocity as they sucked, she gave chase to a little black lamb and kissed its sable nose.
That brought her thoughts back to the flood by way of Mother Gander’s hostelry and its drowned landlord, and she inquired at last about Master Peartree’s losses. They had been limited to one bullock, she was glad to hear, though no such glow of Christian feeling possessed her as she had recommended to her grandfather, when the shepherd-cowman proceeded to estimate that what with stacks, root-crops, and winter-wheat, Farmer Gale was the poorer by several thousand pounds. Other shepherds had been badly hit, but he himself—thanks to the Almighty—had got more twins and triplets than ever, and taking her round his plaza of straw he showed her the yellow-splashed, long-legged lambkins in the thatched pens, one set of which he would have to feed by bottle, for handsome mothers did not give the most milk, he moralized.
She ran homewards as full of the joy of life as the leaping lambs, though she was living only for the morrow. Through the frosty air she felt a first breath of spring, birds were singing, and even beginning to build, and the flood, she was sure, was falling. But when next day she reached Rosemary Villa, the gaunt drudge informed her that only the old Flynts were in! Her heart turned to lead. So he had not stayed in for her, though she, for her part, had raced to him by the shortest routes, irrespective of business, cutting through Chipstone proper by a single side-street. It was not till she had learnt that he was gone, like Elijah and all the world, to Mr. Mott’s funeral, that her heart grew light again—she seemed to batten on tragedies these days. Of course Will could not avoid this mark of respect, he who had always put up his coach in the courtyard of “The Black Sheep,” and perhaps she ought to have gone to the funeral too, and would probably have encountered it had she not skipped the High Street in her eagerness. She remembered now some lowered blinds in the street she had scuttled through, and a slow booming bell, whose disregarded notes now at last donged their message to her brain. But perhaps it was better so—her redeemed frock was too gay, her winter shawl and bonnet without a single touch of black. She ought to have borne the inevitable funeral in mind though, she told herself reproachfully. In her present guise she could hardly station even in the courtyard. It was fortunate “Mother Gander” no longer expected to see her within. How embarrassing it would have been for the widow to meet the confidante of her unmeasured denunciations! Probably the whole place would be closed for the day, though she supposed the Chelmsford coach with the passengers from London would have to come in as usual.
Apprised by the barking of Nip, the Flynt couple had descended, looking uneasy, for they had been speaking of her not long before. Their hostess-drudge had started the ball as she closed the door upon Will, outward bound for the funeral. “You’d think he’d found a fortune, not lost one,” the melancholy creature had commented, warmed by that youthful sunshine. “I reckon he wasn’t happy hartin’ Jinny’s business,” Caleb had surmised. “And to be happy is as good as a fortune.” Upon which Martha, who was equally in the passage “to see Will off,” had surprised them by a sudden sob. “She’s thinkin’ of that poor drownded young man,” Caleb had apologized, leading her gently upstairs. “Oi do hope Will’ll keep a proper face for the funeral.”