Jenny: A Village Idyl

by M. A. Curtois

Was that Annie’s thought as she sank back in her chair with a weary sigh as soon as she was left alone, leaving him to return to the Farm and its hospitable welcome, to Mrs Robson’s new mysteries, and Alice Robson’s saddened face?—was there mingled with the remembrance that she had tried to say farewell to her friend some feeling of separation and of loss? Perhaps, but at that time she was attempting to be strong, nerved by the new trial that she could not escape; for it was always her instinct, like that of others in her family, to meet trial with pride, if not with fortitude. She bound up her hair, and got the tea-things ready, before she sat down to wait for her mother and for Nat .... Tim had tried to be good to her; oh, he had tried to be good; if she never saw him again she would be grateful still ....

The sense of the new danger, however, was more overwhelming when she awoke to the remembrance of it in the darkness of the night; and when, with the memory, there came shame, and pain, and fever as on those first nights after she had returned to her home. She tried to be still and to bear it, in the silence of her mother’s room where she was sleeping now; but the loneliness and misery were too much for her, and she broke out at last into suffocating cries. Jenny heard her, and was by her pillow in an instant; but, although she clung to her mother, she would not confess to her.

‘Oh, mother, it’s coming,’ she sobbed out in the darkness; ‘I know that it’s coming, and they all will know. They’ll make me a shame and a by-word in the place—I shall never be happy, whatever happens now. The Lord might have spared me, He might have helped me in my trouble; but I’ve been a bad girl, and He won’t give help to me.’

Dark, terrible sentences thus uttered in the night-time without the confession that gives breaking hearts relief; for, although she sobbed out these words in her anguish and delirium, the broken sentences were all the confession that she made. Whatever might be the weight that was resting on her spirit, it was evident then and through succeeding days, that with all the strength that was left to her she was determined to bear that weight alone.

[CHAPTER XXVI
IN WINTER NIGHTS]

BUT, meanwhile, the village had recovered from its wonder to become aware of a deeper mystery, and its astonishment and gossip had only subsided to give place in their turn to a more absorbing interest. For it is pleasant to find some topic which may serve for conversation through the long winter evenings whilst we sit beside the fire.

Certainly, if poor Annie’s misery had been only that common story—that too often repeated story all villages know so well—it could but have served to make a nine-days’-gossip, and even ill-natured exultation must in time have died away. Her persistent silence, however, gave rise to other talk, it seemed like a suggestion of some mystery; and floating ideas that could be scarce expressed in words began to rise and to hover round her name. The most likely and probable of the suggestions that were made was that she was attempting to screen some village lad, for to all who knew Jenny Salter it could not appear surprising that her daughter should have inherited a piteous faithfulness. There were some rumours that spoke of ‘a gentleman,’ but they were but rumours and had no support in facts.

And, meanwhile, thus developed into a living mystery, poor Annie lived her secluded life at home, rarely leaving the cottage even to enter its strip of garden, or to go through the gate into the Thackbusk fields. She continued altered; she remained wan, gentle, patient, as one on whose head perpetual sorrow rests; her old pride and fierceness did not flash for an instant to disturb the habitual sadness of her face. And yet to a close observer there must have been visible in her eyes a look of yearning, a strange expression suggestive of some unsatisfied desire, suggestive also of the possibility that her disposition was still not without fever or perhaps delirium. If she were waiting for tidings none seemed to come to her, and the slow days passed on towards the closing of the year.

It was maliciously observed sometimes by the gossips in the village that Tim Nicol did not visit one whom he had professed to love, and that sufficient amusement for his leisure hours could be found within the boundaries of the Manor Farm. The observation was unfair, for Tim had never been a constant visitor anywhere, and was now much occupied at the foundry, which was ‘on overtime;’ and if in his spare moments he was more at the Manor than before, there were many reasons why he should not leave its shelter. He had never quite recovered from the scene at the Rantan, and was obliged to be careful of his health; and, besides, he was studying for some science classes, for the sake of which he stayed in the town two evenings in the week. No doubt, when he was not there he could be found in the Manor kitchen, but then the kitchen was warm and bright for study, whilst his own little bedroom was dark and cold above; and, if he had to endure much wisdom from the lips of Farmer Robson, he could be sure that Farmer Robson would not be always in the room. Alice was there, almost always, but she sat at her knitting, and did not speak to him. ‘There never was such a good girl as Alice,’ Tim reflected; ‘she stays at her work so as you’d not know she was near.’ For this power of being present and yet inaudible is a decided virtue in a woman—in the opinion, that is to say, of a man.