There for some weeks John was a prisoner, with a fractured rib encased in strips of plaster. “In your element again, old girl!” Mahony chaffed his wife, when he met her bearing invalid trays.
“Oh, it doesn’t all fall on me, Richard. Jinny’s a great help — sitting with John and keeping him company.”
Mahony could see it for himself. Oftenest when he entered the room it was Jinny’s black-robed figure — she was in mourning for her parents; for Mrs. Beamish had sunk under the twofold strain of failure and disgrace, and the day after her death it had been necessary to cut old Beamish down from a nail — oftenest it was Jinny he found sitting behind a curtain of the tester-bed, watching while John slept, ready to read to him or to listen to his talk when he awoke. This service set Polly free to devote herself to the extra cooking; and John was content. “A most modest and unassuming young woman,” ran his verdict on Jinny.
Polly reported it to her husband in high glee. “Who could ever have believed two sisters would turn out so differently? Tilly to get so . . . so . . . well, you know what I mean . . . and Jinny to improve as she has done. Have you noticed, Richard, she hardly ever — really quite seldom now — drops an h? It must all have been due to Tilly serving in that low bar.”
By the time John was so far recovered as to exchange bed for sofa, it had come to be exclusively Jinny who carried in to him the dainties Polly prepared — the wife as usual was content to do the dirty work! John declared Miss Jinny had the foot of a fay; also that his meals tasted best at her hands. Jinny even succeeded in making Trotty fond of her; and the love of the fat, shy child was not readily won. Entering the parlour one evening Mahony surprised quite a family scene: John, stretched on the sofa, was stringing cats’-cradles, Jinny sat beside him with Trotty on her knee.
On the whole, though, the child did not warm to her father.
“Aunty, kin dat man take me away f’om you?”
“That man? Why, Trotty darling, he’s your father!” said Polly, shocked.
“Kin ‘e take me away f’om you and Uncle Papa?”
“He could if he wanted to. But I’m sure he doesn’t,” answered her aunt, deftly turning a well-rolled sheet of pastry.
And righting her dolly, which she had been dragging upside down, Trotty let slip her fears with the sovereign ease of childhood.
From the kitchen Polly could hear the boom of John’s deep bass: it made nothing of the lath-and-plaster walls. Of course, shut up as he was, he had to talk to somebody, poor fellow; and Richard was too busy to spare him more than half an hour of an evening. Jinny was a good listener. Through the crack of the door, Polly could see her sitting humbly drinking in John’s words, and even looking rather pretty, in her fair, full womanliness.
“Oh, Polly!” she burst out one day, after being held thus spellbound. “Oh, my dear, what a splendid man your brother is! I feel sometimes I could sink through the floor with shame at my ignorance, when ‘e talks to me so.”
But as time went on Mahony noticed that his wife grew decidedly thoughtful; and if John continued to sing Jinny’s praises, he heard nothing more of it. He had an acute suspicion what troubled Polly; but did not try to force her confidence.
Then one afternoon, on his getting home, she came into the surgery looking very perturbed, and could hardly find words to break a certain piece of news to him. It appeared that not an hour previously, Jinny, flushed and tearful, had lain on her neck, confessing her feelings for John and hinting at the belief that they were returned.
“Well, I think you might have been prepared for something of this sort, Polly,” he said with a shrug, when he had heard her out. “Convalescence is notoriously dangerous for fanning the affections.”
“Oh, but I never DREAMT of such a thing, Richard! Jinny is a dear good girl and all that, but she is NOT John’s equal. And that he can even THINK of putting her in poor Emma’s place!— What shall I say to him?”
“Say nothing at all. Your brother John is not the man to put up with interference.”
“He longs so for a real home again, Polly darling,” said Jinny, wiping her eyes. “And HOW ‘appy it will make me to fulfil ‘is wish! Don’t let me feel unwelcome and an intruder, dear. I know I’m not nearly good enough for ’im, and ‘e could ‘ave had the choice of ever such handsome women. But ‘e ‘as promised to be patient with me, and to teach me everything I ought to know.”
Polly’s dismay at the turn of events yielded to a womanly sympathy with her friend. “It’s just like poor little Agnes and Mr. Henry over again,” was her private thought. For she could not picture John stooping to guide and instruct.
But she had been touched on a tender spot — that of ambitious pride for those related to her — and she made what Mahony called “a real Turnham attempt” to stand up to John. Against her husband’s express advice.
“For if your brother chooses to contract a mesalliance of this kind, it’s nobody’s business but his own. Upon my word though, Polly, if you don’t take care, this house will get a bad name over the matches that are made in it. You had better have your spare room boarded up, my dear.”
Mahony was feeling particularly rasped by John’s hoity-toity behaviour in this connection. Having been nursed back to health, John went about with his chin in the air, and hardly condescended to allude to his engagement — let alone talk it over with his relatives. So Mahony retired into himself — after all, the world of John’s mind was so dissimilar to his own that he did not even care to know what went on in it. “The fellow has been caught on the hop by a buxom form and a languishing eye,” was how he dismissed the matter in thought.
“I raise my wife to my own station, Mary. And you will greatly oblige me by showing Jane every possible attention,” was the only satisfaction Polly could get from John, made in his driest tone.
Before the engagement was a week old Tilly reappeared — she was to be married from their house on the hither side of Christmas. At first she was too full of herself and her own affairs to let either Polly or Jinny get a word in. Just to think of it! That old cabbage-grower, Devine, had gone and bought the block of land next the one Mr. O. was building on. She’d lay a bet he would put up a house the dead spit of theirs. Did ever anyone hear such cheek?
At the news that was broken to her, the first time she paused for breath, she let herself heavily down on a chair.
“Well, I’m blowed!” was all she could ejaculate. “Blowed!. . . that’s what I am.”
But afterwards, when Jinny had left the room, she gave free play to a very real envy and regret. “In all my life I never did! Jinn to be Mrs. John! . . . and, as like as not, the Honourable Mrs. John before she’s done. Oh, Polly, my dear, why EVER didn’t I wait!”
On being presented to John, however, she became more reconciled to her lot. “‘E’s got a temper, your brother has, or I’m very much mistaken. It won’t be all beer and skittles for ‘er ladyship. For Jinn hasn’t a scrap of spunk in ‘er, Polly. She got so mopey the last year or two, there was no doing anything with ‘er. Now it was just the other way round with me. No matter how black things looked, I always kept my pecker up. Poor ma used to say I grew more like her, every day.”
And at a still later date: “No, Polly, my dear, I wouldn’t change places with the future Mrs. T. after all, thank you — not for Joseph! I SAY! she’ll need to mind her p’s and q’s.” For Tilly had listened to John explaining to Jinny what he expected of her, what she might and might not do; and had watched Jinny sitting meekly by and saying yes to everything.
There was nothing in the way of the marriage; indeed, did it not take place immediately, Jinny would have to look about her for a situation of some kind; and, said John, that was nothing for HIS wife. His house stood empty; he was very much in love; and pressed for the naming of the day. So it was decided that Polly should accompany Jinny to lodgings in Melbourne, help her choose her trousseau and engage servants. Afterwards there would be a quiet wedding — by reason of Jinny’s mourning — at which Richard, if he could possibly contrive to leave his patients, would give the bride away. Polly was to remain in John’s house while the happy couple were on honeymoon, to look after the servants. This arrangement would also make the break less hard for the child. Trotty was still blissfully unconscious of what had befallen her. She had learnt to say “new mamma” parrot-wise, without understanding what the words meant. And meanwhile, the fact that she was to go with her aunt for a long, exciting coach-ride filled her childish cup with happiness. As Polly packed the little clothes, she thought of the night, six years before, when the fat, sleeping babe had been laid in her arms.
“Of course it’s only natural John should want his family round him again. But I SHALL miss the dear little soul,” she said to her husband who stood watching her.
“What you need is a little one of your own, wife.”
“Ah, don’t I wish I had!” said Polly, and drew a sigh. “That would make up for everything. Still if it can’t be, it can’t.”
A few days before the set time John received an urgent summons to Melbourne, and went on ahead, leaving Mahony suspecting him of a dodge to avoid travelling EN FAMILLE. In order that his bride-elect should not be put to inconvenience, John hired four seats for the three of them; but: “He might just as well have saved his money,” thought Polly, when she saw the coach. Despite their protests they were packed like herrings in a barrel — had hardly enough room to use their hands. Altogether it was a trying journey. Jinny, worked on by excitement and fatigue, took a fit of hysterics; Trotty, frightened by the many rough strangers, cried and had to be nursed; and the whole burden of the undertaking lay on Polly’s shoulders. She had felt rather timid about it, b............