Not a word had she spoken, from first to last: but stood now with hot cheeks and bosom heaving. Then, finding none to take up her challenge, she strode out through the folk, and I after her, with the mirror in my hand; while the Cheap Jack picked himself out of the tub, whining, and the Astrologer wip’d his long white beard and soil’d robe.
Outside the throng was a carriage, stopp’d for a minute by this tumult, and a servant at the horses’ heads. By the look of it, ’twas the coach of some person of quality; and glancing at it I saw inside an old gentleman with a grave venerable face, seated. For the moment it flash’d on me I had seen him before, somewhere: and cudgell’d my wits to think where it had been. But a second and longer gaze assured me I was mistaken, and I went on down the street after Joan.
She was walking fast and angry; nor when I caught her up and tried to soothe, would she answer me but in the shortest words. Woman’s justice, as I had just learn’d, has this small defect—it goes straight enough, but mainly for the wrong object. Which now I proved in my own case.
“Where are you going, Joan?”
“To Fifteen Balls stable, for my horse.”
“Art not leaving the fair yet, surely!”
“That I be, though. Have had fairing enow—wi’ a man!”
Nor for a great part of the way home would she speak to me. But meeting, by Pound Scawens (a hamlet close to the road), with some friends going to the fair, she stopp’d for a while to chat with them, whilst I rode forward: and when she overtook me, her brow was clear again.
“Am a hot headed fool, Jack, and have spoil’d thy day for thee.”
“Nay, that you have not,” said I, heartily glad to see her humble, for the first time in our acquaintance: “but if you have forgiven me that which I could not help, you shall take this that I bought for you, in proof.”
And pulling out the mirror, I lean’d over and handed it to her.
“What i’ the world be this?” she ask’d, taking and looking at it doubtfully.
“Why, a mirror.”
“What’s that?”
“A glass to see your face in,” I explained.
“Be this my face?” She rode forward, holding up the glass in front of her. “Why, what a handsome looking gal I be, to be sure! Jack, art certain ’tis my very own face?”
“To be sure,” said I amazed.
“Well!” There was silence for a full minute, save for our horses’ tread on the high road. And then—
“Jack, I be powerful dirty!”
This was true enough, and it made me laugh. She looked up solemnly at my mirth (having no sense of a joke, then or ever) and bent forward to the glass again.
“By the way,” said I, “did you mark a carriage just outside the crowd, by the Cheap Jack’s booth?—with a white-hair’d gentleman seated inside?”
Joan nodded. “Master Hannibal Tingcomb: steward o’ Gleys.”
“What!”
I jumped in my saddle, and with a pull at the bridle brought Molly to a standstill.
“Of Gleys?” I cried. “Steward of Sir Deakin Killigrew that was?”
“Right, lad, except the last word. ‘That is,’ should’st rather say.”
“Then you are wrong, Joan: for he’s dead and buried, these five months. Where is this house of Gleys? for tomorrow I must ride there.”
“ ’Tis easy found, then: for it stands on the south coast yonder, and no house near it: five mile from anywhere, and sixteen from Temple, due south. Shall want thee afore thou startest, Jack. Dear, now! who’d ha’ thought I was so dirty?”
The cottage door stood open as we rode into the yard, and from it a faint smoke came curling, with a smell of peat. Within I found the smould’ring turves scattered about as on the day of my first arrival, and among them Joan’s father stretch’d, flat on his face: only this time the cat was curl’d up quietly, and lying between the old man’s shoulder blades.
“Drunk again,” said Joan shortly.
But looking more narrowly, I marked a purplish stain on the ground by the old man’s mouth, and turned him softly over.
“Joan,” said I, “he’s not drunk—he’s dead!”
She stood above us and looked down, first at the corpse, then at me, without speaking for a time: at last—
“Then I reckon he may so well be buried.”
“Girl,” I call’d out, being shocked at this callousness, “ ’tis your father—and he is dead!”
“Why that’s so, lad. An he were alive, shouldn’t trouble thee to bury ’n.”
And so, before night, we carried him up to the bleak tor side, and dug his grave there; the black cat following us to look. Five feet deep we laid him, having dug down to solid rock; and having covered him over, went silently back to the hovel. Joan had not shed a single tear.
XIV
I Do No Good in the House of Gleys
Very early next morning I awoke, and hearing no sound in the loft above (whither, since my coming, Joan had carried her bed), concluded her to be still asleep. But in this I was mistaken: for going to the well at the back to wash, I found her there, studying her face in the mirror.
“Luckily met, Jack,” she said, when I was cleansed and freshly glowing: “Now fill another bucket and sarve me the same.”
“Cannot you wash yourself?” I ask’d, as I did so.
“Lost the knack, I reckon. Stand thee so, an’ slush the water over me.”
“But your clothes!” I cried out, “they’ll be soaking wet!”
“Clothes won’t be worse for a wash, neither. So slush away.”
Therefore, standing at three paces’ distance, I sent a bucketful over her, and then another and another. Six times I filled and emptied the bucket in all: and at the end she was satisfied, and
