Читать книгу Iron and Smoke - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 11

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The next morning Humphrey went south, back to the fields and stacks and barns of the golden August reapings, leaving the chimneys and wheels and smoke of those sinister harvests underground. Jenny did not feel so sad as she had expected to see him go. For one thing, the parting would not be for long—he was anxious, flatteringly if embarrassingly anxious, that their wedding should happen soon, and she knew that without him both her mind and time would be more free for preparation.

She visited her dressmaker in Darlington, and between them, with the help of the Queen and other London papers, they evolved the elaborate garments that fashion decreed. “Dainty” and “fussy” were words often on their lips, and sometimes the dressmaker said “dashing.” But Jenny knew that “dashing” styles did not suit her, and that she must avoid them even as a baronet’s wife. Billows of tulle and chiffon and muslin, endless ruchings and gatherings and flouncings were more in her line than the latest thing in shirts or golf-capes. She would have liked to have had her wedding dress made in London, but her family did not see London with her eyes, and the wedding dress finally came from Leeds, with all the linen that her mother chose for her.

Humphrey Mallard nearly came north again when his bride wrote, “Father is giving us some new china and silver. Of course we know you have plenty, darling, but it is old, I think you said.” However, he restrained himself with the thought that whatever Bastow chose it would certainly be costly, and could probably be disposed of if too abominable for use. He did not expect that Jenny’s parents would visit her much in her new home. He would make it his business to deepen the gulf between North and South, to get and keep his wife more and more to himself so that he could make her more and more what he wanted. After all, he was only acquiring the raw material of a wife, to shape it to his needs and the needs of the Herringdales. Jenny’s mind was as the waters of creation, without form and void, and he could move on its face and create out of it what world he willed. Better that than a fiery mind in conflict with his own and giving birth to its own stars. He dreamed of Jenny as the ideal wife, submissive, following, comforting, such as Isabel could have never been.

As the days drew nearer the marriage fixed for October, Jenny began to have a multitude of thrilling disquiets, which she could not quite drive out of her head with thoughts of satin and linen. Sometimes for hours after she had gone to bed, she would lie awake with her heart beating fast. Her mind would be full of pictures which she could not darken, though she did not know if they had any counterpart in waking life—pictures of herself and Humphrey in contacts which she could not feel sure would be blissful or terrifying. He had come to stay for short periods at Slapewath twice since their betrothal, but neither time had they achieved quite that intimacy which she had hoped. She had thought that when their first shynesses were broken down they would open their minds to each other, they would give and receive delicious confidences. But, strangely enough, nothing of that kind had happened. The ardour of his love seemed to have deepened, his kiss was readier, his touch more passionate, but his mind was as much a stranger to hers as at the beginning. She had made one or two tentative approaches, but he had not seemed to notice them, and she had drawn back. Well, perhaps it would come when they were married. Men always were reserved in comparison with women, and she must not alarm him by trying to force his confidence. Perhaps he was a little afraid of her—more than she was of him—and she must be patient and let things go slowly.