Though this fine tirade was addressed to Jeanie, it was delivered at Aubrey, which obliged him to go on looking at Dulcibella with an expression of serene indifference. Otherwise, he would have turned round to see where the draught was coming from. It was a hellish draught, cold as though it were blowing on him from the wastes of Lapland, 173and by the time she had completed her lifelong regrets for Jeanie’s sufferings, he seemed to have a square patch of ice wedged between his shoulder-blades. Earlier in the tirade, Jeanie had detached herself from Dulcibella’s increasingly rhetorical pats. Perhaps she had gone out, and left the door open.

But when Dulcibella released him, breaking off to re-establish an earring, he looked round and saw that Jeanie was still in the room, slumped on a chair in the corner and looking completely exhausted.

‘It’s time that child was in bed,’ he said.

Dulcibella got up. ‘If you can still suppose that we would spend a night under your roof, I despair of making you understand anything. Come, Jeanie! Goodnight, Mr Cudweed.’

Aubrey held the door open while Jeanie gathered up Dulcibella’s belongings. As she passed him, she paused to say, ‘You’ll thee, you old beatht! You’ll thee!’ Then, pale as death and riven with yawns, she staggered loyally after Dulcibella, and they drove away.

Left to himself, Aubrey felt as quiet as an oyster, and almost as cold. He wished that Hopkins would bring him another brew of that strong Indian tea, but, hearing Hopkins approaching, he said pettishly, ‘That’s enough for to-night, Hopkins. Leave everything, and go to bed.’

‘Very good, sir. We were thinking of having a cup of tea amongst ourselves. Perhaps you would—’ Hopkins in his solicitude almost said ‘join us,’ but he amended this to ‘be glad of one yourself.’174

Aubrey was very glad of the tea, though it was not so reviving as he had hoped. He certainly felt quite bowled over. But he had taken the full charge of Jeanie’s youthful hatred, and it was a taxing injection for a man of his age. He slept heavily, and in the morning he had his breakfast in bed without much enjoying it. The wind had gone round to the east, and when it sat in that quarter, nothing would properly warm the house—not even the hope, rather laboriously indulged in, that Dulcibella and Jeanie would have broken down on Salisbury Plain and caught great colds in their heads. He himself seemed to be hatching a cold, for his sense of taste was dulled and the wedge of ice was still lodged between his shoulder-blades. The sky all day was a sharp, cloudless blue, and whenever he looked out of the window he was teased by the lines:

Bright Reason will mock thee,

Like the sun from a wintry sky.

Most unpleasant of all was the awareness that there was something he childishly wanted to know and childishly did not dare to ask. No doubt his servants knew, but he did not wish them to be putting two and two together, and he could scarcely go into Tittingham and hang inquiringly round the Folk Museum, even if he felt equal to going out in this wind.