A Web of Dreams

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘Jenny will look after you.’

  He moved lethargically towards her as if he would catch at her hand. She jerked out of his reach. He looked hurt.

  ‘Come and lie down, Ned,’ Jenny said quickly. ‘Doctor said you were to lie down until ‒’

  The bell rang from downstairs. Maggie went to open the door. There was the sound of men’s heavy footsteps on the staircase, in the passage. A young man came into view, in a semi-uniform of blue serge with black braided fastenings. ‘Mr Corvill?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Ned looked uncertain. The uniform was somehow disturbing.

  ‘Dr Murdo sent me. The ambulance is downstairs.’

  ‘Ambulance?’

  ‘It’s all right, Ned,’ Jenny soothed. ‘Dr Murdo said he would send it, remember? And you said you would go.’

  ‘Yes, but ‒’

  ‘I’m coming with you, dear.’

  ‘Lucy too?’ he said, resisting the urgings of the sanatorium attendant to lead him to the door.

  Lucy was about to say no. ‘Come,’ Jenny whispered, ‘at least just down to the cab.’

  Unwilling, but agreeing so as to see him gone, Lucy went with the group to the outer door. Maggie handed Jenny a shawl for Lucy as they went out on to the staircase. Slowly they descended. Night had come down now, the lamps in Hanover Street were casting pools of light on the pavement.

  At the kerb stood a four-wheeled van, painted a dark blue. It had windows but the blinds were down. It opened at the back. Another attendant stood there, waiting. Somehow it was not reassuring.

  ‘No!’ cried Ned, throwing himself backwards to avoid being ushered in.

  ‘Now, sir, please dinna cause a fuss,’ said the attendant.

  ‘I won’t go in that ‒’

  ‘Please, Ned, you agreed to go,’ Jenny said, through tears she couldn’t check.

  ‘No, no ‒ Lucy, don’t let them ‒’ He threw himself on Lucy for protection. She turned away, avoiding his weight. He staggered, regaining his balance by windmilling his arms.

  The two horses harnessed to the van shied at the figure silhouetted by the street lights. The more nervous of the pair reared up. The van moved grindingly against its brake, rocking.

  Lucy, nerves already stretched, shrieked in fright. She turned to fly from the rocking van.

  Her foot caught in her floating peignoir and the falling shawl. She went headlong on the hard pavement.

  ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ shouted Ned, beside himself with concern for her. The attendants stepped up, wrestled with him efficiently as they had learned to do with many a violent patient, and pushed him towards the van’s entry. He went suddenly limp. Afterwards Jenny wondered if she had seen a little black implement momentarily wielded at the back of his neck.

  But her main concern was for Lucy, who had come down with a terrible impetus. She got down on her knees beside her. Maggie came flying to help her. Together they turned Lucy, raised her head. Her eyelids fluttered. She was alive, and in a moment she was conscious. She looked at Jenny with frightened eyes.

  The driver had quieted the horses. The attendants had closed the back door of the van. One had gone inside with Ned, the other now came back to the women. ‘Is the lady a’ richt?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so ‒’

  ‘We’ll be off then, better no to hang aboot.’

  With a clatter and a rattle the van pulled away from the kerb, the assistant climbing on the box beside the driver. Its square black shape with its tail lantern disappeared up the street.

  Maggie and Jenny between them got Lucy upstairs again. Without consulting they took her straight into the bedroom, laid her on the bed. ‘Sal volatile,’ Maggie said, and went for it.

  ‘Jenny …’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Jenny, I’ve got a pain.’

  ‘You’re bruised ‒’

  ‘No, not that. Jenny, I ‒ Oh!’ She gave a moan, half raised herself, and wrapped her arms about her middle, twisting in agony.

  Jenny ran out, to meet Maggie in the passage with the restorative. ‘Never mind that, Maggie, run for Dr Laggan. I think Mrs Corvill is losing her baby.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  In thirty-six hours it was over: the baby boy had entered and left the world for which he was so ill prepared.

  Lucy was weak from shock and loss of blood but in no danger. She slept and woke, took the beef tea and brandy prescribed by Dr Laggan, wept a little from time to time, but was undoubtedly recovering by the Sunday.

  ‘If you feel well enough to do without me,’ Jenny said, ‘I’d like to go out for a while.’

  ‘Go out?’ Lucy said jealously. ‘Where to?’

  ‘To Dr Murdo’s clinic to visit Ned.’

  Lucy had the grace to blush. She’d almost totally forgotten Ned in the drama of her own situation.

  ‘You’ll tell him about the baby?’

  ‘Not yet, Lucy. I don’t think it would be good for him. I’ll ask Dr Murdo. Would you like to write a note for Ned?’

  ‘What on earth would I say to him?’ Lucy cried, tears springing. ‘I don’t want to write to him! It’s his fault I lost my baby.’

  ‘No, no, Lucy, it was an accident.’

  ‘It was his fault! I don’t care what you say! I don’t care if I never see him again ‒ I hate him!’

  Jenny felt that it was weakness and self-pity forcing the words from her sister-in-law. She shook her head in silence and went out.

  In a conference with Dr Murdo, she was advised to tell Ned the truth. ‘Nothing is to be gained by lying to the patient,’ he said. ‘It does away with trust ‒ and if he doesn’t trust me he will never accept my treatment.’

  Ned seemed well but very passive, which she put down to the chloral he was prescribed. He became more alert when he asked if Lucy would be coming to visit. ‘I’m only allowed one more day of visiting, you see. Then the treatment begins in earnest and the doctor has explained to me I must concentrate on that and not see anyone for at least a month.’

  ‘I understand, Ned. Lucy won’t be coming to see you. She’s … not well.’

  ‘Sick again because of the baby? Poor darling.’

  ‘She had a miscarriage, Ned,’ Jenny said, taking his hand. ‘It’s all over about the baby.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m sorry, brother. It is so.’

  ‘She was upset because I had to go away,’ he said, looking as if he might weep. ‘I blame myself. She’s so sensitive ‒ it upset her.’

  ‘Perhaps it was that,’ Jenny sighed. No matter what Dr Murdo said, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him Lucy wasn’t the sensitive flower he imagined.

  She promised to come back next day. When she got home, she let herself in quietly in case Lucy was resting, then herself lay down on her bed. She seemed to have had no sleep for days. Yet she couldn’t find ease in an afternoon nap, she lay awake trying to compose the letter she must write for the evening post, the letter telling her mother what had happened.

  She became aware of sounds in the passage. Her door was a little ajar, left so in case Lucy called for her. She heard the maids moving about near the big press at the end of the passage nearest her room, where superfluous garments were stored until needed.

  Lucy’s maid Fordyce said, ‘Well, I shan’t have to let out the rest of the winter gowns after all.’

  ‘Aye, that’s one good thing, if aught good can come of what’s happened.’

  ‘Oh, come, Maggie ‒ she’s better off without the baby, if its father was to be shut up in a madhouse.’

  Maggie was apparently catching up with some housework. The sound of a broom on the corridor carpet could be heard. ‘The poor man,’ Maggie said, pausing. ‘He was aye decent enough to me. Sad to lose his liberty and his wain.’

  ‘If it was his.’

  ‘Miss Fordyce!’

  ‘Well, oftentimes she was flushed and excited when I’d be doing her hair to go out. Don’t tell me she was excited over the master ‒ it was more like
ly the handsome gentleman that came a-visiting when he got back from abroad.’

  ‘Mr Brunton? Aye, there was a charm about him. But it couldna ha’ been him. He’s never been nigh nor bye these six weeks.’

  ‘And why would he, Maggie? He didn’t strike me as the man to enjoy a woman full of morning sickness and self-pity.’ There was a pause, then Fordyce said in a lower tone, ‘We’ll see if she can get him back now she’s lost her little burden.’

  Jenny threw an arm over her eyes to blot out the picture they had conjured up. Archie and Lucy …

  Of course she knew Archie had returned to Scotland. It had been reported in the social column of the Galashiels Record. He was now living in Edinburgh, where his mother had joined him so as to have easier treatment for her vein inflammations. The big house at the Mains had been let to a gentleman tenant.

  Lucy’s whereabouts were just as easy for Archie to ascertain. The young Corvills would have figured in newspaper accounts of social functions in Glasgow. It only needed one or other to make the first move ‒ a hostess-like note to Archie to invite him, a letter from Archie to Ned recalling old acquaintance …

  Could it have been Archie’s child?

  Perhaps not even Lucy herself could say. Better not to think of it at all. That was all in the past. But, for the future …?

  Ned was shut up out of the way in the sanatorium. Lucy would soon be on her own in Glasgow, for Jenny would have to return to Galashiels. Archie Brunton was a few miles away, an easy journey by passenger train.

  Jenny lay wondering what she should do. Should she in fact do anything? Had she any right to interfere? Formerly she had had some role ‒ she was the prospective fiancée of Archie Brunton, considered so by his mother and all the rest of the community. But now … she had dissociated herself from Archie, she had no right to moralise over his conduct. And as for Lucy …

  Jenny felt she had no right to condemn Lucy considering what her own behaviour had been recently.

  She gave up the attempt to sleep. She got up and paced about her room. Maggie, coming in to dust, drew up in astonishment. ‘Losh! I thought you were out visiting the master!’

  ‘No, I got back a while ago.’

  Maggie went red, no doubt wondering how much, if anything, Jenny had heard. ‘Can I get you aught, Miss Corvill?’

  ‘No.’ Jenny suddenly made up her mind. If she stayed she might end up quarrelling openly with Lucy, and nothing was to be gained by that. ‘I’m going to pack and go home in the morning as soon as I’ve visited Mr Corvill again.’

  ‘But what about the mistress?’

  ‘I’ll send a pre-paid telegraph message for her mother. Perhaps my sister-in-law would be better off with an older woman as companion at the present time.’

  ‘I see what you mean, miss.’

  Lucy wasn’t pleased when she heard her mother had been sent for. ‘I wish you hadn’t taken so much upon yourself, Jenny. I don’t want my mother here.’

  ‘At a time like this, surely ‒’

  ‘No, we don’t really get on. But since you’ve done it she’ll come. I can put up with her for a few days, I suppose.’ There was no attempt to retain Jenny as a companion. They both knew they’d be glad when they parted.

  Mrs Morrison duly replied that she would come at once. Jenny packed, went one last time to see Ned, and set off for the Borders with her mind full of the encounter with her own mother yet to come. How much should she tell? Only what concerned Ned, only what her mother had a need to know.

  To her astonishment Millicent took the news with less shock and dismay than she expected. ‘I sometimes wondered, you know, Jenny … I was closer to Ned than your father ever was. I had to go in and rouse him in the mornings when he didn’t get up, and there were times … I thought … But I didn’t want to believe my own son was a drunkard and it would have been such a blow to your father …’

  ‘Oh, Mother, I wish we’d confided in each other! We might have been able to help him before things got so bad.’

  Millicent sighed. ‘Yet you know what it says in Proverbs: “A fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards.” Ah well, it’s afterwards now ‒ we must do all we can to make this new start when the time comes.’ She thought a moment. ‘Was Lucy very upset about the baby?’

  ‘Of course.’ Yet while Jenny gave this conventional reply she was already thinking, She’ll get over it quickly, she’s not the maternal type.

  Her mother seemed to echo the thought when she spoke again. ‘I was very pleased at the idea of a grandchild, but you know, Jenny, I never could quite picture Lucy with a baby …’

  It was Tuesday morning when Jenny got back to Waterside Mill. In some mysterious way, the news had gone before her ‒ she had been to Glasgow, her brother was sick and in a nursing home, her sister-in-law had lost her baby. Everyone was kind, sympathetic.

  Everyone except Franz.

  ‘You did not write to me! You said you would write from Glasgow but you did not!’

  He had waylaid her as she hurried down Market Street towards the printer who was producing her first catalogue of tartans for distribution abroad.

  ‘I’m sorry, everything happened all at once. I simply didn’t have time.’

  His eyes flashed with anger. ‘You have been gone a week! Surely you could have found a moment ‒’

  ‘Oh, Franz, please don’t be angry. I can’t bear it ‒ everything has been so awful!’

  Her obvious distress made him regret his accusations. He seized one of her hands. A passer-by glanced with interest but she had the presence of mind to say, ‘Thank you, the cobbles are slippery here.’

  It was a very cold November day. The summits of the hills around Galashiels were dusted with snow and the lower slopes had the glint of frost. Jenny held her long jacket close against her to keep out the chill. Franz looked as if he longed to put an arm about her to protect her from the weather and any other ill that might come to her.

  She told him what she had told no one except her mother ‒ the real nature of her brother’s ailment. Franz, who remembered the gentle, amiable creature he had met in Hamburg, was horrified.

  ‘My dear! I’m sorry I snarled at you! What must you think of me, to be so selfish when you have such troubles.’

  ‘No, no, Franz, I understand ‒ I should have written. I meant to send a note the moment I got back but my mother ‒’

  ‘She must be very anxious.’

  ‘She keeps saying she wants to go to Glasgow to be near him, but there’s no point in that ‒ he isn’t allowed visitors until another three weeks have gone by.’

  ‘But she wishes to go so as to be a comfort to the daughter-in-law, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’ She didn’t want to go into explanations about Lucy, which in any case would sound unkind and ill-natured. ‘I shall take Mother there in good time to be the first visitor to Ned.’

  ‘In the meantime ‒’

  ‘In the meantime we can write to him, and receive letters from him, only not frequently because Dr Murdo feels ‒’

  ‘No, I meant, in the meantime, when can we meet, my darling?’

  ‘No, Franz.’ They had reached the printer’s office, so she had good reason for stopping and drawing away from him. ‘I must spend time with Mother. She’s upset, frightened … I can’t leave her alone in the evenings.’

  ‘But Jenny ‒’

  ‘Please, Franz. If you feel anything for me, give me just your friendship for the moment. I need that ‒ I have no one else to turn to.’

  This appeal was simple and genuine, but it could not have been better calculated to touch the knight-errant in Franz. He was at once all sympathy and concern, promised to be her good friend, and left her to enter the printer’s with an easy mind.

  Baird had been getting out the clothes she had put away when William died and Jenny went into mourning, for the year in black was up. She said to her, ‘You’re thinner than you were, mistress. You should work less and eat more.’<
br />
  ‘This isn’t the time to work less, Baird. We’re busy ‒ and if I’m to be away again at the end of the month I must get everything in apple pie order so I can leave it.’

  The maid tried not to look too eager. She’d been told she would accompany Jenny and her mother to Glasgow, staying on there to look after the elder Mrs Corvill. She was happy at the thought of being in a big city where all the necessities for good appearance were ready to hand ‒ new lace to refurbish a tired gown, trimmings for bonnets, the latest style in gloves. Not that the elder Mrs Corvill paid much heed to such things, but Baird liked to ‘turn out’ her mistress well.

  Letters from Ned, though limited to one page only, had conveyed his progress. He said he had been given the task of helping with the horses, was being taught to mend harnesses, had learned to row in a four-man skiff, and felt well. Jenny thought they were like letters from a boy at boarding-school rather than a grown man. But perhaps that was Dr Murdo’s method ‒ to take the patient back to childhood then start him again on a better path.

  At the big apartment in Glasgow they found Lucy involved with dressmakers. She too had left deep mourning behind but had decided to have new clothes. Her mother was helping her choose styles, but it seemed to involve more wrangling than pleasure.

  ‘It’s almost as if they’re quarrelling,’ Mrs Corvill said to Jenny. ‘It’s a strange way of enjoying yourself, surely?’

  ‘Never mind, Mrs Morrison will be gone tomorrow.’

  Lucy’s mother had let it be known that she preferred Edinburgh to Glasgow, that she had a gentleman friend who pined for her and that she must get back as soon as someone could take her daughter off her hands. She had a money allowance now, provided for her by William Corvill soon after Lucy’s marriage: he had felt it unsuitable for any woman relative of his to be running a boarding-house where she had to handle a succession of male lodgers.

  As a result Mrs Morrison saw herself these days as a lady of leisure, and had not been best pleased to play nursemaid to her daughter. Moreover, she was eager to get home before the gentleman friend cooled off, because she had hopes of hearing wedding bells again.