A Web of Dreams

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A Web of Dreams Page 28

by Tessa Barclay


  She rang the bell, and told Thirley to have the carriage brought round. She accompanied Lucy upstairs while she got her bonnet and fur pelisse. She waited at the bedroom door for her, meanwhile sending Baird to fetch her thick promenade jacket and a hat.

  There was no escape for Lucy. They were helped into the carriage, the coachman flicked the reins at the bays, and off they went on the road towards Clovenfords, a distance of some three miles round the slope of Meigle Hill on a bad road.

  It was a mild February day, but drizzly, so the carriage was closed up against the dampness. There was no danger that the coachman would hear what was said between the ladies.

  ‘Now,’ Jenny said as soon as they had left the driveway of Gatesmuir, ‘what were you doing last night?’

  ‘Doing? I don’t understand you.’

  ‘When you switched Ned’s glass for someone else’s.’

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘Lucy, we both know you did. What was your intention? To get him drunk, to break his spirit, to put him back in the sanatorium with Dr Murdo? Or perhaps you wanted to achieve more ‒ perhaps you see yourself as the pretty young widow of poor Ned Corvill who drank himself to death?’

  ‘No!’ It was a cry of protest.

  ‘Very well, let’s say you didn’t actually intend a murder. What did you have in your mind?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything ‒’ Lucy gulped and burst into tears.

  ‘Cry if you must. It won’t have any effect. I’ll wait until you recover to get my answers.’

  ‘You … you’re hateful!’ Lucy sobbed. ‘You have no feelings! And you’ve never liked me!’

  ‘When you came to Gatesmuir after pushing Ned into a secret marriage,’ Jenny said drily, ‘none of us were exactly delighted with you. But we could have forgiven you everything ‒ the secrecy, the lies ‒ if only you’d really loved Ned.’

  ‘Lies? What lies? How dare you!’

  ‘Oh, Lucy … You’re such a fool.’ She said it without scorn, simply as if stating a fact. ‘Because you don’t know how to get at facts, you think no one else can do it. But of course I learned within a week or two that there was no heroic young lieutenant called Morrison who died with the China Squadron.’

  ‘What? Of course there was ‒ my father ‒’

  ‘Your father’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the Navy List. It’s such a silly lie.’

  Lucy’s tears had ended as her anger began. ‘Only someone like you would even think of checking!’

  ‘Quite true. Now you know that I did check, and that I’ve never been taken in by your tales about your father.’

  Lucy mopped her eyes to peer at her. ‘You told your mother? Your father?’

  ‘No, no one. I couldn’t see how it would help. You’ve made a legal marriage with my brother and he loves you. That’s why it’s so despicable of you to try to undo all the good of the nursing home. He doesn’t deserve that, Lucy. It was a very mean thing.’

  Lucy clenched and unclenched her hands over her lace handkerchief. ‘Oh, you don’t know what it’s like!’ she burst out. ‘He makes me go to those horrid, horrid meetings and I have to sit on the platform and hear him tell everyone how low he sank, and it’s so sordid, and then I have to smile and be nice to those awful people, they’re so dull or else they’re fervent and strange ‒ wild-eyed ‒ and they expect me to know what to tell them, they say things like, “Do you find prayer helpful?” or “How should I get my husband to reform?” as if I would know, and they’re the kind of people no one of any breeding would want to know and I can tell everyone is laughing at me behind my back because of it …’

  The outburst ended as she ran out of breath. It had been uttered with perfect sincerity and feeling. Jenny had no doubt she was hearing the truth.

  ‘Are you telling me you tried to wreck Ned’s recovery just to avoid going to a meeting?’

  ‘There’s this terrible rally in Selkirk. Ned actually wants us to head a procession through the High Street, in front of everybody. He wants me to hold a banner! I only thought … I only thought … if he had a relapse we wouldn’t have to go ‒’

  Jenny closed her eyes. And for this ‒ to avoid being publicly embarrassed ‒ Ned’s wife had been prepared to toss him back to the terrors of delirium tremens.

  When she looked up again Lucy was watching her in anxiety. ‘You won’t tell Ned what I did?’

  ‘Of course not. Once I’d put the glass beyond his reach ‒’

  ‘Because if you tell him I’ll deny it and it’ll only be your word against mine.’

  ‘I shouldn’t dream of telling him, Lucy. It would break his heart.’

  A faint colour came up under Lucy’s pale skin. ‘You say that as if he cares a lot for me but it’s not true, he drags me with him to ‒’

  ‘Lucy, all you have to do is say, “I won’t go”.’

  ‘I tried that ‒ I explained I didn’t like it and all he said was, “You must believe that God has called you and all will be well.” So another time I pretended I had a headache and I didn’t have to go, but after that I couldn’t think of an excuse so I had to ‒’

  ‘You don’t have to go, you don’t have to have an excuse. Just tell him you don’t want to do it.’

  ‘But I can’t … he thinks it’s all so important, I can’t just tell him I don’t agree, I don’t know how to say that to a man …’

  Jenny felt, not for the first time, an impulse of pity for Lucy. She was so utterly trapped in her own view of herself as gentle and good, like an ideal heroine of some Sir Walter Scott poem.

  ‘Would you like me to tell him for you?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, would you, Jenny? Would you? Explain to him ‒ my health won’t stand up to it ‒ my nerves ‒’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ Jenny said, mentally making a vow to invent nothing about Lucy’s nerves.

  They made their call on Mrs Lyall, who was so delighted by the unexpected honour of seeing Miss Corvill as well as the young Mrs Corvill that Jenny’s conscience was smitten. She really ought to do more in the domestic circle. It was wrong to leave it all to others ‒ and think of the damage it had done, in Lucy’s impulsive act last night. With no one to turn to for help, her sister-in-law had almost committed an unforgivable act.

  Perhaps it was unfortunate that Mrs Lyall was so gushing to Jenny. It was clear Lucy resented it. On the way home she was silent. At lunch time Ned appeared, glowing with health, having spent the morning sawing up logs at the far side of the woods. Millicent Corvill had been to see an exhibition of handwriting at the Subscription School. The chat over the meal was about small, household matters. Lucy went up to her room immediately it was over, avoiding her husband’s suggestion of a long walk now that the drizzle had cleared up.

  ‘Let me walk with you, Ned,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m going down to the works in any case.’

  ‘Very unlike you, taking a morning off,’ he remarked, as he offered her his arm on the slippery surface of the steep drive.

  ‘I thought it was permissible,’ she said with a laugh. ‘It’s the first time I’ve taken time off for anything except family matters or business.’

  ‘That’s true. You do too much, sister.’

  ‘Not at all. You know I enjoy my work. But that’s what I want to speak to you about, Ned. Enjoyment.’

  ‘Enjoyment?’ He checked in his stride to give her a puzzled look. ‘That’s a strange topic!’

  ‘You enjoy working for the Temperance Society, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, Jenny, you can’t imagine! It’s changed my life! For the first time I feel there’s a reason for my existence.’

  She hugged his arm. ‘It’s certainly made a great change in you. But you know … you used to be a very tolerant man, brother.’

  ‘Tolerant! Tolerance is merely an escape route for a man without true convictions.’

  ‘My word! Is that your own thought, or a quotation from someone?’

  ‘Dr Murdo said it, in fact.’

 
‘Yes, Dr Murdo. A fine man.’

  ‘A man in a million.’

  ‘He has no wife, I think.’

  ‘She died on the mission station in Africa.’

  ‘I see. That’s sad. She shared his convictions, then, if she too was a missionary.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Jenny drew a deep breath. ‘What I wanted to say to you, Ned, was that all wives don’t necessarily share their husband’s views. And if others differ from you, you must be prepared to tolerate it.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Jenny,’ he said, and she could tell from his tone that he was a thousand miles away from guessing she was speaking about himself and Lucy. ‘I accept naturally that some people don’t share my views, and those who have no problem with the Demon Drink are entitled to ‒’

  ‘Yes, entitled to their own opinion. So you ought to allow Lucy to have an opinion of her own.’

  ‘Lucy?’ Consternation rose in his voice as he said the name. ‘Lucy? What has Lucy to do with this?’

  ‘Lucy doesn’t like it when you force her to share in your work. She doesn’t ‒’

  ‘I don’t force her!’

  ‘You do, Ned. She’s … she’s accustomed to pleasing people and she can’t bear to irritate or disappoint you ‒ but she hates going to your meetings.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘It is true, brother.’

  ‘But she plays her part so very well. She sits there looking so earnest and … and almost saintly, and people take to her …’

  ‘Is that what you want her for? Window-dressing?’

  ‘Jenny!’ He was greatly shocked.

  ‘Lucy doesn’t have your vocation to take the message of temperance out to the rest of the world. She finds it embarrassing and it makes her miserable. If you have any mercy on her, you’ll leave her at home.’

  ‘Mercy?’ her brother said faintly. ‘You can’t think I want to be cruel to my own sweet little wife?’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t mean to be. Your enthusiasm for your work has perhaps blinded you a little to Lucy’s unhappiness. She has tried to draw back, I believe?’

  ‘No, never, except, for what I took to be a natural modesty, humility …’

  Jenny almost said, Take it for what it really is, a great desire not to look a fool in front of people she wants to impress. Aloud she said, ‘You will think about what I say?’

  ‘Of course. I can scarcely believe … I’ll discuss it with Lucy.’

  ‘No, brother, don’t discuss it. Lucy is the kind of girl who can’t argue her own case against a man. That’s why she confided in me ‒ she couldn’t bring herself to discuss it with you. Just tell her that she needn’t come with you.’

  Ned tried to cope with this sudden new outlook on his partnership with Lucy. ‘I shall miss her very much. It’s been a joy to me to have her with me.’

  ‘But your faith is strong,’ Jenny said, thinking that she was using flattery and that it was all very wrong, but somehow she had to rescue her sister-in-law from her undoubted misery. ‘You can stand alone on a platform, brother.’

  ‘With God’s help, I can.’

  She almost said, If God is so quick to help you, why didn’t He tell you your wife wanted to get you drunk last night? But she dared not argue with Ned. She felt that, for all his protestations, his faith was precarious. Perhaps that was what made him so loud about it.

  ‘I’m sure you will be strong even without Lucy.’

  ‘And you know, if she feels the call, she can come to it again later.’

  ‘Yes, if that happens, she can certainly change her mind,’ Jenny agreed, knowing it was the most unlikely thing in the world.

  It seems to be the way of life that when you’ve solved one problem, another rises to take its place. Lucy, set free from any compulsion to go with Ned on his temperance campaigning, was for a week or two full of blithe good spirits and energy. But Galashiels in late winter wasn’t the most entertaining place in the world.

  By mid-March boredom had set in again. She couldn’t be given the task of redecorating Gatesmuir again because it had taken Jenny and her mother six months to get it comfortable after her last effort. She didn’t want to join the Mothers’ Union or the Ladies Charitable Sewing Circle. She didn’t enjoy outdoor pursuits such as skating or riding to hounds. The parties, the concerts by local amateurs, the bazaars and fairs for good causes, the exhibitions of weaving products — they had too little sophistication for her taste.

  Ned was away on his meetings and rallies, often overnight. Archie Brunton was long lost to her. For the one or two rather raffish male friends she’d made in Glasgow while Ned was out drinking she had no use; it was too risky to summon them up, even if they would come.

  She studied her social circle in Galashiels looking for agreeable masculine company. And her eye lighted on Franz Lennhardt.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Is your sister-in-law a little odd?’ Franz asked Jenny.

  ‘Odd? How do you mean?’

  ‘Flirtatious … artificial…?’

  Jenny might have said that she thought Lucy all of these things, but it never did any good to speak unkindly without good reason. ‘Why do you ask?’ she inquired.

  They were at a gathering in Peebles to hear a lecture by a former Inspector of Factories on possible changes in the law regarding the employment of child labour. This important matter was being continually discussed, yet neither Jenny nor Franz would have chosen the lecture hall as a meeting place. But it was so difficult for them to see each other these days that they grasped any opportunity.

  So here they sat, Jenny in Row G of the auditorium and Franz in Row H. An intermission had been called during which refreshments could be obtained in the lobby. Franz and Jenny had decided to go without so as to have a moment’s private conversation.

  ‘Why do you ask about Lucy?’ she repeated, for she was always on the alert where Ned’s wife was concerned.

  ‘I think she is trying to make me into an especial friend. Last week at that concert of songs ‒ you remember, where Mr Kennet’s son sang so badly? ‒ she engaged me in a long conversation about German music.’

  ‘Well, she is interested in music. She plays a little.’

  ‘But why does she pretend? She was clearly under the impression that Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin means The Jolly Miller. I found it hard not to laugh. Anyone who has ever listened to the music knows there is nothing jolly about the songs.’

  ‘Franz, you didn’t say anything to her about that? She might take offence very easily.’

  ‘No, of course not, it would have been impolite. But I can’t imagine why she is bothering to talk at such length to me on subjects she knows nothing about.’

  Jenny found it easy to imagine the reason. For Lucy, Franz was an ideal target. He was young, handsome, and well-educated. Then followed the reasons that troubled Jenny’s conscience when she thought about their own liaison. He was alone, far from home, vulnerable ‒ very likely to respond to friendly overtures from a pretty woman. Lastly, he was married ‒ there was no danger he could take things too seriously if Lucy flirted with him.

  Jenny couldn’t say any of this to Franz. But she wanted to put him on his guard. ‘Dearest, please be careful. Lucy doesn’t like me ‒’

  ‘Doesn’t like you? But why not?’ To him, it was impossible not to like Jenny.

  ‘It would take too long to explain ‒ mostly it’s a family problem. All I’m asking is that you don’t take Lucy lightly. If she found out about us …’

  ‘What would she do? Cause a scandal? Surely not.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jenny said, deeply troubled.

  ‘In any case, what is there to find out? We meet almost as strangers these days. And our past is gone, melted away with December’s snow.’

  People began to filter back into the auditorium. Jenny turned to greet a colleague. The chance to talk was over.

  But she had been put on the alert, and now she noticed
that when Franz was one of the gathering Lucy always tried to arrange for him to be close to her. Franz was polite but not warm. Lucy became a little puzzled. Why wouldn’t he like her?

  She began to watch him at every opportunity. And soon she saw what no one else would have noticed ‒ that Franz had a deep interest in Jenny. Although he didn’t always sit near her at a party, he seemed always to be aware of where she was. If she needed anything ‒ a glass of wine, a fan, a pencil to write down a card score ‒ Franz was ready with it.

  ‘Anyone would think that young German was on the mash for you,’ she remarked softly to Jenny, watching him approach across the Cuddy Green as they walked back from church on the last Sunday of March.

  Jenny went cold. ‘Who do you mean?’ she asked, playing for time.

  ‘Mr Lennhardt, of course ‒ what other young German gentleman do we have in Galashiels.’

  ‘Mr Lennhardt? What makes you speak of him?’

  ‘Because I see him walking towards us at this very minute ‒ and what he’s doing here except putting himself in the way of meeting you, I can’t imagine.’

  Luckily Franz was provided with an excuse that had nothing to do with Jenny. He wanted to have a word with Ned about how to obtain fishing rights on the upper Tweed. Ned made it clear that he couldn’t possibly discuss such a thing early on the Sabbath but nevertheless invited Franz to the Sunday meal that evening, at which hour he might feel more free to talk about sports and pastimes.

  ‘He arrived here soon after we left for Glasgow last year, didn’t he?’ Lucy inquired when he had bowed and gone on his way.

  ‘Yes, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you remember, sister-in-law. It’s unlikely you’d forget the arrival of such an asset to Galashiels society.’ Lucy’s tone was teasing, but it had an undertone.

  ‘Jenny won’t let me invite him to the house very much,’ Millicent put in from behind Lucy. ‘She says we mustn’t show favouritism to any of the buyers.’

  This gave Lucy pause. If she had been in Jenny’s place she’d have invited Franz at every possible opportunity. So perhaps after all it was one-sided ‒ the handsome foreigner might be on the mash for Jenny, but Jenny wasn’t interested in him …

 

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