“I don’t believe you’ve heard a single word of what I’ve been saying, Janey!” Love’s clear voice, with its disturbing resemblance to their mother’s, broke like a sudden peal of bells on her thought. About to apologize for inattention from force of habit, Jane stopped herself. After all, there was no need to be humble with a younger sister!
“No, I haven’t,” she said instead. “I was thinking about something else. Have I missed anything really important?”
*“Not a bit,” Love said cheerfully. “I was only babbling about being presented. Aren’t you the tiniest bit trilled, Janey? Aren’t you glad you were never done at one of those dull afternoon courts?”
“Yes, I am,” confessed Jane. “Because it’s Holyrood. I am very glad the parents could never rise to having me presented in London. Holyrood is so much more romantic than Buckingham Palace.”
“Much less room, if that’s what you mean,” said Love, quenching romance. Jane glanced at her regular profile outlined against the dark blue upholstery of the car, and wondered what went on inside Love’s head, what emotions stirred behind the still secret façade of her smooth face with its calm dark eyes. There was a poise about Love, even at eighteen, which she and Maggie and Stair never had, never would have, a perfection of finish which lay like a rich patina over her whole personality.
“Why did you laugh?” demanded Love, as Jane chuckled involuntarily.
“I was thinking that you are much more like the thirty-year old elder sister, and I the new débutante,” explained Jane. “I feel utterly gauche beside you.”
“It’s one of your best points, that youthful manner,” Love said calmly, as if she had given considerable thought to the matter. “Stick to it, and treat it as an asset instead of a liability.”
“Mother doesn’t think it much of an asset,” was Jane’s rueful answer.
“Mother doesn’t know everything,” said Love.
“High treason, my Love!”
“Only if you tell her, and you’re not likely to.”
“Hardly,” Jane agreed. “Oh! There are the Greenriggs at last.”
She leant forward, opening the window and peering out at the clear evening, as the cool soft air rushed in, bringing with it a scent of burning heather.
Quite suddenly they had left the last ugly outskirts of the city behind and were entering the eastern end of a long and wide valley, walled on their right by the unbroken line of high frowning hills. Grey drystone dykes bounded little pasture fields which ran up the steep hillside for a short distance and then gave place to rough bent grass and bracken. In the low ground it was a green country, whitewashed farmhouses, woods, and many streams, but it always looked as if the surrounding heather might creep back over it if it were left untended for even a short space of time. Southward stretched rolling miles of moor, still wearing its sombre winter brown: and, far ahead, the valley flattened out to gently rising ground from which the blue peaks of mountains—Ben Lomond, the Cobbler, Ben Vorlich, stood up magnificent against the pale gold west.
“So you aren’t really sorry to come home?” murmured Love, who had been watching her sister’s absorbed face.
“No. It’s lovely. I don’t know a lovelier place,” Jane said dreamily. “If only I could enjoy it in peace and not have to bother about all the things mother thinks it’s my duty to do.”
“Poor Janey. It’s a pity you’ve never learnt to say ‘No’ to mother.”
“Does that mean that you aren’t going to take any of these horrors off my hands?” Jane turned to look at Love.
“I don’t intend to be rushed into anything,” said Love. “Probably I’ll do something, because everyone ought to, for the good of the community, but I mean to look about first and have a decent fling for several months.”
“There’s never been any money for me to have what you call a decent fling,” said Jane. “Where do you suppose it’s coming from for yours? Our presentations will be the utmost they can manage, I expect.”
“Oh, I’ve been thinking that out.” Love spoke earnestly and confidently. “The first thing to do is to find a kind rich husband for you, and then the parents will only have me to worry about And I shall point out the great advantage of meeting people from your example, and they’ll see that I must be allowed my round of gaiety. Mother is just like any other mother in wanting to see her daughters well married.”
Jane, curbing laughter with difficulty, for Love now seemed quite ridiculously young in her bland arranging for the future, only remarked: “First find your kind, rich husband, darling.”
“Oh, I shall. In fact. I’m not at all sure that I haven’t got one for you already.”
“Good heavens!” It was a feeble rejoinder, but at the moment Jane was totally incapable of saving anything else. When John went to Rosyth and paid them a visit at Craigrois and they could announce their engagement, it might be a shock to Love, but that could hardly be helped. In the meantime there seemed no harm in letting her enjoy whatever plans she might have made. She could really do very little damage, for even Love would not be able to force her candidate for matrimony into proposing to Jane.
They had passed through their village, Milton Riggend, they had had a glimpse between old beech-trees of the severe Georgian pile of Allander and now they were turning in at the unpretentious gateway, guarded by no lodge, and up a long, tree-shaded avenue to Craigrois.
Jane forgot all the possible complications to which Love’s match-making schemes might give rise, in looking out eagerly for the well-remembered paths through the wood, the tiny Lily Loch, dark as a clouded mirror now, where water-hens and swans nested, and the keeper’s cottage, and the burn that ran down from the high tops of the Greenriggs. At last there was the ancient yew hedge, and behind it, on a level stretch of hillside, the grey house, its one little round tower with the sharply-pointed slate roof sticking up above the medley of other roofs all of different heights. Green lawns, the garden farther up the hill, sloping down southwards towards the house, old trees now bursting into brilliant leaf, a gravelled sweep, the front door oddly set in an angle of two walls, met Jane’s eyes as the car drew up. Over all lay that lovely light, too warm for silver, too pale for gold, seen only in the mild damp western climate, touching everything to an opalescent pearly glow, veiling and yet brightening the landscape, giving it a semblance of those ‘faery lands forlorn’ which belong to dreams. The air was still and cold, smoke from the chimneys rose vividly blue against the scarred cliff-face of the hills, to the south-east the sky was a clear unearthly green, with one brilliant star hanging low above the darkening moor.
“Come in. It’s cold,” said Love, and Jane, with a start, turned to follow her into the wide hall, where the polished floor shone like water, and a fire burned comfortingly. Over the mantel, looking in the dancing light of the flames almost alive, was the portrait of their grandmother, whom Love so much resembled. An unknown French artist had painted her lovingly and well, in a pale rose-pink crinoline with a tight bodice which displayed a pair of exquisite shoulders and a slender milk-white neck. Her folded hands were covered by short white gloves, in her dark ringlets were vine-leaves and a cluster of purple grapes. She smiled sidelong from the oval gilt mount with just Love’s small secret smile hovering about her faintly rosy mouth.
Jane, who had crossed to the fire and was looking up at the pictured face, was vaguely aware that Love was reading telephone messages written on a block which she had taken from the round table near the door, but she did not move until a rather heavy yet soundless tread and the faint tinkle of glass and china told her that Gunn, their elderly table-maid, had pounded in from beyond the service door. Then she turned with a smile.
“Well. Gunn, how are you?” she asked, going forward and shaking the wrinkled hand.
“As well as I can expect, miss, at my time of life” said Gunn, a flicker of an answering smile softening her rather grim face. “The better for seeing you and Miss Love home again.”
“That’s goo
d. Is the rheumatism still bothering you?”
“Not so bad, miss, since the doctor gave me a bottle to take for it,” said Gunn. “But as he said, miss, I canna expect to be without it now. It’s here for good.”
“Oh, Gunn,” broke in Love. “Will you tell Mrs. Sword, please, that we shall be six for luncheon to-morrow?” And as Gunn removed herself with the tread that advertised her presence rather by vibration than sound, she looked half-apologetically at Jane. “Sorry to be giving orders like this, Janey, but as you’ve only this minute arrived and don’t know what is happening, I thought I’d better carry on.”
“Of course. Do,” was Jane’s cordial answer. “When you’ve deputized for mother as long as I have you’ll be only too thankful to let someone else do it.”
“But I don’t intend to,” said Love. “Not for more than a year at the outside, once I’ve got you settled in life.”
Jane realized with some dismay that she had inadvertently reminded her younger sister of her matrimonial schemes. She did not feel equal to prolonged argument, her own idea being to leave it to time and experience to teach Love that other people’s futures could not be settled for them off-hand; and she was trying to think of a change of subject when Love herself provided one.
“By the way, there’s a telegram here for you,” she said; and Jane gratefully took the yellow envelope, tore it open, and read the contents several times.
‘DARLING HOPE YOU’VE ARRIVED SAFELY AFTER DECENT TRIP ALL MY LOVE WRITING, JOHN.
it said.
“From a boy-friend?” suggested Love rather anxiously.
“Yes. A boy-friend,” Jane answered carelessly, for she did not wish to discuss it. “Love, I must go to bed. I’m awfully sleepy.”
“Oh, but not before you’ve had some sandwiches and a glass of sherry!” cried Love, her mouth drooping disappointedly at the corners. “I ordered them specially, Janey, because I was sure you’d be hungry after the train. I always am!”
Jane, about to deny hunger, saw that Love’s eyes had wandered wistfully to the covered plate on the tray which Gunn had brought in, and changed her mind. “You’ll have to help me to eat them, then,” she said. While she nibbled at a sandwich and drank a glass of sherry—(‘Father’s best dry sherry,’ she noted inwardly)—it amused her to see that Love’s grown-upness had not so far affected her magnificent appetite, for she was devouring the remainder of the plateful with the zest of a healthy puppy, explaining between large bites as she did so: “I don’t want to leave any when poor old Gunn made them so nicely, in case she thinks that they weren’t appreciated!”
An odd home-coming, but rather a pleasant one, Jane decided, when, having mounted the slippery polished stair to her room in the older part of the house, she had kissed Love good night and was alone. For once there had been not a word of Guides or W.R.I., of fête or committee-meeting, and she found the omission refreshing. No doubt Love had been primed with messages and injunctions of that sort, but she had had the tact and sense not to mention them on this first evening. Jane picked up her blind and stared out at the deep-blue sky, studded with stars, cloudless. The voice of the burn which fed the Lily Loch fell gently on her listening ears, and an owl hooted loud and dolefully from the trees up the glen. She read John’s telegram again with a pleasant quickening of her pulses and put it under her pillow as she say down, fully expecting to fall asleep thinking about him. But strangely, her last waking thought was of Love, so poised, so sure of herself, so full of absurd plans, and with it all, so deliciously young. If a mere elder sister found her attractive, what effect would she have on men? Her clear voice, outlining her intentions, mingled with the soft muttering of the burn, and was gradually drowned by it; to the sound of running water Jane fell asleep.
She was wakened at dawn by a cock-pheasant crowing arrogantly somewhere below her window, by the plaintive cries of nesting plover, the wild call of the curlew, the notes of innumerable smaller birds tuning up for their first song of the day; then suddenly, clear and mellow and true, a cuckoo called on a perfect descending major third. It was the sound which always meant that summer was on its way, just as the curlew heralded spring as early as February. For a little Jane lay comfortably in bed, curled up, picturing the scene she knew so well. As early as this, everything would look a misty grey, dew-soaked grass, trees, sky, and the dim hills. It was curious how the greens seemed to lose their colour before the sun touched them, almost as though night had drained it away. On many a morning late in April she had crept from the house to see the sun rise, to see the moon pale from primrose to a mere tissue-paper shadow in the south. Sleepy no longer, she jumped up, pulled an ancient tweed skirt and woollen sweater from the wardrobe, dressed quickly and carelessly, stole downstairs and ran out. Her feet in old tennis-shoes crossed the drive without a sound, and left tracks over the lawn; the dew on the longer grass in the wood was cool about her ankles. It was lovely to be alive on such a morning, to feel that the world was her own; and the fact that she looked much more like a tinker than Miss Cranstoun of Craigrois added a final touch of piquancy to her pleasure. Had it been later in the day, or Jane less sensitive to the exquisite serenity of the morning, she would have sung at the top of her voice, but as it was she crept through the unfolding sprays of the young bracken noiselessly, almost holding her breath for fear of breaking a peace which the bird sounds disturbed no more than the noise of waves breaking gently on a sandy beach. Because it was Sunday and very early indeed, she knew that she would not meet even one of the gamekeepers; and it was with a shock of acute irritation that she saw, seated on a heather bush where the trees of the glen thinned to give way to open hillside, the motionless figure of a man in grey tweeds.
Entirely forgetful of her disreputable appearance, Jane advanced indignantly until she stood quite close behind him, and said, coldly and accusingly: “I suppose you know that you are trespassing?”
He started, but did not look round. With one hand he made a signal for silence, at the same time muttering just above his breath. “No law of trespass in Scotland. You might keep quiet for a minute, please.”
“I won’t keep quiet,” said Jane, her anger and her voice rising at his coolness. “Will you please go away at once?”
“Oh, damn! Now you’ve disturbed them!” he cried as angrily.
“Disturbed what? And will you go away?”
“Why should I?” He turned at last to face her, and under his cool grey stare Jane became uncomfortably aware of how she must look. “What business have you to be here, anyhow? I suppose you’re one of the campers from that caravan down in the Tinkers’ Loan?”
“Certainly not. I’m—” Jane began, and bit her lip.
Suddenly she realized that if she said who she was, and the tale of her having been met, dressed like a tramp and mistaken for one of those abominable camping people, ever came to her mother’s ears, as it almost certainly would, there was bound to be trouble. So she ended haughtily but rather unconvincingly:
“Never mind who I am. Please go!”
He only laughed, and there is nothing more maddening than to have the weak points of one’s position stressed by laughter. Jane’s cheeks became a fine vermilion, her eyes sparkled ominously, her breath came fast.
“Very well,” she said shortly. “I’ll go and tell one of the keepers. He’ll soon put you off. Law of trespass or not, you’re disturbing young birds.”
“There was no disturbance of any kind,” he told her, “until you came along and started to make a noise.”
“I’m going to fetch Cleghorn,” Jane said, and turned away with as much dignity as the consciousness of her bare legs permitted.
She had only taken two steps when he called her back. “You needn’t bother to tell Cleghorn,” he said.
Jane could not hide her satisfaction. “Oh! You’ve thought better of it, have you?” she asked. “I imagined that the threat would be enough “
“Not at all. It’s only that I’m too kind-hearted to let you go c
harging all the way down to the keeper’s cottage on a fool’s errand,” he said coolly. “In your present temper you’ll go at such a pace that either you’ll sprain an ankle or burst a blood-vessel I happen to have permission from Sir Magnus Cranstoun, the owner of the property, to come here as often as I like to watch birds. That’s all.”
Lady Cranstoun often deplored her elder daughter’s lack of dignity, and her laments would have been amply justified if she had happened to be present on this occasion.
“You beast,” said Jane. “You mean devil. Why didn’t you say so at the start?”
“You didn’t give me an opportunity,” he pointed out. “Besides, as I think I said before, what business have you to be here?”
“Oh!” Jane’s impotent fury almost choked her. Passionately she wished that she had been dressed for the part of the haughty Miss Cranstoun, daughter of one of the oldest families in the country. Her mother’s quietly-voiced but iron-hard rules of decorum rang in her head; for once she bitterly regretted that she fell so far short of them, and she could have cried with pure vexation.
“You’ve ruined the morning for me,” she said, knowing that the retort was childish in the extreme, but quite unable to stop herself. “I might as well have come out on a November afternoon in London, in a thick fog, if it’s any consolation to you!”
Love Comes Home Page 4