“Of course. You always do, General. I wouldn’t have anyone else on my left hand, would I?” said Jane. “I only came to church for the joy of walking home with you and Miss Scott.”
While these exchanges of courtesy were taking place, on the cobbled open space in front of the Parish Church, a car drove past, showing a momentary glimpse of a smart hat and a hand in a white glove waving from the window.
“Some friend of yours, Jane, my dear?”
“No one I know, General. The wave must have been for you two,” said Jane.
“It was Mrs. Kennedy, William,” said his sister with a twinkle at Jane. “And as she certainly never bothers to wave to me if I am alone, I can only conclude that you are the favoured person.”
The General became exceedingly stately. “I do not consider that my slight acquaintance with Mrs. Kennedy warrants such familiarity on her part,” he said stiffly, and his companions broke into delighted laughter.
“Oh, darling, that was lovely!” cried Jane.
“What was lovely, my dear?” The General was horrified, in theory, at the mere suggestion that anyone should address him as ‘darling.’ In practice, and from Jane, he rather enjoyed it. There was not another person who used such an endearment to him since his mother had died, and the enjoyment struggled with and overcame the austerity of his question.
“The whole thing. You do it so magnificently. If poor Mrs. Kennedy had heard you she would be lying on the floor of her nice car crushed to pulp. Absolute pulp!” said Jane. “Don’t you ever try to do it to me!”
“The occasion is hardly likely to arise,” said the General.
“Oh, you never know. I might take a sudden fit of boldness and wave to you from the car one of these days. And I suppose you’d draw yourself up and stare straight through me with a look that would freeze my marrow!”
“I expect, really, Jane, he would blow you a kiss,” suggested his sister wickedly. She considered it very good for her brother to be jolted out of his old-fashioned stateliness now and then and was always ready to aid and abet Jane in her impertinences.
“Er-Edith! Ought we not to be walking on?” said the General with a repressive frown, which had had devastating effect in the Orderly Room, but entirely failed to overawe Miss Scott.
“Yes, really we should. This is Love’s first luncheon party on her own,” Jane explained, “and she’ll expect us all to be there punctually.”
“Ah, no doubt.” The General was sympathetic. “She will want your support, of course, my dear.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Jane cheerfully. “Love has never been in need of moral support in her life. She wants me to be there to see how well she does it.”
“Dear me!” said the General mildly, not quite sure whether to disapprove or be impressed. Miss Scott, however, was in no doubt.
“It’s an excellent thing in young people of to-day, this self-confidence,” she announced. “Of course they are bound to come croppers from time to time, but then, so did the diffident young of my own period, and suffered far more. They lost what little confidence they had, and in some cases never recovered it. Love is inclined to be bumptious and opinionated, but that will soon wear off, and she will find her level without too many blows to her pride and self-esteem.” She smiled down at Jane from her erect, slim height. “Now you, my child, aren’t nearly bumptious enough, and never have been.”
“No. I know,” said Jane, but she neither sounded nor felt depressed by this statement, though she agreed with its truth. She knew that in her engagement to John she was adequately armoured against the weapons of disapproval and criticism which had always found her so vulnerable before.
“I suppose you are talking sense, Edith?” said the General in a questioning tone that sounded far from certain of it.
“Certainly I am, William,” Miss Scott returned a little tartly. “I have always been renowned for sense if for nothing else.”
“I believe you’re hungry, my pets,” said Jane. “You both sound a teeny bit fretful. I hope there will be a decent lunch.”
“My dear child, do you really consider that Edith and I were—er—shall we say bickering?” asked the General in genuine distress. “Nothing was further from my mind, but of course as one grows older, crabbed age, you know—”
“Nonsense, darling!” and “No, no, William!” exclaimed Jane and his sister firmly. Miss Scott continued: “I dare say I was a trifle short, but you certainly weren’t bickering, William. Your manners are far too good, even to your cross old sister.”
“My dear!” said the General, embarrassed.
“What makes you think, Jane, that there may not be a ‘decent lunch,’ as you call it?” asked Miss Scott with interest. “It has never failed in excellence during all the years that we have eaten Sunday luncheon with you at Craigrois.”
“Ah!” said Jane darkly. “But then Love hasn’t been putting her finger in the pie, you see. The Armoury—I mean Mrs. Sword and Gunn—will brook no interference, and I believe they are the only people in existence over whom mother can’t exert her influence. They run Craigrois, and if Love has been making tactless suggestions to either of them, or worse still, has been giving orders, I hate to think what may happen.”
“Well, we shall know the worst quite soon,” said Miss Scott, stepping out more briskly than ever.
They were not far from the house now. Already the yew hedge loomed dark and solid through the budding oaks and the living green of young beech leaves and the pointed roof of the tower could be seen, its slates shining in the sunlight. A drowsy roo-cooing of wood pigeons throbbed on the still air, an obligato to the joyous calling of many cuckoos, a bumble-bee went booming past them in search of some early honied flower. ‘Perhaps there are primroses out on the sheltered bank beside the burn,’ thought Jane. ‘I must go and see in the afternoon.’
Love, wearing a dress of soft green, met them in the hall. “How late you are!” she murmured, with a glance over her shoulder. “The others are here, in the drawing-room, and they don’t seem to be getting on very well. I’ve plied them with sherry and talked till I’m quite hoarse and they just sit. Was it a very long sermon?”
“It must have been, if we’re late,” said Jane. “I’ll go and take off my hat, Love, and be down in a minute.”
Love nodded. “You look rather churchly. Your nose is glittering and you need a spot of lipstick,” she said with sisterly candour. “General, you and Miss Scott must come and unfreeze the drawing-room! I feel quite chilly after a spell in there.”
Followed by the General, looking apprehensive, and his sister, whose blue eyes shone with amusement, she disappeared into the drawing-room, and Jane went slowly upstairs, pulling off her hat on the way. She was in no hurry to join the party and have to meet that odious Gilbert man again. The one consolation was that he was not at all likely to recognize her from the morning’s encounter.
‘Really, I don’t look bad,’ she thought quite complacently, as she eyed herself with impartial severity in her long glass. This magpie outfit seems to suit me.’ She pulled out the white frills about her neck and wrists, saw that her hair was in ordered curls, brightened her lips, and went down again.
“Why this breathless hush in the close to-night?” she demanded as she stood in the drawing-room doorway. It was a ridiculous remark and neither deserved nor received a smile from the gloomy company which sat gazing dismally into sherry glasses. But she had seen at a glance that Love was nervous and unhappy, and wanted to help somehow.
“How are you, Althea?” she went on with determined gaiety, shaking hands with a girl whom she had known all her life, and adding in a quick aside: “mutes at a funeral, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t we?” agreed Althea Johnston fervently, and blushed to the roots of her pale-gold hair. “I mean, I mean, Janey,” she stammered, “that I’m awfully fit, thank you, and the parents sent their love and hope to see you soon.”
“I’ll ring up and come over one day this week,” said
Jane with a wink which no one else saw. She turned to Love. “I don’t think I know Mr.—Gilbert, is it?” she added, smiling graciously at the long morose figure standing near the fire, noticing in one lightning glance that he had hidden himself behind his big spectacles again.
Love, thankful to be rescued, muttered: “Mr. Gilbert, my sister Jane,” and fled to the shelter of Miss Scott’s kindly presence, leaving Jane and the tall stranger facing one another in the middle of the room.
“Miss Cranstoun and I have—er—met already,” he said in a halting manner which sounded shy to everyone but Jane, who was certain that she could hear annoyance and a hint of malice in his deep voice. Surely he couldn’t be such a bounder as to tell them all about their meeting at the top of the glen?
“Oh, have we met? I don’t think so,” she said a little too quickly, and a demon prompted her to add: “I’m sure I shouldn’t have forgotten meeting you.”
‘Quick worker Jane’s getting to be,’ was Althea Johnston’s inward and rather envious comment. Love thought, ‘My hat, Janey has a nerve, after this morning! Wonder if he’ll take her dare?’
The two older guests only saw dear Jane being charmingly polite to this difficult young man, this stranger in their midst who showed, so far, no sign of wanting to know his neighbours better, but must now be considered one of themselves since he had settled at Allander.
“We met, perhaps, a little informally,” Peregrine Gilbert was saying quietly but in a voice which carried round the whole room. Jane held her breath, but continued to wear a sweet incredulous smile.
“Didn’t we travel together from Euston yesterday?” he continued, and Jane’s heart gave one mad thump of relief and settled down to its normal beat.
“So we did!” she exclaimed. “How silly of me to forget. But people look so—so different in a train, don’t you think, besides being usually shrouded in papers and magazines. It was clever of you to remember me, Mr. Gilbert, and I do apologize for not having recognized you at once.”
“Luncheon is served,” intoned Gunn from the doorway, and with almost visible relief the party proceeded towards the dining-room.
Jane, sitting at the head of the table, opposite Love, was rejoiced to find that she had Miss Scott and the General on her right hand and on her left, while the obnoxious Gilbert, all the more abominable because he had given her such an uncomfortable moment, was beyond Miss Scott.
“Delicious salmon mayonnaise,” murmured that lady, who liked her food and was not ashamed of it. “Mrs. Sword has excelled herself, Jane. Your forebodings were quite unnecessary.”
“Yes. I’m very glad, especially for Love’s sake. She’s finding it much heavier going than she expected, I fancy,” said Jane. “But she’s carrying it off remarkably well.”
“Love has an aplomb far beyond her years. I can see her making a notable hostess in her own house,” said the General approvingly.
“General, what are you saying about me? Something nice, I hope?” cried Love, breaking off her conversation with Althea about Paris in spring.
“Certainly, my dear.”
Miss Scott raised her voice and repeated her brother’s remark in clear tones.
“Oh, thank you, General! You are a pet!” Love was delighted. “I mean to do a great deal of entertaining when I’m married.”
“You are engaged, then, Miss Cranstoun?” asked Peregrine Gilbert politely but without much interest.
“Not yet,” said Love cheerfully. “But I expect I shall be soon.”
“Dear me,” said the General in some bewilderment to Jane. “I thought—surely Love has only just left school? Do you mean to say that there is a probability of her being engaged in the near future? I suppose your parents know and approve of the young man?”
“As far as I know,” said Jane drily, “there isn’t any young man, unless she can have collected one on her way home. But Love has her plans all cut and dried.”
“Most extraordinary,” murmured the General, and turned thankfully to the scandalized Gunn, who with compressed lips was hovering at his right elbow.
“White wine, sir?”
“No, thank you. A little whisky-and-soda,” said General Scott, feeling that he required a stimulant.
Love, unconscious or unheeding that she had caused a sensation—Jane was not at all sure which, chattered happily on to her unresponsive neighbour. “You’ll have to work uncommonly hard if you’re going to get in against Danny Buchanan,” she told him. “Danny represents the popular front here, you know, and besides, being a local man gives him a tremendous pull. You’ve only bought a house, and the Labour people all think you’ve done it just to curry favour, and look on you with grave suspicion. Danny was born in a miner’s cottage at Blackburn and everyone knows him.”
“I know him myself, as it happens,” said Gilbert, languidly helping himself to salt.
“You do?” Love’s eyes opened so wide that they seemed to swallow up her small face, and the others at the table leaned forward to look at the author of this remarkable statement, except Jane, who perversely leaned back instead, thinking, ‘Met him on the road and passed the time of day with him to create an impression of mateyness, I suppose.’
“How do you happen to know Buchanan?” asked the General.
“He was my batman for quite a bit in France,” said Peregrine Gilbert, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Was he a good one? I should have thought he’d have resented it most awfully,” said Althea Johnston.
“He hadn’t started to bother about politics in those days. Neither had I. None of us had much time for that sort of thing.” said Gilbert. “He was an excellent servant, apart from his fondness for a white mouse which lived in his tunic pocket and was apt to pop out at inopportune moments.”
“I think that’s glorious,” said Love. “He ought to have saved your life or something really romantic like that.” Dreamily she raised a large spoonful of chocolate mousse to her mouth. (It had not failed to strike Jane that her younger sister had managed to cajole Mrs. Sword into including all her own favourite dishes in the menu.) “Then, of course,” Love went on, “you would feel bound to stand down in his favour and let him win the seat unopposed.”
This chivalrous picture provoked a burst of laughter.
“I doubt,” said Miss Scott, “very much whether the Unionist Party would be altogether impressed by such behaviour on Mr. Gilbert’s part, nor would they be likely to leave the seat uncontested to Labour. There are other candidates.”
Love turned a deaf ear to this. “Did he save your life?” she asked.
Peregrine Gilbert smiled for the first time. “No. I’m truly sorry to disappoint you, but he didn’t,” he said gravely.
“Oh, what a pity!” sighed Love. She turned away and began to discuss clothes with Althea.
“Miss Cranstoun, are you interested in wild life?” Jane, with a start, awoke to the realization that the question was addressed to her, that it had been put by Gilbert, and that it was evidently, from his patient expression, not his first attempt to catch her ear.
“I beg your pardon,” she said confusedly. “Wild life, did you say?”
“He doesn’t mean night clubs,” Love threw over her shoulder. “He means Flora and Fauna.”
“Oh, I see.” Jane paused for she added deliberately: “Not particularly, I’m afraid.”
She had no intention of revealing her deep delight in the countryside, the pleasure she gained from watching birds, to this strange man whom she disliked already.
He showed no disappointment. “I thought you might be one of those people who like to get up at dawn and go out to see the sun rise,” he said blandly.
‘Beast,’ thought Jane, and said aloud: “Dear me no. I’m much too lazy.”
“I thought we’d have coffee in the hall, Janey,” Love said, rising from her chair, and in the general movement Jane was saved from perjuring herself further. But only temporarily, for to her dismay Peregrine Gilber
t brought his coffee over to the big window which looked out on a stretch of lawn sloping down to the yew hedge. There was a deep, well-cushioned seat in it, and it had been Jane’s favourite corner of the hall from childhood. There she had brought her dolls and played with them in a rather unorthodox fashion, making them actors in dramas oddly unsuited to their staring blue eyes, dimpled china chins and flaxen curls. On cold winter evenings when the long heavy curtains had been drawn, she had always loved to creep in behind them, and, curled up on the window-seat, she had watched the chill green sky darken to a blue that was almost black, with stars popping out one by one, tiny twinkling points like the candles on the Christmas-tree. Or perhaps the moon had sailed up in haughty splendour over the bare black trees, flooding the open spaces with frosty brightness, but leaving the yew hedge darker than ever. Once she had seen three mallard fly across the moon’s chill face, out-thrust heads on long craning necks, wings beating their rhythmical way over the sky, and the beauty and wonder of it, like a Hans Andersen fairy-tale come to life, had never left her.
Now, standing there alone, for Love was showing snapshots to the others, Jane jumped and spilled coffee over her wrist as she heard his slow, low-pitched voice at her shoulder, saying: “You miss a lot, you know, by living in the country and not being interested in it. I—somehow I thought you would have been.”
Love Comes Home Page 6