“The pictur’s yon papers prents is a fair disgrace. Look at the Queen. A regular wee dumplin’ they mak’ her look, an’ the Duchess o’ Gloucester the same,” answered Mrs. Cleghorn stoutly. “They’ll hae used her leddyship that way, mair shame tae them.”
“All right, Cleggy. I won’t argue with you,” said Jane from the doorstep. “But to punish you for your obstinacy I’ll give you a photograph of me in my Court dress, and you’ll have to put it on the mantelpiece too.”
Mrs. Cleghorn, however, had the last word. “There’s naethin’ I’d like better!” she called after Jane’s retreating figure. “Unless the pictur’ o’ ye in yer waddin’ goon!”
Wedding-gown. . . . Well, perhaps Cleggy would see her in that sooner than she expected. At the thought, Jane’s sober mood of an hour earlier, already half swept away by her visit to the keeper’s wife, disappeared in a rosy haze of joyful anticipation. The wood had been dark and very quiet as she had come along, but now, going home—home to meet John! Sunlight was pouring between the branches, dappling the ground at her feet, gilding the vivid moss that grew about the tree-roots. The beeches were like green flame, the budding oak-leaves golden, while among their sombre cousins the spruces, an occasional larch lifted its brilliant spire. The burn ran, low and clear, at the bottom of a high steep bank starred with primroses, to the left of the path, and suddenly Jane saw that an open glade fringed with silver birches was blue as a fairy sea. The wild hyacinths were out at last, hiding their drooping bells among spreading fronds of springing bracken, rising in great clusters from the bright green grass, A blackbird, perched far above her on the swaying tip of a spruce-fir, uttered one or two tentative preliminary notes, and began his enchanting lay. Everything was young, fresh, lovely as a day in the beginning of the world when evil was unknown as yet, and man had been tempted by no serpent.
Jane idled along, missing not the tiniest circle of yellow or orange lichen on grey rock, the delicate silver-green croziers of fern thrusting their way from last year’s russet fronds, the toadstools in damper patches, startlingly bright. Bees hummed in the flowering plane-trees, a squirrel scolded her from a low branch before he ran up a tree, his bushy tail like smoke behind him, and stopped in safety to hurl small pieces of moss and the outer shells of beech-nuts on to the head of this large intruder on his preserves. Her eyes filled with beauty, her ears with the drone of bees, the blackbirds’ song, the everlasting murmur of the burn, she came slowly out of the wood beside the Lily Loch, where a pair of golden-eye duck, soot-black, snowy-white, floated at ease, reflected in the still water. It was absolutely still, utterly peaceful. The smoke from the chimneys of Craigrois, rising straight into the air, bright, soft blue against the background of dark hill, reminder that there were human beings within hailing distance, yet seemed to intensify the stillness. Then a coot called, a wild, lonely sound that echoed over the water, and Jane, skirting the loch, walked past the yew hedge and gained the house by a side-door.
“You’re very late. Jane. Did you stay a long time with Mrs. Cleghorn?” said Lady Cranstoun, pouring out a cup of very pale straw-coloured tea and looking at it doubtfully. “Ring for fresh tea, Love, please.”
“If it’s for Jane, you needn’t worry. She won’t have time to drink it,” said Love without rising. “She’s got to change still.”
“Change? What for? I shall dress for dinner as usual,” said Jane.
Love sighed patiently. “I suppose you’ve forgotten that there are people coming to sherry at six?”
“To-day?” asked Jane, her cup half-way to her lips.
Lady Cranstoun stared at her younger daughter. “Did I hear you say that people are coming here, this evening, Love?”
“You did,” said Love cheerfully. “Now, Mother, you knew they were coming—”
“How could I know? I didn’t invite anyone. Love,” said Lady Cranstoun, a brighter pink than usual in her cheeks, “if you have asked people here on your own responsibility, without my permission, it was an unwarrantable impertinence, and I shall be exceedingly angry.”
“What a lot of long words,” said Love, unawed. “But surely you remember my saying, when we arranged to ask John here for the week-end, that we ought to have some people to meet him, and that a sherry-party was the easiest? Of course you do.”
“I remember that you said a great deal, but I have absolutely no recollection of agreeing to any of it. Once for all, Love, have you asked people here this evening?” demanded Lady Cranstoun. “And if so, how many?”
For the first time Love appeared a trifle embarrassed.
“Yes. this evening. We haven’t time to argue about it, Mother. It’s five now, and I asked them for six-ish.”
“How many?” her mother repeated.
“Really not many—” Love’s discomposure was increasing. “More than I meant, as a matter of fact, but then one person led to another, and—”
“Twenty?”
“Well, no, more than twenty. As a matter of fact,” Love went on desperately repeating herself, “there will be about fifty-seven, counting the old Hardings, but I don’t suppose they’ll come, as a matter of fact, so there will only be fifty-five.”
Lady Cranstoun put a hand to her head and stared at Love. “You sit there and tell me that fifty-seven people will be here in less than an hour, and I knew nothing about it! Fifty-seven!”
“Probably only fifty-five,” amended Love. “The old Hardings—”
“Never mind the old Hardings. What do two more or less matter? How do you propose to make the preparations for a party of this size between now and six o’clock? I really despair of you.”
“Oh, the preparations are all made, except for clearing this room,” said Love brightly, more certain of her ground. “I told the Armoury that I was doing all the arrangements to save you trouble, and everything looks lovely. Mrs. Sword has made some absolutely wizard little eats, and Gunn has got lots of sherry decanted. I told her we needn’t have cocktails, just the sherry and some whisky in the background in case the men felt like it.”
“I suppose this is my house?” Lady Cranstoun appealed to Jane, who had sat silent, half-amused, half-admiring, throughout; but it was Love who answered.
“Of course, darling, but you want me to feel at home in it, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure that I do, to the extent of asking fifty-seven people here without consulting me,” said her mother bitterly.
“Fifty-five. Mother. The old—”
“If you mention the old Hardings again I shall scream,” said poor Lady Cranstoun.
“Mother, we’d better dash away and change.” This was Jane, finding her voice at last. “As it’s Love’s party, we don’t need to help. She can do it with Gunn and Mary. Where’s father?”
“Gone out to see the forester’s house. The roof has been leaking.”
“That means he can’t be warned. He’ll just plunge into the thick of it, unless he hears the noise and creeps into the library out of harm’s way,” said Jane. “Oh, well, he’ll have a living illustration of that poem in Punch that amused him so much. The one about ‘say it with sherry and plenty of din.’”
Lady Cranstoun, with a sigh, begged that plenty of ash-trays might be strewn about the drawing-room to save her new and cherished black carpet and followed Jane upstairs, just as the grandfather clock in the hall struck solemnly once for half-past five.
In the rush of changing from tweeds, thick stockings and brogues to garments more suitable for a sherry-party in one’s own house, Jane had no time to think of anything but Love’s amazing, incredible impudence. She had carried it off, too, as she so often did. Mother was completely floored for once, and could do nothing.
‘How she had the cold-blooded courage, I can’t imagine!’ thought Jane as she scrambled madly into fine silk stockings. “I couldn’t have done it, nor Maggie, nor Stair! Why, it was Love who got John invited—’
John! She had actually forgotten for the moment that among the guests wh
o would so soon be arriving, was the most important person in the world to her. Why, he might be driving up now. and she wasn’t ready—with that, she tugged at her stocking, and a long ladder rushed down it from top to instep.
“Oh, damn!” Jane tore it off, rummaged in a drawer for another pair, pulled them on with more regard for their cobweb fragility, and dashed to her dressing-table to do her face and hair. In spite of all her haste, the mishap had delayed her, and she sped downstairs to the hall, breathless, to see standing there below her a group of four persons: her mother, Love, and slightly in the background, two embarrassed male figures at whom she did not have time to look, for a ding-dong battle was taking place between mother and child.
“Go upstairs at once, Magdalen, and take that—that disgusting stuff off your lips and eyelids,” Lady Cranstoun was saying, and Jane, glancing at her younger sister, repressed a gasp which would have given her away, but with difficulty. Love evidently had ideas all her own about the proper face for a sherry-party. Always pale, she had heightened her pallor by a heavy application of blue shadow to her upper lids, while her mouth, usually tinted a decorous rose, now showed vivid pillar-box red. She looked pretty, fast, and at least ten years older than her age, and was dressed in a black garment so skin-tight that Jane fancied she must have got Mary to sew her into it after she had put it on.
“But, Mother!” The amazing vermilion lips parted on an angry wail. “Don’t, don’t be so utterly mid-Victorian! I can’t go about with a naked face, it isn’t decent!”
“Keep it as it is if you wish, but you are not going to appear before guests in my house looking like that,” was Lady Cranstoun’s ultimatum.
Jane, who had no desire to be involved in controversy which showed signs of being bitter and prolonged, had retreated silently, and now stood in the semi-darkness of a small landing halfway up, where the stairs divided to lead, right and left, to the older and newer parts of the house. But almost immediately, to her astonishment, Love came slowly up, and seeing her, burst out in a savage undertone: “Did you ever hear such rot, Janey? I’ve got to go and take off my lipstick, and it’s new, too! Of course I couldn’t go on arguing with people listening to us, but mother will be sorry for this!”
“Don’t be a baby, Love,” said Jane, who had turned her to face the light and was examining her face at close quarters with careful attention. “Mother’s right this time. You can’t go down like that. You look like a tart.”
“That’s just exactly how I meant to look!” was the astonishing answer, all the more vehement because it had to be spoken almost under her breath, since Lady Cranstoun could be heard inviting the two men to go into the drawing-room.
“Good heavens, why?”
“I had my reasons,” said Love with dignity, and vanished haughtily on her upward way. Over her shoulder she called back: “You’d better go down and rescue your Johnnie from mother’s clutches. He and Perry were the modest violets shrinking into a corner while she was slating me. Delightful family scene—calculated to make anyone feel at home!”
“Oh!” Jane heard only the first words. “Oh! Is John here?” She fled down the slippery polished stair so fast that her feet hardly felt the treads, never hearing Love’s contemptuous sniff behind her.
Cars were drawing up outside, the bell was ringing, Gunn was crossing the hall with heavy, measured steps to usher guests in, and Jane, wildly anxious to have at least a word with John before she found herself in the thick of a noisy crowd, slipped on a rug which she had always insisted was a death-trap, and was saved from falling by a pair of powerful arms.
“John!” she gasped, even as she realized that this hold was not only unfamiliar but far from ardent.
Before she could free herself, there was a scandalized cough from Gunn behind her, an outburst of loud and delighted laughter from the same direction, while over the right arm which encircled her so gingerly, she saw her mother’s face and raised eyebrows, and John’s amazed and angry eyes.
Discovered by the first of the sherry party in the unwilling embrace of Peregrine Gilbert, Jane longed to sink into the floor beneath her feet. That being impossible, she pulled herself violently away and turned to meet the amused glances of her mother’s vivacious friend Mrs. Graham, Althea Johnston, and a confused blur of other persons with what composure she might.
“Jane dear! How delicious! Are you rehearsing for charades? Or is this what you’ve learnt from the Silent Service?” shrieked Milly Graham with a laugh which Jane bitterly thought sounded like the neighing of a horse.
Peregrine Gilbert said stiffly. “It was an entirely unrehearsed scene, I assure you, Mrs. Graham,” thus merely making matters worse. For: “Spontaneous! Oh, better than ever!” said Mrs. Graham with another still louder laugh.
The unhappy Jane, standing between two men who both scowled at her for the same reason—that she had fallen into the arms of the wrong one, could think of nothing to say. The truth would only be twisted by the odious Milly into another of her would-be witty remarks. It was left for Lady Cranstoun to say, with a touch of asperity: “Suppose we all come into the drawing-room and have some sherry?”
“What a marvellous beginning to a party, Helen’” said Mrs. Graham, entering the drawing-room first of all, and at once seizing a glass from the tray offered her by Mary. “All the ice has been broken at once! And now, do tell me who the charming sulky young man is, who is glaring at poor dear Mr. Gilbert as if he wanted to slay him?”
“A friend of Jane’s. Shall I introduce him?” said Lady Cranstoun.
“Oh, do! A sailor?” cried the vivacious Milly, setting down her already empty glass and stretching out an eager hand for another, while her predatory eyes were devouring John.
So Jane, who was edging her way towards him to shake his sleeve and beg him not to be silly about Peregrine Gilbert, the dullest man she had ever met, saw John whisked away into Milly Graham’s clutches and knew that she had lost him for the duration of the party.
She had, but not to Milly, for Milly was about to be routed, horse, foot and dragoons, and from a totally unexpected quarter. The big drawing-room was full, people were beginning to overflow into the hall and dining-room, and Jane felt certain that Love’s fifty-five had been increased by more than the ‘old Hardings,’ when the perpetrator of the whole affair made a belated appearance.
Standing shyly on the bottom step of the stairs, her figure thrown into high relief by the dark wood at her back, was Love. A foam of stiffly embroidered muslin frills stood out round her knees, a rose-pink sash girdled her slender waist and matched the fillet which held her long dark hair back from a pointed elfish face innocent of powder or lipstick. Except for the long legs, encased in white silk stockings, ending in black dancing sandals tied round her ankles by narrow ribbon, she might have been ten years old.
“What, more charades?” called the irrepressible Milly over the heads which intervened between her and her appalled hostess. “Is that what a year in Paris does to our girls, Helen?”
Lady Cranstoun could only shake her head helplessly, but Love’s bell-like tones floated clearly to the ears of everyone. “It’s so ageing for poor mummy to have two grown-up daughters, isn’t it?” she was saying, and it seemed to Jane that she was almost lisping, so childish was she. “And I don’t feel grown-up a bit. I dread the day when I have to put my hair up and wear long skirts!” She tossed her mane and flirted her ridiculous dress, which her elder sister’s suspicious eye now recognized as a petticoat belonging to her own younger days, and resurrected from the dressing-up box, allied to a short-sleeved muslin blouse.
“I say. What a wizard child! And lovely as they make ’em!” murmured John’s voice, with such heartfelt admiration that Jane’s own heart sank like a stone. Love, she knew, was making her mother sorry for scolding her in front of the two men in whose eyes she had wanted to look sophisticated. Was she going to make the innocent Jane even sorrier? It looked uncommonly like it now.
“Come down from your pe
rch and stop acting,” said Peregrine Gilbert brusquely, sorry for his hostess’s hardly-concealed discomfiture, and longing to smack the minx who had caused it. “I’ll get you a glass of sherry. You must be longing for it.”
Love raised dove-like eyes to his, looking like one of Botticelli’s younger angels. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Gilbert,” she said in shocked tones. “But I’m not allowed to drink sherry. If I could have just a teeny, weeny glass of orange-juice I’d love it.”
Before Peregrine, utterly taken-aback and silenced by such barefaced lying, could rally, John broke through the crowd and caught her hand. “I’ll get you some orange-juice,” he said, smiling down at her—the crooked half-smile which had made so many women’s hearts turn to water. “I saw some just a minute ago.”
Love’s fingers curled confidingly round his. “That’s most awfully sweet of you, John. I may call you John, mayn’t I?”
Together they disappeared into the dining-room, while beside Jane, Mrs. Graham drew a long breath. “Well,” she said enviously, “that takes a lot of beating. Girlish innocence wins the day. But if I were you, Jane, and that young man is supposed to be your friend, I should take quite definite steps to keep him away from dear little Love.”
Jane turned off this remark, prompted by malice, with a smile and a slight shrug. “Too busy,” she said indifferently, moving over to General Scott who had no one to talk to for the moment. But the words stuck like a burr to her mind, she could not throw them off, and at last, to distress was added anger. Love did not know that she and John were practically engaged, but he did. There was the sting: he did, and he appeared to have forgotten it with the utmost ease.
“I certainly won’t remind him of it!” Jane vowed to herself, moving among the guests with a smile glued to her face, offering olives and smoked salmon and savoury biscuits. “If he wants to forget, so do I!”
When the party began to thin out, and people, taking leave of their hostess, were commenting with amusement on “that original child, Love,” John finally came up behind Jane, and putting his hand under her elbow, turned her to face him.
Love Comes Home Page 10