“Not peevish with me, are you, Jenny? I ought to be peevish with you—falling into other men’s arms like that!”
She could not know that guilty conscience had made him assume the offensive, nor that the pricks were caused by the remembrance that his flirtation with Kitty Mariner, from a mild beginning fostered by boredom and missing Jane, had grown with terrifying speed like a tropic plant, until it threatened to choke out all other feelings. Knowing that his love for Jane was the more lasting and better thing altogether, he had yet lacked the strength to leave Kitty alone; even to himself he would not admit that most of the advances—all of them at first, had been made by Kitty, bored too, and mischievous as a young cat; that she would not have allowed matters to rest if he had wanted to. He had been glad to leave Chatham, and had settled down eagerly to his fresh job at Rosyth with the feeling of having turned over a new leaf. All the way to Craigrois he had been comforting himself with the thought that as soon as he saw Jane again it would be all right; he would confess to her, and she, knowing Kitty so well, would understand all that decency forbade him to say, and would forgive him. He would be able to get her alone, take her in his arms, tell her that their engagement must be announced at once, parents or not. And instead, what had happened? Everything had been knocked to bits by this damned sherry-party, and the sudden flare of jealousy that had scorched him at his first sight of her caught and held in Peregrine Gilbert’s arms, had not had time to die down before he had been dragged away and introduced to a frightful woman with a voice like a fog-horn. And then—there had been Love.
He had been prepared to like ‘Jenny’s little sister,’ and on entering the house with that couple of yards of bilge water who seemed to be on such infernally matey terms with Jane, had been staggered by meeting a vision, tall and slim and cool as Diana, but dressed and made up as that chaste huntress never was. She was lovely, under the mess of rouge and lipstick and eye-shadow with which she had daubed her charming face, and he had hated having to stand by while her mother told her off and sent her away to clean her face. Pity had changed to quick admiration when she appeared again in her absurd travesty of a child’s party-frock complete with schoolroom manners to match; he was enchanted with the spirit she had shown in turning the tables on Lady Cranstoun, that formidable if gracious woman, and had allowed himself to be taken away by her, forgetful of the opportunity he ought to seize to put things right with Jane. So now his tone was far from placating, it was positively truculent as he growled his annoyance.
“Falling in the fellow’s arms as if you belonged to him!”
Jane glared back at him, but kept her temper outwardly, though it would have been better for both if she had blazed up, for then kisses and apology would have followed quickly.
“Dear me, John,” she said lightly. “Aren’t you being rather ridiculous? I didn’t mean to slip on the rug, and I was only too thankful to be saved from falling by the nearest person. The floor is uncommonly hard.”
Gone in a flash was the knowledge that she had every right to be angry with him, and man-like, he became the injured party. “You were pretty careful to slip where he was handy, weren’t you?” he said.
Jane, remembering that it had been her haste to see him that had caused all this trouble, was angrier than ever. “If I wanted to be in Peregrine Gilbert’s arms as badly as all that, I’d think, of a better way of doing it!” she exclaimed.
“Yes. Bit public, wasn’t it? Tiresome thing, an unwanted audience.”
“Oh, John! Really you are too childish to argue with. Go and play with Love. In her present dress she’s just about your level,” said Jane.
“Right. I will.” He turned on his heel and walked quickly back to the drawing-room, and Jane realized too late that, far from taking Milly Graham’s sound if spiteful advice, she had deliberately sent John to seek consolation from Love.
“I don’t care,” she told herself untruthfully, and continued to speed the parting guests. The sound of the piano suddenly drifted into the hall where she stood, mechanically smiling, mechanically shaking hands and saying: “I’m so glad you were able to come. Yes, quite a good party, wasn’t it, thanks to Love’s sensational appearance as the infant prodigy!”
“Enfant terrible, you mean, don’t you?” said Peregrine Gilbert, as he took her hand and she made her stock remark like a cracked gramophone record playing the same piece over and over again.
“Do I? Yes, perhaps I do. Good-bye,” said Jane rather wildly, for the enfant terrible was singing, and the words came with painful distinctness to her unwilling ears.
“She passed the salley-gardens with little snow-white feet. She bade me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree. But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.”
Chapter Six
CONCERT PARTY
“Remember,” said Love, “this is an important occasion. You’ll have to behave with the utmost decorum, no matter how funny it may be.” And to point her warning she administered a shrewd pinch to the muscular arm on which she had laid her hand so confidingly.
The arm belonged to John Marsh, and since Jane, on his other side, appeared to be oblivious of his presence, he found himself more and more talking to Love, listening to Love, looking at Love. Especially looking, for Love, in cloudy black, wearing an old paste star borrowed without permission from her mother, was as peacefully attractive to the eyes as soft moonlight on a lake.
“But there’s sure to be a comic-song merchant. Aren’t I allowed to laugh at him?” he asked plaintively.
“Yes, if you want to, but you won’t. He won’t be comic,” Love assured him. “It’s the sentimental ones who make you feel like laughing, and you simply mustn’t, or you’ll disgrace us all.”
The Craigrois party made an imposing show, filling the front row of hard wooden chairs in the village hall, where they faced a small stage masked by curtains of a lurid blue, which were violently agitated from time to time by various anxious performers peering through holes to see if there was going to be a full house. Magnus Cranstoun, the elder son, who was always known as ‘Maggie’ to distinguish him from his father, had come home for a few days, and with John Peregrine Gilbert, and Sir Magnus himself, brought the number of dinner-jackets and boiled shirts up to four.
“A noble army, men and boys,” murmured Love, surveying them with satisfaction. “It’s most unusual to have more men than women at any sort of show here.”
John turned and looked back down the hall, which was rapidly filling now that the hour set for the concert to begin was past. “There seems to be plenty of men,” he began.
“Oh, there are lots, but not for us,” said Love. “The village dances can always produce any number of men. It’s when we start trying to have a party that the scarcity is so dreadfully noticeable.”
“I see. Is everyone in the place Conservative, then?” asked John. “It seems a very big turn-out for a smallish village, but I understood that it was a stronghold of Labour.”
“So it is, but all the Labour people come to the Conservative shows,” Love explained. “They wouldn’t stay away for a ransom. They love them, and then, you see, they have all the extra pleasure of going home and saying how rotten they were.”
John laughed, managing to sound quite free from care, which was hardly the case. With Jane sitting at his right hand, so close that his sleeve constantly brushed her bare arm, he could not feel entirely happy and at ease. The least sign of softening on her part, he told himself, and everything could still be all right, but she was wearing a dress the colour of dark red carnations, and this seemed to him a bad sign. She knew that he did not think red suited her, and yet she had put it on. He wondered if she had done so to annoy him, and stole a quick glance at her, but her profile, the small slightly retroussé nose, the clear pale cheek, the dark sweep of her brows, and her composed mouth, told him nothing. He made up his mind speak to her in the hope that it might betray her into showing feeling of some sort, but while he was wondering w
hat to say (wondering what to say to Jenny!) Peregrine Gilbert, on her other side, bent his tall sandy head towards her dark one and murmured a remark low in her ear.
It was of the most innocent, being no more than a comment on the number of Danny Buchanan’s supporters present, but to John’s jealous eyes it looked confidential, almost intimate; and he scowled. When he did at last catch her attention, injury was plainly audible in his sulky growl.
“Pretty cold in here, isn’t it?” he said, so savagely that Love uttered a smothered squeak and a giggle, while Jane started.
She answered with complete composure, however. “It will get very hot before the end. There’s practically no ventilation in the hall.”
The little pale mask of her face was quite inscrutable, but at least, while she spoke to him, she had to look at him. Desperately he tried to find another sentence, and in the sudden silence which so often falls at inconvenient moments, he said, loudly and hoarsely: “Jenny—”
Heads turned in his direction, but it was Love who answered his appeal. “Hush,” she whispered. “Don’t you see the curtain has gone up?”
John, appalled by having made himself not only absurd but conspicuous, for he had all the Englishman’s morbid dislike for limelight, looked at the stage, to see the blue curtains jerking slowly apart, and revealing a bare deal floor, an upright piano across one corner, a drooping aspidistra hanging its head in shame opposite, and in the centre, occupying most of the available space, stood a billowing lady whose voluptuous charms wore poorly concealed by a dress of vivid grass-green taffeta.
Love raised her programme to her face as if to fan herself, and murmured behind it: “This is our champion contralto. She sounds as if her mouth was full of plums.”
There was no time to reply before, drawing a breath so deep that it seemed the green taffeta would not be able to withstand the strain put on its creaking seams, the contralto began to sing, lingering over each richly glutinous note as if she could hardly bear to part with it.
“Oh, sahd were the homes in the mountain ahnd glen
When Ahngus MacDonald marcht toff with his men!
Oh, sahd was my heart as we sobbed dour good-bye,
Ahnd he marcht to the bahttle”—pregnant pause—
“maybe to DIE!”
“Oh, my God!” muttered John, writhing slightly. Along the row he saw Maggie Cranstoun hurriedly pull a large white handkerchief from his breast-pocket and stuff most of it into his mouth.
“Maggie’s off. She always finishes him!” whispered Love, who, except for an occasional convulsive tremor at some particularly poignant passage, retained a very fair semblance of calm. John began to see what she meant when she told him that he must not laugh. Close as they were to the massive singer, who bent forward impressively as she warmed to her work, he wondered if the mouth which she opened as widely as a hippopotamus, to disclose an astonishing vista of gold-stopped teeth, might not engulf them all at one fell swoop before they learnt of Ahngus’s fate. This catastrophe did not take place. Angus MacDonald came home from the war to a crashing of chords and a crescendo which almost blew the roof from the hall, and, bowing and smirking, the songstress retired from the stage. She gave place to a stout child in unbelievably short skirts who performed several solo dances with such abandon that the whole platform bounded and the aspidistra fell over into Lady Cransloun’s lap. The stout child was followed by a chinless baritone who proceeded to gallop through The Trumpeter at breakneck speed, leaving his luckless accompanist to rush up and down the piano in a vain attempt to overtake him; the baritone was followed in turn by a dismal violin, a young female reciter and a would-be comedian.
John, struggling between untimely spasms of laughter and bored yawns, had to admire the magnificent calm of the Cranstouns. They sat, politely gazing at the performers as if in rapt attention; even Maggie had recovered and no longer needed to screen his face in his handkerchief.
“Good old dicky-orum!” whispered John, as the comedian, after a final number in which mothers-in-law, Gorgonzola, and all the other time-honoured ingredients of a funny song were horribly combined, retired, mopping his streaming brow.
“Good old what?” Love turned a blank face to him.
“Good old Bones!” said Jane, and John, with the warm gratitude which one feels towards those who recognize a pet allusion from a book, smiled at her.
Once again he prepared to speak, once again he was thwarted. “Hush!” said Jane. “Miss Duffy is going to sing.”
“Soprano. Specializes in uplift numbers,” was Love’s quick footnote to this. “And if you have a good ear, prepare to suffer. She’s always just flat.”
John moaned faintly, set his teeth, leaned back, and announced that he was ready to endure the efforts of the faded blonde who now tripped girlishly on to the stage. Clasping her hands, from one of which floated a pink chiffon handkerchief, she closed her eyes and lifted her chin, thus giving a life-like imitation of a hen drinking, and warbled a bright little song called, apparently, ‘Peg Away.’
Once more Maggie collapsed, this time uttering a snort which he tried to turn into a cough as his mother glanced balefully at him. Unheeding, Miss Dully warbled gaily on, ever so slightly flat, but making up for it by a refinement of accent which rendered the words almost impossible of comprehension.
“Peg awee, led, never look sed,
Whatevah you find tu du.
Doon’t be afreed, deah little meed,
The work’s too hea-vy for you!
Peg awee, lass, peg awee, led,
Steady and staunch and gee . . .”
“What a good thing there’s an interval now,’’ said Love, when the song was over at last. “Maggie can’t control himself any more, and he makes such a noise when he tries not to laugh. It’s like the end of a siphon, all sputter and fizz.”
The interval was occupied by two short speeches, one from Sir Magnus: “I am sure we are all very grateful indeed to the artistes who have so kindly lent their services to make this evening thoroughly enjoyable. Here in Milton we have some excellent local talent, as I am sure you will agree after to-night’s delightful concert. I ask you to join with me in a very hearty vote of thanks to the performers.”
(“Loud cheers!” said Love, as everyone clapped and the back benches bawled “’Core!”.)
The second speech, unexpectedly good, lightened by a display of dry, crisp humour, and listened to with unflattering amazement by Love and Jane, was made by Peregrine Gilbert. As it had a political flavour and gave an outline of the Conservative party’s policy and programme, and urged reasons why every thinking man and woman ought to vote for it, the applause at the end was far from being as wholehearted as that accorded to Sir Magnus; but the mutterings and stampings of members of the opposite camp, restrained from a laudable feeling that they were merely guests this evening of their adversaries, were drowned in Conservative cheers, and Love clapped till her hands were sore.
“I would never have believed that Perry had it in him!” she exclaimed to John for the fourth time, “Would you?”
“I don’t know the fellow,” he grunted. “And it’s his job to make speeches, isn’t it, after all?” Then, feeling that he had been curmudgeonly, he added more generously: “Yes, it was damned good, and sound sense, he ought to do well if he gets in.”
Unfortunately for this handsome gesture, Jane, rather remorseful because she had so carelessly dismissed him as a ‘dry stick,’ welcomed Peregrine back to his place beside her with more friendliness than she had shown him before. “Full marks!” she said, clapping noiselessly with an approving smile. “You delivered the goods that time. The Labour people will realize now that you are a person to be reckoned with, Danny Buchanan or no.”
Peregrine, who had been acutely nervous, terrified that he might stammer at a critical moment and lose the thread of his remarks, was warmed by her spontaneous praise. His thin, hawk-like face reddened slightly as he smiled. “Thank you very much,” he said. “I believe
you really mean it, Miss Cranstoun.”
“Of course I do,” said Jane. “And by the way, have you really a prejudice against calling people by their Christian names’? I mean, would you prefer to go on calling me ‘Miss Cranstoun’?”
He shied away from her like a nervous horse, “I—er—well—” he began haltingly.
Jane laughed. “I’m not proposing to call you ‘Perry,’ if that’s what you’re afraid of,” she said.
“Oh!” Relief sounded in his voice, shone from his eyes. “It’s silly, no doubt, but I have a strong objection to that kind of shortening of a name. I shall be very glad if you will call me Peregrine—unless, like your sister, you find it too much of a mouthful?” he ended resentfully.
“Not a bit,” Jane said cheerfully. “After all the short names I’m accustomed to, yours will be quite refreshing.”
‘The devil it will!’ thought John, who could not help overhearing, as Love had bent forward to speak to her mother, and he had no one to talk to. “I suppose that’s a hit at me! I couldn’t very well have a much shorter name. Perhaps she wishes I’d been christened Nebuchadnezzar or Marmaduke?”
In his indignation he moved clumsily and bumped into her. Jane, turning, feeling more sure of herself than at any moment since he had come to Craigrois, smiled at him almost in her old manner.
“Well, John. Are you enjoying the concert?”
It was an olive-branch, and he knew it. There was no excuse for him when he answered coldly: “Very much, thank you. Love has piloted me through it, and given me tips about the performers.” His queer, sulky temper, which was apt to smoulder for days and burst unexpectedly into flame, more often than not scorching unoffending people, was his undoing on this occasion. Jane, feeling as if he had slapped her face, certain now that by rudeness he was trying to show that he no longer cared for her, was more hurt than angry, but she was angry too, which saved her, for rage has the quick, warming effect of a strong cocktail, comforting and helpful at the moment, whatever its result may be later.
Love Comes Home Page 11