A Web of Dreams

by Tessa Barclay

  ‘So you see,’ Jenny said to Ned, when he came from Edinburgh for the Christmas vacation, ‘your misgivings were mistaken. Mother and Father are quite happy.’

  ‘And are you?’ he asked, studying her. She was thinner than formerly, her pale skin seemed stretched tighter over her high cheekbones, her dark eyes glowed bigger than ever in her face. ‘Aren’t you overworking?’

  ‘Oh, it’s only until we get really established. We’re doing well ‒ orders are rolling in. Our designs for next spring were all taken up and the samples for next winter are out now and getting a lot of approval, especially on the Continent. Oh, Ned, you don’t know how wonderful it is to see the bales of cloth going out labelled for London and Paris and Hamburg!’

  Well, she seemed happy, if finely drawn. ‘Just don’t overdo it,’ he urged. ‘You told me you were going to get other people to do the actual work, yet it seems to me you spend all day in the mill.’

  ‘But I love it!’

  ‘But, Jenny … After all, if you’re shut up there, you’re not meeting people.’ He meant, not meeting any men suitable to marry.

  She understood him quite well. ‘I’ve accepted almost every invitation that’s come in for parties at Christmas and New Year, Ned, and we’ve taken tickets for the Assembly Ball at the Ordnance Arms. We’ve only mixed in Galashiels society to the extent of tea parties and morning visits so far, but the family will get right into the swing of everything in the coming month, I promise. And when I’ve got the hang of what people expect, we’ll have a party here ‒ perhaps a Burns Night party.’

  ‘A Burns Night!’ He was surprised and pleased. There was something literary and intellectual about the notion. The habit was growing to give a dinner on the anniversary of the poet’s birth, with toasts and music, and recitations of the more famous works. ‘I could give a speech,’ he offered. ‘About the influence of Burns on the Scottish language ‒’

  ‘We’ll see, Ned, we’ll see.’ Jenny had no desire for a long dinner with too many whisky toasts and a static set of dinner companions. What she had in mind was a party ‒ not a ball, because she had no confidence in her own ability to deal with one nor in her mother’s. But a party, based on the notion of old country dances, the singing and playing of the songs Robert Burns had written, perhaps games or charades … She read about such things in the fashion magazines.

  The morning visits and the leaving of cards had brought the Corvills a large circle of acquaintance. Most of the initial calls had been from the wives of other cloth-makers or those connected with the cloth trade. The wife of the headmaster of the Subscription School, and the wives of the town’s two doctors had also left cards, besides those of most of the town councillors.

  Working her way painstakingly through the necessary return calls, Jenny’s mother had at first needed Jenny’s company as moral support. But she soon discovered that it was quite easy to pass fifteen minutes in polite conversation, that even the wife of a town councillor liked to talk about recipes and crochet, and that ‒ to her own surprise ‒ she was regarded as very ‘interesting’ because of her speech. All the Corvills were thought to speak in a very genteel manner, due to their Huguenot background. In fact, her fear that she might be looked down upon because she was really only a weaver’s wife was unfounded: in the Borders, where new mills were springing up every month, families were welcomed if they brought prosperity to the district, no matter what their origins.

  To the Assembly Ball they went as a family party. Jenny and her mother had new gowns for the occasion, Jenny in a copy of a French model in rose pink silk with rows of tassels on the crinoline skirt and a pretty latticed front-bodice, Millicent in dark blue with a frilled bertha edged in yellow and a matching yellow fan. Ned was looking handsome in black broadcloth and a silk shirt with a soft black bow. Even William, who thought this frivolity rather lax, was in a new evening suit of charcoal grey with a plain satin waistcoat.

  Jenny learned several important things at the ball. The first was that families of standing didn’t arrive at the time printed on the tickets ‒ that was much too early. The second was that Ronald Armstrong was present with a young woman on his arm. Well, why not? Anyone who could afford the price of the ticket could attend. The third was that Jenny herself was very attractive to men.

  It might be thought she had learned this through her affair with Bobby. Quite the contrary. For months she had been haunted by the idea that she had been taken by an experienced hunter, like a deer by a lion. He’d gone to bed with her because she’d been easily gulled, and easily available. Why had he continued the affair after that first night? Well, that was more difficult, but she’d thought it was perhaps because on his journeys to and fro on behalf of the Royal Household, he’d been too busy to find anyone better.

  But at the Assembly Ball she had assurance that it wasn’t so. Her programme for the first half was filled almost from the moment she had left her wrap in the cloakroom, and so she was spared the indignity of dancing more than one dance with her brother. Men already known to her through the family visiting were the first to approach, but it was soon clear that acquaintances were being asked to introduce others.

  ‘Miss Corvill, may I present Mr Archibald Brunton, of Bowden and the Mains Farm. Archie, Miss Corvill of Gatesmuir.’

  ‘Delighted.’ And it was clearly true. This tallish, darkish man with the smiling blue eyes was delighted to meet her. ‘May I have the honour of a dance with you, Miss Corvill?’

  ‘Oh, sir, I’m afraid … Not until after supper.’

  ‘Must I wait so long in anguish?’ he said, laughing.

  ‘Na, na, Archie,’ said Mr Cairns, ‘You were too slow off your stool. Miss Corvill, I won’t ask you to waste your time with an old fellow like me, but I beg to be of your party in the supper room.’

  ‘That will be a great pleasure.’

  ‘And when may I claim you after supper?’ Archie Brunton insisted.

  ‘Shall we say the eightsome reel?’

  He bowed and perforce moved aside as her partner claimed her for the next dance, a quadrille. She took the arm of Mr Hailes, the sleeping partner of Mr Begg of Begg & Hailes, a rather elderly, gossipy man who collected butterflies. ‘Let you not get too smitten with Archie Brunton,’ he said with a wink as he led her on the floor. ‘He’s the gay dog, is Archie.’

  ‘Mr Hailes, I’ve only just bowed to the man for the first time.’

  ‘That’s no guarantee you won’t be in his arms the next. Half the young women of the Borders have been in love with him. And half of that crew have succumbed to more than bows and curtseys, I hear.’

  ‘Mr Hailes!’

  He chuckled, handing her across to the ladies’ side. ‘Only joking,’ he said.

  Later she talked to Mr Cairns, the mill owner who had dismissed Ronald Armstrong for impertinence. As they stood waiting by their partners while the set formed and the fiddlers tuned up, she said in idle tones, ‘Did I see Mr Armstrong here with his wife?’

  ‘He’s not married,’ Cairns said shortly. The matter clearly still rankled.

  ‘Oh? I thought the lady with him was his wife, perhaps.’

  ‘I’m not the least interested in Armstrong’s doings,’ he said. And then, realising how impolite he had been, he coloured, his face glowing between his soft brown cheek whiskers. ‘Ach, I made an idiot of myself over the man,’ he said. ‘And naturally you’re interested because you were lucky enough to get him after I’d lost him by my own daftness. I think the lady with him is the sister of his landlady.’

  ‘Ah. He’s danced with quite a few others, I notice.’

  Mr Cairns looked as if he were a little surprised she should be so curious. ‘Oh, yes, he has a fair acquaintance among the ladies. He’s regarded as a respectable escort ‒ a widower, you see.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’

  ‘No, well, he’s not like to tell you himself. I heard it in a roundabout way. Lost his wife and child in a cholera epidemic in Glasgow.’

>   The orchestra struck a chord, the ladies and gentlemen bowed and curtseyed, the cotillion began. And that was the most Jenny was able to learn about Ronald Armstrong for that evening.

  The long cotillion led on to supper. She rejoined Ned and her parents, bringing her partner with her as etiquette demanded and being introduced to a young lady whom Ned had partnered. Her relatives joined them, and Mr Brunton appeared. They were able to commandeer a large table in a corner, where the ladies sat fanning themselves in the heat from too many gaslights, and the men went to fetch refreshments.

  Ned’s dance partner couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted to fascinate Ned or Archie Brunton. Archie soon solved her dilemma by devoting himself to Jenny.

  ‘I hear wonderful things about you, Miss Corvill,’ he began. ‘You run your father’s mill for him, I hear.’

  ‘You use wonderful in its old sense of strange or unusual, I suppose.’

  He blinked. He had thought she would demur, because to tell the truth he’d only just heard this piece of gossip in the course of trying to find out more about this exceedingly pretty girl. He hadn’t for a moment thought it was the truth.

  ‘Is it actually so, then?’ he asked, deciding to be open and frank about it.

  ‘It is actually so. Where do you live, Mr Brunton?’

  ‘My estate is at the village of Bowden, some miles to the south. You must come and ‒’

  ‘I only inquire because the place must be at the back of beyond. Everyone in Galashiels ‒ perhaps in the Scottish Borders ‒ knows about this strange species of woman who manages a cloth mill.’

  She was warning him on two scores: first that if he wanted a flirtation she wasn’t easy game and secondly that if he was interested in a more serious friendship, she wasn’t like the other women he had met.

  She wanted him to know it from the outset. Ned had reminded her she must think about marriage, and Archie would be considered a very suitable match ‒ a bachelor, of course, well-educated, with a great estate consisting of many farms let out to successful sheep farmers.

  The gentlemen were rejoicing in the fall of Sebastopol, certain news of which had just appeared in The Times. Discussion ensued about whether the Russians would now agree to a peace conference to end a war in which they were failing so miserably.

  ‘Poor souls, they were badly advised ever to get into it,’ Mr Cairns remarked. ‘I suppose, having put Napoleon to flight forty years or so ago, they thought they could do the same with France and Britain. Very foolish.’

  ‘The Tsar, I hear, is a very well-educated man,’ said Ned.

  ‘Aye, aye, probably better educated than his generals …’ To the party, it all sounded a very long way away, in a world they knew nothing of.

  ‘We sold a gown piece to the Tsarina,’ remarked Jenny, trying it out for the first time in public.

  ‘You did? You sent patterns to her?’

  ‘No, a lady-in-waiting came to our premises.’

  ‘My word,’ sighed Ned’s dancing partner in envy. ‘You actually met a member of the Russian court?’

  ‘Yes, a very elegant lady. She seemed very rich.’ Into Jenny’s mind flashed another picture, of another rich and elegant lady she had met that day ‒ Mrs Bobby Prentiss. She felt herself colour up, but the attention of the party was elsewhere, fortunately.

  ‘And did the Tsarina like the gown piece?’

  ‘We received a very appreciative letter,’ William Corvill said with pride. ‘Her Imperial Majesty was so good as to say the colour was superb.’

  A murmur of awe and appreciation followed. Archie Brunton said in Jenny’s ear, ‘I had no idea you had such notable customers.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and we have supplied tartan to the Queen and Prince Consort which they greatly liked. We think of having their letters framed and hung in a little room at the mill where we may receive buyers and visitors.’

  ‘The tartan for the royal family was ordered by a lady-in-waiting too?’

  ‘No, I met His Royal Highness personally.’

  Archie was impressed. Jenny couldn’t be sure whether it was good or bad to impress him so much. It might frighten him off. On the other hand, it might counterbalance the idea of a woman who went to work daily in a mill.

  She was aware that she wanted to cultivate his acquaintance. After all, she would soon be twenty. She couldn’t go on for ever without a husband. The term ‘old maid’ might not be applied to her, but to continue too long unmarried and in business would build up an idea that she was odd.

  Archie was by no means the only man she’d met since settling in Galashiels. But he was the richest …

  It was only politeness for her new acquaintances of the ball to further the friendship by a visit in the next few days. Unfortunately a spell of bad weather made this less possible. There was snow on the hills encircling the little town, roads became slippery although not bad enough to prevent goods being moved on heavy wagons. But if a man wanted an excuse not to take out his carriage for a journey from Bowden into Galashiels, the weather provided it.

  Instead a polite note came from Mr Brunton to Jenny’s mother, remarking on the pleasure of having made her acquaintance and that of her family. ‘We’ll invite him to the Burns Night party,’ said Mrs Corvill.

  ‘He won’t come,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Why would he not?’

  ‘It’s not elegant enough for him. A friendly party with country dances and hot punch ‒ it’s not what he enjoys.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ Millicent wondered. ‘You only met him the once.’

  Jenny didn’t reply. She was fairly sure Archie Brunton had found her a little alarming. It was a pity, because he was much the most entertaining man in the district.

  Other young men came. If Jenny had wanted merely to be a married woman, she could have achieved the status within the first year. She had two formal offers, which she as formally refused. And there was Mr Gables, a mill manager who loved her both for her looks and for the fact that she was a member of a family that was making money. This suitor she seriously considered: he shared a common interest and was a lively enough fellow, though bumptious. But when in the end she said she thought she would like to remain single a while longer, he left in a huff for the Yorkshire woollen mills.

  Naturally, everyone in Galashiels took an interest. So it was Ronald Armstrong, the manager of the dyeing department, who told her that Hector Gables had accepted a post in Leeds.

  ‘You hadn’t heard?’ he asked, seeing her surprise.

  She shrugged. ‘I daresay someone would have told me soon enough. When did he accept?’

  ‘Posted the letter yesterday, as far as I can gather.’

  ‘My word! News travels fast.’

  ‘Well, he’s making a great thing of it. It’s a promotion, of course ‒ he’s going to manage Macclethorpe Mill. Besides …’

  ‘What, Mr Armstrong?’

  ‘I expect he wants everyone to know he can succeed in his career even if he fails elsewhere.’

  She looked at the long, tranquil face. She had a feeling he was laughing inwardly. There was some slight glint in the hazel eyes that seemed to say so.

  ‘Well, Mr Armstrong, what are we going to do about this fugitive beige?’ she inquired, to show him that as far as she was concerned the affairs of Mr Gables were of no importance.

  ‘The mordant will have to be changed, that’s all. You’re sure you really want beige for a background?’

  She made no reply to this, for it deserved none. He had the graph before him, with its colours set out. All the same, perhaps it was unusual to want to make a tartan with a beige background.

  She answered the question he had not asked. ‘It will be good in a heavy weight,’ she explained. ‘For men’s capes and winter riding coats. We need to get a sample made as soon as possible to offer it in the pattern books for next winter.’

  He twitched his sample of yarn to and fro in his hands. ‘Aye,’ he sighed, ‘one thing about the w
eaving world ‒ you never seem to live in today, it’s always next season, next summer, next winter … And life’s going by all the while.’

  She felt an impulse of sympathy. She had thought the same thing herself more than once. ‘ “The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending” ‒’

  ‘ “We lay waste our powers”,’ he took up the quotation, regret in his voice.

  ‘Do you think you’re wasted here, Mr Armstrong?’ she asked. ‘In fact, now I come to think of it, I wonder you’ve never started up on your own.’

  ‘Oh, I thought of it, mistress … There was a time … But it seems pointless, doing it for yourself alone.’

  She knew he was thinking of his lost wife and child. They had never spoken of it, never in fact exchanged more than the politenesses of daily life. She was on the verge of inquiring if he had ever thought of remarrying, but something prevented her ‒ a respect she felt for him, for his privacy. ‘Ah, we’re melancholy today,’ she said in a teasing tone.

  ‘It’s not for anyone as young as you, Mistress Corvill,’ he said in the same manner. ‘Melancholy is for old men like me ‒ and it doesn’t help solve the problem of this exasperating shade of beige. I’ll away and have a think about it.’

  The conversation recurred to her again on the day of her twentieth birthday. On an impulse she took time off from the mill, ordered out the dogcart, and decided to amuse herself with a morning’s driving, a newly acquired skill.

  The sturdy cob, Downie, clopped his way with pleasure along the dusty road out of Galashiels eastwards towards Melrose and into the sun of the August morning. It was a journey of some five miles along the north of the Tweed with the slopes of Easter Hill and Camp Knowe on her left and the green river valley on her right.

  She was wearing a new capote hat, a birthday present from her mother. It had nodding pink roses and broad pink ribbons tying under her chin. Her gown, rather less hooped than usual because she had chosen to drive the dogcart, was of glazed cotton, cream sprigged with pink rosebuds, with cream gauze undersleeves which came down to meet the white kid gloves. She had thought that morning that she looked rather well ‒ the soft blush of colour suited her dark features.