A Web of Dreams

by Tessa Barclay

  She had wanted time to herself, to think. She was twenty years old today. Though she enjoyed her life, she heard again Ronald Armstrong’s voice: ‘Life’s going by all the while …’

  Recently she had been troubled by a restlessness, a nameless longing that made her want to move about without purpose or kept her awake at night. Sometimes, at an evening party when one of the gentlemen was rendering a sentimental song or a young lady playing a piece by Mendelssohn on the pianoforte, a chord would strike her as poignant, a phrase would bring tears to her eyes.

  It was a foolishness. But it existed, it was a factor in her life. She wanted to examine it.

  As she drove along she now and again passed a vehicle driven by someone she knew. She raised her whip in greeting. At a crossroads before Melrose she noticed a young couple standing hand in hand by a church gate, smiling at each other. They were unknown to her, but she was given a moment of recognition, a moment of envy.

  The thing that troubled her was loneliness. Though she had her parents and, when he was at home, her brother … Though she had a host of friends and acquaintances in the town … Though at the mills she was surrounded by people … She was lonely.

  She wanted someone for herself. Someone to be to her what Bobby Prentiss had been. Her own soul-companion, her lover, the one person to whom she was more important than the world ‒ the man who would assuage this longing that was of the body as well as the spirit.

  She pulled the reins to bring Downie to a standstill. For some moments she sat in the shade of a roadside tree, gazing with unseeing eyes over the meadow where sheep grazed on lush grass.

  She had refused or eluded four suitors. There had been reasons why they hadn’t pleased her. But it was time to be sensible. She at last understood that she had physical needs. Her affair with Bobby had given her experience beyond what most girls of her age were allowed ‒ and she didn’t regret it, she knew she had been blessed in the sensual pleasure of that happy time.

  But having once known it, she knew how empty her life was. She felt like Eve locked out of Paradise. Paradise was unlikely to be regained, but she could find some lesser happiness.

  By and by she drove on again and into the town of Melrose. The ancient settlement had grown up around the gates of St Mary’s Abbey, which still dominated the town with its extraordinary splendour of Decorated Gothic, its flamboyant tracery at windows and gables. A ruin for centuries, it was a place of romantic interest to many because Sir Walter Scott had praised it.

  Jenny handed the reins to a groom at the George and Abbotsford Inn. It was a little after ten. She paused to drink some cooling lemonade at a rustic table in the garden before sauntering on to look at St Mary’s.

  And there, strolling on the lawn, she found Archibald Brunton with a group of friends.

  He saw her and came towards her, recognition and pleasure in his eyes. Then she saw a slight hesitation. It was as if he suddenly thought that he ought not to seem too pleased to see her.

  But she was looking very pretty and very elegant, and he was with people who were very dowdy and very boring, friends of his mother’s, from Edinburgh.

  ‘Miss Corvill,’ he said, smiling. ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Brunton.’

  ‘Your parents are with you?’

  ‘No, I’m alone.’

  ‘Alone!’ He thought this unseemly, but said nothing. His companions drifted up. ‘Mother, let me present Miss Corvill, of Gatesmuir in Galashiels.’

  Mrs Brunton, rather stout in black poplin and a straw bonnet, bowed. Her friends were introduced, the party resumed its stroll in the sunshine around St Mary’s.

  When it became clear that Miss Corvill was of a family in manufacture, there was a slight cooling off in the interest of the Edinburgh friends. But when it became known that Corvill and Son had sold cloth to royalty, the coldness evaporated.

  Jenny invited the visitors to come to Galashiels if they had time during their holiday. It would be a pleasure to show them round the mill.

  ‘Should we see the tartan you sold to Her Majesty?’ inquired the youngest lady in the group.

  ‘Only a small sample is left, but yes, it’s on view. Also the one we sold to the Tsarina. And others, of course ‒ we have many clients among the nobility and gentry.’

  It was too enticing. An arrangement was made. Mrs Brunton nodded and smiled, and was encouraging. She too would like to come. She too would like to partake of the luncheon Miss Corvill would offer.

  Jenny wasn’t one who thought of things as ‘meant’, who believed that Providence intervened in the personal lives of mortals. But finding Archie here on the very day she had made up her mind she must marry was too apt a coincidence to ignore.

  Of all the men she had met since coming to Galashiels, he was the one she liked best. And now she had decided.

  She needed a husband. Archie Brunton was the man.

  Chapter Seven

  The difficulty soon became clear. Archie Brunton had no intention of dwindling into a husband.

  He was a 26-year-old bachelor who very much enjoyed his life. True, he must marry some day, to ensure an heir for the estate, otherwise it would all go to a hateful cousin in Berwick. But he had good looks, good manners, good health: any time up to the age of fifty he had only to crook his finger and a suitable girl or young woman would come running.

  In the meantime everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. He could flirt with all the pretty girls in his neighbourhood, and when he wanted something more satisfying there were always ladies available in the lanes around the markets, or in Glasgow or Edinburgh at the hotels. He could spend his money to please himself, not on the upbringing of children or at the behest of a wife. He liked to play cards a little, to back horses a little, to travel a little, to buy fashionable carriages, see the latest plays, and be admired as a gentleman of taste.

  Jenny wasn’t the first young lady who had set out to capture him. It was, of course, incumbent on every mother of a marriageable girl to get a good husband for her, so plans had been made and seiges laid for Archie Brunton ever since he came home from Fettes College. He was an old hand at avoiding the quotable declaration, the compromising situation, from which there was no escape for a man of honour except to offer his hand in marriage.

  Jenny understood this without having to be told. And her plan, if she had one, was simply to make herself such a pleasant companion that Archie would miss her sorely if they had to part. She didn’t imagine he could be made to fall passionately in love with her, and she was right. Archie had a poor opinion of love. He saw that it landed his friends in very dull marriages, and felt that love was bad for the brain.

  Jenny had an ally, unacknowledged and unannounced, yet powerful. Mrs Brunton wanted her son to settle down.

  She knew more about his activities than he guessed. An elderly male friend had murmured once that the boy had been seen in an unsavoury area of Newcastle, and on another occasion when supervising the sending of some of his clothes to be cleaned, she had found revealing hotel bills in his pockets.

  There had been other girls, more suitable than Genevieve Corvill, whom Mrs Brunton would have preferred as a daughter-in-law. But they had married other men and were mothers of young families now. Moreover, as she grew to know Miss Corvill, Mrs Brunton began to like her.

  It was true she managed the mill for her father. It was true she went almost every day to the office and conferred with workmen. It was true that she spoke with more assurance than was quite elegant in a girl so young. On the other hand, she was level-headed, intelligent, patient. She knew how to handle her own menfolk ‒ presumably she would know how to handle Archie.

  And, widowed, Mrs Brunton knew that Archie needed handling. Whether he would ever be a faithful husband might depend very much on how much work his wife would put into keeping him faithful.

  She took an important step to bring the Corvills and the Bruntons closer. She invited them to her New Year Ball
.

  ‘It’s so kind of her!’ cried Millicent Corvill when she took the invitation out of its stiff envelope. ‘Mrs Wylie was only saying the other day that it’s a great privilege to be invited.’

  ‘She likes you,’ her husband said, seeing it in simple terms. ‘I’ve seen you chatting together quite often.’

  ‘She’s very amiable,’ agreed his wife. But her mind was working, and she had understood the unspoken message, which was: let us bring Archie and Jenny together.

  Jenny understood it too, and made a very special effort on her appearance at the ball. Excitement and resolve had brought colour to her pale skin. Her hair was piled high in a coronet of ringlets threaded with pale blue ribbon. Her gown of cornflower silk was nipped in at the waist with silver braid which matched her fan.

  She was such a success that Archie Brunton almost failed to get on to her dance ticket. He was in quite a huff about it. After all, it was his house and she was his guest, and if anyone were to partner her it should be the host. He became quite possessive about her for an hour or two.

  Jenny noted it as one more step on the road on which she was coaxing him. And when the Corvills gave their January ball in return, she made sure that Archie was made to feel important. It was the first ball the Corvills had given at home, causing much terror to her mother, but with good caterers and a careful reprise of what they had seen at other houses, all went well.

  And it became the first of a series of enjoyable entertainments at Gatesmuir. From January into June, the house became the centre of social activity in Galashiels. Archie found himself looking forward to the parties, the at homes, the dances, formal or informal dinners.

  He began to be quite happy in this web the womenfolk were spinning around him. He found the Corvills agreeable enough, if only they had not been cloth manufacturers. Jenny’s brother Ned, for example, was quite the gentleman, and when you got away from the rather Quaker-ish home influence, quite good fun to go about with.

  On a June day Archie arranged a picnic outing to the banks of the Tweed where the view was considered to be very charming. It was to be a tour de force of organisation, with the food provided by the first-rate cook at the Mains, transported separately and of a very special standard ‒ pies kept hot in a hay-box, early strawberries and cream.

  Unfortunately the weather, which had been beautiful, turned cool. Archie’s new carriage developed trouble with the springs after he had left the Mains Farm and he had to accept a lift from Walter Hailes. The food was late arriving at the rendezvous. All in all, he was in a bad temper by the time lunch was served on the rather chilly knoll which had seemed so inviting when he first spied it out.

  The conversation turned to the new transatlantic telegraph cable which had just begun to be laid amid speculation about its ever being successful.

  ‘It will be a great impetus to trade between Britain and the United States if it works,’ Jenny said.

  ‘The achievement itself is more important than any results to trade,’ said Archie.

  ‘Oh, come now, Brunton ‒’

  ‘Yes, think what you’re saying, my boy. Science is the handmaiden of industry.’

  ‘More’s the pity! Pure science should be our chief interest. I sometimes think,’ Archie said, with a tilt of his handsome head towards the heavens, ‘that I should like to devote the rest of my life to astronomy.’

  ‘You’d have a hard time doing that without the money to finance it,’ said Mr Hailes. ‘And any money that is made available for science must come from trade.’

  ‘Quite untrue. If I took up astronomy I should use my own money, which has not been sullied by mere commerce.’

  Jenny glanced across at him, and caught a glint in his blue eyes that spoke of irritation with the occasion and the wish to vent it on someone. Sometimes he was very like a spoiled child.

  ‘I can’t see,’ she said, ‘that taking rents from farmers is uncommercial.’

  He sat up. ‘Money isn’t the first priority in land management, as it is in industry.’

  ‘But land management is an industry, Archie.’

  ‘Not at all! How can you say so?’

  ‘You rent land to farmers, who produce wool, which they sell, and from the proceeds they pay rent. If that isn’t an industry, I don’t know what else it is.’

  ‘It’s a relationship,’ Archie insisted sharply. ‘A relationship with people known to my family for generations. Not like in trade, where you have to deal with any rogue or vagabond who comes in off the pavement with money to pay for goods.’

  There was an uneasy pause. The party exchanged glances.

  ‘You seem to be saying,’ Jenny remarked, very cool, ‘that among the customers of Corvill and Son there are people you would find deplorable.’

  Too late, Archie saw where his ill-temper had led him. He said uncertainly, ‘No, I didn’t quite intend that …’

  Jenny gave her hand to Tom Simpson to be helped to her feet. She moved away, saying in a low voice to Archie as she passed, ‘Perhaps you should begin to think what you do intend.’

  She avoided him for the rest of the day, which was not a success in any sense. What was worse, she continued to avoid him. She ensured that her mother refused an invitation from Mrs Brunton to a concert in St Boswells, and also that the Bruntons were not invited to a midsummer lantern-party in the garden at Gatesmuir.

  A month went by. It was known that Ned Corvill would soon be down from university for good and that a dance would probably be given to celebrate his homecoming. No invitation or message came to the Mains.

  ‘Archie, what have you done to offend the Corvills?’ Mrs Brunton inquired when he came home from a few days at Peebles for the spa waters.

  ‘I? I’ve done nothing.’

  ‘Tell me the truth, my lad. Did you say or do something at that picnic last month?’

  ‘The picnic? Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because you came home in a gey bad mood, and there’s been a coolness ever since from the side of the Corvills.’

  ‘Well, let them be cool! I don’t care if they turn into icicles!’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Archie. You’ve been drifting about like a lost soul the last few weeks, ever since they stopped inviting us.’ His mother fixed him with a sharp blue gaze, like his own but colder. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t like it when a woman takes it on herself to argue!’ he burst out. ‘Who does she think she is?’

  Mrs Brunton laid aside her tapestry. ‘Archie, I’ll tell you who she is,’ she said. ‘She’s the best chance you’ve had at a wife who could keep you in order. And if like a gomeril you’ve put her off, I’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘Mother, I’m not thinking about taking a wife.’

  ‘The more fool you! How will you feel when she marries someone else?’

  ‘What?’ gasped Archie.

  ‘Do you imagine she’s going to cool her heels forever waiting for you? I estimate,’ Mrs Brunton remarked, ‘that the girl is going on twenty-one this year. She’ll want to be a married woman before she gets to twenty-two ‒ it stands to reason. If Tom Simpson ‒’

  ‘Tom Simpson!’ he said in scorn. ‘She’d never take Tom Simpson ‒’

  ‘She’ll take you if you ask her,’ his mother said. ‘But I think you’d better make up your differences first.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to apologise for, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘Archie, Archie …’ she sighed. ‘If you can’t do anything more constructive, at least ring for tea.’

  And she dropped the subject.

  But he knew she was right. It would be galling if Jenny Corvill married anyone else. He would be shut out from her friendship, from her lively world, from her pretty ways …

  He sent a bouquet of choice flowers from the garden of the Mains together with a note suggesting that there had been some misunderstanding between them. She replied saying she wasn�
�t aware of any misunderstanding but suggesting they hadn’t seen each other because she had been so very busy. Her father’s firm was buying out Begg & Hailes at the mill: it was taking up a lot of her attention.

  Her note was nicely calculated to tell him that she was ready to forgive him for his bad manners but that he mustn’t think he came first in her life. Chastened, he accepted the implied rebuke. He had missed her more than he expected.

  The friendship was resumed. Mrs Brunton beamed on her son. Though nothing had been said she thought she could hear wedding bells in the offing.

  Jenny’s mother, too, was pleased. She had gone along with Jenny’s insistence that they should stand off from the Bruntons, but her mind misgave her at the time. She’ll lose him, she told herself, she’ll lose the best husband in the district. But no, once again her clever daughter had been proved right.

  Archie had returned to the fold. And, like Mrs Brunton, Mrs Corvill thought she could smell orange blossoms.

  The party for Ned’s homecoming was the great event. He had not come back to Galashiels immediately on taking his finals but had waited to see the results posted. He had done well, a first class degree. So when he wrote that he would like to stay a few weeks more in Edinburgh with friends it had seemed only fair to let him celebrate.

  He was expected on the Wednesday of the last week of September. Mrs Corvill ordered a special dinner, had his bedroom aired, put fresh flowers on the high-boy, and badgered her husband to be sure to come home early from a meeting of the elders of the United Secession Church.

  Archie had called, to say ‘welcome home’ to a pleasant drinking companion. He was walking with Jenny in the garden of Gatesmuir when they heard the carriage come up the steep drive.

  Jenny eagerly picked up her skirts and ran round to the front of the house. The early evening sun was turning the trunks of the birch trees a silvery pink. The hackney that had brought Ned from the station stood on the gravel before the door, the steps already down.