A Web of Dreams

by Tessa Barclay

  It took two or three weeks for Lucy to become aware of the fact. She was sitting one evening in the drawing-room, painstakingly writing invitations for an Easter outing, when she glanced up from Mrs Corvill’s list. ‘Mother, the Bruntons have been forgotten.’

  ‘No, dear, I left them out on purpose.’

  There was a tiny pause. ‘I don’t understand,’ Lucy said. ‘We’re not dropping the Bruntons?’

  ‘For the moment, yes.’

  ‘But … but … we can’t do that!’

  William Corvill looked up from his book. ‘We can choose our friends, I think.’

  Lucy never liked to oppose her father-in-law openly. After a moment’s thought she said, ‘It seems a shame not to be on good terms with the Bruntons. Mrs Brunton is a very agreeable lady.’

  ‘Certainly. I have nothing against Mrs Brunton.’

  The slight emphasis on the name was enough to show Lucy where the problem lay. After a moment she visibly gathered her courage to ask, ‘Has there been some new gossip to set you against Archie?’

  ‘Lucy, don’t concern yourself with it,’ said Mrs Corvill patiently. ‘It’s not worth your notice.’

  A flash of relief. Then Lucy said, ‘All the same, Mother, if we cut ourselves off from the Bruntons, it will look, very odd. People will say …’

  She glanced at Jenny, who was sitting under the lamp amusing herself with some pencil sketches of a new check she wanted to try.

  ‘Never mind what people will say,’ Mrs Corvill said.

  ‘ “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain”,’ quoted William.

  Lucy was silenced for the moment. But after a while she rose, to drift towards Jenny at her table. She sat down beside her. ‘Everyone’ll think he’s jilted you,’ she murmured.

  ‘Very likely.’

  ‘You don’t care?’

  ‘Not much.’

  Lucy played with the pen in her hand. ‘Have you had a quarrel with Archie?’

  ‘I haven’t exchanged a word with him since I got back from London.’

  ‘Then what’s it about?’

  Jenny looked up from her sketching. ‘Lucy,’ she said, ‘don’t ask questions to which you might get very unpleasant answers.’

  She saw her sister-in-law go very pale. For a moment there was a dreadful, beating silence between them. She feared Lucy might burst out in angry denial. But luckily the drawing-room door opened to admit Ned, fresh from an evening’s conviviality at the Galashiels Gentlemen’s Club.

  He told them it had turned colder again, Mr Nash had bought a roan colt, and the Church of Scotland minister was having floral decorations for Easter.

  ‘Papal fashions,’ said William, whose Secession Church would allow nothing but a plain deal table for an altar and no kneelers for prayers.

  ‘Did you see Archie Brunton at the Club?’ Lucy asked, greatly daring.

  ‘No, but there was great crack about him,’ said Ned, who had been once or twice to the whisky bottle at the Club. ‘What do you think? They say he sent out half a dozen Valentine cards with declarations of undying love! Got his groom to write the envelopes so the young ladies wouldn’t know who sent them.’

  Mrs Corvill smothered a laugh, Jenny smiled, Lucy looked vexed. William Corvill shook his head. ‘ “Let no man deceive you with vain words”,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a great one for a joke, is Archie,’ Ned murmured in mitigation. ‘There was no harm in it.’

  ‘He’s not a man I think highly of,’ his father replied. ‘I’d prefer it, laddie, if you would keep your distance from the likes of him.’

  ‘Father, he and I are friends!’

  Lucy flashed a glance at Jenny. There was defiance in it, almost as if she were daring Jenny to speak out. How ironic, that Ned should be claiming friendship with his wife’s lover …

  Jenny held her peace. Nothing could be gained from causing an open scandal. The best she could hope for was to keep the two families apart as much as possible until Lucy’s infatuation died away.

  On an afternoon at the end of March, a visitor was announced at the door of Jenny’s office in the mill. ‘Mrs Brunton,’ said the chief clerk.

  Taken aback, Jenny was about to say, ‘Tell her I’m engaged,’ but the lady herself swept in before she could utter the words.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Corvill. I hope you can spare me a few moments.’

  ‘Certainly, Mrs Brunton.’ Jenny stifled a sigh. She had a fair idea what was coming. ‘Pray sit down.’

  Archie’s mother settled her stout person on the straight-backed chair. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me what’s amiss between you and my son.’

  Jenny smiled. ‘Would you like some tea, Mrs Brunton?’

  ‘No, I would not like some tea. I’d like an answer to my question.’ She waited.

  Jenny shrugged.

  ‘I spoke to Archie,’ his mother said. ‘Last time, when the pair of you cooled off, he admitted he’d upset you and I got him to write a wee note. But this time … This time he gets flustered and embarrassed. He says he doesn’t know what to write and apologise about.’

  ‘Archie’s embarrassment is his own affair.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind! If it means he’s losing you, it’s my affair.’ She made a snorting, sighing sound. ‘I’ve looked forward to having you as a daughter-in-law, my dear. I can’t give up the idea so easily.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re saying … it’s off?’

  Jenny said nothing.

  ‘But why? Why?’ She hesitated. ‘Was it the Valentines? I tried to stop him but he would do it …’

  ‘I’m not perturbed about the Valentines, Mrs Brunton.’

  ‘Then what is it?’ She almost glared at Jenny. ‘I’m not leaving this office until you tell me what’s wrong so I can put it right.’

  She settled herself more firmly on the uncomfortable chair, folding her arms like a soldier.

  There was no help for it. Jenny said, with great reluctance, ‘Archie is involved with another woman.’

  ‘Ach!’ sighed Mrs Brunton. Then she gathered herself together. ‘But come now, Miss Corvill ‒ you’ve always known there were other women. His reputation is no secret. And one of the things I felt happy about was that I knew you could handle him.’

  ‘This is something I can only handle by putting an end to our relationship ‒ if there ever was one.’

  ‘You make it sound very serious. I wonder at you! What does it matter if Archie exchanges a kiss or two with a girl at a party?’

  ‘This wasn’t at a party. It was in a secret meeting ‒’

  ‘Come now, how could you possibly be present ‒’

  ‘I would rather not go into it.’

  ‘You saw him in some underhand situation with another woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I insist on knowing what you mean. You’re slandering my son.’

  Jenny sighed. ‘Very well. The woman was my sister-in-law.’

  Archie’s mother went very red. ‘That girl …’ she muttered. ‘I knew she spelt trouble, the moment Archie came home to say your brother had brought back a “sweet little thing” from Edinburgh.’

  ‘Mrs Brunton, it takes two to make the kind of trouble we’re speaking of.’

  ‘What exactly are we speaking of? If they had some foolish rendezvous that you happened upon, there’s no need to take it too seriously. Archie will flirt with anyone at the least encouragement.’

  ‘It was the middle of the night. And Lucy was in her nightclothes.’

  Mrs Brunton began to gasp for breath. Jenny leapt up to attend to her, but she waved her aside, gasping and choking, but in the end coming to herself. Jenny brought her a glass of water from the desk carafe.

  She sipped it, put it down. ‘The damned young fool,’ she groaned. ‘I knew he was up to his tricks. He was out in the middle of the night … He thinks I don’t know, but I hear hi
m come in so stealthily. But Lucy! How could he have been daft enough to fall into Lucy’s clutches?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘I think Lucy is very bored with life in the Borders,’ she suggested.

  ‘And very eager to score off you if she can! Why does the child dislike you so, Miss Corvill?’

  ‘Who knows? I don’t pretend to understand her. But the situation being as it is, you can see that any notion of a match between your son and me is out of the question.’

  ‘Aye, you could hardly feel happy with a man who might creep out of your bed and into your sister-in-law’s … Damn him, he hasn’t the brains of a hen! He’s lost the best wife he could ever have had!’

  ‘I wonder if that’s true,’ said Jenny. ‘I know from my own reactions to the mess that I never have loved Archie. A wife should love her husband.’

  ‘He’ll play the braw gallant until he’s forty and then some cold-hearted little snip will catch him and lead him a dog’s life …’ She got heavily to her feet. ‘Ach, Miss Corvill, this is a sorry ending to my visit. I thought to mend matters and see you my daughter-in-law by June.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Have you told anyone else what you saw?’

  ‘No, no one. Ned still thinks of Lucy as some perfect little porcelain ornament that must be kept in a glass cabinet, you see. I couldn’t hurt him needlessly. And my parents would be so shocked.’

  ‘You say nothing of yourself. Let me ask you this ‒ what will you do now? There’s almost no one else in the district worthy of you. You wouldn’t think of taking Tom Simpson?’ And at Jenny’s quick shake of the head, ‘Of course not, I shouldn’t have even suggested it. But then there’s only Hector Bruce, but you deserve better than a tenant farmer. Or Ainsworth ‒ but he has a vile temper, I hear.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Mrs Brunton,’ Jenny responded with hidden amusement. ‘I can survive a while more without a husband.’

  ‘But it will look gey strange ‒ unmarried and well past twenty. Before you make this break final, Miss Corvill, reflect! For all his faults, Archie is a great catch.’

  Jenny almost said, I don’t even like him any more. But there was no point in hurting his mother more than had been unavoidable. ‘I’m prepared to face the prospect of seeming gey strange. I want to be able to love and respect my husband.’

  ‘Aye, that’s understandable. I felt like that about Archie’s father ‒ the finest man that ever stepped. And the unhappiest day of my life was when I lost him. Today’s almost a match to that, now I lose you, my dear child.’ The older woman came to kiss Jenny on the brow. ‘Goodbye.’

  She moved to the door. There she paused. ‘Is there anything I can do to help matters?’

  Jenny seized the chance. ‘There is one thing … If you could make sure that Archie and Lucy don’t get a chance to meet?’

  ‘I’ll see he never gets within a mile of that little white cat. Rely on me, my dear.’

  She was as good as her word. News came by the end of the week that Archibald Brunton Esquire had left for a year’s visit to distant cousins in Canada.

  Only someone who knew the whole story would have seen the shock and disappointment on Lucy’s face. Then she gave a little trill of laughter. ‘That has a look of desperation,’ she cried. ‘People will say he had to leave the country to escape you, Jenny!’

  Even Ned was startled at the sharpness of her tone. ‘My love! If anyone says any such thing, I hope you’ll set them right.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The population of Galashiels were of a totally different opinion. ‘She wouldna have him,’ mourned the porter at the mill loading bay as he paid up on his bets.

  ‘She’s got too much sense,’ Ronald Armstrong said, watching the transaction with amusement. ‘How could you have thought the mistress would take a man like that, Rob? He’s got a head as full as a well-washed jug.’

  Some of the mill girls had come out to eat their midday ‘pieces’ in the spring sun. ‘What better could she want than Mr Brunton?’ one of them said wistfully. ‘Rich and handsome … I’d gie my soul for one like him.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re tending a carding machine and the mistress is managing the works,’ Ronald said.

  ‘What does that mean, Mr Armstrong?’

  ‘It means she knows what’s really important, Maisie.’ With a little nod for emphasis, he went back into the mill.

  Maisie looked after him, still pursuing her romantic notions. ‘If she werena so far above him, he’d think of her,’ she remarked.

  ‘Think of her? What way?’

  ‘For his wife.’

  ‘Dinna be sae daft, Maisie.’

  ‘He’ll never hear a word against her. I tell ye, he thinks of her.’

  ‘Och, havers,’ said the porter, and went back to work.

  If it were true that Ronald had some special feeling for Miss Corvill, the feeling must have been enhanced when, a few days later, she called him into her office. ‘Mr Armstrong, do you ever go fishing?’

  ‘Fishing?’

  ‘For trout.’

  ‘Oh, well … Aye, often enough, when I have the time.’ He was looking at her in bewilderment.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it. I’d like you to have this rod.’

  ‘Eh?’ he said, his mouth actually falling open a little.

  ‘It’s in token of my appreciation for the work you did on the Balmoral tartan.’

  ‘But … but that was just in the line of work …’

  ‘All the same, that tan line was a difficult shade to catch. And you did it so quickly. I hope you’ll accept this in the spirit in which it’s meant.’

  He took the long parcel from her in stunned silence. And then a beam of pleasure split his long face. ‘Why, I … I don’t know what to say … I never expected … It’s very good of you, Miss Corvill.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  If he had known that in fact it was less than nothing, that it was something she wanted to be rid of, he would have been less delighted. He would have wanted nothing to do with presents originally intended for Archibald Brunton.

  Her conscience troubled her a little when she saw how pleased he was. Yet, after all, he was a valuable colleague, an expert workman ‒ he deserved something as a reward. She reproached herself that she hadn’t thought to buy him something specially.

  But, if one thought about it sensibly, the reward an employee liked best was a rise in wages. Perhaps, at New Year, she would offer a bonus if sales continued to go up in this steady fashion.

  For after it became known that the mill had had a direct commission from the Palace, orders rolled in. They were working at full stretch. It was a most satisfactory situation.

  If only it could have been as happy at home …

  Archie’s desertion hurt Lucy. He hadn’t even sent her a note, got any kind of message to her ‒ he had just gone, as if she meant nothing to him. Somehow Lucy was sure it was all Jenny’s doing. Without any evidence, she knew it was so.

  She became restless, irritable. She practised long and noisily on the piano, attempting to master a ballade by Chopin that was quite beyond her, drowning out the reading aloud that had always been part of the family’s evening amusement. She scolded the servants over nothing. Her manner to occasional business guests of Jenny’s was less than cordial.

  Jenny thought about it, and came to the conclusion that Lucy needed something to occupy her. Since apparently no children were on the way, Lucy would have to be given a role to play.

  A week or two of thought provided the answer ‒ an answer that made a lot of sense. Jenny had understood very well that by dismissing Archibald Brunton she had perhaps condemned herself to spinsterhood. That being so, she might stay at Gatesmuir for the rest of her life.

  The house didn’t belong to the family. But it would be easy enough to buy it outright. She asked Mr Kennet the lawyer to get in touch with Colonel Anderson in Portugal. In about a month it was arranged, Kennet had power of attorne
y to act for the absent owner, papers were drawn up, Gatesmuir became the property of William Corvill of the Waterside Mill.

  William had been bemused at the notion of owning such a fine house. But he accepted Jenny’s reasoning. ‘Aye, lassie, if you’re not to find a husband, I see you want to be sure of a roof over your head. Only, I wonder that you think marriage so unlikely. I could ask among the menfolk at the church ‒ a respectable young man with good principles, not like yon Brunton …’

  ‘No, Father, thank you,’ Jenny said hastily. It amazed her to recall how he would have accepted some dark-clad, sedate young Huguenot only four years ago. She was well beyond that now. No one except herself should ever choose her husband. And there was no one she found to her liking.

  Now that Gatesmuir belonged to them, they could undertake work other than repairs. To Lucy, Jenny gave the task of supervising the redecorations. Afterwards, when she was engaged in wrangles about expense, she wondered at her own stupidity. But there was no doubt it brightened her sister-in-law’s outlook in the most extraordinary way to be looking through pattern books for curtain fabrics, discussing paint shades with the decorator, and driving to Selkirk or Peebles to look at carpets.

  It was going to cost money. And the result might well be a house not exactly to Jenny’s taste. But if it restored Lucy to good humour, it was worth it.

  High summer came, and the wool sales began. Jenny had a lot of anxiety over wool supplies to take her mind off Lucy’s great redecorating schemes.

  Wool for the Border mills came from two sources, by direct buying from local growers or through an agent known as a stapler. Until about ten years previously, Border mills had used Border wool.

  But Scottish sheep farmers clung to old-fashioned methods. They daubed their sheep with tar or butter to prevent infestation of the fleece. When the fleece was clipped, the wool was stained with these unwanted blemishes. Sheep-washing was supposed to clean the fleece before clipping but in fact it was impossible to use the wool at the mill until after expensive cleaning.

  As a result, wool imported from Australia was much in favour. Cross-bred sheep on the vast grasslands grew a purer, whiter wool. When Corvill and Son began production in Galashiels, it was often Australian Botany that went through their machines, for the heavier cloth.