“You’ll have to ask him here, Mother,” said Love, idly eating still more sugar.
“If he is a friend of Jane’s, we certainly shall sometime,” said Lady Cranstoun vaguely. “Love, darling, ought you to eat quite so much sugar? It can’t be good for your teeth.”
Jane’s heart had sunk. She knew that purposeful vagueness so well. Her mother was never anything but clear-cut and well-defined in her thoughts and deeds as well as words, and when she sounded like that it meant that she had no intention of doing anything about inviting ‘Jane’s friend’ to stay.
“I have a sort of craving for sugar just now,” said Love plaintively. “It supplies heat and energy, and I seem to need it. Mother, can’t you ask Jane’s boy-friend to come to Craigrois for the week-end after next? And we can have a sherry-party, and Perry will come. Perry’s so fond of sherry aren’t you, Perry dear?”
“Love!” said her mother warningly, “don’t be impertinent. It isn’t really clever. And I know there’s some reason why we can’t have Jane’s friend here that week-end—what is his name, Jane, by the way? Oh, Marsh. I see. I don’t seem to know it at all. Now, Love, just fetch the engagement diary, dear, and I’ll look at it. I don’t mean the one in the hall, but my own little book from the telephone table in the boudoir.” Love slowly uncoiled herself and went on her errand, and Sir Magnus, looking up from the game of patience which only a dinner-party could prevent him from playing every evening which he spent under his own roof, said: “I used to know a General Marsh, a gunner, who came from Herefordshire. A good old family.”
“I don’t suppose it’s the same,” muttered Jane, hating the usual parental research into pedigrees. “I think John told me that his father was a clergyman.”
“Church of England, of course. Rather a different matter from our padres,” said Sir Magnus. “Though of course they are excellent, worthy fellows—our ministers, I mean. Ah! Red six on black seven, and that brings it out.”
Love returned, fluttering over the pages of a small book bound in blue morocco. “Here you are, Mother.”
“Give it to me, dear. I prefer to look for myself,” said Lady Cranstoun firmly. “Now my spectacles, please—no, darling, not those. My reading glasses, in the red case. Ah! Just as I thought!” She sounded regretfully triumphant. “Saturday week is the day of the Unionist Concert in the hall. I knew there was something.”
“Well, good heavens!” cried Love. “Why shouldn’t John come to the concert as well? He’d probably love it. Perhaps he could do a turn, it would be a change from the everlasting old crusted performers.”
“John?” murmured Lady Cranstoun, raising her fine eyebrows.
“Oh, Mother! Paymaster-Lieutenant-Commander Marsh, R.N., if you must have it. I expect I shall call him John, though,” said Love. “Is Janey to ring him up and ask him, or will you write?”
For once Lady Cranstoun looked helpless. “You rush things so,” she said. “Jane dear, you haven’t been consulted yet as to whether you want to have Mr.—er—Commander Marsh here or not. Do you think he will be able to sit through a Unionist concert?”
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t try,” said Jane, her heart beating fast, gratitude to Love, suspicion as to her motives, and joy because she would soon be able to show John the places she loved, making her speak low and indistinctly. “We can tell him what’s in store for him, and leave it to him to refuse if he can’t face it.”
“Of course we can!” cried Love impatiently. “And now, Mother, you’d better let Jane ring him up soon or he won’t be able to come. Men are scarce, and he’s probably engaged for weeks ahead. Go on, Janey. Rush to the telephone!”
She seemed determined to have it carried through, and as usual, got her way. Jane rang up, John was delighted to accept, concert and all; Sir Magnus and Lady Cranstoun appeared resigned to entertaining not only a young man of whose antecedents they knew nothing, but an entire sherry party as well.
“Just a minute, Love, my poppet,” said Jane, when they were on their way up to bed, leaving Peregrine and Sir Magnus still deep in talk. “You don’t elude me so easily. Why this eagerness to have my boy-friend, as you call him, here? If it has anything to do with your half-baked plans for getting me married and off your hands, let me tell you that you’d better leave things severely alone, or you’ll find me settling down with a parrot and cat and some nice crochet-work in less than six months. Don’t let me catch you telling John these schemes of yours, or I’ll—I’ll—anyhow, you’ll be sorry.”
Love gazed at her, a limpid, round-eyed, innocent gaze. “Oh, Janey!” she said reproachfully. “As if I’d be so tactless! I only thought it would be a good thing to get mother and father accustomed to seeing men about the place. I promise faithfully that I won’t do or say a thing to John that will make him think I want him to marry you. There! Will that do?”
“I suppose so,” said Jane, but she said it doubtfully. There was something in this that she could not fathom at all, something connected with Love’s sudden tears at dinner, something that made her feel vaguely uneasy.
‘I expect it’s only because I want to see John so much that I’m afraid something may happen to stop him from coming,’ she thought before she fell asleep. ‘He sounded—not quite so gay as usual. It will be all right once he’s here. Darling John! How lovely it will be to have him at Craigrois. . . . Dear John. . . .’
Chapter Five
BEING YOUNG AND FOOLISH
“Oh, who is like my Johnnie.
Sae leish, sae blithe, sae bonnie!
He’s foremost ’mang the mony
Keel lads o’ coaly Tyne.”
“I’m getting a bit sick of that song, Love,” said Jane much more mildly than she felt. “We seem to have had nothing else for the past week.”
“It suits my voice,” said Love, peering over the battered top of the schoolroom piano at her sister, who was darning stockings in a chair near the fire. “Don’t you like it? I’m sorry.” Her voice was innocent and inquiring, and Jane did not see the glint in her eye. “I’ll try another.”
She struck a few chords and launched into a plaintive air.
“My Johnnie was a shoe-maker,
And dearly he loved me!
My Johnnie was a shoe-maker,
But now he’s gone to sea.
With dirty pitch to soil his hands,
And sail upon the stormy sea—
My Johnnie—”
“I think,” said Jane with restraint, “that I’ll go out. I promised mother to take some magazines to Mrs. Cleghorn.”
“Oh, dear! I’m afraid I’ve driven you away!” Love lamented. “But I have to practise.”
“Of course you have to, sweetie-pie,” said Jane in honied tones as she rose to leave the room. “But I don’t have to stay and listen to you, thank God!”
“What a pig you are, Janey,” Love said dispassionately. “My voice isn’t half as bad as some.”
“It isn’t your voice, it’s your idiotic choice of songs,” replied the goaded Jane.
“That was just to give you a—a sort of Johnnie background for when your Johnnie arrives this evening.” Love was injured.
“Thank you. It’s quite unnecessary.”
“I wish I knew some songs about Perry,” said Love discontentedly. “But it’s such a mouthful of a name whole, and the only things that rhyme with Perry seem to be fruit, berry or cherry or sherry—”
“Fruit?” murmured Jane dubiously.
“Well, it’s juice of the grape, isn’t it? But there aren’t any others, anyhow.”
“Ferry,” suggested Jane, thankful to have shifted the centre of interest from John. “Merry. Very. Derry—you know, hey derry-down-derry. There are quite a lot really.”
“All unsuitable. Perry isn’t very merry although he drinks quite a lot of sherry, and he certainly isn’t ruddier than the cherry. But he might haste to the ferry because he’s going home to Kerry—”
“Hey derry derry,” ended Jane obli
gingly.
“Janey, you do like Perry, don’t you?”
“Not much. He seems such a stick,” said Jane with unflattering haste.
“What a pity. Still, a little anti—anti—well, you know what I mean, isn’t a bad thing,” said Love, nodding her head mysteriously.
“Do you like him, Love?”
“Yes, I do, rather. I’m sort of sorry for him.”
“Well, take my advice for once and don’t tease him too much,” said Jane, “or he’ll soon develop a fine healthy hatred for you. I’ve seen him look at you as if he’d like to pop a good dose of arsenic in your drink.”
Love did not appear to mind. “It doesn’t matter much whether he likes me or not,” she said carelessly, and then, as if she knew that a question was hovering, added: “I’m going to sing again now.”
“Oh, Lor’! Can’t you wait till I’ve collected these magazines and got out of the room?” begged Jane.
“I musn’t waste any more time,” said Love virtuously, and burst into song.
“Down by the salley-gardens, my love and I did meet,” she sang, while Jane tied bundles of old Tatlers and Sketches together as fast as she could.
“She bade me take love easy, as the bird sings on the tree.
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.”
Jane fled from the schoolroom, banging the door behind her as a relief to her feelings.
John would be at Craigrois in time for dinner, but the few hours between then and now were going more slowly than all the rest of the week, and she was glad to have something definite to do to fill in the time.
With the heavy, slippery bundle of papers held in the crook of her left arm she walked by the narrow twisting path along the burnside which led down the glen to the head-keeper’s cottage, thinking about time. It went so fast when you wanted it to tarry, crept when you would have had it gallop; and when it once was gone, whether quick or slow, it never could come back. What became of the lovely hours you would have liked to live over again? Were they still somewhere? Were they wasted as much as those dreary ones you only wished gone? The hours and days and months had seemed to be of limitless length in childhood, when the year stretched like a great arc from Christmas to Christmas, and now they moved to an ever-quickening tempo, even the slowest of them. Jane knew that sadden passionate regret for childhood, schooldays, the first years of being grown-up and discovering that it did not bring entire freedom of action with it, which attacks everyone occasionally. The thought that she could never again be ten—‘in double figures,’ that high peak of importance to the very young—or thirteen, or twenty-one, or twenty-five, even, seemed to bring the end of life frighteningly close. How could the years go rolling on when she was dead, and they would mean nothing to her any more? How could the world not stop when she stopped breathing?
She shook it off in a minute, laughed at herself for a fool, reminded herself that, barring accidents, which one never really considers except as happening to other people, the grave would not yawn for her for some time; but she was in a sober mood when she came to the end of the thinning trees and saw the cottage standing close under a round green hump of hill, with the usual rowan-tree, planted to keep off witches, waving its new green leaves beside the gate. A deafening uproar of dogs barking rose as she drew near, and the leaping forms of several Labradors, their black coats shining like sealskin in the sun, could be seen at the bars of the kennels.
Jane, who had never been able to believe that anyone could be really afraid of a dog, walked up close and thrust her hand in to be nosed and licked. “Sam, old man,” she said, stroking the black velvet muzzles. “Ross! Dusk!” She was still there, the magazines, which had slipped unnoticed from her arm, lying on the path, when Mrs. Cleghorn appeared at the door.
“Eh, it’s Miss Jane,” she said. “Can ye step ben, miss? It’s a lang while or we’ve seen ye.”
“If you aren’t busy, Mrs. Cleghorn,” began Jane, who knew quite well that nothing was ever allowed to stand in the way of a prolonged visit, but had to observe the form proper to such occasions.
“Havers!” cried Mrs. Cleghorn. deftly retrieving the tumbled papers. “An’ me jist wearyin’ for a sight o’ somebody! Thinks I, if I could jist see Miss Jane comin’ doon the glen, I wadna ca’ the King ma kizzen. An’ here ye are, like an answer to a prayer. Come awa’ ben and gie’s yer crack.”
Thus cordially invited, Jane gave the Labradors a final pat all round, pulled Sam’s ears, rubbed Ross’s nose, and was ushered into a kitchen so spotless that it was hard to believe that a family ate, cooked, and, in the case of Cleghorn and his wife, slept, in it, for there was an old fashioned box-bed there, condemned as insanitary by an official, but staunchly defended by its occupants, who were loud in their wrath at the idea of having to give it up.
“I hear that you are to have another room built on, Mrs. Cleghorn,” said Jane, when she sat down on a chair to which her hostess had given an entirely superfluous flick with her blue apron. “That will be nice for you—less crowded, won’t it?”
“That’s as may be. I wad hae thocht that Sir Magnus had mair use for his money than tae start buildin’ rooms for fowk that doesna want them,” said Mrs. Cleghorn darkly. “It’s a’ the fault o’ that impiddent laddie o’ a Sanitary Inspector they’ve got in Milton noo, Auld Higginbotham, decent man, wad as soon hae thocht o’ pu’in’ doon Craigrois itsel’ as come pokin’ his neb whaur he wasna wanted. But this lad! ‘Oh, Mistress Cleghorn,’ said he”—here Mrs. Cleghorn elevated her long nose, raised her eyebrows, and adopted a mincing accent of incredible gentility. “’Ow, Mistress Cleghorn, this will nevah do at all. Nevah. Sleeping in the kitchen in these days! It’s not to be thot of. Ay’ll speak to Sir Magnus for you and hev this put raight immedjit.’ ‘Thanks for naethin’,’ says I, ‘I’ve aye been able tae speak for masel’, and Cleghorn’s no’ the man tae be feart for his maister, the mair when it’s Sir Magnus Cranstoun. I’ve sleepit in a box-bed since the day I mairret on Cleghorn,’ says I, ‘an’ no’ a whit the waur o’t. I’m a sicht healthier lookin’ nor yersel’, sleep in the kitchen or no’,’ says I. But he was neither tae hold nor tae bind. ‘May good woman,’ says he, ‘you must move with the times, you know, and if Sir Magnus won’t consent to build on, this cottage will hev to be condemned, ay feeah.’ ‘Aweel,’ says I, ‘ye’ll need tae dae somethin’ tae earn yer wages, but if ye’d tak’ that lang neb o’ yours an’ poke it ben a wheen hooses in Milton Riggend that disna belang tae Sir Magnus, ye’d maybe no’ speak sae fast aboot condemnin’ this. Dirrty stinkin’ holes.’ But I couldna stop him frae rinnin’ tae yer faither, Miss Jane, though I’m tellin’ ye, I was awfu’ vexed that he should be pit aboot by a wee whipper-snapper o’ a clurk like yon.”
“It’s called progress, Mrs. Cleghorn, and we all have to put up with it,” said Jane pacifically. “Anyhow, it’s better than having to build a whole new house. They can’t make them like the old ones, solid and lasting. And now, I’ve brought you a whole lot of Tatlers and things from mother. I think you’ll find a picture of them among the house-party given for the Minister of Agriculture at Mains. It’s quite good of father, but mother looks as if she’d been left out in the rain all night, poor pet.”
“They’ll no’ hae done her jistice,” Mrs. Cleghorn assured her warmly. “She’s a rale bonny leddy, but she doesna mak’ a guid fotty.”
“None of us does—at least, none of the females,” said Jane with a sigh, for she longed to present John with a large-eyed, etherealized, wistful portrait of herself, almost life-size, and knew only too well that the result would look, as it always did, like an elderly overfed pug in a bad temper. “Father and the boys at least turn out recognizable.”
“Never heed. Ye’ll be haein’ a grand pictur’ took in yer feathers an’ train an’ a’,” said Mrs. Cleghorn, meaning to console, but merely adding one more to the terrors of presentation.
“I suppose I shall,” Jane answered gloomily.
> “An’ whit are ye wearin’ for the Great Event, Miss Jane? Miss Love, bein’ whit they ca’ a deb, she’ll be a’ in white, eh?”
“Oh, yes. Lovely white angel-skin, I think it is. It will suit her very well indeed,” said Jane, knowing her hearer’s passionate interest in Society functions and the clothes worn at them. “Of course the feathers and veil and gloves have to be white, and she is going to carry flowers. They aren’t quite decided yet.”
“An’ yersel’?” persisted Mrs. Cleghorn.
“Mine is a sort of dullish silver brocade, woven on brown in a pattern of feathers.” Jane began to wish that she could describe dresses in the well-chosen words of Vogue. “And a train of the same, lined with green and a green ostrich fan.”
“It sounds kin’a dark like tae me.”
“Oh, but the silver shines a lot,” Jane assured her. “And of course I couldn’t wear anything too light, when Love is so much younger.” Then, to forestall further objections, she went on quickly “mother is going to look very fine, she has a very stiff purplish brocade, shot with blue and gold, and she’ll wear her diamonds and amethysts.”
“There’ll no’ be mony tae match her leddyship,” said Mrs. Cleghorn, satisfied.
“Nonsense, Cleggy!” Jane laughed, using their childish name for her, because her firm belief in the beauty and brains of the Cranstoun brought back memories of the days when they had all cone to tea with ‘Cleggy,’ and she had given them boiled eggs and girdle-scones and said to their nurse that they were the bonniest bairns in braid Scotland. “Nonsense. You know perfectly well that everyone will be at one or other of these Courts, and some of the women are lovely, really lovely.”
“They’ll no’ beat her leddyship,” was Mrs. Cleghorn’s firm reply.
“You may change your mind after you’ve seen the libellous photograph of her in the Tatler,” said Jane. “I must go. I shall be late for tea.”
Love Comes Home Page 9
