“How amusing for you both,” she said quickly, and at once turned back to Peregrine.
Neither she nor John gave that quiet man credit for being observant, and this was silly of Jane, who knew a little of his interest in birdlore. He was thinking, ‘that young fool of a sailor is behaving very badly, and the poor girl has taken a bit of a toss over him.’ In his new-born friendliness he was prompted to say to her: “To-morrow’s Sunday. There’ll be no keepers or anyone about really early. If it’s fine, would you care to come and watch the blackcock with me?”
“I’d love to. Thank you—Peregrine,” said Jane, the tonic of another man’s attentions restoring her a little.
“All right. Meet me near the top of the glen, and mind you come quietly through the wood.” Already he was half-regretting his offer, telling himself that he was a fool to be saddled with a girl who might want to chatter and would have to be constantly hushed.
‘“Come quietly?’ Perry, are you taking Jane in charge?” called Love with interest. “You’d make a very good policeman, you know! Or is it just a date?”
“Just a date,” said Jane blandly, and had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing John’s face darken still more.
“Oh, how thrilling! Perry, you are coming on! Tell me all about it!” cried Love. Then, in a different tone: “Oh, blow! There’s the curtain moving. This damned concert’s going to start again! What a bore—”
None of the three close to her echoed this regret, and indeed, Peregrine Gilbert muttered: “Thank God!” devoutly, as the curtain was hauled bodily apart and showed the stage crudely set for an even cruder representation of Ici Ong Parle Frongsay, by the local dramatic club, which piece was to form the second part of the evening’s entertainment.
“Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea,” said Love as everyone relaxed from the stiff poses they had almost unconsciously adopted for the singing of God Save The King. “You’d better come back with us, Perry, and have a drink.”
“No thanks,” Peregrine answered more hurriedly than politely. “I’m going straight home to bed.”
“Oh!” cried Love in horror. “How dull! They’re going to clear the hall and dance. I want to stay—John, will you stay and dance with me?”
“Not much of a floor, is it?” said John, who wanted to get out of the stuffy, smoke-fogged place.
“You aren’t going to dance here, Love?” said Lady Cranstoun. “There’s no need for any of us to stay, and unless you intend to walk home, you must come now.”
Love looked rebellious, but followed her mother’s slow progress down the aisle left between the seats to the door. While Lady Cranstoun paused to speak to this person or that, her younger daughter muttered in Jane’s ear: “It’s queer how mother always manages to stamp on one’s simplest pleasures, isn’t it?”
“Dancing in the hall may be simple enough, but it’s hardly my idea of pleasure,” retorted Jane, and Maggie, who, with John, was close behind the two girls, overheard and chuckled.
“Not even very simple, Janey,” he said, “when a real crowd like there is to-night starts trying to dance an eightsome in here. Do you remember the party father and mother gave here to celebrate their silver wedding? We barely escaped with our lives, an’ my dinner-jacket was practically ripped in half in the quadrilles?”
“Of course I remember,” answered Jane, with a faint sigh for that evening six years ago when she had been heart-whole and amused by anything that came her way. “I was ‘burrled’ round so hard that my shoes flew off, and one went right through a window and was never seen again!”
“I remember, too,” said Love. “I was twelve, and it was my first big party in the village. I fell in love with the blacksmith’s son, the red-headed one, and he gave me one of those darling button-holes that they plait from straw at harvest, and I kept it for months. And for old times’ sake I’d like to stay and dance again this evening. Wouldn’t you, John?”
“Not much,” said John, looking with distaste at the cloud of dust rising from the floor in a distant quarter of the hall, where young men more eager to dance than he had already piled up the chairs and were sweeping the dirty boards with tremendous vigour. “But we could dance in the hall when we get back to Craigrois, couldn’t we?”
“Why not?” said the good-natured Maggie. “I’ve brought some new dance records home with me, and lord knows there’s plenty of room.”
Lady Cranstoun, who was not really the kill-joy that Love accused her of being, not only agreed willingly that they might dance, but proposed that they should catch some of their friends outside the hall before they all roared home in cars, and invite them to join in.
“Well, mother’s done it now, so it’s no good saying anything,” muttered Maggie dismally to Jane, as they stood for a moment below the faintly smiling portrait of their grandmother in the hall. “But wouldn’t you know it? Four couples of us, and an extra girl.”
“It won’t matter.” said Jane, as she wound the gramophone. “Either Love or I would have to be the extra girl as it’s our house, so I’ll just slip away to bed. My head aches anyhow after the fug at that concert.”
“But hang it all, Janey, I want to dance with you,” said Maggie, who was one of those rare young men with a preference for his sister as a partner in the dance.
“If we don’t get a chance soon our steps won’t match any more and we’ll have to give up all our fancy-work.”
“We’ll have a private practice to-morrow afternoon in the schoolroom,” Jane promised.
“What will your young man say to that?”
“My young man? My young—oh, you mean John Marsh! But, my dear Maggie,” said Jane, much more loudly than she intended, “he isn’t my young man! What an absurd idea!” she ended with a hollow laugh, which was abruptly cut short as she realized, from John’s thunderous scowl, that he had heard.
Maggie was not deceived by her laughter if John was; but he had known her a great deal longer, with that intimate knowledge which no other human relationship ever acquires, and which is born of the blood-tie, and of days spent in the close companionship of nursery and schoolroom; besides, his judgment was not obscured by a guilty conscience and a growing sense of having been badly treated warring together.
“So Love’s pinched him?” he said at once. “Little devil, she ought to be spanked for the way she goes on.”
“She won’t be,” said Jane, ignoring the first half of his remark. “Love can do what not one of the rest of us can, Maggie—she can get her own way with mother. She isn’t going to be anyone’s doormat, and I admire her for it.”
“It would do her a power of good if someone in heavy boots wiped his feet on her, as she is now,” grunted Maggie, and started the gramophone. “At present she’s nothing but a menace. Because she isn’t a doormat, do you have to lie down and let her tramp on you?”
“I didn’t know I was letting her do that.”
“What else do you call it when she carries off your boy-friend from under your nose?”
“He is not my boy-friend!” cried Jane in a furious undertone, stamping her foot and causing the needle to leap wildly on the record, missing a beat and making a horrible scratching noise.
“Good God, Jane, what an elephant you are,” said the justly annoyed Maggie. “That’s one of my new ones.”
“Don’t irritate me, then. And go and dance with Althea, she’s trying to look as if she didn’t care and what-is-dancing-anyway? Go on, Maggie.”
“Well, dance round once or twice then, and we’ll stop beside her,” coaxed Maggie, putting a sturdy arm about her. Jane yielded to it, and in a moment they were moving smoothly over the polished floor, their faces grave with enjoyment of their rhythmic harmony of movement. John, dancing with Love, saw them, and though Jane was in her own brother’s unemotional and business-like hold, yet felt jealous because she was not his partner. Love danced well, but she lacked Jane’s exquisite precision, the finished grace which raised it to a fine art and yet
kept a quality of freshness and gaiety like an April morning.
“You don’t dance as well as Jane,” he said suddenly, as if the words had been wrung out of him.
“Well, of course not,” retorted Love, stung, for she had imagined that she was doing uncommonly well. “Jane’s been at it far longer than I have.”
“You little pussy-cat!” exclaimed John, and shook her none too gently. “What a rotten thing to say.”
“You said just as rotten a thing yourself,” said Love, her lower lip quivering childishly. “Perhaps you’d rather stop dancing with me!”
“Now, don’t be a little idiot. You don’t dance as well as Jane, and never will, however long you’ve been at it. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like dancing with you, because I do.”
“Are you in love with Jane?” asked Love, her resentment lost in curiosity.
“Is it any business of yours if I am?” he countered, steering her skilfully into an untenanted corner and there executing several intricate steps that tangled her feet badly.
“Of course it is,” she said at once, as soon as she had recovered herself. “Jane’s my sister, and she’s so ingenious, John, that I feel a great responsibility for her.”
“Indeed? Even when she’s so much older?”
“Don’t be a pig,” begged Love. “She’s awfully young for her age. You know she is. Are you in love with her, John?”
“Suppose I said I was, would you approve?”
Love shook her head. “Not at all,” she said.
“And why not?”
“Because you aren’t a bit suited to each other,” Love replied with such calm certainty that he felt rather shaken. Were he and Jane suited to each other? This week-end so far seemed to prove the exact reverse, and if it were so apparent to a child like Love—! ‘My God,’ he thought bitterly, ‘what a mess I’ve made of it! Why couldn’t I have left Jenny alone? Fooling with Kitty’s more my mark!’
“Now, you and I,” Love was saying, “would do very much better together.”
“Indeed?” said John blankly.
“Oh, don’t go on bleating ‘Indeed’ like that! it’s such an annoying mannerism. Perry has it too, and I mean to break him of it.”
“Ind—the devil you do!” hastily substituted John. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that you’re taking a good deal upon yourself?”
“Everyone ought to do some sort of good works,” Love replied. “Mother’s always at me about it, and I’ve decided that quietly reforming or improving people I’m interested in is the good work I am best at.”
“I see. And which of us are you starting on? Gilbert or me?” asked John drily. “Or Jane? You might even have a shot at your parents. Charity begins at home.”
“Father and mother are past improving, except by a convulsion of nature,” said Love quite seriously. “Of course Jane is on my list, and so is Perry, and I’ll add you to it to-night when I go to bed. I keep the names in a dear little green book, one page to each client—”
“Don’t you think ‘victim’ might be a better term?” suggested John. “Hullo, the music’s stopped. Thank you for the dance, and still more for your—er—illuminating conversation. I think I’ll take a turn with Jane now. I need a rest.”
But Jane had gone to bed, Maggie told him, adding carelessly: “I believe she’s getting up with the lark or before it to do some nature-study with Peregrine Gilbert. Pair of idiots, aren’t they?”
“Damn’ fools,” John gloomily but heartily agreed.
Jane, crawling sleepily and unwillingly from between the sheets at four o’clock the next morning, muttered the same words as she dragged on as few clothes as possible. Once she was out of the house, however, the lovely quietness of the morning laid its usual soothing spell upon her, like a cool hand on a feverish forehead. A heavy mist hung low over everything, blotting out the house before she had gone a hundred yards, the birds were only beginning to stir, and two hares, loping unafraid towards her, came so close that she could see the dark linings of their sensitive ears, the long whiskers, the timid prominent eyes. They passed within a foot of her as if she had eaten fern-seed and was invisible. Further up the wood she met a roebuck, and instead of turning and flying from her, in long airy bounds, he raised his dainty head, blew out his moist black nostrils and barked sharply and indignantly. ‘The glen is mine,’ he seemed to say. ‘What are you, a human, doing trespassing here so early?’ Then he turned and walked slowly away, his white scut bobbing, while Jane stood still, feeling that she ought to apologize.
As the path grew steeper, nearer the head of the glen, she became aware of a sound which, mingling with the low crooning of the burn, had been in her ears for some time, a rolling, savage sound, oddly like a wood-pigeon’s call, but lacking its drowsy gentleness entirely. “Roo-karoo ka-roo-coo! Roo karoo ka roo-coo!” it went, filling the throbbing air with the thrill of a distant drum. Jane’s heart began to beat faster in sympathy. She recognized the war-cry of the blackcock, challenging each other to combat for the sake of their shy dowdy mates, the grey-hens. All winter they had lived, gay bachelors, apart from the hens, and as if unwilling to assume the responsibilities of matrimony, were later in mating than any other gamebird. But now the time had come for them to set up their annual harem, and there would be many a savage battle before one, stronger than the rest, became the proud sultan, lord over many wives.
An owl flew out of a thicket, stroking the air with broad silent wings, and landing on a low branch, peered down at Jane round-eyed, cocking its head comically from side to side until she had to laugh, and it dived sideways into the depth of the wood again, rousing the newly-wakening blackbirds to a passion of frightened chatter. Flowers began to show their delicate colours among the leaves on the ground, rabbits scurried to convenient holes, and she reached the top of the glen and found Peregrine Gilbert waiting for her, leaning against the stem of a Scots fir.
He smiled and nodded, but did not speak, for the rolling of the blackcocks’ battle-song was quite close. Beckoning her to follow, he slipped over the wall where it was lowest, and went crouching through the young bracken on the other side, Jane, eager and excited as a zealous gun-dog on the first day of the shooting-season, hard on his heels. Where the bracken thinned, he lay down prone, and Jane crawled up alongside him. Peering between the straight green stems with their branching, feathery heads, reminded her of days when, as children, she and Maggie had lain deep in the bracken and fancied themselves lost in some tropical forest. There was no time for that sort of thing now. Peregrine muttered, so close to her ear that it tickled: “There’s very little cover now. We’ll have to crawl quite a long way, and don’t make a sound. You know how quick they are to see or hear anything strange.”
Jane nodded, and they set off again on their hands and knees, slowly and painfully making their way through tough, sharp bent and short heather, which pricked severely, and thrust up malicious pointed ends to scratch their faces. ‘Is it worth it?’ thought Jane with some bitterness as she was nearly winded by a stem springing upright after being flattened by Peregrine’s progress. Every now and then he stopped, and she had an interesting view of the hob-nails which in a complicated pattern decorated the soles of his heavy shoes. ‘Is it worth it? I wish I’d stayed in my comfortable bed!’
When she had thought this for about the tenth time, he stopped again, but this time he turned his head with infinite precaution and grinned at her. Jane, gathering that this was a signal for her to come beside him, crawled up and lay flat, the damp of the grass soaking through to her skin. In spite of the discomfort, she forgot all her doubts as to the wisdom of having come. The air was a-throb with magnificent hoarse sound, war-drums beating close at hand now. She was looking at a long shallow basin of boggy ground, backed by a line of low grey cliffs, above which the eastern sky was exquisite clear green, streaked with rose and lilac cloud, growing brighter every moment as the sun, invisible still, climbed up behind the distant hills. Tawny rushes, the pale bril
liance of new grass, the dark soft brown of peat, filled the hollow, and strutting to and fro, trailing their fine black-and-white tads, turning to spread them into fans, and all the time rolling out their challenge, were the blackcock, three or four of them, proud as rival pipers caught up in the madness of their own wild music. The grey-hens, a sober huddle of brown plumage, watched from a tuft of bent their splendid lords. Back and forth they went, their glossy black feathers showing purple-blue gleams, the red patches above their eyes glowing like flame, their throats swelling with noisy defiance, embodiments of male arrogance.
Suddenly the biggest of them selected a worthy opponent, and flew at him like a fighting cock, striking out furiously with his claws. All in a minute the others had joined battle in pairs, lyre-shaped tails spread and raised, red-wattled heads low. It was a savage conflict while it lasted, and ended as suddenly as it had begun, in the flight of the vanquished, which whirred away to a distant point, where they landed and called a last faint challenge. But who so proud as the conqueror, who marched up and down, up and down, in front of the hens, trailing his glorious tail, the depth and pride of his war-song doubled. No wonder, thought Jane, that it was a blackcock’s tail-feathers which pipers wore in their bonnets. His notes had all the wild throbbing of the drones, his walk was as swaggering as theirs. . . . And then a shepherd came in sight, collies at heel, long-handled crook helping his easy slow lope over the moor as he went his morning rounds. Blackcock and grey-hens rose in a storm of beating wings and swept off, passing close above their silent watchers, who could hear the air whistling through their strong pinions, and the bog was left deserted.
“Well,” said Peregrine, rising to his lean height and stretching himself. “That was worth seeing, wasn’t it? Look here, are you soaked?”
Love Comes Home Page 12
