“Isn’t there anything else we can try?” asked Violet.
“Oh, yes, lots,” said Love more cheerfully. She rummaged in a drawer and produced a battered red book, from which she proceeded to read aloud.
“Here’s one about yarrow. ‘This is a weed commonly found in abundance on graves, towards the end of the spring and beginning of the summer. It must be plucked exactly on the first hour of morn; place three sprigs either in your shoe or glove, saying:
“Good morning, good morning, good yarrow,
And thrice a good morning to thee;
Tell me before this time to-morrow,
“Who my true love is to be.”
“I’m sure there isn’t any yarrow growing in Milton churchyard. It’s far too tidy,” objected Violet.
“Oh, bother. So it is. That’s no good, then. “What about the one where you sow hempseed and your future husband comes after you to mow it?”
“Ugh. I’d scream with fright. It’s as bad as eating an apple before the glass on Hallowe’en. Besides,” said the practical Violet. “We haven’t got any hempseed, have we?”
“It’s all far too difficult,” said Love, throwing the book impatiently from her. “You seem to require such impossible things, like the blood of a white pigeon, or ambergris, or garters. The only thing left is orpine.”
“What’s orpine?”
“It’s a plant with big bluey-green leaves, a kind of stone-crop, and I know it when I see it, because Jane pointed it out to me growing on the railway embankment one day, and told me that its other name was ‘Midsummer Men.’ We could get that.”
“What do you do with it?” asked Violet interestedly “Eat it?”
“How your mind does run on eating. There’s a tin of chocolate biscuits in my wardrobe if you’re hungry,” said Love. “No, I’ll read you the bit about orpine. ‘It is called Midsummer Men because it used to be set in pots or shells on Midsummer Eve and hung up in the house to tell damsels whether their sweethearts were true or not. If the leaves bent to the right, it was a sign of fidelity; if to the left, the true-love’s heart was cold and faithless.’”
“But surely you don’t mean to go creeping all the way to the railway embankment at this time of night?” said Violet, dismayed. “We’d never be able to find it in the dark.”
“No, perhaps we wouldn’t. I tell you what, Vi,” exclaimed Love, always eager to make plans. “We’ll have some biscuits now and go to sleep, and we’ll wake frightfully early and slip out and pick the stuff and hang it up. That would do just as well as to-night.”
Whereupon they ate several chocolate biscuits with total disregard for their teeth and digestions, lay down, and slept without moving until they were called at half-past eight the next morning. This effort represented all the attempt made by either of them to charm from the future its misty secrets, “It’s rubbish, anyhow. You know who your true love is, and I don’t mean to have one,” Violet said placidly.
Dressmaking, tennis, and the approaching court were more amusing after all, and Mrs. Sword had been so angry about her little pan, which, it appeared, was the apple of her eye and absolutely irreplaceable, that further experiments seemed inadvisable, especially as they might lead to uncomfortable inquiry.
The beginning of July saw the Cranstouns ensconced in a house in Heriot Row as guests of Lady Cranstoun’s aunt, old Miss Stewart, who thoroughly enjoyed the bustle and importance of the occasion. The sun shone, the skies were blue. “Trust Edinburgh to have real King’s weather for the royal visit,” said Aunt Arabella Stewart proudly, nor did the fact that a cloud-burst broke over the royal garden-party disturb her in the least. “Hoots,” she said, more proudly than ever. “It always rains on the Garden Party.”
She herself escaped the downpour, for having driven to the gates of the Palace in her own car, her ancient chauffeur, formerly her coachman, had refused to let her alight.
“If ye dinna ken what’s good for ye, Miss Arabella, I dae,” he remarked. “An’ I’ll juist turn the cam an’ tak’ ye back to yer ain house to hae yer tea in comfort, an’ dry.” Whereupon he had driven her inexorably home again to Heriot Row, and whatever disappointment his mistress may have felt was amply made up for her by the excellent tale she was able to tell her friends for months to come, of Riddell’s tyrannical care for her.
The Cranstouns were hardly so fortunate. They were well within the grounds of Holyroodhouse, their car gone beyond recall, when the heavens opened and pitiless rain fell on their defenceless heads. “Thank goodness we both chose short dresses!” gasped Love, as she and Jane huddled coatless beneath one sunshade in the inadequate shelter afforded by a small tree. “They’ll open some of the rooms and let us in,” said Jane hopefully. “I don’t suppose they really want us to drown.”
“We’d be drowned long before we got there, across all that grass,” retorted Love. “Oh, Janey, look, do look at that poor woman’s hat!”
The hat in question, an enormous cartwheel of crinoline straw, softened by the rain, had fallen in folds over the wearer’s face and hung far down her back while she, holding up her trailing chiffon skirts with one hand, was endeavouring to run towards a marquee in the distance. The green lawns of Holyrood presented a sorry scene of bedraggled finery, of delicate shoes thick with mud, of men like wet crows standing in dismal groups exuding a powerful odour of moth-balls from their seldom-worn garments.
“Ugh!” said Love with a shiver. “A trickle has just run down the back of my neck!”
Jane’s only answer was a sneeze, but it had excellent results, for a kindly St. Andrew’s Ambulance man, hearing it, made a gallant dash from his tiny tent near by to offer them shelter.
“Oh, thank you!” said Love, turning her vivid and lovely face to him. “Come on, Janey!”
She fled from the tree towards the offered haven, but Jane, following, was separated from her by a rush of women who had had the same idea, and before she could reach the ambulance tent, a hand grasped her arm, a well-known voice cried: “Jenny! Come with me. I’ve found a tea-marquee quite close. Will you risk it?”
“Will I not!” cried Jane gladly, running fast over the soaking grass, her gloved hand in John’s warm hold. They dodged in at the open front of the big marquee, full of drenched people and others less wet who viewed their damp neighbours with pitying condescension.
“What luck to find you in this crowd!” said John, firmly making a way for her to reach a place at the long table which stretched from end to end of the tent. “I came with the Admiral and his madam, but they’re safely parked in one of the corridors of the Palace. I saw your parents there too. Look here, you must have some tea at once, or you’ll get cold and sneeze in the King’s face to-morrow night.”
“Love is sheltering in the Ambulance men’s tent, nearer the gate,” said Jane. “It seems a shame to—”
“She’s all right as long as she’s under cover,” he said. “If I go to look for her now, the odds are that I’d never find her.” He seized a steaming cup from a waitress and handed it to Jane. “I must say, Royalty knows how to provide tea at its parties. This is truly regal. There’s that fat girl, what’s her name? the daughter of that awful vampire of a woman, tucking in for all she’s worth.”
Jane, following the direction of his nod, caught a glimpse of Violet’s stout form, incongruously enveloped in pale mauve, now crushed and wet beyond hope of recovery, wedged against the table munching happily, her mild eyes roving in pleased anticipation over the plates of sandwiches and cakes, her ready hand hovering over the one of her next choice almost before she had finished chewing.
“It’s a damned good thing that all H.M.’s guests haven’t appetites like hers,” went on John, taking up a plate of foie-gras sandwiches and handing first to Jane and then to everyone within reach. “The plates in her neighbourhood look as if a plague of locusts had been at ’em.”
“Poor Violet. She’s very young and easily snubbed, and nice things to eat are her only consolation. Milly give
s her a pretty beastly time of it,” said Jane.
“I’ll bet she does,” answered John with feeling. He was looking down at her with his half-smile which could still make her stupid heart jump, and she wished angrily that she knew of something about herself which might be disturbing to him in turn.
“I like your rig,” he said. “Much smarter than those trailing dresses even in decent weather. On a day like this they look like wet night-gowns.”
His quick blue gaze took in every gown in the marquee, then returned to Jane’s dark blue crêpe-de-chine, patterned with alternate blue and white medallions, in each of which was a tiny lion, blue on the white, white on the blue; the sable tie round her throat lent by her mother, the dark red roses clustered on the soft fur, and the small, tilted hat of dark blue straw.
So approving was the look bestowed on her that Jane could not bring herself to question his knowledge of night-dresses, wet or dry. Instead, a very faint colour stained the pure fine skin of her cheeks, her eyes darkened as they always did when she was pleased or stirred.
“Have some strawberries and cream?” he suggested. “Violet Graham’s had three goes to my certain knowledge, so they must be good.” His words were light, carelessly spoken, and might have been said to any acquaintance. It was his manner and look that set Jane’s heart beating so fast and unevenly, and in a moment she had better cause for this absurd behaviour of a machine which had been placed within the cage of her ribs merely to pump the blood through her body, and not as a gauge for the emotions. He touched her arm, bare between the short sleeve and the softly wrinkled glove, and murmured, suddenly husky and unsure of himself: “When your eyes go all dark and bright like that—like dew on ripe blackberries, they remind me of that farewell party at Chatham. Do you remember? And I begin to think, to wonder if perhaps—”
What he wondered Jane was fated not to hear, for, ruthlessly pushing aside by sheer force of weight all those who barred her progress. Violet suddenly joined them. Her hat was awry, her long white gloves as hopelessly dirty as her shoes and the hem of her pale mauve organdie, but her face was flushed with a child’s pleasure in a good party.
“Jane! Isn’t this fun?” she called in her loud young voice. “Oh, you’re eating strawberries!” This as if the fruit in question had never stained her own large pink mouth. “Oh, I’d love some—” with a beseeching look at John. There was nothing for it. Smiling resignedly, he battled his way once more towards the table, and Violet turned to Jane.
“He’s awfully nice, isn’t he?” she demanded.
Jane, a little dazed, said stupidly “Who?”
“Why, John Marsh, of course! Love’s young man.”
“Yes. But—Violet—what makes you call him ‘Love’s young man’?” asked Jane, her eyes watching his dark head move among the wet hats.
“Well, he is, isn’t he? Of course he is!” Violet’s eyes opened widely. “Why”—on a crescendo of such power that Jane felt sure she must be audible to everyone in the marquee. “Love told me he was! We were talking about getting married, and she said her husband would never expect her to settle down in one place, because he’d be a sailor and she’d go all over the world with him!”
“There are other sailors,” said Jane, her lips suddenly dry.
“Yes, but Love doesn’t know them, and anyhow, she meant him. She said so.”
“I see. But need you,” said Jane sharply, so sharply that Violet, who had never been reprimanded by Love’s kind elder sister in such a fashion before, wilted visibly, like a fading specimen of her own name-flower. “Need you bawl Love’s private affairs to the whole Garden Party? You really must learn to be a little less like a calf, Violet!”
“Oh!” whispered the crest-fallen Violet. “I’m sorry, Jane. I know my voice is rather loud—”
“Rather loud? It’s like someone speaking into a megaphone. No wonder your mother is annoyed with you sometimes.”
“I’m used to mother being annoyed with me,” said Violet. “But not you. Please don’t be annoyed, Jane, and oh, don’t tell Love I told you, or she’ll be annoyed too!” She looked as if she were about to burst into tears, and Jane, her quick, heartening anger entirely evaporated, leaving nothing behind it but a redoubled heartache, said:
“No. I won’t tell her. I’m not so silly. If there’s anything in what you say, Love will tell me herself when she feels like it. And now I must go and find mother and father. Will you make my excuses to John for me?”
“Oh, I will!” cried Violet fervently, and Jane slipped quickly out of the tea-tent.
It had stopped raining, and though thunder was still growling like distant guns away to the west, the air was clear, the sun making a watery effort to brighten the scene. Dresses were beginning to dry, and though woefully crumpled, no longer clung to their wearers’ limbs in hampering folds. Everyone was moving towards one particular part of the gardens, there were murmurs that the King and Queen were coming out, and their guests were being formed into long lanes by the Scottish Archers, whose dark-green bonnets could be seen bobbing about among the throng, marshalling, moving back, beckoning forward, with calm authority.
But the Garden Party, as far as Jane was concerned, was a failure now. Even the sight of Majesty, grey top-hat in hand, bowing and smiling, speaking a few slow words here and there, even the rosy vision of the dark-haired Queen and the two grave, charming children who followed her hand in hand, could not rouse her from the depression into which Violet’s words had thrown her, all the greater because it had come on the heels of renewed hope.
Lady Cranstoun cast more than one anxious glance in her direction, but said nothing until they were back at the house in Heriot Row, when she decreed that the evening should be spent at the theatre. In the flurry of telephoning for seats, persuading Aunt Arabella—who really needed very little persuasion—to accompany them, changing and dining in haste, the hours passed, until by the time she fell into bed, Jane was too tired for anything but sleep.
Nor did the next day afford any opportunities for moping or repining, and a kind of feverish excitement carried Jane through it, an excitement born of the unusual brilliance and gaiety which prevailed in Edinburgh, Edinburgh welcoming, for the first time in centuries, a Scottish Queen to her husband’s northern capital. For her the blue and white banners swung from tall masts along the kerbs, for her the shop-fronts of Princes Street, banked with red, white and blue flowers, vied with the gardens opposite. For her even sober George Street had burst into a swaying mass of bunting. To walk in the city on that July morning was to feel exhilarated in spite of personal cares, and Jane, going out with Love for fresh air and exercise, was lifted out of herself, even if only temporarily. Stopped by the crowd in George Street, they had a glimpse of the King and Queen driving back to the Palace under the coloured arcade of many flags, sped by cheers and smiles.
“I do love pomp and circumstance,” sighed Love as they sat at table trying to do justice to the enormous luncheon which Aunt Arabella thought they needed, (“for remember, Helen and you girls, that you’ll get no dinner to-night.”)
“Pomp and circumstance is all very well in short snatches,” said Sir Magnus drily. “No more chicken, thank you, Aunt Arabella—but I doubt if any of us would enjoy it the whole time.”
“I would,” said Love. “And I mean to have as much of it as I can.”
Did she imagine, thought Jane, that the life of a Naval Officer’s wife was one continuous pageant? Kitty Mariner could tell her another tale! But she said nothing aloud, afraid that by doing so she might start a dissertation on Love’s future plans.
“What are you going to do this afternoon?” asked Sir Magnus, when at last they left the dining-room.
“Afternoon? There ain’t going to be no afternoon!” Love assured him. “The hairdresser’s coming, and we have to leave for the Palace before six, and it will take us hours to dress and fix our feathers and things.”
“Tea will be at four sharp,” said Aunt Arabella. “A substanti
al tea. And at five o’clock or shortly after, a few people are coming in to drink sherry and see you in all your finery.”
“Gosh Maggie!” muttered Love vulgarly. “I was right when I said there would be no afternoon!”
“You were indeed,” answered Jane, and said it again when, it seemed only minutes later, she was seated before the solid old-fashioned dressing-table staring at the unfamiliar reflection of her pale face and neck and dark hair with a plume of three curling white ostrich feathers rising from it, while the young lady sent by their hairdresser hovered about her, skilfully curling wayward ends, settling the length of white tulle veil, and fixing the feathers so securely that no curtsey could make them tip.
“Madam must remember to lower the head when getting into her car. The feathers add an inch or two to madam’s height,” she warned, and Jane, whose mind was a whirl of the directions given at the presentation classes, suppressed a nervous giggle.
“Madam looks lovely,” said the girl with such honest admiration that Jane was pleased.
‘I do look rather nice,’ she thought, gazing at the radiant vision in the close-cut silver gown.
A knock at the door. “Come in!” she called, and there entered Aunt Arabella’s staid parlourmaid.
“Miss Magdalen is ready to have her hair done,” she said. “And a boy from a florists’ has left this for you, miss.”
“For me?” Jane took the green cardboard box and opened it, wondering. ‘Perhaps father ordered them,’ she thought, and said to the maid, “I suppose there are some for Miss L—Miss Magdalen, too, Alice?”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, miss. These are the only ones that I took in,” said Alice. “Miss Magdalen’s book-ay arrived some hours ago.”
She left the room, taking with her the hairdresser’s assistant, and Jane, from its nest of tissue paper, lifted a cluster of long-stemmed sweet-smelling violets.
Love Comes Home Page 15
