“I believe you’re right,” said Love. “I think I’ll break off my engagement—oh, but how can I?” she cried suddenly. “There’s someone else I don’t want him to marry, not just dog-in-the-manger, truly and honestly, but because I don’t think he’ll make her happy—”
“And what you think must be right? Is that the way of it?” he said. “Miss Magdalen, ye canna play providence without doing more mischief than good. Ye asked my advice, well, here it is, to tak’ or leave as ye like. Let things alane that dinna concern yersel’. If more folk interfered less, the world would be a better place to live in.”
“Then what about Spain? You want us to interfere in that,” said Love reasonably enough.
“I ken,” he said heavily, “I ken. It’s no’ consistent. I don’t know the rights or wrongs o’t noo, I’ve thought on it ower long. But it’s mair than I can stand, to bide here when Franco is killing those defenceless folk ower yonder.”
“If you feel like that,” said Love slowly, “I wonder you don’t go to Spain and fight as a volunteer. You haven’t anyone dependent on you whom you can’t leave, and at least you’d see for yourself what’s happening, and it might settle things in your mind.”
He stared at her as if he saw a vision. “By!” he shouted suddenly. “Ye’re richt! I’ll gang!”
“But wait, Danny. I forgot! The election,” said Love hastily. “What a bore the wretched thing is!”
“The election. Oh, ay,” he said slowly. “The election.” He paused, then said: “Miss Magdalen, I’ve no right to tell this to a soul, but I tellt old Harrison it wasna clean dealin’, so I’ll give ye the hint. Ye can pass it on, it’ll no’ matter to me what’s said about me, for I’ll be in Spain.”
The way in which he spoke the name was as if he spoke of the Blessed Isles. Perhaps, to him, thought Love with sudden intuition, that war-torn country would indeed prove Tir-nan-Og. “Listen to me,” he went on. “Harrison doesna mean to retire at a’. He’s waiting till the last meenit, keeping the Major hangin’ on here in case he might go an’ stand for yon Edinburry division—they’ve an awfu’ weak Tory candidate there for want o’ better—an’ at the last meenit, Harrison’ll turn roond an’ announce that he’ll continue to represent the constituency.” He uttered the last words with extreme bitterness, and added: “The Major should ken fairly soon. Will ye tell him?”
“Yes, I will, Danny, and thank you,” said Love. She hesitated, wanting to say more, hardly knowing how to put it. “I do wish you the very best of luck, Danny. I’m not sure whether I’m for Franco or against him. I don’t like either side much, but I wish you luck, and I believe you’ll really be happier in Spain, however horrid it is.” She held out her hand. “I won’t forget that afternoon up at the Queen’s View, and how you and Mr. Gilbert hauled me through the bog,” she said, smiling, but with tears in her eyes. “It—it was a rare ploy, wasn’t it?”
“I’ll mind it and laugh ower it when I’m awa’,” said Danny gravely. “I wish ye weel, Miss Magdalen.” Then his face lit up. “Ay!” he said. “It was a rare ploy!” and turning, went on his way, perhaps to death, certainly to hardship; to peace of mind, Love sincerely hoped. She sat where he left her for a moment, then sprang up, shook herself as if to shake off gloom, and started towards Craigrois at a run.
Now she had two things to do, important, interesting: tell John that she was not going to marry him, and take Danny’s message to Peregrine. Over the first she wasted little thought, but the second afforded her a good deal of satisfaction. If this was not heaping coals of fire on Peregrine’s rude, ungrateful head, what was?
To reach Allander, her quickest way would be to cross the Craigrois avenue without going to the house, and make her way by field and wood to Peregrine’s. Forgetful of everything but the triumph she would enjoy, of his indebtedness to her, she hurried on. It was only as she leapt the last drystone dyke and went through the strip of wood which bordered the avenue that the sound of an approaching car reminded her of John.
“Bother!” she thought, and then: “Oh, well, if this is him, I’ll just tell him I’ll be home quite soon.”
It was John’s car, coming not too fast up the long incline, and she stood out from the sheltering fir trees and waved imperiously to him to stop.
“Hullo,” he said. “Want a lift home? It was decent of you to come and meet me.” Try as he might, he merely succeeded in sounding constrained. He need not have worried. The tones of his voice meant nothing to Love. It is doubtful whether she would have noticed it if he had quacked like a duck or howled like a wolf, so absorbed was she in warm thoughts of Peregrine’s discomfiture.
“Oh, John!” she cried breathlessly. “No, I’m not coming home just yet, I’ve got a most important message to deliver, and you needn’t say to mother that you’ve seen me at all, please. Oh, and John, by the way, our engagement is broken off, if you don’t mind. I’m not going to marry you after all. Good-bye, I’ll be back quite soon, don’t say anything till I come—”
She was gone, springing through the wood on the other side of the drive while he sat there in helpless bewilderment which gradually changed through anger at being jilted, to an overwhelming relief. At last, ‘Thank God! Now I won’t have to tell her that I can’t go through with it!’ he said aloud with grateful fervour, and drove on slowly to the house.
Love’s enthusiastic anticipation took her at top speed as far as the wide gravel sweep in front of Allander. There she paused to smooth her hair with her hand, and by squinting, to try to see if her nose was shiny. The result of her one-eyed scrutiny was disheartening, for it revealed a blurred but glittering red blob, so, without giving herself time to be daunted by her appearance, she marched up the wide shallow steps and rang the bell. The open door showed her the spacious, stone-floored hall, and a glimpse, beyond an arched opening at the back, of the graceful circular staircase with its simple handrail. Heavy dark doors on either side stood half open, and from one of these the stately figure of the butler loomed into view on his leisurely way to answer her ring.
“Is Mr. Gilbert at home? I should like to see him,” said Love with the ease of manner which made her so like her mother, and ignored her hatless and gloveless condition.
“Will you come this way, miss?” The butler stood aside, then preceded her with the pomp of one leading a procession, across the hall, down several steps, across a lower hall, very dark, which echoed their footsteps resoundingly, and threw open a door.
“Miss Cranstoun, sir,” he said, and Love walked into a low-ceiled square room, which held, besides several well-filled bookcases and a gun cabinet, a round Queen Anne table of lovely proportions, some comfortable chairs upholstered in dark green leather, and Peregrine himself, rising from one of them, a book, in his hand.
“Hullo, Love!” he said easily. “This is a very pleasant surprise. I thought it must be Jane and that you’d be busy with your engagement.” And to the butler, while Love calmed her own rage by remembering the coals of fire about to be piled on his head: “Bring the sherry in here, Moyes.”
“Very good, sir.”
“What a nice room,” said Love, sniffing the masculine atmosphere of leather and tobacco and gun-oil like a dog. “Do you always sit here? Why haven’t I seen it before?”
“You don’t honour me very often, and the last time you came, we had a tea-party,” he reminded her. “And Moyes thought the drawing-room the proper place for that, when there were ladies present. But I prefer this myself. Did you come here just to be polite about it, or have you some other reason? More plans to divulge?”
“I certainly don’t mean to tell you anything about my plans,” Love said, but with so little indignation that he looked at her in surprise, not knowing she was about to have her revenge, and that the thought of his approaching humiliation made her feel almost fond of him. “There’s something I think you ought to know, something that you’ll be really grateful to me for telling you,” she ended impressively.
“Really?
That sounds interesting and mysterious,” he said. “Has all been discovered? Is my dark past known to the parish, and have you flown here to warn me?”
“I’m not interested in your past, and you’ll be very, very sorry you made fun of me, in a minute,” said Love with dignity. Then she forgot to be dignified, and cried eagerly: “Have you got a dark past, truly, Perry?”
He shook his head sadly. “I hate to disappoint you, Love, but I have not,” he said.
“Oh!” cried Love angrily. “What a horrid man you are!”
“I know,” he said, as the door slid open noiselessly. “But don’t give me away to Moyes. The poor fellow thinks I’m quite decent.”
The butler, setting a silver tray equipped with glasses and decanter, and, to the hungry Love’s dismay, nothing in the shape of biscuits, murmured confidentially: “I took the liberty, sir, of bringing the brown sherry, thinking that the young lady would prefer it.”
“Not at all, Moyes. Miss Cranstoun is a connoisseur of sherry,” said Peregrine. “You can’t put her off with that sweet stuff. Bring the very dry pale sherry.”
“Very good, sir.” The butler withdrew again, and Love, catching the ghost of a tiny smile on her host’s grave lips, could not, for very pride admit that the fruitier the sherry the better it pleased her.
“Ah! That’s the stuff,” Peregrine said approvingly, as the butler returned with a cut-glass decanter half full of liquid paler than gold. “I’d like your opinion of this, Love,” he added, pouring out two glasses and handing her one. “But business before pleasure, of course. Let’s have your important news first.”
Thankful to put off the moment when she must drink the sherry with pretended enjoyment or be for ever shamed, Love eagerly told him the whole story of her long walk, and the meeting with Danny Buchanan.
Peregrine listened without interruption, and then, to her fury, laughed.
“Oh, good Lord, that! I guessed the old fox was up to that trick weeks ago, my dear child. He wouldn’t have deceived a blind baby. But as I had no intention of standing for that Edinburgh division, I let him go on amusing himself. It doesn’t worry me in the least. I’ve already told the central committee my suspicions, and they know that I’m far from keen on representing the constituency, at least until I’ve lived here much longer and am not considered an in-comer. I expect old Harrison will get the shock of his life presently, when he hears that I’m being put up for the County Council, with a very fair chance of getting in. I can spoil his fun there far better than in the House. Thank you all the same for coming and telling me. I’m afraid you’ve had an extra walk for nothing. How let’s hear what you think of my favourite sherry.”
Love was so completely shattered by this cool reception of the news which was to have left him apologizing with humble gratitude for his former rudeness to her that she was afraid she might begin to cry, and as an alternative, and also to get it over quickly, raised her glass and drank off the sherry like spring water. It went, dry, stinging and burning, down her throat, and she experienced a most odd sensation as if the room were slowly turning round her.
“Ah! I see that you appreciate it. Have another glass, though I don’t as a rule like you to take more than one,” came Peregrine’s voice from a great distance. She pulled herself together, defiantly held out her glass, and drank once again, in the hope that it might make the room stop behaving in such a very peculiar fashion. It didn’t. It made it much worse, and sudden realization added the last touch of horrified shame to her confused angry misery.
“Perry!” she faltered piteously. “Perry, I believe I’m—I’m drunk!”
“Drunk? On two small glasses of sherry?” he repeated mockingly. “You, the frequenter of so many cocktail parties? Nonsense!”
Love could not see his expression, his face kept advancing and retreating most disturbingly, and it looked like a rather thin turnip lantern. But she could hear the sudden change in his voice.
“Love! My dear child, do you really feel funny? You can’t possibly be tight on what you’ve had. Here, hang on to me.” His arm came reassuringly round her and she was guided to a chair.
“I wish you’d make the room keep still, and then I’d be all right,” she said plaintively.
Peregrine was thinking quickly. “Have you had any tea?” he asked. “Not? And a small lunch, I’ll bet, and you’ve walked all the way to Nether Craigie and back here? What a brute and a fool I am!” He went to the bell and rang it violently.
“That’s—what I call you,” murmured Love in a hazy voice.
“It looks as if you were quite right,” he said shortly. “Oh, Moyes, send Mrs. Mallow to me, will you? Miss Cranstoun feels a little faint.”
“Yes, sir,” said the butler.
“‘Moyes and Mallow!” said Love, beginning to giggle. “Moyes and Mallow. Moyles and Mayow. Like a pair of com-comedians. How awfully funny!”
“Don’t try to talk,” he said gently but very firmly. “You’ll be all right once you’ve had something to eat, and I’ll drive you home. Here comes Mrs. Mallow.”
The housekeeper, her tread making all the guns in their cabinet rattle, hurried in. “Poor young lady!” she panted in a rich wheezing voice which made Love think she had been nourished solely on hot strawberry jam. “What can I do for her, sir?”
“She hasn’t had any tea, Mrs. Mallow, and a very long walk. I think, as it is a bit late, you might bring some good hot coffee and cakes or sandwiches—something to eat, anyhow.”
After the coffee, blazing hot and black as night, had come, and Love had drunk two cups of it and eaten several sandwiches, things began to return to normal. The room was once more stationary, Peregrine’s face stopped looking like a badly-cut turnip lantern and resumed its real thin, clear outlines, and Love’s own head ceased to make sounds like a busy telephone exchange.
“Better now?” asked Peregrine.
“Oh, yes, thank you. It was awfully silly of me. You—you won’t tell anyone, will you, Perry? I feel so ashamed,” said Love.
“I’m the one who ought to feel ashamed,” he said. “Egging you on to drink that sherry when you’d come miles to tell me about the election. Will you forgive me? Even if I don’t ask Jane to marry me?”
“I don’t believe I want you to marry Jane after all,” said Love. “And she’ll marry John, I expect. She really cares about him. All my plans have gone wrong, even the last one. I hoped I’d make you feel small if I told you about the election, you see. That’s why I came.”
“Oh, I feel small all right. You’ve certainly managed to bring that off,” he said. “Does it please you?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Love said petulantly. “Stop feeling small at once.”
He laughed. “Now I know you’re better. Would you like me to take you home?”
“Oh!” Love jumped up in dismay. “Oh, yes please, quickly, Perry! I quite forgot, poor John’s at Craigrois all this time, facing the lions unsupported.”
“It will do him no harm. He deserves to be made a little uncomfortable. But come on,” he said, leading the way to the door, where the car waited.
He whirled her down the Allander avenue, along the short stretch of road which lay between the two houses, and turned in at the entrance to Craigrois. “Why did you say that Jane would marry Marsh?” he asked, breaking the silence. “I thought you and he were engaged?”
“Oh, no. That’s off,” Love said nonchalantly. “I met him in the avenue when I was on my way to you, and told him so.”
Peregrine gave a shout of laughter. “Oh, Love, Love! You’re quite incorrigible!” he said.
On the threshold of the drawing-room she hung back a little. “I expect I’m in disgrace,” she murmured. Then she braced herself. “Oh, well—” and pushing the door open, she walked in, Peregrine close behind her, to find Sir Magnus and Lady Cranstoun and Maggie seated there in various attitudes of impatient expectancy.
“Magdalen,” said her mother. “I am most displeased with you. John has
been here for over an hour and a half.”
“Where is he? Out searching for my body?” asked Love.
“‘We are not amused,’” murmured Maggie, as Lady Cranstoun frowned. “Hullo, Peregrine, what fun for you. You’re going to be treated to a good old-fashioned family scene in the best tradition.”
“Peregrine has too much sense, I hope, to pay any attention to you, Maggie,” said his mother.
“And where’s Jane?” continued Love. “Out helping him to look for me? That girl has the kindest heart!”
“Jane very kindly indeed has taken him to the garden,” Lady Cranstoun said severely. “But I must say,” she added, severity softening to astonishment, “that I didn’t expect them to stay out quite so long.”
“No?” Love shot a quick glance at Peregrine.
“Here they come,” said Maggie, who had wandered over to the window, and Sir Magnus, laying aside his book, came to take his stand with his back to the fire flickering on the hearth as a reminder that evenings were becoming chilly.
“Now we’ll see some fun!” said Maggie with a chuckle, poking Love in the ribs, but he was a little taken aback by her cordial: “Yes, won’t we?” instead of the confused reply he had expected.
“Pop’s got on his stern father face,” Maggie continued, disconcerting Sir Magnus, who was certainly gazing very intently at his younger daughter. “Go on. Love, go out and lead him in by the hand, and both of you fall on your knees in front of father, who then gives you his blessing in a broken voice.” And Maggie whistled the opening bars of the Wedding March.
“Dear Maggie,” said Love blandly. “It is really a very great pity that you should be such an ass.”
“Children,” murmured Lady Cranstoun, and Peregrine said uncomfortably: “Hadn’t I better leave you?”
The evening rays that fell on their faces through the window could hardly add to their radiant looks. Sir Magnus, blinking, stared at them, and John, going straight up to him, said, stammering a little, but speaking clearly and honestly: “Do you mind v-very much sir if I m-marry Jane?”
Love Comes Home Page 24
