“I wish I could do something to help,” Jane said earnestly. “But I don’t see how I can.”
“If you were to stay,” Helen suggested slowly. “Permanently, I mean. There’s always the need for another pair of hands on a farm, Jane, and—I won’t be able to do much about the house for a long time to come.”
“There’s Marion,” Jane suggested uncomfortably. “She might not think that another pair of hands was necessary. She’s so competent.”
Helen sighed, her blue eyes deeply troubled.
“It was my suggestion that Marion should come here,” she confessed, “because I felt sorry for her when Adam bought up her land and she lost her home. We knew the Denholms so well. The two families had always been neighborly and the children were brought up together. They were part of the dale. Marion was the strongest-natured. She bossed them all—except Adam.” Helen smiled a little. “Adam was always a match for Marion, but it was in a friendly enough way. I think she respected him because he wouldn’t give in to her unless he thought she was right. Anyway, she never tried to bully him openly, as she did the others.”
“I can’t imagine anyone bullying Adam into doing what he didn’t want to do,” Jane said, although she supposed that even Adam might be no real match for a woman so subtly determined to have her way as Marion.
“Everything would have been different, of course,” Helen observed, “if Angela had lived. Adam would have been married by now and High Tor would have been a happier place. At first,” she added, “I thought that he was never going to get over Angela’s death, and I don’t suppose he’ll ever forget her completely. She was so sweet a person, Jane. But life must go on.” She paused, looking through the sun-warmed window-pane at the frisking lambs. “What’s your sister like?” she asked unexpectedly.
“Penny?” The flush of a swift embarrassment mounted to Jane’s cheeks. “We’re twins. I suppose you might say that when you’ve seen me you’ve seen Penny.”
Helen considered her for a moment before she answered.
“Not always,” she contradicted. “Quite often twins develop differently. They might look alike, but fundamentally they can be almost opposites. I couldn’t imagine you doing what Penny did to Adam, for instance.”
“Perhaps I was really older than Penny in a good many ways,” she said. “I always took care of her when we were younger.” She smiled reminiscently. “Penny was rather like Nigel, Mrs. Drummond. She never wanted to settle. She had such strong, bright wings!”
“You’ve all got to try them,” Helen said with a smile. “But I’m hoping that Nigel will always come home to roost!”
Two days later Jane had a second letter from her twin. To her surprise, and perhaps also a little to her dismay, it bore a London postmark. Penny had come home.
“Dear Jane,” she wrote, in a new, brittle way,
“You may not be surprised at this. Stephen is about to be married, but not to me! He met her in New York. Her father is so rich that he doesn’t even know how many times he is a millionaire! Nice for Stephen, isn’t it? I couldn’t stay in New York. I couldn’t bear to stay!”
The old Penny had shown through, impulsive, emotional and so easily hurt.
“They are going to be married in church and I had already planned every detail of my own wedding to Stephen. Could anything be more cruel? Maybe I’ve asked for this, Jane,” she went on with deeper insight. “You’ve every right to tell me that I did the same thing to you, but you can’t be in love with Stephen now. Even I can see how selfish he is, how utterly concerned with his own interests he will always be. I can see that, yet I’m all shrivelled up inside. I just want to creep into a deep hole and hide. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”
Determinedly she rushed on to the snippets of news which she thought might be of interest to Jane.
“The present show is going into cold storage till the autumn. Ivor Blundell thinks we all need what he calls ‘a long rest.’ What fun for me! I’ve applied for the Royal Ballet, but I don’t think I’ve got a lot of hope. You have to be one of their own fledglings, I suppose, before you get a chance with them, or akin to genius, which I’m not. You see, Jane, I haven’t got many illusions left! But don’t think from this that I’m about to jump off Westminster Bridge one dark and murky night. I’m not made that way. You said something about coming to London if I needed you, but don’t come just yet. There’s also a hope that I can get another spell on tour with Ivor—nothing definite yet, but it might bring me your way, in time. Newcastle upon Tyne was one of the towns Ivor mentioned, and then Carlisle, so, you see, I might break in on your convalescence one of these days. Do you think Adam has forgiven me yet?
“Yours, as always, “Penny.”
Penny hadn’t mentioned Adam’s name until the very end of her letter. It had sounded like an afterthought, but afterthoughts could be dangerous. Supposing Penny did turn up at High Tor by the remotest chance?
Jane knew that she could not let that happen. She would have to write to Penny and tell her that it was the last thing she must do. Helen had never really forgiven her for deserting Adam, and—and it would be too dreadful for Adam himself. No, Penny must be kept away from High Tor at all costs!
It turned out to be a difficult letter to write, and it took Jane two days to think about it. During that time she saw little of Adam and almost nothing of Nigel. It was spring and there was a great deal to do with two farms to look after.
Adam had given her a pony to ride, a docile creature with soft brown eyes and a way of nuzzling her for sugar that delighted her.
Toward the end of the week Nigel came back from the Priory with the information that the local hunt was to hold its annual ball there.
“Adam has given his permission,” he told Jane. “I suppose it was a sort of mutual arrangement between him and Marion. The hunt balls were always held in the Priory in the past. The George isn’t really big enough, and it’s not the same in an hotel, somehow. The atmosphere is just right at the Priory. Marion must be feeling like a dog with two tails!” he laughed. “She has always wanted to see the Priory come back into its own, preferably with herself as mistress of ceremonies!”
There was still a peculiar reticence about Nigel’s references to Marion, still something almost sinister in the way they parried and sparred without quite hitting out openly at one another.
“The ball is the local highlight of the season,” he rushed on. “You’ll be roped in to help, of course.”
But Marion did not suggest that Jane might help. She had made herself responsible for the catering arrangements and the decoration of her old home for the occasion, but it was Adam she wanted to stand by her side.
On one pretext or another she kept him at the Priory whenever she could, and not until she was practically forced to make the gesture did she extend a reluctant invitation to Jane.
“I don’t suppose you will be able to dance a great deal,” was how she put it, “but if you would like to come along—”
It was the old, almost scathing reference to Jane’s injury, the bitter underlining of the fact that she could never hope to be a fully active member of their set.
“Of course she can dance!” Nigel declared, ever ready to champion Jane. “She’s walked for miles since she came here, and I’ve already decided to take her as my partner!”
Dear Nigel, Jane thought, while she remained fully conscious of Adam standing behind them in the shadows, taking no part in the conversation yet still aware of them.
“I had no idea that was how the wind was blowing!” Marion observed with obvious relief. She glanced back at Adam. “How about you?” she asked boldly. “Are we already partnered, Adam?”
“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t all go down together,” he said, coming into the glow of light round the fireplace. “We have to be there slightly ahead of the others, anyway.”
“You and I certainly will,” Marion agreed. “But there’s no need for Jane and Nigel to get down before eight,
really. I shall be quite obliged if you’ll all help with the greenery the evening before, though.”
She was being magnanimous because she felt that she had won her point with Adam, and Jane supposed that everything was finally settled.
She wrote to London for the only evening dress she possessed, hoping that it would pass muster at the Priory. Marion, she knew, had ordered a new one from a well-known gown shop in Newcastle upon Tyne and had been for several fittings, and Jane realized suddenly that she had seldom seen her out of riding breeches and a jacket or a tweed skirt and sweater.
Yet she supposed Marion could look regal in the right type of evening gown, and certainly the Priory was the perfect setting for her.
Jane began to worry when the expected parcel had not yet arrived the day before the ball.
There was little work being done that morning apart from the routine tasks, and even the dogs had come in with Adam from the hill. They raised a frenzied barking as the telephone bell rang shrilly through the hall, and Adam went to take the call while Jane tried to silence them.
“I’ll shut them into the kitchen,” Nigel suggested. “Adam won’t be able to hear a thing!”
He had carried in the tray with their eleven o’clock coffee and Jane took it from him as he shepherded the three dogs toward the kitchen door. Adam lifted the receiver.
“High Tor,” he announced.
Jane poured her own coffee and Nigel’s. She had no idea how long Adam might be on the telephone. A considerable amount of High Tor’s business was done that way.
It was minutes, therefore before she realized that something was wrong, or, at least, that Adam had not spoken into the mouthpiece again. Someone at the other end of the line appeared to have a great deal to say.
“Where exactly are you?” he asked at last. “You are in the vicinity, I take it?”
His voice had sounded tight and unemotional, and he listened to the voluble reply for several seconds without further comment. “No,” he said at last. “I’ve no objection, Penny.”
Jane felt paralyzed and almost incapable of thought. What had made Penny telephone High Tor? What had induced her to put in a call to Adam, of all people?
“Where is this parcel?” he was asking into the instrument. “Have you got it with you?”
My dress, Jane thought desperately. Penny hasn’t posted my dress and now she’s here—somewhere near enough to put through a local call!
It was inconceivable that her twin could do such a thing. It was almost criminal on Penny’s part to be talking to Adam as if nothing but the most casual of friendships had existed between them!
She moved at last, going halfway to the telephone to hear Adam say:
“All right, Penny. Stay where you are. There’s no way of getting here if you’ve already missed the bus to Kirkleyhead, and Jane must have her dress.”
“The dress doesn’t matter, Adam,” Jane protested at his elbow. “Please let me speak to Penny.”
He held up a receiver which was already buzzing emptily.
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” he said.
“But how could she!” Jane felt as if she would be glad if the floor were to open and swallow her up. “How could she ring you, Adam, or contact High Tor at all!”
“I thought you knew Penny better than that,” he observed, amused. “In an emergency she’s invariably quite singleminded. All that mattered, it would seem, was the fact that you might not get your dress for the ball. Penny is quite capable of having forgotten for the moment that she was ever engaged to me,” he added dryly.
“It’s unforgivable of her,” Jane gasped. “I can’t understand it. Where is she now?”
“At Brampton. She was speaking from the White Lion.” His voice was steady, his gray eyes unconcerned as he looked at her. “I’ve told her that I will meet her there.”
“Adam, you can’t!” She could not let Penny inflict such a meeting on him. “Penny has no right to do this to you.”
He gave her an oddly crooked smile.
“Can’t you see that I’ve got over Penny?” he said briefly. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t go to meet her, Jane.”
“Please let me go to Brampton instead,” she begged. “Penny will have to put up somewhere for the night, and I could fix up there for her, perhaps.”
“Why not ask her here?” Nigel had come back from the kitchen in the middle of their conversation, but almost immediately he remembered that Penny had once been engaged to Adam. “Gosh!” he added hastily, “I’m sorry, Adam.”
“You needn’t be,” his brother assured him. “I know how short your memory is, Nigel. Penny’s staying here will rather depend on how Mother feels about it.”
“Please don’t ask her,” Jane pleaded. “It would only distress her.”
And you, Adam, she had meant, but Adam would not let anyone see his distress.
“We can always find out,” he answered briefly. “Penny will be quite safe at the White Lion in the meantime.”
He finished his coffee before he went into his mother’s room, and Nigel said:
“This is something!” He poured himself more coffee. “What do you think, Jane?”
“I think Penny ought to be smacked!”
“And that’s putting it mildly! Poor Jane!” He came to sit on the arm of her chair, looking down at her with frank amusement in his eyes. “Don’t take it too seriously. It will all work out,” he declared.
She was back in the kitchen when Adam came through from his mother’s room.
“Please let me deal with Penny,” she begged. “She had no right to come, even as far as Brampton. One of the men could run me to Kirkleyhead and I could go down: in the bus,” she suggested desperately when he did not speak. “This is my affair.”
“And mine,” he reminded her. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t see Penny, and no reason why she shouldn’t come back with me now that my mother has no objection.”
Of course he had the right to see Penny alone, Jane thought after he had left her. It was the first time they had met since Penny had broken their engagement, and he might even be going to Brampton with the hope that he could win Penny back again.
Jane could not imagine him as a supplicant and, looking at him through the window as he got ready for the journey, she thought that her twin might be in for rather a bad time. His jaw was set and his mouth had taken on a harder line as he got in behind the steering wheel and drove away.
“I thought we were going to make the rum butter, miss,” Doris said, bustling in from the pantry. “It’s a real favorite with Mr. Adam, and now that Mrs. Drummond is getting up and about she’ll be able to eat a bit better and she’s sure to fancy some.”
“I’d like to see how it’s made, Doris,” Jane agreed, “but I must go and have a word with Mrs. Drummond first.”
For a split second she hesitated before knocking on Helen’s door. What was she going to say? What could she say? And then it seemed that she could only tell Helen the truth.
“I’m terribly unhappy about all this, Mrs. Drummond,” she confessed, crossing to the window where Helen sat in the sunshine. “I had no idea that Penny would do such a thing and I wanted Adam to let me go to Brampton, but he seemed determined to handle it by himself.”
“Adam’s like that,” Helen said with a smile. “And I don’t think your sister’s visit will cause such a terrible upheaval, after all. It may even be rather a good thing, when all is said and done.”
“I can’t see that,” Jane said. “It will hurt Adam.”
“And that means a great deal to you?” Helen guessed. “My dear, I’ve often thought so, but you were so adamant about it in the past. One might almost have thought that you and Adam were determined to remain at loggerheads!”
“There was no reason why he should like me,” Jane said heavily. “I burst in here with the news that my sister had gone back on her word to him, and every moment that we were together must have reminded Adam of that. Penny and I ar
e so very much alike.”
Helen gave her an odd look.
“I’m rather looking forward to meeting Penny,” she confessed thoughtfully. “And if Adam can forgive her and she wants him back, well—that might be the answer to a good many things. It wouldn’t, though, be the answer for you, Jane.”
She paused tentatively, but Jane had nothing to say.
“We all make mistakes,” Helen added gently, “but sometimes they can be righted without too much heartache for anybody—even the culprit.”
Jane wondered how true that was as she made her way slowly back to the kitchen where Doris was waiting. Adam would be almost at his destination by now, prepared to forgive Penny, perhaps, and soon they would be on their way back to High Tor.
When she thought about Marion, her heart gave a sick little lurch for Penny’s sake, because all Marion’s venom would now be directed against her twin. Penny, the girl Adam had been going to marry, was on her way to High Tor, and Marion was not yet aware of the fact!
As Adam’s car came swiftly toward the last of the gates leading to the farm Jane was there to open it.
“Hullo!” Penny greeted her as they drove through. “Surprised to see me?”
“Not really,” Jane answered, forcing a smile. “Adam said he would bring you.”
Suddenly she was aware how pale Penny looked. She was thinner, too, and drawn about the mouth, and her eyes had lost some of their former lustre. She appeared tired and a little wan, and she avoided looking directly at Adam. A good deal of her habitual confidence had deserted her, and with it had gone the rather pert look that someone had once told Jane was the way of distinguishing between them.
The Gated Road Page 13
